A dish I can’t forget: rice and chicken at Rambutan

Chicken and rice, the workhorses of my unimaginative weekday diet, rarely tempt me on a menu. But at Rambutan, the saffron chicken pongal rests on two components at their very best. Slices of grilled thigh, charred but still lush, fan across a high-sided bowl of pongal, a rice dish common across South India and Sri Lanka.

Pongal ranges from tightly puddingy, each starchy grain smushing into the next, to something looser, more like a thin porridge. This one is somewhere in between. The orb-like muthu samba rice, a landrace variety long harvested in Sri Lanka, has less amylase – an enzyme that breaks down starch – than common basmati. Despite a lingering simmer in coconut milk, each plump grain holds its shape. The resulting texture is silky, but not babyish. Fennel, cinnamon, cardamom, whole dried red chillies and saffron lend warmth, while a pile of frizzled shallots counter the coconut’s mellow sweetness. It’s finished with a green jolt of mint sambol, served alongside.

Pongal has been on the menu of the Borough Market restaurant since it opened in 2023. I’ve had it on every visit (I lost count around six). The food is Tamil but not rigidly so. Rambutan’s founder, Cynthia Shanmugalingam, and head chef, Sofia Tertzakian, weave British produce – rhubarb, cherries – through the menu, often in palate-cleansing pickles and condiments called acharus. The pongal, however, hews close to the original.

‘It’s my grandmother’s recipe, transcribed in Tamil handwriting in a plain exercise book,’ says Shanmugalingam. ‘Some things are done best the way your grandmother did them.’