Category Archives: Indian

Murgh Masala (Chicken in Tomato and Onion Sauce)

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If I knew someone who is afraid of opulent, complex, hot flavours, this is the dish I would probably serve to introduce her or him to the marvels of the Indian cuisine. This was my first Murgh Masala, so I don’t know if all the Indian cooks prepare it this way, but this one was low-fat, subtly seasoned and mild (the last point can easily be changed of course!). In short: a toned down, but equally delightful side of the Indian cuisine I was happy to discover. Apart from being more delicate, Murgh Masala proved also quite effortless and relatively quick (especially compared to other Indian dishes), so I think I will be preparing it quite often.

This Punjabi speciality is another fabulous recipe I found in the Classic Indian Cookery by Julie Sahni. I have followed the author’s instructions almost to the letter, the only modification being the use of skinned chicken breasts instead of cut up whole bird. I have also scaled down the 8-servings recipe to a dish for two, which meant I have slightly changed the ingredients’ amounts too.

If you like Indian cuisine, you might be interested in these (other gems found in Julie Sahni’s book):

Indian Chickpeas in Tangy Sauce (my absolute chickpeas favourite!)

or Butter Chicken (Makhani Murgh)

TIP: This was the first time I used black cardamom (I used to replace it, as it’s often advised in Indian recipes, by green cardamom). The difference is surprisingly huge. If you cook Indian from time to time, I strongly encourage you to invest in a package of black cardamom.

Preparation: about 1h30

Ingredients (serves two):

2 chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces or half a chicken cut into small skinned pieces

1 medium onion (sliced)

2 medium fresh tomatoes, chopped and skinned, or 100 – 150 ml/ approx. 3,5 – 5 oz canned tomatoes

1 medium clove garlic (chopped)

1/2 cm fresh ginger (chopped)

1/2 cinnamon stick

1 black cardamom pod (or 2 green cardamom pods)

1/2 teaspoon turmeric

1/2 teaspoon hot chili powder

200 ml/ 7 oz hot water

1 teaspoon roasted and ground cumin seeds

fresh coriander

oil or ghee

Heat one tablespoon oil in a pan.

Brown the chicken pieces (without cooking them thoroughly!).

Put aside.

Add one more tablespoon oil and fry the onion on medium heat constantly stirring until it becomes light brown (it can take 15 – 30 minutes).

Add the garlic and the ginger and fry for 5 minutes, stirring.

Afterwards add the cinnamon and the cardamom, fry for 2 more minutes.

Finally add the turmeric, the chili pepper, the chicken, the tomatoes and the water.

Season with salt (just a bit, you will be able to adjust the saltiness later) and cook at low heat, covered for about 30 minutes. If you use pieces with bones, including thighs, it might take more time. (Check from time to time if it’s not burning!).

Uncover the pan, increase the heat and finish cooking until the sauce has thickened.

The author recommends putting the dish aside for minimum one hour (perfectly two hours) and then reheating it slowly before serving.

If you are in a hurry, you can serve it straight away, but it tastes better reheated indeed.

Sprinkle with ground cumin and give it a stir. Then sprinkle with fresh coriander just before serving.

Indian Chickpeas in Tangy Sauce (Khatte Channe)

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Happy New Year, my dear readers! I hope you have spent wonderful, palate-pleasing holidays. I bet many of you have made new year’s resolutions, just like I did, and probably some of them concern food too. I wish you all the discipline, the courage and the patience to stick to them! This Indian chickpeas dish illustrates two of my 2013 goals: cooking more legumes and using more often the fascinating cookery books I own and tend to forget, such as the highly reliable Classic Indian Cookery by Julie Sahni, where I found this excellent recipe. As for my sudden longing for Indian flavours, I owe it to Eva (Kitchen Inspirations), who dazzled me with her extraordinary Indian feast throughout half of December (it started here and went on for several impressive posts).

