Tandoori Shrimp Salad

This dish was something I randomly came up with one night a few weeks ago while trying to decide how to use the shrimp I had defrosted.  I started thinking that we hadn't had an entree salad in awhile and then started thinking about what kind of shrimp salad I could make that would be interesting enough to appeal to Alex (who isn't a huge fan of the entree salad genre but goes along with it to humor me).  I started kicking around ideas in my head until I came up with the idea of doing a quasi-Indian tandoori shrimp salad - marinating the shrimp tandoori style, crisping up some garlic naan to use as croutons and rounding out the salad with the cucumber, red onion and radishes we already had in the fridge.  When I hit the grocery store to pick up some salad greens and the naan I decided that baby spinach sounded like the obvious choice.  Then I decided that some grape tomatoes would be another nice addition to the salad.  And then I went home and started wildly throwing stuff together.

My favorite elements of the salad were the shrimp (even though we overcooked them they had nice flavor) and the whole garlic naan as crouton idea.  Unfortunately, overcooking seemed to be something of a theme because I wandered off and crisped up the naan a little more than I had intended.  Oops.  I also love salads full of herbs and random veggies.  Adding herbs to salads is somewhat new to me (and I only do it occasionally), but ever since I had a salad at The Spotted Pig that included some fresh mint I have been intrigued by the idea of using herbs (in moderation) in salads.  Now that I think about it there was an Asian salad I was obsessed with over the summer at Chop't that also included herbs.  Unfortunately they rotate their menu of salads and that salad is no longer available, but I have high hopes that it will be back next summer.  The dressing was also nice - I liked the interplay between the tang of the Greek yogurt, the hint of sweetness from the honey and the warmth from the spices.  I would definitely try the dressing again and play with the spices until I found the perfect combination (I think the combination we found was a good one and worked really well with the salad, but I'm sure that there are a lot of different variations that would be just as good, if not better).

Recipe after the jump!

Indian-Style Broccoli with Spiced Yogurt

For some reason I have been talking about broccoli all weekend.  Alex finds it totally mystifying when I get so fixated on vegetables but I can't help it.  Apparently he never craves vegetables.  All I can think about right now is broccoli, cauliflower and brussels sprouts.  Don't get me wrong - I am happy to eat other things along the way, but I need some veggies in my life ASAP.  Luckily, Sunday is farmers' market day.  I also wanted delicata squash, but they didn't have any so I ended up getting a nice spaghetti squash along with my broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts and fresh bread.  I also thought about getting green tomatoes, but Alex shot me down.  I admit it - sometimes I need to be reined in a little.  We already had more produce than we can easily eat in a week.  Anyway, since I have been babbling about broccoli all weekend I decided that the first order of business would be to make some broccoli for lunch.

It is pretty easy to sum up my thoughts on this dish.  The flavors are fantastic - I thought the spiced yogurt worked beautifully with the broccoli.  And the slight gritty-ness of the coarsely ground spices added some nice texture and little bursts of flavor.  We were both a little worried at first that the spices should have been more finely ground, but I actually really enjoyed biting into the occasional toasted cumin seed or fennel seed.  My one complaint/modification would be to the cooking method - instead of blanching and then pan-roasting the broccoli in the future I would just roast it in the oven.  There is no point in boiling something and getting it kind of soft and soggy before trying to sear it up and crisp it around the edges.  It doesn't make sense.  So in the future I would totally toss the broccoli florets with a little evoo and s&p and throw it in the oven at 425 degrees F for roughly 25 minutes - until the broccoli is crisp-tender and starting to brown around the edges.  And then I would drizzle it with the sauce.  I think that would be a better (and easier) variation on the dish.  As an added benefit there would be one less pan/pot to wash!

Recipe after the jump!

Zucchini with Lentils and Roasted Garlic

Ok so first things first.  I know exactly what this looks like.  And it doesn't look appetizing.  When we first mixed the dish together I had some interesting thoughts - and few of them were good.  The one exception was that the smell of the spices (particularly the cumin and the coriander) was very nice.  But once you get over the texture, which is similar to baby food, it's not bad.  I would love to say that it's amazing, but it wasn't there for me.  Maybe it was the texture or maybe it was something else.  I just don't know.  I wish our dish had looked anything like the original on Steamy Kitchen, but clearly we messed something up there.  But let's be honest, even if the texture had been perfect it still would not have made it to my list of dishes that I love and can't wait to make again.  Oh well.  At least we tried!

