Our church started holding a monthly potluck and January's theme was "roots", or food from your ethnic heritage. Rich and I chose to cook something from my Indian heritage and I set about trying to choose a good dish. And that's where I ran into some difficulty. I am Indian, but my family isn't Hindu. They're Catholic, have Portuguese last names, and eat meat. So a typical vegetarian Indian dish wouldn't really count.
After some Googling, I found plenty of Goan dishes. Some sounded familiar (sorpotel), but I was certain my relatives didn't use so much coconut and their sorpotel didn't involve dried pig blood. Plus, my family isn't from Goa. They're from the suburbs just north of Mumbai. I gave up on Goan recipes and decided to pick a recipe that was sure to represent my heritage: a recipe for Chicken Moile from one of my aunts. I Googled "chicken moile" and found that it's from the little community of Portuguese Catholics living just north of Bombay, known as "East Indians" (apparently the name refers to the British East India Company, as they live within walking distance of the west coast of India). This opened up the door to plenty of websites describing East Indian history, culture, and food.
As great as it was to learn so much about my heritage, there was a problem. The second ingredient in my aunt's recipe is "bottle masala". I had heard of this stuff—my relatives would bring it back from India whenever they travelled there. Surely, if my relatives couldn't find it in the Indian grocery stores of Chicago, I wouldn't find any in Madison. Then I forgot to bring some home while visiting my family for Christmas. So my only choice was to make some.
Perhaps this would be a good point to explain that bottle masala is a mixture (masala) of twenty-something spices that are individually roasted and pound into a powder, then packed into beer bottles and sealed. Bottle masala gets made once a year, when a group of women gets together to roast a big batch of chillies and spices and then pounds them with a giant mortar and pestle. The process usually takes more than a day. My plan was to scale a recipe down to one bottle worth and to make it in a spice grinder.
More internet research revealed that bottle masala recipes are family secrets. Apparently,
- the first rule of Bottle Masala is: you don't talk about Bottle Masala.
- The second rule of Bottle Masala is: you don't talk about Bottle Masala (Just use it quietly).
- The third rule about Bottle Masala is: you don't ask questions about Bottle Masala.
Then the day arrived. We spent hours measuring out miniscule quantities of spices, roasting them on the stove, grinding them in small batches, and coughing because of all the red chili powder in the air. When we finished, we celebrated by using our first tablespoon in that night's dinner: chicken moile. We had no idea if our bottle masala was even close to authentic, but the chicken was delicious. I've since asked my dad to compare our version to the authentic stuff from India, and he says it smells different.
I won't share the bottle masala recipe yet, as I'm hoping to refine it to make it more authentic. But I will share my aunt's chicken moile recipe. You'll need to find your own bottle masala to make it (I still have some of ours in the pantry that I'm happy to share—the sooner I run out, the sooner I make a new batch).
- Chicken Moile
- 2 lbs chicken (we cut up a whole chicken)
- 1 tbsp bottle masala
- 2 tablespoons canola oil
- 2 large potatoes, each cut into 4 pieces
- ¼ tsp garam masala (you can find this at the grocery store or make it in a spice grinder)
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 tbsp vinegar
- 4 onions, cut into rings
- 2 green chilies
- 8 flakes garlic (we used one clove of garlic)
- ½-inch piece of ginger
- Sauté onions, green chilies, garlic and ginger in canola oil until golden.
- Add chicken and masalas and cook for 15 minutes.
- Add potatoes, salt, and vinegar and cook until the potatoes and chicken are done.
recipe courtesy of Elizabeth Gonsalves, known to family as Aunty Buddy
