Indian food

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fenugreek chapati

Wednesday, February 8th, 2012

Speaking of 660 Curries (I never seem to shut up about it, do I), I recently tried a recipe from the back of the book, where he puts the curry accompaniments. It was a basic chapati, or roti, recipe, but with the addition of fenugreek leaves. These are one of those specialty items that we bought some time ago but then seldom used, so I was thrilled to find something new to do with them. And I was startled at how good it was – the leaves perfume the chapatis with a fresh green scent, and also seem to make the dough softer and better to eat. Amazing. I make chapatis all the time, but this variation is going to become part of the regular rotation.

I don’t measure too carefully when I make chapati. To make breads for the two of us (about 6 small chapati) I generally use about a half cup of whole wheat flour, a half cup of all-purpose, a pinch of salt, and maybe half a cup of warm water, then adjust with more flour or water as necessary to make a smooth dough. For the fenugreek breads, I added 1/4 cup of dried fenugreek leaves, soaked in cold water for 15 minutes then drained before mixing into the dough. If I had fresh or frozen leaves (which I’ve never seen anywhere), then it would have been half a cup of chopped leaves. I kneaded the dough for a bit, rolled it into a ball and let it rest about half an hour under its mixing bowl.

When the rest of the dinner was ready, I cut the dough into six pieces, rolled them out into thin circles, plopped them onto a hot griddle, turning once, then put them directly onto a gas flame to poof them up. We usually just cook them entirely on the griddle, but since I had a spare burner available I thought I’d try the direct-on-flame approach, and it worked really well. So often when we cook Indian food, though, every burner is in use, so this may not happen again soon.

The breads rested in a basket lined with a clean dishtowel while we set the table, and were perfectly soft and chewy. It was difficult not to overeat. Plus the house smelled wonderfully of fenugreek all evening.

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Tags: bread, flatbread, herbs, Indian food

cardamom chicken

Monday, February 6th, 2012

We went over the mountains to my parents’ house this weekend for band practice. When my father and I put our heads together to come up with an interesting but soothing dinner, this is the recipe that turned up: chicken legs rubbed with cardamom and other spices, pan-fried with onions, then braised until tender. If you don’t care for cardamom, avoid this one, but if you like its fragrant pungency as much as we do, then by all means try it. Yet another winner from the book 660 Curries, this is a great thing to do with cheap drumsticks – although it would also be swell with boneless chicken thighs. The sharpness of the cardamom could be quelled a bit by adding some yogurt, cream or other dairy product.

We seeded cardamom pods by hand, then blitzed them to powder and mixed them with other spices. This got rubbed all over skinned chicken drumsticks, which then marinated for half an hour.

The chicken went into a large skillet with diced onion, bay leaves and cinnamon sticks, and we sauteed it until the onion was soft and the spices were all sticking to the bottom of the pan. We added water, covered the pan and let it all simmer for half an hour.

We tossed a handful of fresh cilantro in, then lifted out the chicken legs, bay leaves and cinnamon and set them aside.

We cooked down the liquid a bit, wilted baby spinach in it, poured everything over the chicken, and voila! A warmly fragrant dinner for a February day.

Cardamom-scented chicken legs

adapted from 660 Curries by Raghavan Iyer

2 Tbsp fresh ginger, microplaned
1 Tbsp garlic, pressed
2 tsp cardamom seeds, ground
1/2 tsp cayenne (half of what the original recipe called for, but it was plenty spicy)
1 tsp salt (we actually forgot to add the salt, but it hardly needed it)
1/4 tsp turmeric
8 chicken drumsticks or thighs, skin removed
oil
1 small red onion, diced
4 bay leaves, fresh or dried
2 cinnamon sticks
2 Tbsp cilantro, chopped
8 oz baby spinach (optional)
yogurt or heavy cream (optional)

Combine the ginger, garlic, cardamom, cayenne, salt and turmeric and smear the resulting paste over the chicken pieces. Refrigerate at least 30 minutes or overnight.

Heat a few spoonfuls of oil in a large skillet with a well-fitting lid. Add the onion, chicken, bay and cinnamon. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion is soft and the chicken has browned, about 20 minutes.

Add a cup of water, scrape the pan bottom to deglaze it, bring to a simmer and cover the pan. Cook gently about 30 minutes, stirring once in a while. Stir in the cilantro.

Remove the chicken to a platter and boil down the sauce in the pan until it thickens a bit. Toss in a pile of spinach leaves to wilt, if you like, and perhaps a half cup or so of plain yogurt or cream. Serve the greens and sauce with the chicken legs and some steamed basmati rice.

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Tags: chicken, Indian food, spices

tandoori attempt

Thursday, June 9th, 2011

Many years ago there was an Indian restaurant in town that really knew its way around a tandoor oven. It closed, of course, leaving us deprived of tandoori chicken and naan. I’ve started experimenting with naan recipes, but I’ve only just gotten around to trying out tandoori chicken at home. Turns out it’s a little tricky.