Recipe after the jump!

Egg and Spinach Kati Rolls with Cilantro Chutney

Happy Fourth of July everyone!  This dish had nothing to do with the Fourth (we didn't make it or eat it today), but I am going to post it anyway since I have the time on my hands to do so. But it's going to be a short post because...   Well because I am tired and i have work tomorrow!  Suffice it to say that this is one of my favorite meals that we have made of late.  It was totally delicious.  The kati rolls had a really nice combination of flavors and textures - buttery, flaky parathas, the sweetness of the onion and the garam masala, the slight smokiness of the cumin in the eggs and the chutney and the fresh, bright flavor and kick of the cilantro chutney...  And by the way, our cilantro chutney had some serious heat so a little went a long way.  It was just so yummy.  In case you couldn't tell, I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I was surprised by how well all of the elements came together because sometimes when I conceptualize a dish in my head it never quite comes together.  But this was a total (vegetarian) winner.  Yay!

Recipe after the jump!

Madhur Jaffrey's Shrimp Biryani

I have been wanting to make Indian food for a few weeks now.  But something always got in the way.  Tonight we finally had the opportunity to make some biryani.  Biryani is a dish that I have enjoyed at restaurants in the past (although I typically eat chicken biryani rather than shrimp biryani), but I have never attempted to make it at home before.  Madhur Jaffrey is my go-to Indian chef so I decided that I had to use one of her recipes for my first attempt at biryani.  One of our Madhur Jaffrey's cookbooks contains a recipe for lamb biryani, but I found this recipe online at Serious Eats.  Since we had shrimp in the freezer and shrimp is healthier than lamb, I decided to go with the shrimp biryani, rather than the lamb.  Another benefit of making shrimp biryani rather than chicken or lamb biryani is that a biryani with meat takes far longer to cook.

Alex and I are agreed that the biryani was good, but not our favorite Indian dish that we have made.  The shrimp had nice flavor, but the rice was less flavorful than Alex had hoped.  We added a little more lemon juice to the shrimp, which I think was a nice touch, but I wish we had added a little more cilantro to the rice as well.  It also occurred to me after the fact that we could have added some mango pickle (like they do at the biryani cart near my office) or something else to the dish to give it some kick.  Maybe next time?

Recipe after the jump!

Andhra Spiced Eggplant and Andhra Scrambled Eggs

From time to time we fall into a rut.  I think everyone does, whether it's a food rut, an exercise rut, an occupation rut, etc.  There are certain ingredients we always have in the apartment and that we use with abandon because we are so comfortable with them.  But most of the ingredients in this meal did not fall into that category.  This meal was so different from anything else we have made in recent memory that I think it completely blew any rut we might have been in right out of the water.  I'm not sure exactly what drew me to these two recipes, except that I was thinking that I have been neglecting a bunch of my cookbooks recently.  While we use Hot Sour Salty Sweet quite often, we rarely use this cookbook, Mangoes and Curry Leaves: Culinary Travels Through the Great Subcontinent.  Both books are by the same authors, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid and both are fantastic, but while Hot Sour Salty Sweet is right in our Asian wheelhouse, the recipes in Mangoes and Curry Leaves are not.  One problem with the recipes is that they often require a number of Indian, Nepalese or Sri Lankan ingredients that we don't have in the apartment.  I'm not even sure if or where I can find some of the ingredients.  Unfortunately that knocks out a lot of recipes.  Luckily I happened to have everything we needed (or I knew where to find it) for these two recipes.

I can't think of enough good things to say about the Andhra Spiced Eggplant, which both Alex and I were fairly blown away by.  The flavor combination is just so unique and wonderful.  I really thought that the eggplant would be spicy, but somehow all of the flavors really melded together to create a very nice savory dish with great depth of flavor.  The recipe recommends serving the eggplant as a dip for chapatis/pita or serving with white rice.  We happened to have some frozen parathas that we served with the eggplant dip and the buttery, flaky parathas worked really well but I'm sure that chapatis/pita would be an equally good combination.  I will definitely be serving this one again in the future.  As for the eggs, I thought they were nice too.  We both preferred the eggplant, but I was very happy with the eggs.  I don't generally like cooked tomatoes (I love them raw, but I don't like the mushy texture when you cook them), but they really worked in these eggs, which is something I never thought I would say.  Scrambled eggs and tomatoes are a very typical homestyle Chinese dish that they used to serve in China all the time that I avoided like the plague.  But it was good! 

