106 posts tagged “indian”

Sorpotel comes from the same spot as the Vindaloo: the former Portugese colony and current-day hippie hangout of Goa (hey, the Beatles went there, even). It is traditionally made with pork innards, which I avoided. There's a broccoli dish that I can't remember. And of course, raita. Ugh, this doesn't look too good.

Well, nothing to say here — just the plain glory of aloo gobi.

A simple meal, served cold, for someone going on a long car journey — not heavy, but tasty. Salad with garden tomatoes, and breaded strips of chicken breasts, that were flavored with my own curry powder. I used no dressing on the salad, but in retrospect I think I could, or even should, have done something more to the salad part of it all. But you do what you can, with what you've got. Looks good, though.

This is a dish that I've gotten very close, and not so close, several times. This time, I nailed it — as often as not, by accident.

My main problem has been the balance of the sweet flavors of cinnamon, cloves and bay leaves, against everything else, but especially the green cardamom, which can turn things very nasty if you use just a little too much. I've been experimenting with whole and ground spices, roasted or not, using a tea steeper — and in particular, with removing the seeds from the cardamom pods (grinding them or not, before or after roasting them, if you do that at all) or just leaving them whole — and with whether or not to leave them whole in the stew, or in a tea steeper. And if you use a tea steeper, you have to use a lot more of the spices, because the stew just doesn't get to interact with the spices as much. Gah.

This time, I used whole cinnamon, cloves, bay leaves and green cardamom pods in cheese cloth, a la bouquet garni. It gave me just the right flavors, and it allowed me to remove the spices, when I felt they had provided just the right amount of flavor.

The accidental thing was that I used far more ground cashews than the original recipe called for. This created a very rich, smooth and creamy flavor and texture.

Still, there was a lot of improvisation going on here. I ended up removing the chicken pieces towards the end, and running a stick blender through the sauce. That didn't break up the cashews enough, so I had to use a regular blender. But it worked.

It was damn good.

Grinding cashews into a paste, and using it in a sauce — bloody good idea. But don't even think about doing the same with peanuts. I was out of cashews one time when I made this, and tried this. Didn't work at all. I like peanuts in food — whole or otherwise. But for this, peanuts are worse than nothing.

"Yeehaw Murghi" — the name of this here fine blog — comes from a grilled beercan chicken with a tandoori style paste. I decided to try it with these Cornish game hens, and the results were quite good. Game hens have a lot more flavor than chicken, so I was a bit worried about how it'd all work out. Especially since I couldn't find the recipe for the tandoori paste I had originally used, and ended up with one made by Gordon Ramsay (for sautéed salmon) and I'm not sure it had the same flavor, nor that it was suited for slow, indirect grilling.

Also, I decided against removing the skin. This was an important part of the chicken recipe, since it allowed the paste to seep into the meat. Game hens are so small that I figured it'd be too much of a hassle, so I left it on. As a result, the paste just didn't penetrate much at all.

I think I'll stick with the original recipe. Balancing a chicken on a beer can is difficult, but it's easy, compared to doing it with a small V8 can and a game hen.

Tilapia poached in a garlic, chili and coconut milk stew, served over spinach rice.

Plain rice is a little unimaginative, but I have no problem with it, if it is just used to soak up the sauce from a stew such as this. Still, this dish was lacking in vegetable so I decided to chop of a bunch of spinach and stir that in just as the rice was finishing. It worked a treat; definitely something I'll have to keep in mind.

The curry recipe was very simple, but I had some problems. First off, it calls for eight cloves of garlic (which I did use), and four fresh chilies — Thai, Serrano or cayenne. I've never had fresh Thai chilies, but I understand they can be very hot. Serranos, as hot chilies go, are on the mild side. Cayennes, well — they are murder. That's what cayenne pepper is made from. Four of those, and this dish would have been completely inedible. I used one small, fresh Jalapeño, and that gave it a gentle heat — it would have worked if it was a little hotter, but this was fine.

The coconut sauce was made by blending the garlic, chilies, salt, turmeric, some flour (for thickening) and a can of coconut milk. The uncooked garlic gave the mixture a very sharp, bitter flavor that never faded. Next time I think I'll use half the garlic.

