Recipe: Helly Raichura’s Go-To Recipe for Hosting at Home in Winter

Running her own restaurant means Helly Raichura must often turn down invitations. “As a chef, you don’t get to go out on the same days your friends are celebrating or enjoying themselves,” she says. Instead, entertaining at home has become a meaningful way for her to stay connected.

The Enter Via Laundry chef and owner started her culinary career by hosting intimate 10-course degustation dinners at her home for 12 guests at a time. Even after moving to Carlton North, the 20-seat restaurant retains the intimacy of the early days. “I enjoy speaking to my guests, and I almost feel like I’m entertaining them at my home,” she says.

Raichura also prefers small intimate gatherings to big parties when hosting friends in her down time. It helps to have a go-to drink that’s easy to put together, or even scale up as needed. For Raichura, that’s a Spiced Mule cocktail.

Mix about 30 millilitres of Dark Tide spiced rum with 100 millilitres of ginger beer and a dash of lime, garnished with whatever you have in the garden. Raichura personally uses plenty of fresh mint and native thyme, which she describes as a pungent cross between peppermint and thyme. She also likes to make the drink look “nice and spicy” by finishing it with a torched cinnamon stick.

Her goal when entertaining is to connect with someone on a personal level, so she makes it a point not to spend too much time making individual drinks or cooking alone in her kitchen. “I try to have things that I would just need to put in the oven or heat up so that we can all sit for the meal together.”

As the weather gets colder, she prefers starting the night with dishes that are served at room temperature like this warrigal patta chaat, a starter on Enter Via Laundry’s current menu dedicated to Rajasthan (the restaurant cycles through regions of India). Warrigal greens are battered in besan (gram flour) and deep-fried, then served with Davidson’s plum jam, chaat masala and a lemon myrtle mix, on top of thick strained yoghurt and cured spanner crab.

It’s “a nice textural thing”, and a dish you can prepare with a big platter before the party starts so it’s ready for your guests to dip into as soon as they arrive. The moreish snack can also be made with spinach in place of warrigal greens, and pairs perfectly with the Spiced Mule.

“If I’m hosting in winter and people are coming into a nice heated space, I love to hand them something warming, but still refreshing, which the Spiced Mule is,” she says. It’s a multi-dimensional crowd-pleaser, with the mix of spice, booze and citrus complementing the textures, crunch and softness of the chaat, plus that sweet and sour note of Davidson’s plum.

Whatever else she serves, the meal always ends with tea. “I like to use whatever is growing in the garden, because it’s an extension of where you’re living,” she says. Every winter she makes a turmeric, honey and ginger tonic that she stores in the fridge and heats up by adding hot water, making for an easy, comforting sip.

While drinks start punchy and end more restrained, Raichura’s approach to music is the opposite. She likes to set the scene with her Enter Via Laundry playlist, and lets things loosen as the night unfolds – “Bollywood old-school numbers will start banging”.

Helly Raichura’s warrigal patta chaat

Serves 4
Preparation time: 60 minutes, plus 1 hour to marinate
Cooking time: 20 minutes

Ingredients

200g warrigal greens
150g besan (gram flour)
2 tsp turmeric
2 tsp red chilli powder
4 tsp oil Neutral oil, for deep-frying

Spanner crab and yogurt mix
200g hung yoghurt/thick Greek yoghurt
125g spanner crab
4 tbsp lime juice
½ bunch coriander
6 to 7 lemon myrtle leaves
2 green chillies, finely diced
1 tsp fried garlic
2 whole shallots, finely diced

Davidson’s plum chutney garnish
50g Davidson’s plum, deseeded (about 1 plum)
50g sugar
100ml water
1 tbsp red chilli powder
1 tsp cumin powder

Chaat masala
2 tbsp coriander seeds, lightly toasted and coarsely ground
2 tbsp cumin seeds, lightly toasted
½ tbsp red chilli flakes
1 tbsp black salt
1½ tbsp dried mango powder
½ tbsp white pepper powder

Method

Wash and dry the warrigal green leaves. Mix the besan, turmeric, red chilli powder, oil and water until the batter is a nice pouring consistency. Season to taste.

Heat up oil for deep-frying in a pot on medium-high heat. Dip the cleaned and dried warrigal greens into the besan batter and then fry in oil until crunchy and the besan has turned light brown.

Deep-fry all the warrigal greens in batches and leave on a paper towel to drain excess oil.

To make the spanner crab and yoghurt mix, place the cleaned raw meat of the spanner crab in a bowl and add lime juice. Let it rest in the fridge for at least an hour.

Drain the excess liquid from the spanner crab, then add hung/thick Greek yoghurt, lemon myrtle leaves, coriander, green chilli, fried garlic and diced shallots, and fold well. Season to taste.

For the Davidson’s plum chutney, place the deseeded plum in a pot and add sugar, water, chilli powder and cumin seed powder. Season to taste. Bring the mix to a boil on low to medium heat and stir continuously. Cook until consistency is like that of jam. Take off the heat and let it cool, then place in blender and process into a smooth chutney.

Mix all the ingredients of the chaat masala in a bowl and set aside.

For the assembly, have all your components and the serving plate ready. When your guests arrive, plate just before serving.

Spread the crab and yoghurt mix. Dot over with Davidson’s plum chutney. Place the fried warrigal greens on top of the crab and yoghurt mix. Sprinkle chaat masala over everything.

This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Liquorland. Dark Tide Spiced Rum is available at Liquorland – shop online now.