Alu Dum

the Darjeeling and Nepali hill potato: small potatoes boiled, crushed rather than cut, and simmered in a thin dark sauce of black cardamom, timur, and mustard oil until they drink it up

Origin: Darjeeling & Nepal

From the journey of Cardamom.

There are many alu dum across the subcontinent and they are not the same dish. The Kashmiri version is a rich yoghurt braise; the Bengali is sweeter and heavier with tomato. The Darjeeling and Nepali one is a hill dish, thinner, sourer, and smokier than either, and it is eaten as street food from Chowrasta to Kathmandu, ladled into a bowl and topped with puffed rice or eaten with sel roti. What makes it a hill dish is the spicing, and the spicing is a small demonstration of what grows locally. Black cardamom comes from the plantations that cover the slopes of Sikkim, Darjeeling, and eastern Nepal, and it goes in whole and generously. Timur, the Nepali Sichuan pepper, gives the numbing citrus tingle that marks the whole cuisine. Mustard oil is the cooking fat, and a good deal of dried chilli goes in. There is no cream, no yoghurt, and usually no tomato beyond a spoonful, so the colour is a thin dark red rather than an opaque orange. The technique that gives the dish its name is dum, cooking under a tight lid so the steam does the work, and the small detail that matters most is that the potatoes are crushed rather than cut. A cut face is smooth and sheds sauce; a crushed one is ragged and porous, and it drinks the thin gravy in until the potato itself tastes of black cardamom rather than merely sitting in it.

Ingredients

Potatoes

  • 750 g small waxy potatoes, unpeeled

Whole spices

  • 3 whole black cardamom pods, bruised
  • 1 tsp timur (Nepali Sichuan pepper), lightly crushed
  • 4 whole dried red chillies
  • 1 tsp fenugreek seeds

Base

  • 1 large onion, finely chopped
  • 1 tbsp ginger and garlic, pounded to a paste
  • 1 medium tomato, chopped
  • 3 tbsp mustard oil
  • 1.5 tsp sea salt

Ground spices

  • 1 tsp ground turmeric
  • 2 tsp ground coriander
  • 1 tsp chilli powder

To finish

  • 1 handful coriander leaves, chopped
  • 1 squeeze lemon juice, to finish

Method

  1. Boil the potatoes in salted water until tender, 15 to 20 minutes, then drain and cool slightly. Peel them if you like, then crush each one lightly with the heel of your hand or the base of a glass so it cracks open but holds together.
  2. Heat the mustard oil until it just smokes, cool it for a moment, then add the black cardamom, dried chillies, fenugreek, and timur. Sizzle for thirty seconds.
  3. Add the onion and fry for 8 to 10 minutes until well browned, then the ginger-garlic paste for two minutes, then the ground spices for one minute.
  4. Add the tomato and cook until it collapses and the oil separates at the edges, about five minutes.
  5. Add the crushed potatoes with the salt, turn them through the masala, then pour in 300 ml hot water. Cover tightly and simmer on a low heat for 15 minutes.
  6. Uncover, mash two or three potatoes against the side of the pan to thicken the sauce, and simmer uncovered for five minutes more.
  7. Finish with lemon juice and coriander and serve hot.

Notes

Black cardamom is the defining flavour and green cardamom cannot stand in for it; the two are different species and only the black one is smoked. Timur is the Nepali relative of Sichuan pepper and gives a citrusy numbing tingle, for which Sichuan peppercorns substitute well. Use a culinary-grade mustard oil. Waxy potatoes hold together under crushing where floury ones disintegrate. The dish is better the next day and is often eaten cold or barely warm from a street stall. For a fuller meal, serve with rice, or with sel roti, the ring-shaped Nepali rice bread.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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