Mustard seeds were throw into a hot wok, along with one finely chopped red onion. Once softened, the coconut mixture was added along with some curry leaves and a finely chopped, skinned tomato. The fish was placed on top, the sauce spooned over it, and it was left to simmer until flaky.

The problem here was that I had too much flour in the sauce so it became so thick that it didn't simmer properly — it was just too gooey and there wasn't enough bubbling, so to say. So the fish was undercooked (which you can clearly see from the red coloration on the fish — cooked tilapia is white when done). So I had to dilute it with water and return it to the pot after having taken the picture. Embarrassing.

But in the end, quite tasty. 

Vegetable curry with a sauce from onions, homegrown tomatoes, some leftover, homemade Thai style curry paste, adjusted with some homemade, leftover Indian style curry spice — and whatever veggies we had laying around. This, I figured, would be just an easy, lazy Sunday meal. I figured wrong...

First off, with all these tomatoes going ripe right now, I'm always trying to find a use for 'em. And in one of the few cooking shows I bother watching anymore (Molto Mario) I saw him peel and de-seed tomatoes for a sauce — this would work great for a curry. First off, I used so many tomatoes that they cooled the water down too much, so they didn't get blanched properly. This made peeling them a nightmare. Secondly, it's a de-seeding tomatoes is a horrible mess.

Then there was an awful lot of peeling and chopping, of course. Onions, carrots, celery, potatoes, tomatoes. Took far more time than I expected. And finally of course, there was the prolonged simmering required for this type of a stew. So Sunday dinner was served way late. I really hate screwing up the timing like that.

Still, it was very tasty when it was finally done. And it's also nice to see that it is easy to create curry pastes and dry spice mixes that are far better than anything you can buy in a store. And it's even nice when you can bring them out and use them like this — without using commercial stuff, and be all Semi-Homemade etc.

Am seriously starting to feel confident about my grub at this point... This was a very improvised meal, made with leftover, frozen aloo mutter akuri (potatoes, peas and carrots), along with a blended garlic mirepoix flavored with my homemade curry spice mix and some sour cream. This was topped with grated parmesan and breadcrumbs (made from my last baguette attempt). I poured oil over it, to create that crispy crust, but I used too much — and the whole thing was too wet, so it ended up fairly oily looking. But still, it was crisp. Oh and roma tomatoes from the garden.

Chicken marinated in tandoori style spices (mixed some commercial stuff I still have, along with my own curry powder) and grilled them on the Weber, over indirect heat. This was done after I made naan, over a tile, over extremely hot coals.

Aloo mutter isn't as well known as aloo gobi, but this version, I like even better. For this one though, I added carrots also. Worked out quite well, in spite of me being a bit nervous about what the sweetness of the carrots might do to the flavor balance of it all.

And the naan... I'm not sure if my naan is all that authentic anymore, because it's been ages since I've been to a restaurant, and I keep using techniques that I'm learning from The Breadmaker's Apprentice — my reasoning is that some of that fancy-pants French methods for breadmaking can't harm it. I use some of that stuff when making pizza, as well as hamburger buns.

But I'm seriously thinking about doing a really bare-bones, no yeast, just chemical leavener style naan one of these days, thought.

The seemingly weird combination of apricot and curry caught my eye the other day. It was ment as a dipping sauce for coconut shrimp, but I decided to swap out the shrimp for fish fillets, and panko for the coconut (which isn't popular in this household). The breading method used for the coconut shrimp was interesting: dry the shrimp thoroughly, dip them in gently whisked egg whites, and finally in a mixture of shredded, unsweetened coconut, sugar, salt and corn starch. I've not seen this before.

It didn't work too well, because the breading wouldn't darken, since it was dry (coconut on the other hand, has enough moisture to brown quite nicely). So I had to add some oil, and increase the cooking temperature, and time. In retrospect this seems completely obvious, considering how fast shrimp cooks.

It turned out great, though. But the real star was the "sauce" (should it be called something else, when it's this thick?). It was dead simple: mayo, apricot preserve and curry powder. This seems frighteningly "Semi Home Made" I know, but at least I did make my own curry powder, from my own recipe.

This sauce would be great for dipping with coconut shrimp of course, but if I could just find something else that would go with this, I think I'd be onto something really nice.