This month’s Daring Cooks’ challenge is “Healthy Potato Salads from Around the World!”, and the timing couldn’t be better!
This gave me a perfect opportunity to morph the classic Indian “Aloo Gobi” into a fresh potato salad! Instead of drowning the potatoes in mayonnaise, I’ve made a spicy and bright dressing with yogurt. If you like potato salad, and don’t shy away from fun spices, you will love this!
It can be really tricky to recreate the things you love from restaurants. If you’re super talented, you might just wing it and make up a recipe. Then there are people like me who just keep trying new recipes, like a sucker, and getting frustrated when it doesn’t turn out right.
Indian eggplant dishes have given me the most frustration.
This post should be subtitled, “Are you trying to poison me? My lips are going numb!”
I picked the strangest looking vegetable from BJ Supermarket, in the Gerrard India Bazaar. Its bumpy, bright green flesh was intriguing. The sign said ‘Desi Karela’ – I had never heard of it before, so I wrote it down.
A quick Google resulted in many pictures of half-naked girls. Oh wait, I mistakenly typed ‘Desi Kerala’ (Kerala being a state in India).
A quick correction brought me to the vegetable I was looking for… and it turned out to be Bitter Gourd. I had read about bitter gourd before – sometimes in recipes with no mention of the fact that this gourd is, in fact, evil. Other times, the author would curse the evil within, with comments such as “Why would anyone ever want to eat this?!”. Although frightened, I refused to give up and I found a recipe that sounded like the perfect way to introduce myself to Desi Karela.
I chose this recipe from Foodskaypes, because the mix of bitter gourd with coconut and tamarind sounded really tasty and different from the dishes I usually make. In case you are planning to click that link and read the recipe – no, I didn’t buy a fresh coconut and grate it for my dish. We aren’t used to fresh coconut here, so I bought the packaged (unsweetened) stuff. No doubt it isn’t as good as fresh, but you gotta do what you gotta do.
The dish smelled amazing as it was cooking. It was a fun assortment of spices (yay!), and I crossed my fingers that the karela wasn’t too bitter. Then I tasted the sauce. It was so bitter that my heart immediately sank, and I scolded myself for not making a backup dish. I knew J would NOT like this.
We sat down to eat, and I took my first bite. Yowza, that gourd is bitter! Bite two wasn’t so bad, and by bite three I noticed a flavour beyond the bitter that intrigued me, something I’m sure I haven’t tasted anywhere else. I looked up at J, who had also taken about three bites. “That’s about all I can do. My lips are going numb.” That was that. I finished his plate, and gave myself a little bit more, and he went to the fridge for some pitas and veggies.
I should mention that the recipe itself was great, and I’ll be trying it again with some other, less evil vegetable.
I don’t think I’ll be buying desi karela again, but I’m really happy I tried it once. The leftovers are still in my fridge, waiting for me to finish them. I’m kind of afraid of what it will taste like – you know how evil is when given time to collude.
Sorry, J. I swear I didn’t try to poison you!
Today’s salad is inspired by Indian spices and flavour combinations. I’m obsessed with my collection of spices, and I was happy to be able to pull out some of my (recently ignored) Indian spices today.
Possibly the most exciting part for me is the amchoor powder. Amchoor is powdered dried mango, and it has a really neat tart flavour. I have to say that I don’t use this one all that often – it’s not that in many recipes that I come across, and I sometimes forget that I have it. Today was very different – this was the first thing I thought of when I decided to make chickpea salad.
It started with me coming across my stash of dried chickpeas. I decided to try cooking them up again, even though I have never been successful at this task. The price of canned legumes keeps going up so I thought I should give it another go. More on that later. Jump to a couple of days later, nicely cooked chickpeas at hand, and me coming up with ideas for my Indian-inspired chickpea salad. Summer salads should be fun, fresh, zesty, and exciting… ding, ding, ding!! I thought of the sour amchoor powder at the back of my spice drawer.
Mixed with other spices, such as cumin, coriander, tumeric and cayenne, I was able to make a very flavourful dressing that wasn’t heavy or creamy. I opted to add in some fresh veggies and fruits to round it out, including some just perfectly ripe apricots for a little more sweet and sour – I would have used mango, but apricots are in season here, and I thought something fresh and local would be best.
About the cooking of the chickpeas… in the past, I have failed miserably at cooking up dried legumes. They often came out mushy or mealy and just plain terrible. That said, buying them dried is much cheaper than buying them canned, so I thought it couldn’t hurt to try again.
I started with 2 cups of dried chick peas, soaking them in a LOT of water in the fridge. I read to soak them overnight, but I ended up soaking them for two (only because I didn’t have time to do anything with them right away). I discarded the soaking water each day, and just before cooking. I cooked them in a large pot of boiling water and it only took about 40 minutes (brought to a boil, then simmered). I tested along the way, just to ensure I didn’t overcook them. I should also add that I didn’t add anything to the soaking or cooking water – no salt, flour, baking soda… nothing. They cooked up perfectly. As good as canned, if not better. Two cups of dried chick peas probably yielded 5-6 cups of cooked, and it cost less than a 19oz can of chickpeas, which would only contain about 2.5 cups.