Recipes after the jump!

Minced Lamb with Mint Stuffed Zucchini and Rice

I would rank this both as one of the most interesting and the most satisfying meals we have cooked recently.  I have never made stuffed zucchini (or any sort of stuffed vegetable with the exception of these Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms we made last month).  And I have never tried either of these recipes from Indian Cooking by Madhur Jaffrey.  Madhur Jaffrey suggested stuffing her Minced Lamb with Mint into tomatoes before roasting the tomatoes in the oven, but I have a longstanding prejudice against stuffed tomatoes.  I really don't enjoy them.  Alex and I both really enjoy zucchini and Google turned up all sorts of stuffed zucchini recipes when I searched.  Plus stuffed tomatoes are all gross and mushy.  So I decided that stuffed zucchini sounded like a better option.  And I decided that we should make some fancy rice rather than plain basmati rice.  I really prefer plain basmati rice, but I know that Alex really enjoys spiced rice so every once in awhile a try to throw him a bone.  And this rice was really nice.  The sweetness and floral quality of the spices was a nice counterpoint to the spicy lamb mixture.  As for the lamb, it was just delicious.  It had some serious heat, but the spice wasn't  overpowering.  You could still taste the aromatics and the spices in every bite.  The zucchini really soaked up some of those intense flavors, but still provided a nice textural counterpoint to the ground lamb mixture.  It was just a really really nice dish.  Both the lamb and the rice take some time and effort, but they are more than worth it.  The best endorsement that I can give for this meal?  I would make it again and I wouldn't change a single thing.  It really was that good.

Recipes after the jump!

Goan-Style Chicken with Roasted Coconut and Gujerati-Style Green Beans

I have been waiting to make this recipe for Goan-Style Chicken with Roasted Coconut for a long time.  The biggest deterrent to our making the dish was that I was never organized enough to have 2 cups of grated fresh coconut.  And then we saw bags of frozen grated fresh coconut at the Thai grocery store so I picked one up with this recipe in mind.  But it stayed in the freezer until I remembered it earlier this week and unearthed it.  These green beans were another recipe that I have been meaning to try.  A long time ago when I lived down the block from Kalustyans, we picked up Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking on the recommendation of one of the ladies manning the registers.  Our first meal that we made from the cookbook was Green Beans with Ginger and Cilantro and Lemony Chicken with Cilantro.  The chicken was good, but those green beans were a revelation.  Green beans are not a vegetable that I typically associate with Indian cooking.  When I think Indian I think lentils, chickpeas, eggplant, cauliflower and spinach.

Once again, Madhur Jaffrey's green beans were a revelation.  They were really delicious and easy to make.  I loved how the green beans remained crisp-tender, and soaked up the flavors of the garlic and red chili.  They were just so good.  And they went really nicely with the chicken.  I actually slightly preferred the green beans to the chicken (and I went back for seconds on the beans rather than the chicken), but Alex said that he enjoyed them both equally.  We used a mix of boneless skinless chicken breasts and thighs for the Goan-Style Chicken and while I preferred the flavor of the breasts (I know, that doesn't make any sense because thighs are more flavorful) they were a little dry.  Meanwhile the chicken thighs just seemed greasy.  I'm weird like that.  The chicken smelled amazing while it cooked and the flavors lived up to the aroma.  It was also a really interesting and delicious combination of flavors - coconut, ginger, chili, coriander, cloves, cumin, etc.  I think the other thing that threw me about the chicken is that you spend all this time toasting the coconut to get it crispy and golden brown.  And then you throw it in a pan with a cup of water to essentially braise/steam the chicken and the coconut gets all soggy.  I think in the future I would reserve a little of the toasted coconut and spice mixture to use as a garnish.  The other thing that threw me was that the fully cooked mixture is a study in beige.  You can see it in the picture and it doesn't exactly look all that appetizing.  But appearances can be deceiving, because it is quite tasty.