Khatte Channe can have different consistencies, going from a thick soup to a dish with moderated amount of sauce and this version falls into the latter category. I will not bore you with the detailed description of the subtle and complex mixture of flavours (I wouldn’t be able to do it anyway) and will simply say it is the best chickpeas dish I have ever had in my life. One more successful adventure with Julie Sahni’s book, proving that I should open it more often. (Another delightful dish I have prepared following Julie Sahni’s instructions and posted here was Butter Chicken, which, contrary to its name, wasn’t greasy or heavy.)

I have slightly changed the spices’ amounts and adapted the recipe to four servings. Of course, like many Indian dishes in sauce, this one can be made in advance and reheated (the fresh sliced onion and fresh chili should be added however only before the dish is served).

TIPS: If you cannot find tamarind, you might use some lemon or lime juice instead. If you can find it, buy it because it keeps forever in the fridge and apart from the tanginess, brings a very particular taste. Tamarind is sold in Asian shops (not only Indian), usually in blocks (about 200g/ 7 oz) containing both the pulp and seeds and has to be dissolved in hot water.

Julie Sahni emphasizes the importance of the long onion browning stage in many Indian dishes and I must confess I first tried short cuts, i.e. quickly softening onions instead. I quickly realised the final result obtained with browned onions is well worth the effort of constant stirring for 20 minutes.

Preparation: about 1 hour

Ingredients (serves four as a side-dish with rice and for example a meat dish):

2 x 400 g (about 2 x 16 oz) cans chickpeas or cooked chickpeas + 125 ml liquid from the cans or cooking liquid

1 big onion

2 medium garlic cloves

1/2 teaspoon turmeric

2 cm (0,8 in) piece of block of tamarind paste

1/2 teaspoons cayenne pepper

200g (2/3 or about 7 oz) small can of chopped tomatoes or 200 g (7 oz) fresh tomatoes, skinned and chopped

1 heaped teaspoon grated fresh ginger

1 tablespoon garam masala

oil

1 teaspoon roasted and then ground cumin seeds

1 small onion, thinly sliced

1 fresh green chili pepper finely chopped (I have used red chili pepper and only sliced it)

Drain the chickpeas, keeping the liquid aside.

Dissolve the tamarind paste in 190 ml (about 6 oz) boiling water, squashing it with a fork. After a couple of minutes strain the juice thus obtained, getting as much as you can out of the paste.

Slice the big onion.

Chop the garlic cloves.

Heat 2 – 3 tablespoons oil in a pan. Fry the onion, constantly stirring for about 20 minutes until they become “caramel”, as the author calls it. Add the garlic and stir-fry it for 2 minutes.

Add turmeric, cayenne pepper, tomatoes and the ginger.

Cook the sauce at medium heat for 5 minutes.

Add the tamarind juice and and the chickpeas liquid.

Let everything simmer covered, at low heat for 15 minutes.

Finally add the drained chickpeas, garam masala, the cumin and cook for 10 more minutes.

Season with salt and serve sprinkled with sliced fresh onion and chopped or sliced fresh chili.

Pickled Yellow Mango

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Today I have a big honour and pleasure to guest post for my friend Charles from Five Euro Food. I strongly encourage you to pay him a visit and browse through his inspiring recipes from such different parts of the world as Sweden, Britain or Tunisia, watch his impressive cooking videos, admire his breathtaking photos from trips in France or simply say hello. I know Charles shares my passion for home preserves and September being the preserving month par excellence, I have decided to share with you and him my latest pickling experiment.

Even though I prepare some jams, most of my pantry jars contain savoury sauces, jellies and pickles. Mango is the main ingredient of several types of hot sauces and chutneys I prepare every year, but I haven’t tried pickling it until now. If, like me, you are a fan of Indian pickled mango, you will understand that this was the first recipe I started to look for. Unfortunately, Indian pickles are prepared with expensive green mangoes, and, most of all, I found only short-term preserving recipes. I desperately wanted to use the easily available yellow mangoes and to keep the pickles in my pantry for at least a year, so I ventured into something completely new. I kept Indian flavours and combined them with the foolproof European long-term pickling method I use with cucumbers and peppers (click here to see my beloved Pickled Peppers or Hot Chili Peppers).

