Dish for Monday night, August 30, 2010: Ripa's Anda Curry with Aloo, Baltimore, MD
This is a gravy dish. Serve with rice or roti/toasted pita. Plain Yogurt is also a good complement for most Indian savory dishes if you like to mitigate spiciness. The recipe was given to me by a friend who happens to be from the Bengal region of India (eastern coast). The sugar at the end is common in a lot of dishes of North India, particularly in Gujarat, where it is most common to combine savory and sweet flavors in dishes. In fact, Gujaratis are known for using an ingredient called "Gor," also known as "jaggery," which is basically a raw, molasses-type sugar in many of their main dishes. I think it's concentrated juice of sugar cane where molasses has not yet been extracted.
Regarding the recipe, I think it's a great dish if you want the essence of egg in a curry, but not the full flavor. The addition of the potato really neutralized the egg flavor. Also, I used only 1 potato, but it gave the gravy an excellent consistency. When I first started cooking Indian food, I would often make the mistake of adding water to tomato-based gravy dishes at the end before slow cooking, and this would make the final product a little too watery. I always like to make sure gravy is thick and no water is visible. If it appears watery, I usually slow cook it for additional time with a lid on the pan, until the water boils off. Now, I rarely add water at the end, mostly because tomatoes have so much water already in them, that you don't even need to add additional water once the tomatoes start melting in the pan during slow cooking. The addition of boiled potato to this dish however, really made the gravy thick. I think the egg yolk also contributed to that actually, because when you slice the hard-boiled eggs and stir them into the pot, the egg yolks incorporate with the masala, and you really only see the whites. When my husband makes his egg curry (which I'll definitely post, because it's awesome!), it is without potato, and you taste yolk a lot more prominently. I chose the recipe because I was intrigued by the egg-potato combo and I just really like the flavor of boiled potato.
The other key ingredient in egg curry is CUMIN. Roasted cumin is absolutely delicious when used generously in this dish. First, it's highly aromatic, but the flavor also goes very well with tomato-based curries. Note how the recipe calls for 1 tbsp. of cumin seeds as well as 1 tbsp of cumin powder. In addition to that, I added 1 tsp. of fried cumin seeds at the end for an extra kick, as part of the "tadka," which is basically what we do at the end of the cooking process to infuse additional flavored oil and spice to the dish. In a separate pan, just add oil and fry 1 tsp. of cumin only. Once fried, pour it along with the hot oil over the pan containing the egg and potato dish. It adds awesome extra flavor. Hot oil with freshly fried spices over a prepared dish where the main spices are already incorporated is superb! But of course, tadka is best when done just before serving.
I also hand chopped fresh garlic, onion, and ginger. I did not make anything into a paste, just chopped everything finely and fried. I just did that because it's my preference; I like the crunch of the garlic/ginger/onions, and I have found that ginger/garlic/onion pastes leave the masala (or base) without much texture. I pureed 2 fresh tomatoes in the blender. Surprisingly, I also found that the dish got very dry toward the end, but it made sense because the yolk and potato probably absorbed most of the liquid. So, I splashed low sodium chicken broth in it several times, which thinned the gravy and increased the volume. I found also that it required a lot of salt, so that kept going in as well. Finally, because I kept adding the broth, I also found that it was not spicy enough, so I added an extra 1/4 tsp. of red chili powder as well as a chopped up green chili at the end. We ate it with plain yogurt and carrot pickle.
Ingredients:
6 large eggs
1 potato
salt to taste
oil for frying (the recipe prefers mustard or vegetable oil, I often use olive because it's healthier, though olive oil is not traditional to Indian cooking)
1-2 cinnamon sticks
1 large onion
2 vine ripe tomatoes or 1 16oz. can of tomato puree
2 tbsp ginger
2-3 tbsp. garlic (according to taste)
1 tbsp cumin seeds ("jeera")
1/2 tsp. red chili powder
2 whole dry red chilis (I tear them up into the pan)
3-4 broken up dry bay leaves
1-2 tsp of garam masala
1 tbsp of cumin powder
1 tbsp of coriander powder
1/4 tsp turmeric powder
1/4 tsp red chili powder
1 tsp sugar
1. Boil eggs and potato until eggs are cooked and potato is fork tender. Add some salt while boiling. Make some holes in the potato with a fork for salt absorption. The original recipe called for a pressure cooker, but the times vary on those, so if you're more comfortable boiling, just boil in a regular pot. The pressure cooker took me about 30 minutes to get everything boiled.