Recipe after the jump!

Tikka Kebabs with Homemade Flatbread and Cucumber Raita

I'm not sure what drew me to this assortment of recipes, but I have been thinking about making these Tikka Kebabs with some homemade flatbreads or naan for some time now.  I originally wanted to make the Home-Style Tandoor Naan from Mangoes & Curry Leaves: Culinary Travels Through the Great Subcontinent so that the entire meal would come from the same cookbook, but I didn't have the patience (or the time) to begin preparing the dough for the naan about 4 1/2 to 10 hours before I wanted to eat the naan.  So I went with a recipe for homemade flatbread that I cobbled together from a bunch of recipes I found online.  There are hundreds of recipes for homemade naan or flatbread online so I had a lot of resources to work with.  If you don't want to make homemade flatbread or naan, the kind you pick up at the grocery store will work just fine.  Alternatively, you can serve the tikka kebabs with basmati rice and a nice salad, instead of serving it with flatbread.

I was very happy with this meal.  The lamb was tasty and very tender.  The flavors were very simple, but delicious.  If I were to make the tikka kebabs again I would probably add some more cayenne pepper to the marinade to give the dish a little more kick.  The yogurt in the marinade, plus the yogurt in the raita cooled down all hint of spice and I wouldn't mind if just a little more heat had come through (although I didn't really miss the heat, Alex did bring up that criticism/comment so I thought I would pass it along).  I also might add a little more garlic or something to the marinade - perhaps a little ground cumin?  I don't know.  It smelled delicious while it cooked and it was really nice, but it could be improved.  Our homemade flatbread turned out better than our last experiment with Instant Flatbread.  I might play with the recipe in the future and try to use different toppings with the flatbread.  Or brush it with melted butter once it's done to make it taste more like naan.  I thought that the Cucumber Raita was a very nice accompaniment, particularly if you are planning on serving the tikka kebabs with flatbread.  If you are serving the kebabs with basmati rice I think that the raita would be unnecessary and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice would be more than sufficient.  We added some scallions for color and flavor to the kebabs, but again if you were serving them with basmati rice I'm not sure that they would be necessary.

Recipes after the jump!

Shrimp with Zucchinis

This is one of those recipes that I have proposed making several times and yet, for whatever reason, we never got around to it.  But last night I decided enough was enough and we made the shrimp tonight.  Part of the reason I found the recipe so appealing was that it came together so quickly, and used a lot of pantry and refrigerator staples.  We always have shrimp in the freezer and during the summer we tend to have lots of zucchini in the apartment.  I know it's not summer yet (actually it was pretty freezing in NYC today so I could almost swear that it's actually still winter), but zucchini is one of those ingredients that you can get at any grocery store, anytime.

I really enjoyed this recipe.  It was a great fresh and flavorful Indian dish.  Actually, when I took my first bite, the first thing that I thought was that the flavor profile didn't really strike me as Indian.  All of the spices and ingredients are fairly typical of Indian food, but somehow the combination didn't scream Indian food to me.  That's merely an observation and not a complaint.  And I guess it really shows how little I know about Indian food.  There are so many types of Indian food outside of the tandoori chicken and curries that show up all over the country (including the freezer section of most grocery stores).  I guess that means Alex and I need to start cooking a lot more Indian food...  Anyway, back to tonight's dish.  The shrimp and zucchini pick up a ton of tomato and lemon flavor, tempered with a hit of of cilantro and chilis.  I really liked the heat from the combination of the green chili (serrano in this case) and the cayenne.  If you don't like spicy food you should remove the seeds from your green chili and just use 1/4 tsp cayenne.

Recipe after the jump!

Indian Spiced Eggplant

For some time I have been trying to find some decent new eggplant recipes.  I really like eggplant, but I very rarely cook it.  And when I do cook eggplant, I almost always cook long, skinny Asian eggplants in various Asian or Asian-inspired recipes.  I find Asian eggplants to be less bitter/sweeter and more tender than the typical Western variety.  But I can't always find Asian eggplants at the local grocery store, so I have recently been experimenting with Holland eggplants and other eggplants.  I can't wait until the summer when I can go to the farmer's market and stock up on fairy eggplants and little green Thai eggplants for more experiments.

