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!