2. Make onion tomato paste in blender (alternate: use tomato puree (canned) and
finely chopped onions)
3. Fry cumin, dry red chilli (powder as well as whole chilli), bay leaves, in oil. (you may
use mustard/vegetable oil) You may add cinnamon sticks if available. Add ginger
garlic paste and onions thereafter. If you are not using a paste let the onions turn
golden brown and follow the steps below.
4. Add garam masala (1-2 tsp), coriander and cumin powders (1-2 tbsp each). Let the masala
turn brown. Add tomato sauce and allow these things to cook well. Stir and fry well till deep brown.
5. Peel off potatoes and eggs till the masala cooks. Add a little bit of turmeric and red
chilli powder. You may also add a little mustard oil to marinate.
6. After the masala is cooked add the potatoes and eggs. Add some water depending
on how thick or thin you want the gravy to be . Add salt to taste. Allow it too cook for a
little while. You may add a about 1-2 tsp of sugar.
7. Allow it to cook for a little while and its ready !!
Monday, August 30, 2010
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Kozhy Korambu and Carrot Curry
Recipe for Sunday, August 29, 2010: Bal Arneson's South Indian Style Chicken (with Dry Carrot Curry on the side)
Preliminarily, I made these 2 dishes because of the extra kick that I thought having the carrot would give the overall meal. I only have a very few cooking tricks up my sleeve, and I must admit my husband is responsible for a lot of them. Not only because he's a good cook, but he's a good eater. He's SUPER picky, but he's also a great critic. For example, in Indian cooking, we often serve side dishes, or subzis, with main dishes. He told me once that you can never have a gravy side dish with a gravy main dish. You have to do one dry and one gravy. This makes a lot of sense because the dry vegetable will add a nice crunch to the gravy-soaked rice and meat that comprise the main dish. This is why I made the dry carrot to accompany the chicken.
I love the way this chicken turned out. I chose this recipe because I noticed that sambar powder was one of the ingredients that comprised the spice mix. My basic North Indian/Pakistani chicken curry in the past has been just chicken, red chili powder, turmeric, coriander powder, cumin, with garlic/onion/ginger, salt, tomato, and a little garam masala and cilantro leaves to garish at the end. The same formula is interchangeable with countless meats/vegetables/lentils. Honestly, it's boring. I'm always looking out for dishes that utilize different kind of spices. Lately, I've tried to choose dishes with at least 1 spice deviation from the above formula; it has to have 1 different spice that I haven't used or I've only used like once or twice. I've stocked my spice cabinet with things like kalonji (onion seeds I think), mace, fennel seed, fenugreek seed, anise seed, ajwain, etc., in the hopes of one day using it in some exotic recipe. Unfortunately, the utility of a lot of these spices has been limited by my amateurism--with the exception of fennel and fenugreek. I do, however, dream of the day when I'll casually adopt them in my weekday dinner repertoire without too much excitement.
Back to the recipe. The only changes I made were adding a chopped up green chili at the end, using fewer curry leaves (not by choice), and substituting low sodium chicken broth for the water at the end. Curry leaves are extremely common in South India, which happens to be where I'm from, and unfortunately, I realized I only had about seven leaves left after I already started cooking. "No matter" you might say? Nooooo....curry leaves are a cornerstone of the South Indian culinary tradition. They bring a sharp spicy (but not hot) kick to often creamy curries. I was immediately annoyed that I didn't have the 1/4 cup that the recipe called for. In any event, the last change I made was that I slow cooked the chicken. It seems from the video that Bal only cooks the chicken for like 12 minutes. I had it slow cooking for almost an hour--mostly to keep it warm, tenderize the chicken, and let the flavors mix well. I wonder if that dumbed the flavor of the sambar powder down a little...but at the end of the cooking process, the strongest flavor that seemed to emerge was the coconut milk. I love coconut milk, but I'm not sure I like it to be the dominant flavor. That was really the only drawback, and it might have been my own fault for letting it cook for that long. Optimally, I would have liked the sambar flavor to have been dominant, because this dish is pretty much the South Indian dish "Kozhy Korambu," ( கோழி கோரம்பு) or chicken sambar. On the other hand, I was pretty happy with the subtlety of the flavor, because I'm kind of risk-averse when it comes to new dishes, and if I had gone overboard with the spicing, then I would not have had good things to say here, and it would have made for a very bad first post.