My one complaint about this eggplant was that it retained a rather soggy texture from braising it in the first place.  While we cooked off the braising liquid, we were afraid of burning the eggplant (because we have definitely burnt eggplant before), so we didn't char it up nearly enough.  As a warning, the liquid disappears between one second and the next and almost immediately the pan starts to look crusty and black.  So we wimped out.  Even if we had charred up the eggplant a little more, only one side of the eggplant would have had any texture to it.  I think it would have been better if we had charred the eggplant on the bottom and then flipped it over to just crisp the top up a bit.  If we had done those things, I think this dish would have been excellent.  The spice blend was really nice and gave the eggplant a really lovely flavor.  I know that it's not the prettiest looking dish, but it really is nice.  I might try the spice blend and/or braise for other vegetables and dishes - it was that good.  I just have to figure out how best to adapt the recipe...

Recipe after the jump!

Shrimp with Spiced Masala and Coconut Milk

This was the first dish that I ever cooked from Bon Appetit that I loved.  Before that I was a Gourmet girl all the time.  But I saw this recipe online and thought it sounded too good not to try it.  After I tried it I realized that maybe Bon Appetit had some good recipes in it too!  I guess it's a good thing that I started making my peace with Bon Appetit, since Gourmet is no more.

I think the thing I love most about this recipe is the sauce.  It's so luscious and flavorful.  It gets this wonderful creamy texture from the coconut milk and the yogurt and then really nice flavors from the spices.  Given that the shrimp only spends a few minutes cooking in the sauce, it's amazing how much flavor the shrimp soaks up.  You will end up with a ton of sauce, so if you are making dinner for a large group of people you can add an extra pound or two of shrimp (or add some cauliflower florets and peas) to this amount of sauce.  Alternatively, you can reserve half of the sauce to cook chicken, paneer or vegetables in later.  Serve the dish with basmati rice and you are in for an amazing meal.  Don't forget to season the masala and the shrimp to avoid ending up with a bland dish.  Also, feel free to play with the amount of spices to up the heat level or just boost the flavor level.  We often do.

Recipe after the jump!

Pork Vindaloo with Aromatic Yellow Rice and Spicy Cucumber Wedges

So our last few attempts at Indian food have been less than stellar.  We attempted to make a tandoori-style shrimp a few weeks ago and it tasted more like a shrimp scampi than anything else.  All you could taste was butter - nothing else.  And then we tried to make a spiced rice that was bland and overly wet.  The meal was not at all memorable, except in how mediocre it was.  It was an absolute and utter letdown.

But this Pork Vindaloo was everything that I love about Indian food - spicy, aromatic, and flavorful.  As I walked down the hall to our apartment I could smell it and I knew I was in for a treat.  I've never had a pork vindaloo before, nor have I ever cooked a vindaloo, so this was a first on several levels.  It was delicious.  But consider yourself forewarned - this dish is SPICY, just as all good vindaloos are.  The pork is nice and tender from the slow braise and falls apart with the slightest nudge from your fork.  But if you don't like spicy food, then I would not make this recipe.  I guess you could dial down the spice level by using sweet paprika instead of the Kashmiri red chili powder, but the heat is half the fun.  I will admit, I tend to prefer plain white basmati rice to any sort of spiced rice and this recipe for Aromatic Yellow Rice hasn't changed that.  While it is good and has a delicate, but discernible, bouquet of spices, I would still prefer some plain basmati rice.  Alex likes spiced rice more than I do and he said that the rice was a nice accompaniment to a meal because it's not so heavily spiced that it would overcome or compete with the flavors in your entree.  I can agree with that.  But I would probably still make plain basmati instead.  I thought that the Spicy Cucumber Wedges were a really nice and fresh side dish.  They had far more flavor than I had expected, given that they don't marinate at all before you serve them.  I loved the combination of the roasted cumin seeds, lemon juice, cayenne pepper and fresh cucumbers.  I think they would make such a wonderful dish at a potluck or a picnic!  Actually, I think that this entire meal would make a wonderful potluck or picnic meal.

Recipe after the jump!

