Ok, time to finish up this post! :)
So, after finishing up the sides, I started on the chappathis. The dough had sat for over an hour and was soft and quite happy. Hmm ... no rolling pin! That's a challenge. Oh well! I just had to use my hands instead. Wait! A Voss bottle! Brilliant! That was fun - rolling balls of chappathi dough into rotis with the Voss bottle. I just cooked them dry on a pan, no oil or butter. Turned out perfectly soft and yummy!
Finally, the Peas Pulao that I got started before rolling out the chappathis:
2 cups basmati rice - soaked in water for about 5 minutes, drained and spread to dry in a plate or flat pan
1 stick cinnamon
3 bay leaves
1 piece of nutmeg
1 t garam masala
1 pinch turmeric
1.5 cups frozen peas
1 t sesame oil
2 t ginger-garlic paste
salt to taste
Heat oil in a saucepan (large enough to cook the rice) and add the ginger-garlic paste, cinnamon, bay leaves and nutmeg. Once they are browned, throw in the rice and saute for 3-4 minutes, stirring constantly. Then add 3.5 - 4 cups of water along with the peas, garam masala and salt and simmer partially covered till the rice is cooked. Garnish with a handful of chopped cilantro.
Dinner rocked! We opened a bottle of Prosecco to go with the desi food - it is often hard for us to find decent pairings given the spiciness of indian good, but this Prosecco totally complemented the flavors. Except now I've forgotten the label! Damn!
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Desi food cookout - Part I
Jo and Rich visited over the weekend - after we hit the baseball game in the afternoon, we moseyed over to Uwajimaya to get the makings for our mega desi meal :) That store is a lot of entertainment, we spent close to an hour strolling through the aisles, getting distracted by every fifth thing on the shelves - probably something we hadn't seen before! We finally marched out of there with 5 bulging bags of groceries - made heavier by the many mangoes and tender coconuts that I insisted on buying :)
So, the menu for the night:
Dum Aloo
Kadai Paneer
Peas Pulao
Cilantro chappathis
Papads from TJs (I forgot to get the masala papads I really wanted, so we had to make do!)
We discovered that Uwajimaya has a great spread of most things, but they are seriously lacking in cheeses. Maybe that is not surprising for an asian store, but we were banking on finding paneer there, so we had to hit Madison Market instead.
Chappathis: Dough
===============
I started off by kneading the dough - this is made from whole wheat flour. Traditional chappathis don't usually have any filling or seasoning, but we wanted something different. So, I threw in a bunch of minced cilantro along with some red chilli powder and salt. I usually add warm water when initially kneading the dough, and follow this up with some non-fat milk - this makes the dough really smooth and easy to roll out. After kneading, I covered the dough with a wet kitchen towel - letting the dough sit for a couple of hours usually results in much softer rotis.
The next thing to work on was the Dum Aloo. I chose to try a saalan-style masala for this instead of the more traditional poppy seed based flavors. This proved to be a good idea, I definitely want to use this base with more vegetables:
Dum Aloo
========
15-18 small potatoes (we carefully picked small ones that we didn't have to chop up)
20-25 pine nuts - soaked in 1/2 cup of warm water for about 10 minutes
2 T sesame seeds
1 black cardamom pod
3 t coriander seeds
2 t cumin seeds
2 cloves
1" cinnamon
1 small piece of nutmeg
6 cloves garlic
2" ginger
1 T olive oil
1 large red onion - minced
3-4 green cardamon pods
1/2 t turmeric powder
1 t cayenne pepper
2 - 2.5 cups buttermilk
The most important thing here is soaking the potatoes. It is pretty amazing how much of a difference that makes! I pricked the potatoes all over with a fork and soaked them in a bowl of warm water with 1 t of salt for about an hour.
Next, I dry roasted the pine nuts, sesame, black cardamom, coriander, cumin, cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg till the pine nuts turn slightly brown. Once cooled, I ground them up into a fine powder.
I proceeded to mince the garlic and ginger along with the onions to form a coarse paste - it seems like preserving some small pieces instead of grinding to a fine paste results in a much better texture (and better flavor absorption).
Once the potatoes were soaked, we wiped them clean and sauteed them in a broad pan with 1/2 T of olive oil. This worked perfectly since we used this amazing calphalon nonstick pan. Got to love good cookware! :)
We then took the potatoes out and added the remaining 1/2 T of oil to the pan. And then threw in the onion-ginger-garlic paste. Once the onions were browned (this took about 15 minutes), we added the ground masala and salt and stirred it till the powder seemed mixed in. Now we started adding the buttermilk - 2-3 T at a time. I remember reading someplace that this needs to be done slowly so that the buttermilk does not curdle. It actually worked out much easier than I expected. We ended up adding over 2.5 cups, and it lent the perfect consistency. We finally added the potatoes in, mixed the sauce and covered the pan. We cooked it on simmer for almost 30 minutes before it was done. And done beautifully! :)
Meantime, Jo was cutting the pepper and carrots - the most beautifully julienned vegetables I've ever used :) The Kadai Paneer is a pretty simple recipe that can be made in so many different ways: some recipes call for a dry dish with roasted vegetables and paneer dusted with dry masala while others use a tomato gravy. I went with a tomato-onion gravy since it seemed like a good idea to soak it up with the rotis.
