How to Cook Indian project - Dishes 11-12

 

After weeks of cooking chicken, I decided it was time to branch out and try another protein. I rarely cook seafood, so I tried my hand there - with some shrimp!

I made the following, going from top to bottom:

Chingri Macher Kofta Curry ( Deep-fried shrimp koftas in a coconut-onion gravy - pages 314-5)

Like normal, I cut down the number of red onions I used in this recipe from 3 large ones to just 1 small one. I recently learned that eating too many onions could cause one to break-out with acne. So yeah, I’m cutting down on the onions. (Apparently the same can happen with too much garlic, but there’s no such thing as too much garlic, IMHO, lol. so I will continue to use all the garlic! Yum!)

Making the koftas was difficult, I followed the recipe, but didn’t find them sticking together. So I mixed steps 3 and 4 together, and mixed the breadcrumbs and eggs all together with the rest of the shrimp mixture, instead of just dipping/rolling the shrimp mixture into the eggs and breadcrumbs, respectively. That seemed to help, but they still were only loosely held together.

The dish turned out ok, overall. Not sure I’d make it again.

A side of brown rice

Again, I just made some brown rice in a rice cooker. I mixed in a little of the next recipe to give the rice a little color.

Baingan Ka Bharta (roasted eggplant - page 240)

I couldn’t find a “large eggplant” and also wasn’t sure what “large” meant, since there was no size/weight information in the ingredients list. I ended up using two medium-ish(?) eggplants, each weighing about 350 grams. This recipe also called for 5 red onions (5!). That seemed a bit much, so I used about 1.75 (using the rest for garnish (which ended up not being pictured), and even the 1.75 seemed like too much.

I wasn’t sure what the recipe meant by roasting the eggplant - should I roast it whole? Should I chop it into cubs and roast the cubes? And how long would it take to roast a whole eggplant? After a little research online, I decided to roast the eggplant in “steaks”. Basically, I cut it up into thick, about 1in, slices and roasted it in my oven as I was too lazy to turn on the grill. It took about 20 minutes on each side at 400 degrees. (For more tips on roasting eggplant steaks, I followed this blog post from The Kitchn!)

I also have been finding that I should use one size up, when it recommends what side sauté pan to use. This recipe called for a medium one, but I should have definitely used a large one. Even with the fewer onions I used, the dish took up a lot of the volume of my medium pan.

This dish turned out ok. Also not sure I’d make it again. But I learned new things, so I still consider it a success.

 
 

As I can’t just post the recipe from the book (I guess I don’t want to get in trouble over copyright) I am including links to similar recipes. That said, I didn’t make the linked recipes, so I can’t vouch for them. I’m only including them in case you want to make something similar, but don’t want to buy the book.

 
Pooja Mathurhowtocookindianproject, seafood, curry, vegetables