Various recipes (I consulted a lot) give very mixed messages. Some tell you to use a very hot oven, others to use a regular temperature oven. Others say to grill over the hottest coals you can manage, others to grill on indirect heat. My own thinking at this point is that a tandoor is rather like a pizza oven – extremely high heat, but without direct exposure to the heat source. The chicken is supposed to cook quickly but not burn. We tried grilling our chicken directly over coals and had trouble getting the meat to cook through without completely charring the outside – I think next time we’ll try a longer, slower technique.

The main thing that all the recipes had in common was the yogurt-and garam masala-based marinade (made with yogurt drained of some of its whey), rubbed into de-skinned and heavily slashed chicken pieces. I used a marinade from Sanjeev Kapoor’s new book How to Cook Indian, and while it was tasty it seemed far too mild, hardly flavoring the meat at all. In future attempts I will probably get it marinating further ahead of time and add quite a bit more salt.

Despite all the difficulties, it made a great dinner, and some really fantastic chicken sandwiches for several days afterwards. More experimentation is certainly called for – anyone else had good luck doing tandoori at home?

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Tags: chicken, grilling, Indian food

saag murgh

Wednesday, June 1st, 2011

Yet another highly successful recipe from 660 Curries! Saag murgh (chicken with spinach) is a classic Indian dish, and this version kicks it up a little by substituting mustard greens for part of the spinach. Our local grocery, somewhat bafflingly, nearly always has exuberantly fresh mustard greens in its produce department, so this was an easy dish to put together.

Bone-in chicken would give the most flavor, but I used boneless skinless chicken thighs (as I often do – they’re easier to take to work as leftovers). A marinade of spices, cilantro and yogurt gave it excellent flavor.

I browned the chicken, took it out of the pan and fried some onions, then added the mixed spinach and mustard greens and used their liquid to scrape up the fond in the pan. The chicken went back in for a long simmer amid the greens. I tried pureeing the greens (minus the chicken) before serving but made the mistake of using the blender instead of the food processor, and nearly exploded the lot. I settled for “pleasantly chunky”, which was still just fine for scooping up with chunks of chicken and fresh Afghan-style naan.

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Tags: chicken, greens, Indian food

hot yogurt

Wednesday, April 13th, 2011

Most yogurt soups I’ve seen have been summer concoctions, raw and chilled. But I really liked this yogurt-spinach soup, spiced with green chile and ginger, thickened with chickpea flour and served hot. It was bright, tart, fresh, and very warming. We found it in Meena Pathak’s book Flavors of India, where she explains that this is what her mother made for her to eat every day after school in the winter, and it really is comfort food, especially if you have fried potatoes or warm flatbreads (or even better, samosas) to dip in it. When we made it, we served it as a side dish with an aromatic chicken-tomato curry and a side of spiced okra, and it made a beautifully balanced meal. It’s a great way of getting some extra greens on the table, and very quick to make.

This was a pretty spicy soup, mostly because I like to microplane hot chiles to get a smooth texture – but that means all the seeds and membranes go in. If you want it milder, you could deseed the chile and mince it finely, but I don’t think I would leave it out altogether.

Yogurt Spinach Soup

Adapted from Flavors of India: Authentic Indian Recipes by Meena Pathak. Serves two as a starter or side dish.

1 heaping Tablespoon chickpea flour
2 Tbsp water
3 oz fresh spinach, washed and shredded
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1/2 piece fresh ginger, minced or microplaned
1 hot green chile, minced or microplaned
pinch of sugar
pinch of salt
1 cup water
1 Tbsp cilantro, chopped

Combine the chickpea flour and the 2 Tbsp water in a small bowl and set aside.

In a saucepan, combine the yogurt, ginger, chiles, sugar, salt, and 1 cup water. Stir in the chickpea flour mixture and place the pan over medium heat. Bring to a boil, whisking frequently, until the liquid thickens slightly. Add the spinach, stir until wilted, then serve. Garnish each bowl with fresh cilantro.

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Tags: chile peppers, greens, Indian food, soup

shades of beige

Thursday, February 10th, 2011

I wasn’t going to post on this dinner, as it’s really unpreposessing-looking (brown meat, brownish-yellow cabbage, brown pickle – all we needed was a reddish-brown dal to make the plate truly unappetizing). And I’ve already talked about the pork stewed with ginger, chiles and rai masala (a regular dish in our meal rotation). But I don’t believe I’ve told you about this cabbage dish, which is easy to make and amazingly good, especially with a side of yogurt and a good Indian pickle. Despite its looks, it’s worth trying – sweet and a little spicy, with a lingering fennel note and just a hint of bitterness from the fenugreek. I generally make it a little differently each time, depending on my mood and what we’re serving it with. This is the version I made last night.

