Gori Girl

I'm not a recipe kinda person – i just like to throw stuff together and it usualy works.  Sometimes I fail but I learn. When i go to India this winter, i will take many cooking lessons from B's mother. Last night she asked me if I wanted a Gujarati cookbook. I said ABSOLUTELY, B doesn't know anything. Ha. :)

Last night i thought i was going to make a variant of palak paneer. I had kale thought not spinach. and the paneer went moldy. :( So I sauted garlic and ginger in some ghee, added kale til it went bright green, added chana masala and water, and eventually chickpeas and tomatoes. and maybe a little salt and I cheated and a tiny bit of chicken bouilon. i usually keep it 100% veg. I prepared rotis as well. We just buy pilsbury rotis and parathas from Patel's cash n carry.

B said this was chole – chickpeas.  I guess I always make some variant of it. Chole is my favorite "easy" dish. Easy in Indian terms still means it takes like an hour. Saute onions in ghee, add water and chole or chana or whatever masalas you have on hand, and let it cook for a long time. Add chickpeas and then tomatoes towards the end.

Oh, I LOVE "confusion." :) That's what I tried to make my blog about, although a lot of what I cook ends up just being plain old "American" or "Indian."

Anyhow, I'm re-posting this recipe from my blog on here because it's one of my favorites – the perfect breakfast food (and try making oatmeal cookies using these spices, it's amazing ).

“Kheer” Oatmeal

Ingredients

* 1/2 cup oatmeal

* 1/2 cup milk

* 1/4 cup water

* 1/2 tsp. orange blossom water

* 1/4 tsp. crushed cardamom

* 1/8 ginger powder

* 2 or 3 saffron threads

* Almond slices

* Splenda , sugar or brown sugar, to taste

Directions

1. Place all ingredients in a bowl and stir.

2. Microwave for 90 seconds, stir again.

3. Add brown sugar to the top, if you desire.

4. Top with almond slices.

Oh my! My love of sweet potatoes and black cardamom reached new heights after tonight's kitchen experiment: curried sweet potato bisque. I was inspired by two different recipes found online. Some call for fresh ginger, lime and other ingredients, which I'm sure would be lovely, but they are absent from this soup as they are from this house tonight. No worries. Super yummy with spicy kick and took about 35 minutes to make 5-6 bowls of soup.

 
Curried Sweet Potato Bisque

Ingredients
2 15 oz can of sweet potato puree
3 cup chicken stock (I used low-sodium chicken boullion powder mixed in water. I'm sure vegetable stock would be a fine substitute.)
1 onion
1 tbsp olive oil
12-15 baby carrots
3 garlic cloves
3 Thai green chilis, chopped
3/4 dessicated coconut
3 tbsp ground cinnamon
2 tbsp ground clove
2 tbsp nutmeg powder
2 tbsp black pepper
1 tbsp black cardamom powder
1.5 tsp cumin powder
1 tsp red chili powder
1 tbsp salt
1-2 tbsp water
 
Garnish
1 tbsp non-fat plain yoghurt
1 cup chopped cilantro
 
Directions
Finely chop onion and fry it in the vessel where you intend to make your soup. Once onions turn golden brown, remove from heat. Toast coconut until it begins to turn golden brown. Stir to prevent burning. Put carrots, garlic, green chilis, onion and coconut into food processor and set to grind. Add a little water (no more than a couple of tablespoons) and grind again until mixture is thoroughly minced.
Put original vessel onto mid-high heat and pour sweet potato puree into pot. Stir in cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, black pepper, cardamom, cumin and red chili powder. Pour in stock and stir until puree no longer resembles baby food and spices appear to be evenly distributed. Turn oven up to high heat and stir while soup begins to bubble slowly. Pour in carrot mixture, add salt and stir until there are no lumps for 5-7 minutes.
Serve immediately with a dollop of plain yoghurt and freshly chopped cilantro. Enjoy!

Post edited 1:57 pm – November 5, 2009 by kck

I've figured out the trick to making bhakhri.  There are a lot of recipes for the dough online, but no detailed explanation of how to cook them!  That's like having a list of materials for a castle but no architect.

