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Recipe: Fiery Mirchi Ka Salan

September 15, 2022 16:54 IST

I first tasted a very good Mirchi Ka Salan at a wee Hyderabadi restaurant in Colaba, south Mumbai, called Vintage, operating from a colonial era bungalow on the quiet Mandlik Road.

The salan was very well made and I vowed to learn how to reproduce it. So, in those Internet-less days I scoured different cookbooks for a good approximation of the dish, but I had only partial success.

Back in the 1990s, the footpaths around Fort, also south Mumbai, were occupied by even more diverse sellers than they are today. Pavement book hawkers existed cheek by jowl with vendors selling purloined Air India cutlery and dishes.

These hawkers -- I am not talking about the more established stalls selling all kinds of rare books near Flora Fountain and the once-functioning Central Telegraph Office -- sold all kinds of pirated books like Thy Neighbour's Wife, Harold Robbins and Sidney Sheldon's Rage of the Angels and also a series of pamphlet cookbooks for recipes from each Indian state or region.

In the Andhra Pradesh or Hyderabad booklet I found two interesting recipes -- Baghara Baigan and Mirchi Ka Salan.

Using that recipe as the base, I perfected my own version of Mirchi Ka Salan that's popular with my family, especially the foodie youngest daughter.

Mirchi Ka Salan goes best with steamed rice -- basmati or a tasty small-grain rice. It also can be eaten with parathas or rotis.

Mirchi Ka Salan

Photograph: Zelda Pande

Mirchi Ka Salan

Servings: 2

Ingredients

Method

Zelda's Note: For a Jain version of this Mirchi Ka Salan recipe, omit ginger, garlic and onion. Add 1 tbsp saunth or dried ginger powder and increase the hing to 1 tsp.

To veganise this recipe, use vegan yoghurt instead of regular yoghurt and omit the ghee.

To work in advance, you could fry both types of chillies a day before and store in the fridge. The paste can also be made in bulk and kept in the freezer for the next use.

Mirchi Ka Salan pairs well with a mutton fry or a chicken fry. Have a go at making Satya Raghava's Mangalore Chicken Sukka or Ramapriya Suresh's Mutton Sukka.

ZELDA PANDE