The experiment was risky, but proved worthwhile. Tasted after a couple of days (I had to make sure I present you an edible recipe!), the pickled mango has exceeded my expectations. I feared the excessive sweetness and softness of the fruit, but they were perfectly balanced by chili peppers, vinegar and powerful spices. The scarce amount of oil I poured on top of every jar tamed down the harshness of the vinegar and mellowed the flavours. I can already see these aromatic mangoes bringing sunshine to my winter meals.

TIP: If you don’t care for long-term pickles, you can skip the processing stage and keep these pickles in the fridge for at least several weeks.

If you don’t like hot flavours, skip the chili.

The riper the mangoes, the softer the pickles will be. Even those made with quite firm fruits were rather soft (nothing to do with crunchy vinegared cucumbers).

Preparation: 1 h + processing

Ingredients (makes about 8 x 300ml/about 10 fl oz jars):

3 mangoes (not too ripe, still firm)

Marinade:

600 ml/about 2,5 cups vinegar (4,5%)

500 ml/about 2 cups water

150 g/2/3 cup caster sugar

3 flat tablespoons salt

3 teaspoons nigella seeds

2 teaspoons fenugreek seeds

2 teaspoons cumin seeds

2 teaspoons white mustard

8 garlic cloves

about 8 thin slivers fresh ginger

2 bird’s-eye-chilis (or any hot chili variety; the amount depends on how hot you want your pickles)

8 tablespoons good quality oil (I prefer olive oil)

Roast nigella, fenugreek, cumin and mustard seeds in a dry frying pan until they start to pop.

Put them aside.

Put on gloves. Cut the chilis into slices, discarding the seeds.

Peel the mangoes and cut them into more or less equal square pieces.

Fill empty, thoroughly washed and dried jars with mango pieces (no more than 2/3 jars’ height and not tightly packed), add garlic cloves (one per jar), toasted spices (a teaspoon per jar), two chili slices and one ginger sliver per jar.

Bring the marinade to the boil and let it simmer for a couple of minutes, stirring well until all the sugar is dissolved.

Fill the jars with hot – not boiling – marinade, leaving 1,5 cm from the rim.

Pour a tablespoon of oil in each jar. Close the jars and let them cool down.

/At this point you can either keep it in the fridge for a couple of weeks or process the jars, as described below, and store them in your pantry for at least a year!/

Place the cool jars in a big pan, bottom lined with an old kitchen towel folded in two (this will prevent the jars from breaking), cover up with hot – but not boiling- water to the level just below the lid. Bring to the boil and keep on a very low heat, in simmering water, for around 15 minutes (if you use bigger jars, increase the processing time; I usually process 500 ml jars for 20 minutes).
Stick on self-adhesive labels, write the name of the pickle and don’t forget to mark the date.

Wait at least a couple of weeks before opening the jars. As most pickles, these should improve with time.

NOTE: For the readers who live in the USA, the USDA-approved canning method is different. You can find it described here: http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/publications/uga/using_bw_canners.html.

Chicken Wings with Curry and Thyme

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This is not an elegant, sophisticated, pampered and carefully seasoned, whole bird recipe. This is an everyday, easiest pre-cut roast chicken meal I know, best taken simply with some bread, maybe a green salad and definitely a glass of well chilled white wine. This is the way I have been baking wings (and also other chicken cuts) for long, long years. Infused with strong flavours, the skin is always crispy and if I am happy to find three-section wings (believe me, it’s not always obvious…), I make sure the tips are charred and crunchy, so that I can eat the tiny bone. Have I mentioned I also love the cartilaginous wing parts?

I still don’t remember how I had this simple idea (before I used to rub chicken either with curry or with the Mediterranean seasoning including thyme and garlic), but I loved thyme and Indian curry powder from the first time I put them together. I haven’t checked if this combination is popular, but if you have never tasted thyme and curry, I strongly encourage you to try it at least once (although I do not guarantee the result with other meats; the only way I use it is to season chicken).

TIP: If you like hot dishes, I encourage you to use the hot version of curry mixture and to add some hot chili (I add both). Otherwise mild curry and sweet paprika or no paprika are excellent here too.