The dough is simple: about 2 T of oil per cup of flour, plus enough water to make a kind of hard dough (not as soft as for rotli)

The cooking technique is like this:

1. roll some dough into a flat round shape

2. cook it on a dry griddle (no oil!) until bubbles start to pop up in it and maybe the edges curl up.

3. flip it (still no oil!), cook for a few more seconds

4. drizzle some oil on the top side (the first side that you cooked)

5. flip it again!  the oil you put on it will make it puff up.  Do a little pressing-and-turning action to try to get the layers to completely separate.

6. flip it to brown a little on the other side in the oil, then it's done.

7. Lay them out on a plate, slightly overlapping.  This way they cool and they don't get soggy but they also don't get too hard.

How are bhakhri (a gujarati thing) related to chappati?  Are roti the same as rotli (I would bet they are)?  Does anyone know how to make paratha?  If the directions start with “get the bag out of the freezer” it doesn't count.

For late weekend breakfasts or on lazy nights when neither of us want to go out or cook anything too demanding, G and I make eggy dosa. It's super easy once you ferment the dosa batter, or maavu, and can be a healthy and filling meal. Brief sidenote: I cannot overstate the love for dosa that G and I share. When we were in India last December, we each ate seven dosa at one breakfast, much to the entertainment of our host, a family friend. If you're pressed for time, several Indian stores sell ready-made dosa batter, but I got to the point where I couldn't wait for a trip to the Indian store before getting my next fix of crispy, golden dosa fresh off the griddle. Mmm…

Dosa (makes 12-15)

2 cups of idli rice, rinsed

1/2 cup of urad dal, rinsed

10-12 fenugreek seeds

Salt to taste

3 Eggs  (for 6 dosa)

1/2 tsp red chili pepper

1/2 tsp garam masala

1-2 Thai green chili, chopped

1/2 red onion, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

1/4 tsp paprika

Pinch of turmeric

Salt to taste

Soak rice for 12 hours in lukewarm water. Soak urad dal and fenugreek for 3-4 hours, and time it so that both finish soaking at the same time. Drain water, and pour enough warm water to cover the rice. Grind rice separately on ice-cube in an 18-speed blender (wish we had one of those awesome wet grinders for prettier, smoother dosa) until you end up with something resembling thin, smooth and slightly coarse rice milk smoothie. Repeat with urad dal/fenugreek, which will be much thicker. Then, grind rice and urad dal together. Pour into a large sealable container until it is half-full and keep in a warm spot in your house. For example, an air vent works wonders. Allow dosa batter to ferment for 12-18 hours.

Once batter has risen, heat your griddle or kadai to 400 degrees, or highest heat. I like to add 1 tbsp of cumin seeds to the batter just before making dosa. Mix all egg-related ingredients together and have ready next to griddle/kadai. Test heat with a waterdrop and when it dances across the cooking surface, ladle your dosa batter onto the surface. Use your ladle to spread the dosa in an outward growing circle until it is almost paper-thin and about 8-10 inches in diameter. Then, immediately pour about 3-4 tbsp portion of egg mixture in center of dosa. Place 4-5 drops of olive oil around edge of dosa. We don't like a really greasy dosa in our house, but family often liberally sprinkle a dosa with oil. Fry until dosa turns golden brown on underside, flip to fully cook the egg and then serve as is, with sambhar, idli podi,  paruppu podi, coconut chutney, or whatever works for you and yours. You won't be disappointed, and the dosa batter's good for 5-7 days. Keep refridgerated after fermentation.

I don't have much for the recipe itself. For the taste, it might be worth going to a good Indian buffet so you can sample several foods at once. Of course, if your boyfriend can't try it too, you can't be sure that it's really "good" palak paneer, etc. — but maybe a friend or cousin of his could come along? There's usually some bigger-than-usual buffets around Diwali and maybe even Thanksgiving. 

Best of luck! I'll check with my husband–he's in the hospitality field and knows a thing or two about creating and updating recipes. If he has any suggestions, I'll put them up.