Kadai Paneer
=============
1 onion
4 vine tomatoes
5 cloves garlic
3 thai green chillies
1 T garam masala (I had pre-made this, so it made things a lot quicker)
1 bell pepper - julienned
2 carrots - julienned
1 block of paneer (about 12 oz, I think) - chopped into long pieces
1/2 T olive oil
I tossed the onions, tomatoes, garlic and green chillies into a food processor and ground them to a coarse paste. Once the olive oil was heated (in a shallow pan), we threw in this paste and let it cook - this took a little longer than expected, almost 20 minutes. We then added the peppers and carrots and let them cook covered for another 7-8 minutes. In the meantime, ,we baked the paneer (greased with a little oil spray) for about 12 minutes at 350 F until the edges started browning. Finally, we added the garam masala and salt along with the paneer to the veggies and let them simmer for a few more minutes. Garnishing was chopped cilantro - I love that smell - when we toss freshly chopped cilantro into hot gravy! Yum!!
Phew! I'm tired of writing these recipes already! Think I'll post this and let the rest come in Part II :)
So, the menu for the night:
Dum Aloo
Kadai Paneer
Peas Pulao
Cilantro chappathis
Papads from TJs (I forgot to get the masala papads I really wanted, so we had to make do!)
We discovered that Uwajimaya has a great spread of most things, but they are seriously lacking in cheeses. Maybe that is not surprising for an asian store, but we were banking on finding paneer there, so we had to hit Madison Market instead.
Chappathis: Dough
===============
I started off by kneading the dough - this is made from whole wheat flour. Traditional chappathis don't usually have any filling or seasoning, but we wanted something different. So, I threw in a bunch of minced cilantro along with some red chilli powder and salt. I usually add warm water when initially kneading the dough, and follow this up with some non-fat milk - this makes the dough really smooth and easy to roll out. After kneading, I covered the dough with a wet kitchen towel - letting the dough sit for a couple of hours usually results in much softer rotis.
The next thing to work on was the Dum Aloo. I chose to try a saalan-style masala for this instead of the more traditional poppy seed based flavors. This proved to be a good idea, I definitely want to use this base with more vegetables:
Dum Aloo
========
15-18 small potatoes (we carefully picked small ones that we didn't have to chop up)
20-25 pine nuts - soaked in 1/2 cup of warm water for about 10 minutes
2 T sesame seeds
1 black cardamom pod
3 t coriander seeds
2 t cumin seeds
2 cloves
1" cinnamon
1 small piece of nutmeg
6 cloves garlic
2" ginger
1 T olive oil
1 large red onion - minced
3-4 green cardamon pods
1/2 t turmeric powder
1 t cayenne pepper
2 - 2.5 cups buttermilk
The most important thing here is soaking the potatoes. It is pretty amazing how much of a difference that makes! I pricked the potatoes all over with a fork and soaked them in a bowl of warm water with 1 t of salt for about an hour.
Next, I dry roasted the pine nuts, sesame, black cardamom, coriander, cumin, cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg till the pine nuts turn slightly brown. Once cooled, I ground them up into a fine powder.
I proceeded to mince the garlic and ginger along with the onions to form a coarse paste - it seems like preserving some small pieces instead of grinding to a fine paste results in a much better texture (and better flavor absorption).
Once the potatoes were soaked, we wiped them clean and sauteed them in a broad pan with 1/2 T of olive oil. This worked perfectly since we used this amazing calphalon nonstick pan. Got to love good cookware! :)
We then took the potatoes out and added the remaining 1/2 T of oil to the pan. And then threw in the onion-ginger-garlic paste. Once the onions were browned (this took about 15 minutes), we added the ground masala and salt and stirred it till the powder seemed mixed in. Now we started adding the buttermilk - 2-3 T at a time. I remember reading someplace that this needs to be done slowly so that the buttermilk does not curdle. It actually worked out much easier than I expected. We ended up adding over 2.5 cups, and it lent the perfect consistency. We finally added the potatoes in, mixed the sauce and covered the pan. We cooked it on simmer for almost 30 minutes before it was done. And done beautifully! :)
Meantime, Jo was cutting the pepper and carrots - the most beautifully julienned vegetables I've ever used :) The Kadai Paneer is a pretty simple recipe that can be made in so many different ways: some recipes call for a dry dish with roasted vegetables and paneer dusted with dry masala while others use a tomato gravy. I went with a tomato-onion gravy since it seemed like a good idea to soak it up with the rotis.
Kadai Paneer
=============
1 onion
4 vine tomatoes
5 cloves garlic
3 thai green chillies
1 T garam masala (I had pre-made this, so it made things a lot quicker)
1 bell pepper - julienned
2 carrots - julienned
1 block of paneer (about 12 oz, I think) - chopped into long pieces
1/2 T olive oil
I tossed the onions, tomatoes, garlic and green chillies into a food processor and ground them to a coarse paste. Once the olive oil was heated (in a shallow pan), we threw in this paste and let it cook - this took a little longer than expected, almost 20 minutes. We then added the peppers and carrots and let them cook covered for another 7-8 minutes. In the meantime, ,we baked the paneer (greased with a little oil spray) for about 12 minutes at 350 F until the edges started browning. Finally, we added the garam masala and salt along with the paneer to the veggies and let them simmer for a few more minutes. Garnishing was chopped cilantro - I love that smell - when we toss freshly chopped cilantro into hot gravy! Yum!!
Phew! I'm tired of writing these recipes already! Think I'll post this and let the rest come in Part II :)
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