For me such wings are best served with good quality bread, but if you want to make a richer, fuller meal, I can imagine them very well with baked potatoes. (By the way, what you see beside the wings are two slices of bread from my favourite French baker. Can you see the huge holes and soft, but airy interior with crunchy golden crust? The best version of my favourite kind of bread.)

Preparation: about 1 hour

Ingredients (serves 2):

8 chicken wings

1 heaped tablespoon Indian curry powder (hot or mild depending on your preferences)

1 heaped tablespoon thyme

1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons oil

1 teaspoon dried garlic powder

(1 teaspoon chili powder)

Preheat the oven to 180°C (356°F).

Place the wings in a big bowl.

Rub them first with oil and then (using your hands) with salt and the rest of the spices.

Put into a baking dish and bake for about 50 minutes (or until golden brown).

Serve with a green salad and some bread or baked potatoes.

Butter Chicken (Makhani Murgh)

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Butter Chicken is one of the most famous Indian dishes, it is featured in most cookery books, served in most Indian restaurants and probably everyone knows how it tastes. I have decided however to post this recipe because it was by far the best Butter Chicken I have ever had both at home and in restaurants. I owe this successful result to Julie Sahni and her Classic Indian Cookery. I have recently bought it after a long quest for a good, serious introduction to the Indian cuisine with non-Westernised, basic recipes. This excellent, educative book lives up to all my expectations, the Butter Chicken recipe alone was worth the buy and I am looking forward to learning what seems like the real Indian cuisine.

As you probably know Butter Chicken is not a five-minute dish. I would call it “two in one” because the first step consists in preparing Tandoori Chicken marinade. Even though it takes minimum 5 hours (including the marinating time), the preparation is very easy and requires only planning the meal ahead (personally I prefer to marinate the meat overnight). According to Julie Sahni Butter Chicken can be refrigerated for up to two days and then reheated, so you can have two different meals in a couple of days. As usually, I have slightly modified the recipe and also reduced the ingredients amounts to serve for three to four people. My biggest change was to use bite-sized chicken breast pieces instead of the bigger pieces simply because I had only skinless breasts that night.

TIPS: The recipe calls for natural meat tenderiser. I didn’t have it and substituted it by the leftover pineapple juice I had used in Pork Tocino. This tip, learnt from Ray (Wok with Ray), proved even more impressive with chicken. The meat was incredibly tender. Thank you once more, Ray!

The sugar addition is not necessary, but I have the habit to add a bit of sugar to every dish with tomato sauce to enhance the tomato sweetness.

Preparation: 5 hours – 2 days (overnight or 4 hours marinating + 1 hour the following day)

Ingredients (serves 3 – 4 ):

500 g chicken breasts (skinless, cut into bite-sized pieces) or one small chicken, skinned and and cut into pieces (neck and wings should be discarded and used elsewhere)

1/2 teaspoon natural meat tenderiser or 6-7 tablespoons pineapple juice

1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons lemon juice

Tandoori marinade:

1 clove garlic

1 teaspoon chopped fresh ginger

1/2 teaspoon roasted and ground cumin seeds

1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom

1 teaspoon chili powder (I have used Korean chili)

1 teaspoon paprika or 1/2 teaspoon tandoori colouring (I used another teaspoon of very bright Korean chili)

30 g natural yogurt

Butter Chicken:

350 ml canned tomatoes (I used tomato purée)

2 fresh chili peppers (I have used Thai bird’s-eye)

1 tablespoon fresh ginger, chopped

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon paprika (I have used Korean chili)

1 teaspoon garam masala

1 teaspoon sugar

100 ml liquid cream (I have used 25% fat)

50 g butter

2-3 tablespoons oil

2 tablespoons fresh coriander leaves (chopped)

(1 teaspoon ground roasted cumin seeds)

salt

Rub the chicken pieces with lemon juice, salt and pineapple juice.

(If you are using bigger chicken pieces, prick them with a fork and make diagonal cuts with a knife so that the marinade enters the flesh).

Leave them to marinade for 30 minutes.

In the meantime prepare the tandoori marinade putting all the ingredients in a food processor and mixing them thoroughly.

