Recipe of the day

OK... so we have a "joke for the day" thread so here's a variation on that. I made this curry on Friday and it was really good and really easy. May not be as 'authentic' as a curry made in India but my friends and I enjoyed it...

PUMPKIN CURRY

1 onion, chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tsp grated ginger
1/2 - 1 tsp minced chilli (depending onhow hot you like it)
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
1 small pumpkin, peeled and cut into small bits
1- 1/2 cups of water
1 tsp vege stock

In a large non-stick fry pan, cook the onion in a litlle oil until soft. Add the garlic, ginger, chilli and spices and stir for one minute (smells good). Add pumkin, water, stock and simmer, covered, until pumkin tender. Here you can thrown in other stuff if you want... chopped spinach is good but had none on Friday so added mushrooms, roasted aubergine (baked in the oven while the curry was cooking) and some paneer I found in a supermarket here... yummo. Serve with rice, fresh coriander, natural yoghurt or cucumber raita, and some chutney.

Using Patak's pastes.
These are very good and enable you to make good indian food in no time. try the following:

Spinach + coconut
Wash a bag of baby spinach
fry a spoon of Pataks Korma paste in butter
Add a chpped tomato (large, beef?)
Add a couple of spoons of creamed coconut (sold in blocks)
cook till the tomato is all mushy
Add the spinach, cook for 5 minutes and serve

Chickpeas - easy and very tasty
Fry a spoon of Pataks madras paste in butter
Add a tin of drained chick peas
Cook for ten minutes.
you can make it more or less hot with more or less paste.

Yellow dal
Cook red lentils with a spoon of tumeric
fry a spoon of pataks madrass in butter
pour the lentils on the masala
cook till soupy.
This is very authentic tasting and incredibly easy.

Dal Bukhara

Dokhla (Gujarati/Rajastani cuisine)

I love Pataks They have just about the most daggy advertising campaigns I've ever seen though.

I've tried this before, but if anyone has a good momo recipe I'd be indebted to you for life (or shout you a beer, your call)

The daal bukhaaraa is slow cooked daal. It is boiled in an earthen vessel on a very small flame for nearly twelve hours.

Dhoklaa :

This is a somewhat laborious recipe for Dhoklaa.... but original, authentic and WITHOUT chemical additives.

It also requires the hot Indian sun for the "sun drying part"

Part I The basic raw material

Soaked-n-sun-dried-grain

Soak three portions of rice and one portion of oorad daal separately overnight. Next morning wash both separately verrry thoroughly. Spread out a cloth on your terrace in the hot sun and spread these grains out thinly to dry (separately). To avoid dust etc falling on to the drying grains, spread a very thin muslin cotton cloth on this and secure it by weights so that it doesn't fly away. By around four to five hours, the grains will dry to a crisp. Store them in separate airtight containers.

This stored raw material can be used upto a month in the hot humid climes of Mumbai, and remains "best before" upto 90 days in the dry weather of Rajasthan.

Part II The Aerated dough

The previous night.........

Take one portion of the above daal and DRY-grind it coarse in a stone grinder. Take this out dry and soak separately overnight in one-third volume water.

Take three portions of the above rice and DRY-grind it coarse in the stone grinder. This sequence of "daal-first" ensures that the stickiness of the daal is absorbed by the subsequent rice being ground. Soak sprtly ovrnite in 1/3 rd water.

Aeration

The next morning, mix these two in a largish vessel and churn with your hand in a circular motion, either clockwise or anti, NEVER both. Churn for ten mins. Add a little water if found necessary. The batter should be on the thicker side. Drop a small blob in a tall glass of water. If the blob sinks, the dough is not aerated enough. Churn more. The fully aerated blob will FLOAT. Some people add well-boiled-n-well-churned rice (one portion cooked rice) to this batter to make more fluffier dhoklaas.

Add salt to taste. Add a small quantity of freshly pasted ginger-plus-green-chilly paste. Mix well. Now your batter is ready. Go for the steaming.