A new trick I learned from my husband initially, but then from Bal, is adding kadugu (mustard seeds) AFTER starting the frying of the garlic/ginger/onions. Growing up, my mom always used to fry mustard seeds first before adding any other ingredients to the pan. What this does is make the mustard seeds pop and I always thought that the opened mustard seeds was what spread the flavor through the dish. In this recipe, however, notice how Bal adds the seeds after starting the fry of onions/garlic/ginger. At the end of the segment, when taking her first taste, she says something to the effect of "the mustard seeds are popping open in my mouth." Well shoot! As much as I love my mom's method, having the seeds pop in my mouth instead of the pan makes the flavor in the seeds come out in my mouth, which makes it stronger somehow. I also just like the extra little crunch it gives.
Dry Carrot Curry
This turned out pretty awesome too. It went well with Kozhy Korambu because of the garlic I added. Again, my mom's traditional South Indian recipe forbids garlic, because it's not historically used in our cooking--mostly because my ancestors were strict vegetarians (I don't even think that's the right word for what they were, since there are many vegetarian things even that they don't eat, but they're avid dairy consumers so it's not vegan either)...anyway, garlic was traditionally "frowned upon" because it's a root vegetable, so you kill the entire plant when picking it from the ground. As a result, some strict, strict Hindus wouldn't even use it in their cooking, because of the harm to the plant. The flavor of garlic/onion can also be seen as somewhat incompatible with the cooking, if you're a purist. My grandmother actually revolutionized our home food by introducing onion into the dinner mix. Garlic, she still finds scandalous, but sometimes she sneaks it into rasams for my cousin Govind and I, because it's a bit of a thrill to introduce rebellion into her simple life. In that sense, traditional iyengar sambar (what my ancestors made) DEFINITELY is not made with chicken. When I first learned that such a thing existed, I actually cringed, because it felt a little sacreligious (not that I'm even that religious), but anyway. As I got used to the idea, it seemed more and more yummy (as long as it didn't include the dhal).
Back to the carrot!
The Dry Carrot Curry recipe is as follows:
Ingredients
1. About 2 double handfuls of carrots chopped up
2. 1/4 tsp of turmeric
3. 1/3 tsp of red chili powder
4. 2 tsp of chopped garlic (or less if you want less garlic flavor. If you don' t like garlic, omit it altogether)
5. 1 tsp of black mustard seeds
6. salt to taste
7. oil for frying
Recipe
Add a couple tablespoons of oil to the pan. Put in the carrots and garlic. Fry for 3 minutes. Add the mustard seeds, turmeric, red chili powder, and salt. Keep tossing and frying. When it starts getting dry but not cooked, sprinkle water. Repeat the sprinkling every time it gets dry so the carrot cooks through and doesn't burn. Do not pour water, because it will make the carrots soggy. Total cooking time is about 20-25 minutes.
This is a simple but satisfying addition to the Kozhy Korambu recipe. You can also do potatoes, sweet potatoes, parsnips, turnips or other root veg that will give you a nice crunch when paired with the gravy of the sambar.
Happy recipe-ing!
Preliminarily, I made these 2 dishes because of the extra kick that I thought having the carrot would give the overall meal. I only have a very few cooking tricks up my sleeve, and I must admit my husband is responsible for a lot of them. Not only because he's a good cook, but he's a good eater. He's SUPER picky, but he's also a great critic. For example, in Indian cooking, we often serve side dishes, or subzis, with main dishes. He told me once that you can never have a gravy side dish with a gravy main dish. You have to do one dry and one gravy. This makes a lot of sense because the dry vegetable will add a nice crunch to the gravy-soaked rice and meat that comprise the main dish. This is why I made the dry carrot to accompany the chicken.
