Cookaholics Bulletin Board

I did some googling myself and found the name of what I was looking for: dal makhani. This recipe looked quite good:
http://www.mamtaskitchen.com/recipe_print.php?id=10257

I am going to try it on Saturday so I will let you know how it turns out. They must be tough little buggers to cook if it takes 25 minutes in a pressure cooker though!

Mary

Mary,

Yeah, it's astonishing, especially since the skinned ones cook so fast. I guess the skins are just impermeable. Dal makhani is pretty good stuff; depending on how much you like heat, you might want to add some peppers to the cooking dal as well.

I'd skip the cream and use butter though.

Spoil sport.

Mary

I did the dal tonight and it was VERY good except for the fact that I am an idiot. I had to go out to buy the fennel for it, the Indian store was closed so I had to go to the overpriced natural food store (bio veritas, no caps). I brought them home, read "2 tsp fennel seeds" and then put in cumin instead. It was quite creamy without the cream/butter so I just swirled some cream on top for serving.

Mary

Indian food tonight!

- Trader Joe's Samosas
- Packaged Naan
- Brown Basmati Rice

- Saag Paneer

- Sambhar Dal

Recipes later if I get time.

Please the saag recipe. I just bought some paneer last week at the Indian place and would love to try your recipe.

Mary

Hey, cool, not only is this a great board, but there are also some fans of Indian cooking.

Juli and I are both huge fans of Indian cuisine, and it's one of my favorite things to cook. A lot of my own Indian and Indian-inspired recipes are on our blog. Here's a sampling, including one of my latest, a version of Lamb Vindaloo.

http://jeffreyandjulicook.blogspot.com/2011/01/lamb-vindaloo.html
http://jeffreyandjulicook.blogspot.com/2010/11/mild-chicken-and-sweet-potato-curry.html
http://jeffreyandjulicook.blogspot.com/2010/10/keema-mattar-or-quick-make-do-indian.html
http://jeffreyandjulicook.blogspot.com/2010/10/pumpkin-and-red-lentil-curry-soup-sweet.html
http://jeffreyandjulicook.blogspot.com/2010/11/mild-chicken-and-sweet-potato-curry.html
http://jeffreyandjulicook.blogspot.com/2010/12/lamb-curry-with-apricots.html
http://jeffreyandjulicook.blogspot.com/2010/11/chicken-korma-with-peas-and-naan-from.html

We're pretty happy with my Indian cooking, but at the same time, I'm always working on becoming a better cook. Fuzzy, I'd appreciate it if you could look over my recipes and see if you have any suggestions that might help me improve on my Indian cooking. Some other spice ideas, or perhaps some techniques, or any good resources you'd recommend, or simply some things you might suggest I try.

I'd appreciate the same from anyone else who likes to cook Indian, of course.

Mary,

Saag Paneer

20 to 24 oz washed spinach leaves (2lbs whole spinach), roughly chopped
3 tbs clarified butter OR 2 Tbs butter and 1 Tbs vegetable oil
Fresh ginger, 3Tbs minced
3 cloves garlic, minced, about 1 Tbs
Medium to hot fresh green peppers, minced, such as:
- 2 pasillo or anaheim peppers, or
- 3 jalopeno peppers, or
- 2 italian frying peppers
2-6 dried skinny chile peppers, such as cayenne or arbol
2 tsp black mustard seeds, whole (subs. brown mustard seed)
1 Tbs whole coriander seed
One 14oz can diced tomatoes in juice
Chickpea or chana flour, about 1/2 cup (subs. regular flour)
2 tsp Garam Masala
1 to 2 tsp salt
1/2 to 1 lbs paneer, cut into small cubes
Dutch oven, or wide deep saute pan with lid

Heat the butter in the pan to frying temperature. Fry the peppers, ginger and garlic for a couple minutes. Add the mustard seed, coriander seed, and dried peppers, and fry, stirring frequently, until the seeds start to pop, 3-5 minutes. Turn the heat down to medium.

Add the spinach, in 2 or 3 batches, wilting it and stirring it, until it's all completely wilted. Add the diced tomatoes with their juice. If the mixture is a little dry, add 1/4 to 1/2 cup of water -- it should be kinda soupy at this stage. Cover and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes, until the spinach breaks down and the tomatoes start to.

Add the Garam Masala and salt, and stir in. Sprinkle with the flour, stirring, until the liquid thickens to a gravy-like consistency. Toss the paneer cubes with a couple tablespoons of flour, and then stir them gently into the spinach.

Turn off heat, cover, and let sit for 10 minutes. Then serve with Naan or rice.

Flattery will get you everywhere.

From the look of it, your Indian recipes are mostly meat , which means I'm not going to do much with them. As far as advice goes, you seem to have grasped the essential concept of Southeast Asian cooking, which is: don't stint the spices! Use many different spices, and use a lot of them. If you have that down, the rest is mostly combinations.

Oh, wait, I do have one tip for you! Most of your recipes seem to be adding all the spices at the beginning of cooking. For Indian, you usually want to add different spices at several different steps of cooking, depending on the spice. Sometimes you even add the same spice a little at the beginning and a little at the end. Try some of your recipes with the powdered spices added towards the end of cooking (except for turmeric and chili powders, which do better added earlier).

The pumpkin-red-lentil soup sounds pretty good, and very South Indian.

Thank you for the advice. It's most appreciated. I know the layering and spacing of spices can have a profound effect on the dish, but I've not played around with that enough yet to have a good instinct about that. So, your advice is a good reminder for me.

As it happens, I have been experimenting a bit with spreading out the spices more -in the recipe in my latest blog post, I add cardamom at the very end (I find I tend to like cardamom most when added at the end of a dish) - but I definitely have lots of room for growth there.

Oh, and I do cook a fair amount of vegetarian Indian and Indian-inspired dishes, too - the one I posed today is a vegetable curry with potatoes, chick peas and cauliflower - but a lot of my experiments have been with meat dishes. My cookbooks have good versions of saag paneer, matar paneer, aloo ghobi and some other standards, and I haven't as yet done any customization on those.

If I might be so bold as to make a request, I've still not found a samosa recipe I'm really pleased with. We prefer vegetable to meat samosas, and while I've made a few versions (and come up with a pretty good filling featuring potatoes, peas and fresh chilis), I've been less pleased with the pastry part of the dish so far.