Recipe after the jump!
This post is part of a “Blog Bites” challenge issued by Nupur, of the blog One Hot Stove. This month, we’re asked to pick ANY recipe from the blog of our choice, make it, take pics and blog about it. The spirit of the “Blog Bites” challenge series is to get us checking out other food blogs and posting about our experiences, while giving due credit to the original poster. This also fits with the ‘Blog Love’ series I started back in June…
I had already found the perfect recipe when I saw the challenge. Sweet! (Literally)
I have always wanted to try making ice cream, but I don’t have an ice cream maker (and try not to buy unitasking gadgets). Summer brings a slew of amazing sounding ice cream recipes which, for the most part, just depress me into trying to justify making an ice cream maker (can I make dinner ice cream?).
Then I came across a recipe for Almond Pista Kulfi, posted by indosungod on Daily Musings.
Kulfi is an Indian frozen dessert that is made with milk, instead of cream, so doesn’t require an ice cream maker. They often come in flavours like mango, almond, pistachio – and can contain ground nuts. This recipe is a combination of almond and pistachio.
I first had to roast my almonds and pistachios, and then grind them coarsely in the food processor. Since I had some on hand – and totally love them – I decided to add vanilla bean, as well as a few drops of almond extract.
You start by cooking down some whole milk and condensed milk on the stove, adding in a few ingredients and cooking it down a little more.
Here is where I ran into some trouble. Never having made kulfi before, I wasn’t sure how thick it should be. Initially, I followed the instructions, cooking the milk down for a certain amount of time. After adding in some ingredients and letting it thicken, you’re supposed to cook it down a little bit further. I did take it off earlier than it called for, thinking it was thick enough… but it was actually too thick. It was actually too sticky to freeze all the way through!
The next day, I decided I would try to fix things. I warmed up a little more of the whole milk and stirred it into the “semifreddo” concoction, crossed my fingers and stuck it back in the freezer. It worked!!
Writing instructions for these kinds of things can be tricky, because different stoves and cookware can cook things differently. Trial and error are definitely required! I now have a better idea of the consistency it should be when done. I know this sounds gross when talking about dessert, but it had the consistency of clam chowder (sans lumps) before freezing. Thick, coats the spoon, but not too sticky.
Sooo delicious! Once I’m done killing this batch, I’m going to make a cardamom coffee one!!! Can’t wait!!
Recipe after the jump!
Aviyal is a South Indian dish that is made up of thin strips of any crisp vegetables you can get your hands on. I found this in a cookbook, and it looked interesting, so I thought I would Google it to see if the recipe was anywhere near authentic. It’s safe to say that this recipe is a North Americanized version of the dish, as many of the ‘acceptable veggies’ that are often used in this dish are probably not easy to find. We go to Little India, here in Toronto, every once in a while, so I may just try to make Aviyal the ‘real’ way sometime this summer.
The one thing that is intact in this recipe is the inclusion of coconut. Coconut seems to be a primary ingredient in the sauce. I am a little bit skepical, however, as many comments about Aviyal is that it also has a lovely sour taste to it (sometimes introduced by tamarind). There was nothing sour about this dinner. I did take one ingredient out of the dish. After reading up on the dish, and the “rules” for making it, I really couldn’t bring myself to put in any tomato. The #1 rule is to use only vegetables that would remain crisp when cooked. That means you shouldn’t use tomato, eggplant, okra, or even regular onions (which the recipe also called for). Luckily, I had some green leek on hand, which gave a nice onion flavour without the mushy fried onion texture.
The dish was a hit! The veggies were still crisp and fresh tasting, and the sauce was light and coconutty. The sauce is actually a little hard to describe — the coconut meat, which makes up the bulk of the ‘sauce’ was really not saucey at all. Some coconut milk did come out of the coconut, however, and nicely mixed with the spices to make a yummy sauce.
This recipe is from the book “Simple Vegetarian Recipes” by Rosemary Wadey et al. (p.45)
About Aviyal:
I love Indian food. I love the spices, I love the mix of textures and flavours, and I absolutely love the variety you get in an Indian Thali. Indian thalis are platters that feature a number of dishes, alongside some kind of bread (such as naan or chapati) or sometimes rice. Most of the Indian food that people are familiar with are from North India, but it is important to note that there are many regional differences in Indian food. This is something I’d like to learn a little bit about, but I haven’t started researching it yet.
I love to make Indian-inspired dishes at home, but haven’t had much success at making restaurant style dishes until recently. A few weeks ago, I tried a Palak Daal recipe that was fantasic but very lonely. We’re used to having multiple dishes in an Indian meal, so my loney daal didn’t go over as well as it should have. This inspired me to try making a group of dishes at once.
There are two challenges for me here: successfully making restaurant-style Indian dishes AND making multiple dishes at the same time and timing it all out properly. It was a great experience, and left me with the confidence to try more in the future!!
Enjoy!