Combine the tandoori marinade with the chicken meat and leave to marinate either for 4 hours at room temperature or in the fridge overnight.

(Julie Sahni says the meat shouldn’t marinate for more than 2 days when using the meat tenderiser. Otherwise it will become too soft. I have no idea how it will react to the pineapple juice after two days, but it’s safer to keep it for 48 hours maximum.)

/If you want to prepare Tandoori Chicken, take it out of the fridge one hour before grilling or roasting in the oven. Baste it with some ghee or oil and roast it or grill it (the time depends on the size of the pieces; it will take maximum 30 minutes in the oven preheated to 260°C and maximum 40 minutes on a grill; if you use small, bite-sized pieces it will take no more than 10-15 minutes)./

If you prepare Butter Chicken, cut up the bigger marinated pieces in half.

Put the tomatoes, the chili and the ginger in a food processor and mix until smooth.

Put a tablespoon butter and two tablespoons oil in a pan and fry the chicken pieces over medium heat until they are browned (you might have to do it in several batches).

Put the fried chicken aside.

Add one more tablespoon butter to the pan and fry cumin and paprika for about 10 seconds, stirring.

Pour the tomato sauce over the spices, add the sugar and cook, stirring, for about 5 minutes.

Reduce the heat and add the cream and the chicken pieces.

Cook them for about 10 minutes, stirring and checking if the sauce doesn’t burn.

Add the remaining butter, garam masala and roasted cumin seeds (not obligatory).

Stir well and leave the dish covered for 30 minutes before serving.

Sprinkle generously with coriander.

Mango Chutney with Garam Masala

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Long before I started to make my own savoury preserves, mango had always been my favourite in Indian hot chutneys and fiery mango sauce served in Indian restaurants. After my three years’ experience of Hot Mango Sauce and Mango Chutney preserving, this is still my favourite fruit to pair with spices and chillies. Mango is versatile, makes thick sauces and doesn’t have any acidity, so the preserves don’t require lots of sugar. There is also something I love about mangoes: they are available most of the year, since they are imported from different parts of the world.

According to most bloggers who have origins or family in the mango-growing countries neither the smell nor the taste of the mangoes available in Europe can be compared to the real, fresh mangoes’ flavour and aroma. I was always wondering what they meant. Finally, I had a chance to experience the difference and realise what the real mango meant the day when my husband was offered a box of these African beauties, coming straight from mango trees in Mali:

And here is a mango with a standard-sized lime to show you how big they were:

Not only were they huge, chubby, with a funny shape, but most of all, their aroma and taste were extraordinary. The first thing I noticed was they didn’t have the nauseous, overwhelming smell usually ripe mangoes have. Cut into pieces and eaten raw, the Malian mango was refreshing, firm and its smell was delicate. I would say it was a sophisticated version of the fruit I have been buying here for years. Since the mangoes had to be eaten quickly, we partly had them raw and the rest was preserved in a Mango Chutney with Garam Masala. Now, every opened will bring back the memories of this unusual discovery and make us think about Zeïnabou, a kind and generous lady without whom I would never know what a “good mango” meant. Thank you, Zeïnabou, for the discovery we would have never dreamt of and for the exquisite mango feast we shall never forget!

Mango Chutney with Garam Masala is a smooth, sauce-like type of chutney, different from this, chunky, British-style Mango Chutney and even though the recipe is not genuinely Indian, garam masala gives it a warm, rich Indian touch. The tamarind pulp or sauce can be replaced with lemon juice, but the taste is really better with tamarind.

I found this chutney a long time ago on the Discuss Cooking forum and am particularly grateful to Clive from Venezuela (cliveb) for sharing this excellent recipe, which I have only slightly modified.

I don’t need to add that this particular batch, made with Malian mangoes, was exceptionally luscious!

Preparation: 1 hour (+hot water bath processing)

Ingredients:

2 standard oval mangoes or 1 huge Malian mango

2 cm fresh ginger

120 g raisins

200 g brown, cane sugar

200 ml cider vinegar (4,5%) or white wine vinegar

40 ml tamarind juice/pulp or juice from 1/2 lemon

4 garlic cloves

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground coriander seeds

2 teaspoons garam masala

3 teaspoons chili in powder

Peel the ginger, the mangoes, add the rest and mix in a food processor or a blender.