Lemony Chicken with Cilantro

There is an Indian restaurant near our apartment that serves a chicken dish called Chicken Xacutti, which is a chicken dish prepared with ginger, garlic, green chilis and a ton of spices.  Now I have two Madhur Jaffrey cookbooks and neither of them contain a recipe for Chicken Xacutti or anything similar.  So I'm actually not sure why I led in with talking about the Chicken Xacutti, except that thinking about that chicken dish inspired me to make this Indian chicken dish because it is similarly prepared with ginger, garlic, green chilis and a ton of spices (although far less spices than the Xacutti).

What I love about this chicken is the depth of flavor you get in a relatively quick cooking dish.  The cayenne and the jalapeno give the chicken some heat, and then there's the lemon and the cilantro to brighten and freshen the whole dish up.  You get a hint of smokiness from the ground cumin, plus the flavors of garlic and ginger.  It's just such a fun and flavorful dish.  I also like that the flavor combinations are totally different from what you expect from your average Indian dish.  My initial thoughts when it comes to Indian food are chicken dishes in heavy sauces (butter chicken, chicken korma and chicken tikka masala) or tandoori chicken.  A dish like this with a relatively thin sauce made primarily of lemon juice and herbs and spices is certainly not the first thing that comes to mind, but I really think it's a wonderful dish.  The next time I make kati rolls I will probably make this chicken to use as the filling.  I also think this chicken would be a wonderful topping to an Indian-inspired pizza or some sort of naan-ini (a panini made with naan instead of normal bread).  Seeing as this was the first dish we have made at home this week due to work (and will probably be the last homemade meal I make until after I get back from San Diego next Monday), I think it was an excellent choice.

Recipe after the jump!

Mango Chutney, Prosciutto and Paneer Pizza

Apparently this recipe comes from the winner of The Next Food Network Star, Aarti Sequeira.  I was just browsing the Food Network website and saw some reference "The Pizza Recipe."  So of course I clicked on it.  I love pizza and if there exists a recipe so delicious as to be called "The Pizza Recipe" I want to know what it is.  At first I was a little confused by the ingredient list and then I decided that the combination of those ingredients and flavors sounded like it could be really good.  Then I read the reviews and while most of them were endorsements of Aarti and not the dish itself, it got me intrigued enough to try making the pizza myself.  I figured Alex would be excited by the recipe for, if nothing else, the fact that this pizza is topped with prosciutto.  Don't get me wrong - Alex enjoys Indian food, as well as pizza, but give him prosciutto (or serrano ham) and he is a very happy husband.  Luckily we have prosciutto and I know exactly where to go for paneer cheese, frozen naan, and sweet mango chutney.

This pizza was really easy to make, which I generally expect from Food Network recipes, and was very tasty, but needs some work (which I also expect from most Food Network recipes).  It needs a little tweaking to really make it shine.  We tweaked some while cooking, but I wish we had tweaked a little more.  Alex and I both wished that the pizza had more heat to it.  We used the 1/4-tsp or crushed red pepper flakes that we specified below, but in the future I will probably bump it up to about a 1/2-tsp (at the very least).  We both also thought that the pizza would benefit from more ground cumin to add a little smokiness. All things considered I thought it was an easy and interesting lunch, and would make a nice quick and easy dinner if served with a side salad.

Recipe after the jump!

Unda Chicken Kati Rolls

 

Since I graduated from NYU I have had very few chances to head back down to Kati Roll for their Unda Chicken Kati Roll.  And man I loved that roll.  So now I have decided to try and make it at home.  On our last shopping trip to Kalustyans we picked up a package of their fresh parathas so I have been looking forward to making kati rolls ever since.  I know I have talked about making homemade kati rolls for some time now, and I have made variations on the kati roll several times, Scallion Pancake Roll-Ups with Five Spice Duck Breast for instance.  But now that we have parathas we are making actual, honest-to-God kati rolls.  Or at least my version of the same.  

