Earlier this year, the Chez Venza team took a fairly substantial tour of exotic India. The sights, the sounds, the food… the food…. the food. We consider ourselves to be fans of Indian cooking, but after weeks of eating it on a semi-daily basis, we both felt the need for a culinary respite. That respite came to a glorious end when we attempted, yet again, to overdo weekend entertaining in a grand style. Cue the bollywood music…
Course 1: Mulligatawny Soup.
This is a soup I’d had at a local Indian restaurant, but I knew it also from the Seinfeld Soup Nazi bit… there’s something about the name… Mulligatawny… such a nice ring to it! Find a copy of the recipe and a well documented account of how to make it here.
Exotic elements include coconut and banana.
Due to a transcription error on my pdf of this recipe, we ended up with a significantly thicker, heartier version of this soup. Due to this error, we will omit the usual detailed steps. See the above-linked blog post on how it SHOULD be made. However, the same error led to an aggressive seasoning of the soup, which worked out very nicely. All in all, it was delicious. Pictured here with parsley and yogurt garnish.
Course 2: Samosas
Samosas are the empanadas of India. So much so that this “short-cut” recipe from Aarti Sequeira is probably nothing like the real thing, but it was really easy to make and quite tasty. The short-cut part is the dough - I used puff pastry instead of making my own. I would be up for making my own dough, but we had so many other things going on that we were willing to make this small sacrifice for the sake of convenience.
The filling was pretty simple to make: boil the potatoes, saute the onions, then add some tasty spices, jalapeno, peas, and cilantro.
For the dough – I cut out 7-inch circles and then cut them in half. Add the filling and then fold them over into triangles, sealing with egg wash.
The puff pastry does all the work and comes out brown and flaky. These are baked instead of fried, so they really are nothing like samosas except for the filling. I didn’t hear anyone complaining though!
Next step is a make a tasty mint chutney to go with it. Mint, cilantro, ginger, lime juice, salt & pepper go into the food processor.
The fun part is browning the mustard seeds in vegetable oil. It was a little scary – once they hit the hot oil you have to cover the pan with a lid. They pop around all over the place like popcorn!
Here’s a delicious samosa with mint chutney:
Course 3: Chicken Tikka Masala
Ah Tikka Masala… Am I wrong that basically everyone likes this dish? One friend of ours in particular seems to eat only this dish at Indian restaurants and had gently requested that we make it sometime. So here it is!
Plus Chicken breasts. As you can see, there’s very little that’s terribly exotic in the ingredients of this dish. The full-fat plain yogurt and the garam masala spice mixture are probably the hardest ingredients to locate. We happened to have the garam masala cause we’d gotten a $5 promotional coupon for a local health-food store that had just opened. The recipe we used indicated that you can substitute 2 teaspoons ground coriander, 1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom, 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon, and 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper for the garam masala.
Fresh ginger, garlic, jalapeno (HEB didn’t have serrano), tomato paste and garam masala… all ready to dive into the pan.
Unfortunately, in all the hubbub… all the rigmarole… all the getting jiggy-with-it of cooking, we took less pictures than usual of this particular dish. The sauce, which had been a strikingly bright red, moderated to a more appetizing hue once the cream was added at the very end.
The Chicken, which had marinated in cumin, coriander, cayenne and salt before being dipped in a yogurt/garlic/ginger mix and broiled was fantastic. Tikka Masala sauce aside, this is a fantastic way to cook chicken breast on its own.
We served the tikka with a basmati rice that was mixed with golden raisins and sliced almonds. Yeah, we’re kind of awesome.
Course 4: Kulfi
Yet another recipe from Aarti Sequeira. This is a really simple ice cream that does not require an ice cream maker. So there’s really no excuse for you not to make it! Ok, the only excuse you might have is that you don’t want to buy cardamom. But if you’ve ever had cardamom, you will realize how awesome it is, and now you have a recipe that you can use it with. Are you convinced yet?!
First you gently heat the evaporated milk in a saucepan and then EMPTY four bags of Earl Grey tea into the mixture. Very strange cutting open tea bags.
What is evaporated milk anyway? It’s basically canned milk with most of the water removed. Theoretically you could add water and it would be similar to fresh milk. Yeah, anyway…
After 30 minutes of steeping, we strained out the tea. Then you add the condensed milk and some regular milk.
What is condensed milk, you ask? It’s evaporated milk with added sugar. It’s very sticky, sweet, and I would be tempted to eat a whole can of it (except that’s kind of gross).
Then all you have to do is pour it into some sort of container and stick it in the freezer. We used large ice cube trays, but you can use anything, really. Top it with chopped pistachios and you’re done.
See how pretty? After just a few minutes out of the freezer, the Kulfi is soft enough to be eaten with a spoon. It is sweet and creamy and pretty much awesome. Just the thing to prepare a full stomach for some digestion.
No comments:
Post a Comment