How To Cook Indian project - Dishes 28-32
Continuing with my desire to have a lot of dishes to serve at once, I decided to make a number of things!
Tomato Saar (a thin tomato soup - page 60)
I wasn’t sure what to expect out of an Indian tomato soup. It turned out well though. I don’t think it will replace my love for velvety tomato soups though, with a grilled cheese.
Masala Dosas (Lentil and rice pancakes with a spicy potato filling - pages 137-8)
I also have been wanting to make dosas, and decided to try this recipe. This recipe involved making the dosa batter from scratch as well as the dosa filling, which the book calls “baiji”.
In making the batter, I had bought a pre-ground parboiled rice, so just used that. However it was a rough ground, and even after using it in a food processor and with an immersion blender it still didn’t seem to get that smooth. While the taste came out ok, I did find that the dosas I made were thicker than I had ever seen in a restaurant.
The filling was straight forward and tasty. But I should have realized that I only needed half of the potatoes the recipes called for. Again, I feel like potatoes in the US were just bigger, and ended up with *a lot* of extra filling after.
Chandi Kaliyan (Chicken with silver foil - pages 188-9)
I was very curious about this recipe. Silver foil?!? I’ve seen foil on Indian desserts, but not a savory dish. After searching and searching, I found food grade silver foil online and decided to try this recipe. This must be something new, that Kapoor thought up because it uses cream cheese and I can’t imagine cream cheese is a traditional ingredient in Indian cuisine.
I reduced the green chilies by half and replaced the cornstarch with arrowroot powder. Other than that, followed the recipe. The cream cheese seemed to allow the chicken to stay moist when being grilled, but I do wonder if the cream cheese over powered the chicken as there was just so much of it. Overall, it was good.
Chaat Masala (a spice mix - page 24)
Chaat is a type of Indian dishes, usually referring to a snack outside of meals, or an street food snack. Chaat Masala is a common spice mix used to flavor those snacks.
The Chandi Kaliyan required some chaat masala sprinkled on top, so I made this spice mix as well this week. Even though this is listed as a basic in the book, I decided to count it towards my dish count. It’s pretty tasty, I feel like I will put a this on everything. Chaat masala popcorn anyone?
Aloo Posto (potatoes with poppy seeds - page 231)
I learned that posto is the word for "poppy seeds” in Bengali with this dish. It was pretty tasty, especially while it was warm and just off the stove as there was a nice crusty layer cooked on the potatoes.
The recipe called for the poppy seeds to be turned into a paste, but none of my devices (immersion blender, mini food processor) seemed to do the job. I think I need to investigate getting a dry-wet spice grinder. Even without it though, this dish turned out pretty well.
Disclaimer and links: 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.
A Kapoor Tomato Saar recipe. There were two online. This one had more stars.
A Kapoor Chandi Kaliyan recipe, but it seems fairly different than the book.
A Chaat Masala recipe, when Kapoor was on Rachel Ray!