I will admit that when making any Indian dish, my first resource that I always turn to is Madhur Jaffrey.  So for this dish I looked at her recipes for Tandoori Chicken and Cilantro Chutney for inspiration.  I knew I wanted to marinate the chicken in yogurt because by marinating the chicken in yogurt you get wonderfully succulent chicken, even when you use boneless skinless chicken breasts.  The flavors I taste most in the chicken itself are ginger and lemon.  Alex said he tasted turmeric.  I mainly added the turmeric for the lovely warm, golden color it gives the marinade, but sure.  I thought the chicken would be a little spicier than it was, but that isn't really a complaint.  We served the chicken with a rather incendiary homemade chutney so it's a good thing that both elements weren't super spicy.  In Alex's words, the kati rolls were "quite tasty, but messy."  I would agree with both of those things.  I thought that these kati rolls were really good, but not quite as good as the ones I used to enjoy at Kati Roll downtown.  I'm not exactly sure what was missing, but some integral element of their unda chicken was missing.  I think I have to go back to Kati Roll to refresh my memory in order to really recreate their dish.  I have all of the basic flavors and concepts, but I am missing something...

Recipe after the jump!

Turkey Kebabs with Tomato, Onion, and Cilantro Relish, and "Dry" Potatoes with Ginger and Garlic

I have been craving Indian food on and off for the past few weeks.  Rather than going out to eat Indian, I decided to use one of our Madhur Jaffrey cookbooks to make something since I got home early from work this evening.  Of course once I opened up Indian Cooking there were only about a dozen recipes that appealed to me.  But we had some ground turkey so the decision on what to make for our entree was fairly simple - Turkey Kebabs.  Madhur recommends serving these kebabs in pita pockets with cilantro chutney, or wrapped in parathas.  Since we grilled burgers the other night at a friend's place, I wasn't really feeling what sounded entirely too much like an Indian turkey burger.  Instead I wanted to eat it solo topped with some form of chutney or relish.  The relish that sounded the best to me with the combination of spices and ingredients in the turkey kebabs was her Tomato, Onion, and Cilantro Relish.  Then to go with it I originally wanted to make the Spicy Cucumber Wedges, but then we realized that our English cucumber had seen better days.  So I went back to the cookbook and picked out the "Dry" Potatoes with Ginger and Garlic.  We had some of the world's teensiest and most adorable new potatoes left from our CSA haul last week that I wanted to use and it seemed like a great side dish for our kebabs.

I think that Madhur Jaffrey's cookbooks are among the most successful cookbooks I own.  I am very rarely disappointed when I try out one of her recipes.  The kebabs were intensely flavorful, not to mention moist.  I loved the interplay between all of the flavors.  With the addition of the relish they were amazing.  I am a ridiculously large fan of both these kebabs and the relish.  Alex said that the relish at first reminded him of a standard pico de gallo, but then you get hit with the taste of cumin and cayenne and you realize this is no pico de gallo, but something else entirely.  Delicious.  The potatoes were pretty good too, but I'm just not a potato lover - unless of course those potatoes are in really good french fry form.  Alex is a potato lover, but his complaint was that the potatoes didn't carry quite as much of the "spice flavor" as he expected.  Although the potatoes weren't exactly a smashing success, this Indian meal was more successful than some restaurant Indian meals.  Madhur Jaffrey is officially my hero.

Recipes after the jump!

Cardamom and Black Pepper Chicken

This chicken is delicious.  Super delicious.  And so was the cauliflower.  I know I usually babble on for awhile about how I chose the recipe, etc., but this time I just had to say something about how good the chicken was before I babbled.  Now on to the babbling.

The only Indian cookbook I have ever owned is by Madhur Jaffrey.  Several years ago when I first moved to NYC, I visited Kalustyans and asked the Indian ladies working there for a recommendation on a good Indian cookbook.  They pointed out Indian Cooking by Madhur Jaffrey in a split second.  So I bought it.  And all of the recipes I have tried from it (with the exception of one) have been delicious.  So at the library the other day I saw another one of Madhur Jaffrey's cookbooks, From Curries to Kebabs: Recipes from the Indian Spice Trail so I checked it out.  And then proceeded to go through the cookbook, flagging all of the recipes I wanted to try.  This recipe for Cardamom and Black Pepper Chicken was one of the ones that first caught my eye.  And then I thought while I was at it, I should try one of the cauliflower recipes that had also caught my eye.  So our meal of Cardamom and Black Pepper Chicken with Quick Cauliflower Bhaji was born.  I also served it with plain basmati rice and naan (not homemade unfortunately).  Yum.  Both the chicken and the cauliflower had some spice to them, but not an overwhelming amount.  The heat level was lingering and meshed well with the various spices, cumin and coriander in particular.  In the case of the chicken, the spice was additionally balanced against the perfume of the cardamom, the sweetness of the cinnamon, and the tang of the fresh lemon juice.  Very tasty.  I considered making some cilantro chutney with the meal to give it some additional freshness and color, but decided against it.  In the future I might top the chicken with some roughly chopped cilantro because I just love cilantro and otherwise the meal is a study in beige, but it certainly didn't need it flavor-wise. 

