Within the folktale “Stone Soup,” members of a village every carry one ingredient to a simmering pot; it doesn’t matter what they carry, however they be taught that the mixture of things is extra scrumptious than each individually. That’s how Mark Morris thinks of this vegetable stew hailing from Kerala, a state within the south of India. “It’s a really, quite common dish, which is why it doesn’t matter what goes in it,” says the choreographer and creative director of Mark Morris Dance Group. “I’ve eaten it in many alternative locations. Do-it-yourself, restaurant-made, me-made, it’s completely different on a regular basis.” Morris, who travels to India each few years, discovered to make this stew and different dishes by working alongside seasoned cooks there, each when attending an Ayurvedic retreat heart in Kerala and when visiting associates on the Nrityagram Dance Village exterior of Bengaluru, after which experimenting again house in New York Metropolis. “It’s all the time been form of collaborative,” he says. “Not all the time sharing the identical language, however sharing the identical curiosity in scrumptious, scrumptious meals.”
Morris grew to become concerned with cooking as a teen, serving to out his widowed mom. Years of touring and touring have served to develop his ardour. “I can do Indonesian, I can cook dinner a Spanish meal, I can cook dinner Italian meals, French meals…Chinese language I’ve simply been beginning to get form of good at,” says Morris. When requested if his strategy to cooking has any similarities to his strategy to choreography, he solutions cheekily, “In that I’m very, excellent, sure.” Morris provides that although cooking takes much less time than making a dance, they each have ephemeral outcomes. “You cook dinner for hours or days, after which everybody eats it in 5 minutes,” says Morris. “Identical with a dance. I work on it for years, and also you’re achieved in 20 minutes. It’s each true and a joke on the identical time.”
Picture by Laura Giannatempo, Courtesy Morris.
Substances Yield: 6 servings
5 tbsps canola oil or peanut oil
6 entire cardamom pods (black or inexperienced)
6 entire cloves
1 cinnamon stick or 3/4 tsp floor cinnamon
3 chili peppers, cut up in half (jalapeño or Thai, with warmth degree to style)
1 tbsp grated ginger
3 medium pink onions or 5 shallots, thinly sliced
6 cups any combined greens, lower into about 3/4-inch chunks (Morris recommends any mixture of candy potatoes, eggplant, peas, lengthy beans, pumpkin or squash of any type, potatoes, carrots, cauliflower, and bell peppers.)
5 contemporary curry leaves
3 cups water
salt (to style)
3 cups unsweetened coconut milk
1 tsp peppercorns (pink, black, or white), crushed
Directions
Warmth the oil in a big saucepan or Dutch oven over medium warmth. Add the cardamom pods, cloves, and cinnamon, and stir. After roughly 30 seconds, add the chili peppers, ginger, and onions. Sauté, stirring, till the onions are tender and translucent, about 3 minutes.
Add the combined greens, curry leaves, water, and a beneficiant pinch of salt. Cowl, cut back the warmth to low, and cook dinner till the greens are cooked by way of, about 15–20 minutes.
Add the coconut milk and crushed peppercorns. Simmer on very low warmth (to keep away from curdling) for about 2 extra minutes.
Serve the stew with rice or papadam (an Indian flatbread constructed from bean flour).
