Photo: amanderson2 · CC BY 2.0
Bunny Chow (Mutton Curry in a Hollowed Loaf)
Durban's bunny chow: a quarter of an unsliced white loaf, hollowed out and filled with a thick mutton and potato curry. The scooped-out bread sits on top for dipping, and the walls are torn off by hand as you go. A bread bowl drinks what it holds, and here nothing stops it: the curry-soaked inner wall is the point of the dish.
Ingredients
- Curry
- lamb or mutton shoulder, on the bone · in 3cm pieces800 g
- potatoes · quartered2
- onions · finely chopped2
- tomatoes · chopped2
- garlic · chopped4 cloves
- ginger · chopped1 tbsp
- green chillies · split2
- cinnamon stick1 piece
- cardamom pods · lightly crushed3
- hot curry powder2 tbsp
- ground turmeric0.5 tsp
- garam masala1 tsp
- neutral oil3 tbsp
- salt2 tsp
- water600 ml
- coriander leaves1 handful
- Bread and sambal
- unsliced white sandwich loaf · about 800g, square1
- carrot · grated1
- onion · finely chopped0.5
- vinegar1 tbsp
Steps
- ⏲ 10 min 30 sec
Heat the oil and fry the cinnamon and cardamom 30 seconds. Add the onions and cook over a medium heat 10 minutes, to a deep gold.
- ⏲ 1 min 30 sec
Add the garlic, ginger and chillies for a minute, then the curry powder and turmeric for 30 seconds only. Ground spice wants a short time in the oil.
- ⏲ 10 min
Add the tomatoes and cook 5 minutes, until oil shows at the edges. Add the lamb and salt and turn it for 5 minutes.
- ⏲ 60 min
Pour in the water, cover and simmer gently 1 hour.
- ⏲ 30 min
Add the potatoes and simmer 30 minutes more, lid off. The potatoes should be tender and the sauce thick enough to coat the back of a spoon without running. If it is thin, reduce it further. Stir in the garam masala and coriander.
Meanwhile mix the carrot, onion, vinegar and a pinch of salt for the sambal.
Cut the loaf across into quarters. From the cut face of each, run a knife round 1.5cm in from the crust and lift the crumb out in one piece. Do not pierce the base, and keep the crumb.
Fill each bread bowl with hot curry, set the scooped-out bread on top and serve at once. Dip the loose piece first, then tear the walls down from the top as you go.
Tips & Variations
Variations
- Instead of mutton: chicken cuts the simmer to 40 minutes, and sugar beans make a bunny with no meat. Reduce any of them to the same thickness.
- Sizes: a quarter loaf is one person's; a half loaf is for two.
- Where it comes from: Korean Wikipedia says it was created in Durban, a city with a large Indian community, and that although its exact origin is unknown it has been eaten since the 1940s. The curry is Durban Indian; the bowl is a white sandwich loaf.
- South Africa's other curry here: bobotie bakes curried mince under an egg custard. The same country's curry going into an oven in one case and into a loaf in the other.
- The bread bowl that seals itself: Tainan's coffin bread fries a block of white bread first to seal its walls, then fills it with a cream sauce. The same shape and the opposite choice.
Tips
- The bread drinking the curry is the dish. Coffin bread states what a bread bowl does: "A bread bowl drinks the soup it holds; this one is fried first, so its walls are sealed with oil before the filling arrives." Bunny chow does not seal it. The curry-soaked inner wall is the best part, and it is torn off from the top and eaten with the curry.
- Thicker than a curry for rice. Clam chowder gives the rule for a bread bowl: "The bread drinks the liquid, so make the chowder slightly thicker for it." Thin, and the walls give way before the eater gets to them. Reduce until it coats the back of a spoon without running; the potatoes help it get there.
- The loaf must be unsliced. A sliced loaf leaks curry at every cut. Quarter a whole one so the walls are continuous.
- Do not pierce the base. If the knife tip goes through the bottom while you hollow it, the curry soaks through there first and runs onto the plate. Leave 1.5cm of wall and the base whole.
- Serve as soon as it is filled. The bread starts drinking the moment the curry goes in, so a filled bunny left to wait loses its walls first (serving temperature).
- Keep ground spice short in the oil. Curry powder and turmeric need thirty seconds; longer and they scorch (blooming spices).
The basics behind this dish
- Browning and the Maillard ReactionMeat fails to brown for one of three reasons: it is wet, the pan is cool, or you put too much in at once. Plus how the brown film stuck to the pan becomes your sauce.
- Cooking Meat: Temperature, Resting, and Cutting Against the GrainDoneness is a core temperature, not a number of minutes. What resting actually does, how to handle a thick cut, and why the direction you slice changes the texture.
- Knife Skills: Grip, Cuts, and Why Size MattersHow you hold the knife matters more than how fast you cut. The pinch grip, the claw hand, and why uniform size is a cooking decision rather than a cosmetic one.
More of the same kind
More from this country
South African →
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