How To Cook Indian project - Dishes 13-14

 

I decided to go back to a spinach dish this week, as I wanted to see if I liked more than just the Palak Paneer. I also continued with the shrimp theme for the protein side of the meals. And with that, starting with the upper left and moving clockwise, I made the following dishes.

I’m particularly excited because I finally got in my order from iShopIndian.com. I ordered a bunch of Indian spices and pantry items, what seems like months ago, and had finally gotten it in. I finally have things like black salt, and mango powder, etc, so I can actually widen the range of what dishes I can make from this book. My experience with ordering from the website wasn’t ideal. I’m not sure if their shipping times are better outside of a pandemic. Their website claims that orders were being delayed 3-4 weeks, but it took about 6 weeks for my order to ship. The products I got are decent, but I think I will also explore other options for getting some of these items in the future.

Makai Palak (Spinach and corn - page 251)

This recipe called for 2 bunches of spinach, and as we discovered with the last spinach recipe… I don’t know what a “bunch” translates to. So again, I used 16oz of baby spinach. I also cut the number of onions in half. Other than that, the recipe was straight forward to follow.

In the end, I liked it! And I normally don’t enjoy corn, but this was really good. Though, I am curious about the corn… is corn indigenous to India? I feel like I should start researching some of the history of these dishes. I keep wondering which recipes are authentic to India, which were introduced by the British, which introduced by the Portuguese, etc.

Goan Shrimp Curry (A shrimp curry from Goa - page 319)

The only change I made to this recipe was for the tamarind pulp. I spent a bunch of time trying to figure out what the difference between tamarind pulp, tamarind paste, and tamarind concentrate was and am still not completely sure. I have a jar that is labeled “tamarind paste”, but after reading about it online, I think what it actually is is tamarind concentrate, because it’s very dark and thick. And as I haven’t been able to find tamarind pulp in the store, I ended up simply taking using the 1:2 ratio of tamarind paste/concentrate to water, and mixing that together and substituting that for the tamarind pulp.

For the coconut, I used the store-bought shredded coconut. I’m not if the shredded coconut was it, but I wasn’t a fan of this dish. I think the coconut added an odd, rough texture to the curry and I didn’t appreciate it. I should explore other options for the coconut.

A side of spiced yogurt

This is here mostly because I felt like I needed to fill the plate a bit more. I put a little plain yogurt into a bowl (that I made in an paste ceramics class! :D) and then sprinkled on some black salt and ground roasted cumin.

With a couple of chapatis

I added a couple chapatis to eat with the Makai Palak, and continue to work on trying to make circles out of the them. It’s a work in progress. :P

 
 

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, vegetables, seafood, curry