I love the way this chicken turned out. I chose this recipe because I noticed that sambar powder was one of the ingredients that comprised the spice mix. My basic North Indian/Pakistani chicken curry in the past has been just chicken, red chili powder, turmeric, coriander powder, cumin, with garlic/onion/ginger, salt, tomato, and a little garam masala and cilantro leaves to garish at the end. The same formula is interchangeable with countless meats/vegetables/lentils. Honestly, it's boring. I'm always looking out for dishes that utilize different kind of spices. Lately, I've tried to choose dishes with at least 1 spice deviation from the above formula; it has to have 1 different spice that I haven't used or I've only used like once or twice. I've stocked my spice cabinet with things like kalonji (onion seeds I think), mace, fennel seed, fenugreek seed, anise seed, ajwain, etc., in the hopes of one day using it in some exotic recipe. Unfortunately, the utility of a lot of these spices has been limited by my amateurism--with the exception of fennel and fenugreek. I do, however, dream of the day when I'll casually adopt them in my weekday dinner repertoire without too much excitement.
Back to the recipe. The only changes I made were adding a chopped up green chili at the end, using fewer curry leaves (not by choice), and substituting low sodium chicken broth for the water at the end. Curry leaves are extremely common in South India, which happens to be where I'm from, and unfortunately, I realized I only had about seven leaves left after I already started cooking. "No matter" you might say? Nooooo....curry leaves are a cornerstone of the South Indian culinary tradition. They bring a sharp spicy (but not hot) kick to often creamy curries. I was immediately annoyed that I didn't have the 1/4 cup that the recipe called for. In any event, the last change I made was that I slow cooked the chicken. It seems from the video that Bal only cooks the chicken for like 12 minutes. I had it slow cooking for almost an hour--mostly to keep it warm, tenderize the chicken, and let the flavors mix well. I wonder if that dumbed the flavor of the sambar powder down a little...but at the end of the cooking process, the strongest flavor that seemed to emerge was the coconut milk. I love coconut milk, but I'm not sure I like it to be the dominant flavor. That was really the only drawback, and it might have been my own fault for letting it cook for that long. Optimally, I would have liked the sambar flavor to have been dominant, because this dish is pretty much the South Indian dish "Kozhy Korambu," ( கோழி கோரம்பு) or chicken sambar. On the other hand, I was pretty happy with the subtlety of the flavor, because I'm kind of risk-averse when it comes to new dishes, and if I had gone overboard with the spicing, then I would not have had good things to say here, and it would have made for a very bad first post.
A new trick I learned from my husband initially, but then from Bal, is adding kadugu (mustard seeds) AFTER starting the frying of the garlic/ginger/onions. Growing up, my mom always used to fry mustard seeds first before adding any other ingredients to the pan. What this does is make the mustard seeds pop and I always thought that the opened mustard seeds was what spread the flavor through the dish. In this recipe, however, notice how Bal adds the seeds after starting the fry of onions/garlic/ginger. At the end of the segment, when taking her first taste, she says something to the effect of "the mustard seeds are popping open in my mouth." Well shoot! As much as I love my mom's method, having the seeds pop in my mouth instead of the pan makes the flavor in the seeds come out in my mouth, which makes it stronger somehow. I also just like the extra little crunch it gives.
Dry Carrot Curry
This turned out pretty awesome too. It went well with Kozhy Korambu because of the garlic I added. Again, my mom's traditional South Indian recipe forbids garlic, because it's not historically used in our cooking--mostly because my ancestors were strict vegetarians (I don't even think that's the right word for what they were, since there are many vegetarian things even that they don't eat, but they're avid dairy consumers so it's not vegan either)...anyway, garlic was traditionally "frowned upon" because it's a root vegetable, so you kill the entire plant when picking it from the ground. As a result, some strict, strict Hindus wouldn't even use it in their cooking, because of the harm to the plant. The flavor of garlic/onion can also be seen as somewhat incompatible with the cooking, if you're a purist. My grandmother actually revolutionized our home food by introducing onion into the dinner mix. Garlic, she still finds scandalous, but sometimes she sneaks it into rasams for my cousin Govind and I, because it's a bit of a thrill to introduce rebellion into her simple life. In that sense, traditional iyengar sambar (what my ancestors made) DEFINITELY is not made with chicken. When I first learned that such a thing existed, I actually cringed, because it felt a little sacreligious (not that I'm even that religious), but anyway. As I got used to the idea, it seemed more and more yummy (as long as it didn't include the dhal).