Cook everything on a medium heat, stirring, for 30-40 minutes.

Adjust the taste if needed (more chili if it’s not hot enough, more vinegar if it’s too sweet and more sugar if it’s too acid). If you have made any modifications, let the chutney boil for 10 more minutes.

/At this point you can (after the chutney has cooled down) either freeze it or keep it in the fridge for a couple of weeks, or process it in the jars, as described below, and store it in your pantry for at least a year!/

Pour the chutney, still hot, into sterilised jars. Cover with lids. Leave the jars to cool.

Place the cool jars into a big pan, bottom lined with an old kitchen towel folded in two (this will prevent the jars from breaking),, cover up with hot – but not boiling- water to the level just below the lid. Bring to boil and keep on a very low heat, in simmering water, for around 20 minutes.
Stick on self-adhesive labels, write the name of the chutney and don’t forget to mark the date.

NOTE: For the readers who live in the USA, the USDA-approved canning method is different. You can find it described here: http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/publications/uga/using_bw_canners.html.

Mango Chutney with Garam Masala on Punk Domestics

Tomato Chutney

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Spices can make miracles and a mixture of Indian spices can transform an ordinary vegetable into a highly palatable side-dish, a cheap meat cut into a fantastic curry and a big bag of cheap, watery tomatoes into a luscious chutney. I learnt the latter last year, when, having bought a bag of rather bland looking tomatoes, I tried to transform them into the ketchup according to my favourite, Jeffrey Steingarten’s recipe. The result was very disappointing and so far from the one obtained with high quality tomatoes, I decided to look for a different preserving idea.

After some research I managed to save the remaining couple of kilos with an Indian chutney recipe, which really acted as a magic wand. The result is complex, slightly sour, slightly sweet, with an intense tomato flavour and a hot kick from the chili peppers. I don’t remember where I have found it or if I have modified it (I suppose I did), but needless to say, this chutney is simply breathtaking if made with aromatic and ripe tomatoes. As usually the chili amount depends on everyone’s preference and on the chili variety. I use it as a sauce with deep-fried chicken (Chicken Karaage is a good example), with toasted sandwiches, with sausages…

Special equipment: a food mill (a sieve and a spoon may be used instead, but it takes much longer)

Preparation: 2 hours

Ingredients:

1 kg tomatoes

2 tablespoons oil

1 teaspoon mustard seeds

1 teaspoon fennel seeds

2 teaspoons nigella (onion seeds)

3 dried, crushed chili peppers

1 teaspoon powdered chili

100 g sugar (preferably cane sugar)

300 ml apple vinegar (4,5 %)

1 tablespoon salt

Chop roughly the tomatoes.

Put them in a pan, cover, cook over high heat 5-10 minutes, stirring until the chunks give off their juice.

Sieve the tomatoes or put them through a food mill.

Heat the oil in a pan, fry the spices a couple of minutes, add the vinegar and the sugar and let it simmer, stirring, for 10 minutes until the sugar is dissolved.

Add the sieved tomato juice.

Cook over moderate heat until it the chutney has the required consistency (I like it similar to the ketchup consistency).

Taste and add more chili/vinegar or sugar. Let it simmer 10 more minutes.

/At this point you can (after the chutney has cooled down) either freeze it, or keep it in the fridge for a couple of weeks, or process it in the jars, as described below, and store it in your pantry for at least a year!/

Pour the chutney, still hot, into sterilised jars. Cover with lids. Leave the jars to cool.

Place the cool jars into a big pan, bottom lined with an old kitchen towel folded in two (this will prevent the jars from breaking), cover up with hot – but not boiling- water to the level just below the lid. Bring to boil and keep on a very low heat, in simmering water, for around 20 minutes.
Stick on self-adhesive labels, write the name of the chutney and don’t forget to mark the date.