Buttery Cabbage with Fennel and Green Chile

Loosely adapted from Madhur Jaffrey’s Spice Kitchen

1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 onion, sliced
1 small green cabbage, cored and finely sliced
1/2 tsp cumin seed
1/4 tsp mustard seed
1/2 tsp fennel seed
5 fenugreek seeds
a clove or two of garlic, chopped
1 green chile (we use serranos), chopped
1 nugget fresh ginger, chopped
1/2 tsp turmeric
kosher salt
1 Tbsp butter
pinch garam masala
juice of half a lemon

Heat the oil in a large skillet (one that has a well-fitting lid) and add the cumin, mustard, fennel and fenugreek seeds. When they have begun to toast, add the onion and saute until it softens. Add the garlic, ginger, turmeric and chile and cook for a minute or two, then dump in all the shredded cabbage (this is why you needed a large skillet). Saute until the cabbage wilts and combines with the onion and spices, then add some salt and the butter. Stir it all up as the butter melts, then put in a splash of water, cover the pan and lower the heat. Let it simmer 15-30 minutes, checking occasionally to make sure it hasn’t boiled dry. Then take off the lid and slowly saute again, stirring frequently, so that the liquid boils off and the onion and cabbage caramelize a bit – another 15-30 minutes. Sprinkle in the garam masala and lemon juice, taste for salt, and serve.

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Tags: cabbage, Indian food, spices

tamarind chicken

Tuesday, January 18th, 2011

This was an extra-nice sort of chicken curry dinner. We (loosely) followed a fairly involved recipe out of the Vij’s cookbook for tamarind-marinated chicken in a rich curry sauce, and it was well worth the trouble.

It’s a beautiful book, but the recipes suffer a bit from what I think of as restaurant-itis, where every part of every dish is complicated. The way I prefer to cook at home usually involves one involved recipe, like a sauce or fancy side dish, with plain vegetables or a piece of pan-seared meat or fish. But sometimes it’s fun to go a bit further and make something as written. In this case both the chicken and the sauce were good (and good together), and I could definitely see making either again on their own.

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Tags: chicken, curry, Indian food

pakora

Wednesday, January 5th, 2011

For a brief, interesting period, a Punjabi grocery store set up behind the outlet mall in the town just north of us. It was hard to find and only occasionally open, but they carried all sorts of things that we normally need to go to Seattle, or at least Everett, to find. It closed, of course – but we had stocked up on several ingredients first, including a bag of chickpea flour – which I inexplicably did nothing with for an embarrassingly long time.

Finally I decided it was stupid to have chickpea flour and not use it, so over the holidays we made pakoras to go with cocktails. Pakora is like Indian tempura: vegetables dipped in a batter of chickpea flour and spices, then deep fried – a bit of a production, but not at all difficult. I used a batter recipe from Madhur Jaffrey’s first cookbook, but decided to use mushrooms after looking at my parents’ copy of Alford and Duguid’s Mangoes & Curry Leaves.

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Tags: appetizers, chickpeas, cocktail snacks, fried food, Indian food

saucy peas

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

Not the prettiest dish in the world, but extremely good. And easy!

The sauce, a mixture of tomato, cream, green chile, cilantro and spices, is straight from a Madhur Jaffrey recipe, but she wants you to serve it with prawns. We made it that way for a while, then hit on the idea of stirring in lightly cooked peas instead of shrimp. We’ve done it this way ever since.

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Tags: cream, Indian food, peas, spices, tomatoes

kheema

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

This is a favorite meal of ours for those nights when we don’t have a lot of time, we hardly have any fresh vegetables in the house, and we want something with a lot of flavor and a definite comfort factor. Kheema is like the Indian equivalent of chile con carne, or sloppy Joe mix, or spaghetti sauce. There are many different versions – probably as many as there are cooks who make it – and it can be tweaked to accommodate whatever you have in your pantry, as long as you have 1. ground meat 2. chile peppers (fresh or dried) 3. canned tomato and 4. spices. Onions and garlic are helpful, but not absolutely required.

My favorite kheema recipe for when we have no fresh chiles in the house is from Madhur Jaffrey’s first book, An Invitation to Indian Cooking. It’s warm with onion and whole sweet spices as well as dried red chiles, and tastes wonderful. But our current favorite kheema is from the Parsi cookbook My Bombay Kitchen. It uses whole slit green chiles as well as cayenne pepper, so it has a complex spiciness, and it can be made as thick or soupy as you like, depending on how you’re serving it. We usually ladle it over white rice, but the last time we made it I griddled some fresh chapati and we spooned the kheema into the breads with yogurt and chutney. It could also be eaten straight out of a bowl, maybe with tortilla chips. Why not? Not to mention the possibilities of using it for stuffing samosas, or topping pizza.

And for breakfast, I can recommend making a sort of huevos rancheros with leftover kheema and runny fried eggs over sourdough toast or chapati or tortillas. Oh, yeah.

A note about the recipe: there are a few odd ingredients here, but please don’t be scared off by them. We keep curry leaves in our freezer, but the kheema will be perfectly fine without them. And don’t worry about the dhana jiru or the sambar masala – we happen to have both of those, because Jon loves to make spice blends at home, but you can either leave them out, or do what I do, which is to look up the blend, see what the major flavors are, and just add a few of the more important-sounding ones. I’ve indicated a few possible options in the recipe.

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Tags: Beef, chile peppers, comfort food, Indian food, quick dinners, spices, spicy food

Food on the Brain

Is it wrong when all your conversations end up about food?

Indian food

...now browsing by tag

fenugreek chapati

cardamom chicken

tandoori attempt

saag murgh

hot yogurt

shades of beige

tamarind chicken

pakora

saucy peas

kheema