Back to the carrot!
The Dry Carrot Curry recipe is as follows:
Ingredients
1. About 2 double handfuls of carrots chopped up
2. 1/4 tsp of turmeric
3. 1/3 tsp of red chili powder
4. 2 tsp of chopped garlic (or less if you want less garlic flavor. If you don' t like garlic, omit it altogether)
5. 1 tsp of black mustard seeds
6. salt to taste
7. oil for frying
Recipe
Add a couple tablespoons of oil to the pan. Put in the carrots and garlic. Fry for 3 minutes. Add the mustard seeds, turmeric, red chili powder, and salt. Keep tossing and frying. When it starts getting dry but not cooked, sprinkle water. Repeat the sprinkling every time it gets dry so the carrot cooks through and doesn't burn. Do not pour water, because it will make the carrots soggy. Total cooking time is about 20-25 minutes.
This is a simple but satisfying addition to the Kozhy Korambu recipe. You can also do potatoes, sweet potatoes, parsnips, turnips or other root veg that will give you a nice crunch when paired with the gravy of the sambar.
Happy recipe-ing!
Friday, August 27, 2010
inspirations
The purpose of this blog is for me write about my culinary experiences. I have silent dreams of becoming a travel and food writer, and maybe this blog will give me the gusto to take what has long been a passion to a higher level. There are a few reasons I care so much about food: (1) I love every cuisine more than anyone I know (except Ethiopian for some reason, although Zed's in Washington, DC is the one exception); (2) I desperately enjoy cooking for others and seeing their faces when they enjoy my dish; (3) I yearn to learn tricks of the trade; (4) I envy people like Anthony Bourdain and David Rocco who have made careers out of traveling and cooking. Cooking is both entertainment and survival; indulgence as well as simplicity. I love that I can enjoy doing something that is a necessity of life.
Sources of culinary inspiration are everywhere. There are all the restaurants and chefs in New York City and on Food Network/Cooking Channel/Travel Channel, that I like to review and discuss. There are also mothers, grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, cousins, and family friends who made age-old classics that we grew up eating, but perhaps took for granted because they weren't necessarily served on a silver platter with mint leaves arranged vertically to make a triangular point on top. I want to document all of the artistry around me in one place, hoping to spawn my own culinary ideas through cooking and writing (my only valuable professional skill in my opinion). The main idea of this blog is for me to try out recipes and see how they turn out. This includes recipes from TV, but also from my collection of "Auntie recipes." I hope to create a museum of traditional regional family recipes that people can refer to so all the classics don't get lost in future generations. Lastly, I want to start making up my own recipes and see if I can actually come up with something good. I think there are enough sites that publish restaurant reviews, so I may stay away from that, but I do like keeping a running tab of fabulous NYC restaurants. In the process of writing, I hope to improve my own cooking and attempt to experience the world of gourmet cooking from the comfort of my own home.
Sources of culinary inspiration are everywhere. There are all the restaurants and chefs in New York City and on Food Network/Cooking Channel/Travel Channel, that I like to review and discuss. There are also mothers, grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, cousins, and family friends who made age-old classics that we grew up eating, but perhaps took for granted because they weren't necessarily served on a silver platter with mint leaves arranged vertically to make a triangular point on top. I want to document all of the artistry around me in one place, hoping to spawn my own culinary ideas through cooking and writing (my only valuable professional skill in my opinion). The main idea of this blog is for me to try out recipes and see how they turn out. This includes recipes from TV, but also from my collection of "Auntie recipes." I hope to create a museum of traditional regional family recipes that people can refer to so all the classics don't get lost in future generations. Lastly, I want to start making up my own recipes and see if I can actually come up with something good. I think there are enough sites that publish restaurant reviews, so I may stay away from that, but I do like keeping a running tab of fabulous NYC restaurants. In the process of writing, I hope to improve my own cooking and attempt to experience the world of gourmet cooking from the comfort of my own home.
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