Part III The Steaming

If you don't have a special-purpose steaming cooker, a regular pressure-cooker will do (WITHOUT the pressure sealant weight)

Add water for steaming to the bottom of steamer. Put some sorta stand such that your thaali does not sink in this water. (these special purpose steamers can be purchased cheaply... they can be used for iddli and dhoklaa) Apply a very thin layer of peanut oil to the batter-cooking-thaali and pour batter to get a five mm thick layer. (Some people prefer thicker/thinner dhoklaas)(in which case, the steaming time goes up/down). Steam for five to seven mins. This requires a bit of experience to get it "abso right". Understeaming will give a raw taste & over steaming will destroy the fluffiness. Take the thaali out and leave it open at a slant (45 deg ? ) for five to seven mins. The slant ensures that the condensation does not settle back on to the cooked dhoklaa. For a bit of spicy taste, sprinkle pepper during the fourth minute. For a bit of colour, sprinkle chilli powder alternating with pepper powder. After ten mins, take a knife dipped in oil and cut out serving pieces of dhoklaa, say 6cm X 4cm.

Serve right away. Pour a bit of ghee on top. The accompaniment is green chutney made outa coriander + spearmint leaves ground with salt, green chilli, & a wee bit'a lemon juice.

Eat, eat, eat, EAT.

CAUTION :

According to Aayurveda, fermented-aerated food like dhoklaa, iddli, dosaa etc. should be eaten only mornings with a bit of ghee/oil added on top. If eaten at night, it may lead to excessive flatulence. If someone with Rheumatoid Arthritis eats this at night, will find "more" degree of immobility the next morning which could be quite painful.

The commercially available ones are aerated using baking soda. Whilst eating no probs with baking soda. Subsequently. you will keep drinking gallons of water for the rest of the day. Your throat will remain so parched that continuous water drinking will provide no relief. Then all this water will cause more fermentation activity inside your stomach, causing it to bloat up. If your prone to flatulence, beware!

If anyone prepares dhoklaa according to the authentic procedure, please send me some. They are extremely healthy and quite easy to digest.

After eating dhoklaa Volga will become Volgaben

I have a confession to make . Dokhla is my favourite Indian dish. I can eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. With green chutney.

So, I will certainly try this recipe even if I'll have to take a week's holiday to cook it. Thank you so much AvidTrekker! I have few questions, though...

The rice portion (three to one) seems to be a bit high. I have seen recipes with semolina, or without any grain flour. Dokhlas I tasted in India did not seem to have so much rice flour. On the other hand, I have never made it taste like in India when cooking at home, so may be i need to up the grain flour bit.

also, what is iddli?

and what is Volgaben?

Volga... go here for Beach's lovely iddly picture:


http://www.indiamike.com/photopost/s...cat/all/page/1

The iddlys are the white round things.....

yummmmmm...i'm salivating...idli, vada, sambar and chutney = perfect breakfast. this is my new favorite thread. if i can ever figure out how to scan the thing and put in text format, i've got a really great story/recipe from cook's illustrated magazine that wonderfully demystifies the making of delicious scratch curries. they may have it on their web site, but i think you have to pay to access recipes there.

Volga, the basic dhoklaa is made out of rice. Then some are made outa besan (channaa flour). Then there are many more made outa sprouted moong, matki, ravaa, ..... and so on. Generally wheat (flour) is hardly used. I have never heard of semolina dhoklaa.... I am willing to try them out, of course.

Out of all Gujaraatis ( & Rajasthaanis) the maximum dhoklaa eaters are members of the Jain community. They do not eat greens during the monsoon. They invent many new dishes to compensate. Dhoklaa is one of them.

I’m not good at recipe.
But I have mouthwatering food photos.

You've done it again beach! Looks great! I'm going to have to look in the fridge in a minute?

Still, we're going to be back in India in August!

Care to tell us what this dish actually is?

Its colloquially called ‘Chicken Chilly’ or ‘Chilly Chicken’.

I do not know the ‘technical’ name of this dish.

It’s a bit spicy roasted chicken. It tastes a bit hot with a pinch of sweetness. A plate of it costs anything from 40rs to 80rs at local restaurants.

According to the linked BBC article, the price tag for this 3000 calorie omelette at a New York restaurant is $1000, but I'm sure you could make it at home for less than a couple of hundred, although I'm not really up-to-date on the price of caviar.

The ingredients:

6 eggs
1 tbspn chopped chives
1 1/2 tbsps butter
1 lobster
5 tbsps heavy cream
10oz sevruga caviar

Enjoy!

the story here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3724497.stm

Re: "zillion dollar frittada" - what a waste of good eggs!

That chilly chicken looks excellent though, will have to try it next time I'm over!

Wonder how many of you have heard of (let alone eaten) food items like Aviyal, Mologhootal and kootu
Have you people tried to make rasam or sambar ?
They are all vegetarian dishes and taste yummy.