NOTE: For the readers who live in the USA, the USDA-approved canning method is different. You can find it described here http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/publications/uga/using_bw_canners.html.

Cooling and Hot Mint Sauce

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Mint is not the herb I often use in the kitchen, and yet I buy it sometimes when I simply cannot resist its fresh, enticing aroma. The sad thing is I usually end up drying it and then drinking as herbal tea. A couple of days ago I decided I had to break this vicious circle and start cooking with mint. Remembering how quickly I empty the mint sauce bowl in Indian restaurants, I decided to give it a try. Since every Indian mint sauce recipe I found called for the ingredients I didn’t have, I improvised my own recipe. Even though the result was different from what I had in Indian restaurants, it was really good. I especially liked its contrasting palate sensations: refreshing and cooling, it gives a hot kick at the same time. The aroma is still enticing.

Given my experiments with this sauce, I can recommend it as a dip for deep-fried dishes, with rice, with cold turkey cuts, and I think I couldn’t find a better company for the leftover, warmed Lamb Masala.

Special equipment: food processor

Preparation: 5 minutes

Ingredients:

1 big bunch of mint (100g)

200 ml yogurt

1 teaspoon of very hot powdered chili or green/red fresh chilies (amounts depend on their hotness and your personal taste)

salt

Cut off the hardest parts of mint stalks, leaving only the thin branches and leaves.

Mix the mint in a food processor, add the yogurt, mix again. Transfer to a bowl, add a bit of salt to taste (I added 2 teaspoons) and the chili.

Serve chilled.

Lamb Masala

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Usually when the lamb season starts, I start enjoying it by grilling lamb chops. However, since it has been quite cold for over a week I decided to make an Indian curry. Even though I have been preparing Indian curries for years, I am not sure if the sources I take them from are not too “westernised”… This time I decided to look for more “genuine” sounding recipes and finally chose to adapt the Mutton Masala from the recently discovered Hooked on Heat blog. All I can say is I was not disappointed. The word “masala” means roughly “mixture”; on one hand it can be a mixture of spices (dried or forming a paste used in curries) and, on the other, a name of a dish and this one tasted like nothing I have ever had at home or in any Indian restaurant. It was perfect and confirmed what I have always suspected: a good Indian dish is not necessarily full of fat! I will certainly come back to Hooked on Heat for new recipes!

Since I have bad experience with whole spices in sauces and hate biting into a clove by accident, I crushed peppercorns, used powdered cinnamon and cloves. Cumin is the only spice I left whole. I have also changed a bit the ingredients’ proportions and didn’t have any coriander to sprinkle on the dish (the mint branch served merely as a decoration). However I am sure it tastes perfect with fresh coriander.

I used lamb instead of mutton. Maybe this is the reason I had to let the dish simmer for 3 hours; the meat softened very slowly…

Preparation: 3 hours

Ingredients (serves 4):

1 kg lamb cut into 2 – 3 cm cubes

1 big onion, sliced

2 tablespoons oil

1 teaspoon crushed garlic

1 teaspoon grated/crushed fresh ginger

1 tablespoon tomato paste

chopped fresh chilies (I used four chilies, since they were not very hot)

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

2 teaspoons powdered cinnamon (the recipe calls for 1 cinnamon stick)

2 teaspoons crushed black peppercorns (the recipe calls for whole peppercorns)

2 teaspoons ground cloves (or whole 7-8 cloves as in the original recipe)

1/2 teaspoon powdered turmeric

1 tablespoon powdered coriander

1 teaspoon chili powder (or more)

salt

(chopped fresh coriander leaves)

Fry the cumin seeds in oil for one minute.

Add the onion and brown it a bit.

Add the meat, the fresh chillies, the garlic and the ginger.

Let it fry for a couple of minutes, stirring.

Add the chili powder, the turmeric, the powdered coriander and the salt and stir well.

Finally, when the meat starts to brown, add the remaining ingredients and 500 ml water.

Cover and let it simmer until the meat is tender (the recipe says 30-35 minutes, but my meat became tender only after 3 hours). Add water if necessary.

Serve sprinkled with fresh coriander.

Curried Pumpkin Soup with Shrimp