The bitter half

After the hectic excesses of the festive season where one seemed to move from one elaborate feast to the next, I long for food that soothes, comforts and restores.

The flavour that is captivating me right now is bitter. It’s those sharp astringent notes that I want to introduce in recipes, bringing in unexpected atonal riffs that disrupt the smooth harmony of a dish, lifting it with those sophisticated dark accents unique to bitter. I realise there is a logic in my cravings: my body needs comfort food but also food that’s good for it. And as India and the East have always known, bitter foods are chock-full of nutrients.

Growing up with Bengali food one develops a taste for bitter early in life through everyday classics: neem begun where the acrid neem leaves stir-fried with eggplant jolt the palate; or soothing shukto made more interesting by the addition of bitter gourd; mashed potatoes enjoyed with a soupçon of mustard oil, green chilli, and crisped intensely bitter potol (wax gourd) leaves.

But now I find that I’m tempted to play with bitter elements outside traditional frames. A soothing bowl of chowder becomes more interesting with a sprinkling of crisp neem leaves; the sweet green peas of the season is the basis of one of my favourite winter comfort food, peas risotto, except now, just before serving, I fold in some julienned karela that I have stir-fried earlier so that every mouthful of creamy, pea-sweetened goodness has a pleasurable spark of bitter. Buying salad leaves, I look out for scarlet radicchio, wanting the bitter red leaves to liven up a lunchtime sandwich of salty bacon, sweet tomatoes and sharp cheese.

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I’m in good company I find. Chef Sonu Koithara, Taj Bengal’s innovative executive chef, enthusiastically endorses bitter — both as an exciting and challenging flavour to work with and because of its health-promoting qualities. “Bitter, dark, brown and burnt are my favourites just now,” he says, “I love bitter gourd in all forms, it’s a fantastic vegetable, does magic when it comes to health”. He introduces bitter notes in his creations both with ingredients and by using charring and burning, both of which methods, when controlled, infuse foods with pleasant acrid accents.

Chef Koithara’s burnt butternut squash and bitter lemon soup is a rhapsody of flavours, the creaminess of the squash and the acid hit of the citrus fruitbalancing and modulating the strong bitter melody created by charring it. His burnt bell pepper and quinoa salad with rocket leaves is an explosion of tastes and textures, where the earthiness of quinoa is enlivened with the bitter strains of burnt peppers and the subtle yet distinct flavour of rocket. From salads built on chargrilled avocados, to fish burnt on mango wood or cinnamon (a clever reminder that cinnamon is the bark of a tree), or cooked in banana leaves left long enough in the fire to char and hence infuse the fish with a unique smoky bitterness, to burnt pineapple with palm jaggery ice cream, Chef Koithara is on a bitter roll and his guests are loving it.

At The Park, Kolkata, Chef Sharad Dewan has established himself as the chef from whom you expect the unexpected. Audacious fusions, ingredient pairings that stretch the imagination, dishes in colours that tease the mind and the palate — Chef Dewan’s offerings are contemporary and cutting edge. He too is a fan of bitter, appreciating both its nutritious qualities and flavour potential. His French vanilla and charcoal ice cream, for instance, is an elegant concoction of smooth airy creaminess shot through with streaks of charcoal.

“Bitter is better” says Vijay Malhotra, executive chef of ITC Sonar. It’s a mantra he believes in implicitly and one he is encouraging his guests to adopt, highlighting the health properties of bitter ingredients.

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In fact, heroing bitter is becoming a global trend. Anyone who has been following Masterchef Australia over the last couple of seasons will have noted how contestants celebrate bitter ingredients and the endorsement it receives from the judges. In-house judge Matt Preston summed it up in an episode in Season 9 when he said “bitter is really the new black at the moment”. Dark chocolate with barely a hint of sweet, uber-dark caramel, charred and burnt foods, herb ashes — bitter is taking the world of fine dining by storm. One of the most articulate and creative champions of bitter is none other than renowned London-based restaurateur and chef, Yotam Ottolenghi. In his columns in The Guardian he has underlined the fact that the presence of bitter flavours in fruits, vegetables or leaves is usually an indication of their goodness: bitter component whether in the edginess of grapefruit, sharpness of radicchio, robust taste of karela , or hinted at in endives show they contain compounds that provide vital nutrition. Ottolenghi makes a star of such foods in his dishes, marrying veal with chicory in a flavoursome winter stew, pairing radicchio with honey and sharp taleggio cheese on bruschetta, and several other creations. Each of these sing the trademark Ottolenghi anthem of “Flavour! Flavour! Flavour!” and it’s bitter that is the defining flavour, but perfectly offset by salt, sweet, sour and chilli tastes and velvety or crisp textures.

And here lies the secret to succeeding with bitter ingredients. The acrid notes need to be paired with saltiness (think dark soya, anchovies, fish sauce, crystals of sea salt), sweet, chilli; with textures that are creamy or crouton-crisp. As New York-based food entrepreneur Nidhi Jalan who makes the most outstanding ceviche says, “I love serving ceviche on endive leaves or a bed of grapefruit: the chilli hot, sharp acidity of the ceviche pairs perfectly with the bitterness of the endive or grapefruit. The bitter accent is subtle but instantly missed if absent.”

Arundhati Ray is a food writer based in Kolkata

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