Alex kept stopping mid-bite and saying how pleased he was with the meal.  You know it's good when your husband stopped eating long enough to compliment you and/or your food.  Several times.  What can I say?  I'm just that good.  Or Madhur Jaffrey is.

Recipes after the jump!

Indian-Spiced Rice Pudding

I came across this recipe for rice pudding on Sassy Radish and I just couldn't wait to try it. Strangely enough, the night that I made my Indian Lamb Chops with Curried Cauliflower I actually looked for an Indian-inspired rice pudding recipe. I checked all of my usual sources, but didn't find a recipe that sounded like what I was looking for, so we just had fresh mangoes for dessert.  And then a few days later I came across this recipe and then bookmarked it for sometime in the future.  Luckily, the future is now.  I adapted it a little to use some of the fancy cinnamon I picked up at Kalustyans, because I love cinnamon in rice pudding, but I kept the majority of the recipe as written.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

This rice pudding is delicious, subtly spiced and wonderfully sweet.  It is the perfect comforting dessert for a cold snowy day.  I love the perfume of the cardamom and cinnamon as the rice pudding simmers away on the stove.  It made my entire apartment smell luscious.  And since we used Indian spices, I figure it's not too out of the box from the rest of the all Asian-inspired menu for the week of Chinese New Year.  I was going to make my favorite Chinese cookies today, which would have been squarely within the parameters of my menu, but those will have to wait until the weekend so I can pick up more almond flour!

Recipe after the jump!

"Saag Paneer"

I will be the first to admit that I am not an authority on saag paneer.  The last time I had saag paneer was roughly 2 years ago and it was from a mediocre buffet.  While Indian buffets can be fabulous, this one was decidedly not.  The saag paneer there reminded me of baby food.  It looked like it had been pureed, mixed with cream cheese or heavy cream, and then studded with pallid chunks of paneer cheese.  Thinking back, I guess it looked like creamed spinach, only the spinach was seriously pureed, thus the nod to baby food.  I wasn't a huge fan of my last saag paneer experience and have been in no rush since then to try it again.

Then I bought a brick of paneer cheese on my epic shopping trip last weekend, so I had to figure out something to do with it.  I love sauteed spinach, so I figured I would try to make up my own saag paneer recipe, one that used sauteed spinach that wasn't pureed into a consistency that belonged in a Gerber baby food jar.  I also decided that my take on saag paneer would use more spices and no cream.  While cream definitely improves some dishes, it just seemed strange here.  And since Alex is out of town, I figured I could experiment in the kitchen more than usual - if dinner didn't turn out, only I would suffer.  Sometimes it's nice to have someone to use as a guinea pig, but sometimes it's best to try new things out on yourself before subjecting anyone else to them.

So I went in the kitchen and started deciding what I would throw into my saag paneer.  First I sauteed some spinach with onions, garlic, jalapeno, ginger, diced tomatoes and spices.  Next, I pan-fried the paneer cubes to give them some texture.  And then I threw them all together with turmeric, garam masala, ground roasted cumin seeds, cinnamon, ground coriander, s&p.  I'm not sure which (if any) of those spices traditionally go in saag paneer, but one of my favorite things about Indian food is the variety of spices used.  And when I did some brief online research to decide exactly what I should throw into my saag paneer, it seemed like you could throw in pretty much everything and call it saag paneer, so long as you used spinach and paneer.  So I took a little artistic license.  I pretty much started throwing things into the pan willy-nilly (including a heaping tablespoon of cilantro chutney I had made this morning) and what resulted from my experimentation far exceeded my expectations.  The sauteed spinach mixture was delicious!  It probably didn't taste anything like saag paneer is "supposed" to taste, but that's just fine with me! 

Recipe after the jump!