Indian Food Updates and New Recipes

I am planning another Indian meal for two of my sisters next week. Some recipes are ones I have made before, like Kachche Gosht ki Biryani, and some I have made many, many times before, like Palak Paneer. I will be serving an array of chutneys, such as Dhania Poodina (Mint and Cilantro Chutney), Khajur Imli Chatni (Date Tamarind Chutney) and Am Chatni (Mango Chutney). One of my sisters in particular, really loves turning up the heat, so i returned to a recipe I had made in past, called Allam Pachadi, a Ginger Tamarind 'Pickle.'

Allam Pachadi / Ginger Tamarind Pickle

So, looking back over that recipe I used for Allam Pachadi, I thought maybe I should change some things. First off, while I like heat, sometimes it's just heat with no perceptible flavor, while your taste buds try to crawl away screaming, and hide. So I went back to look through the internet and some of my favorite Indian blogs, and others that are new to me, to see what other ingredients or methods might be used for this 'pickle.' I am putting that word in quotes, as these in no way resemble what we know here in the U.S as pickles. They fall more in the category of chutney, and some blog writers seem to use these words interchangeably for the same recipes. 

Looking through recipes then, I stopped at one that seemed to be very interesting, both for the change of ingredients as well as the method of making the pickle. In the first attempt for this pickle that I made some years ago, the main recipe I used, and made a few alterations to, called for 6 TABLESPOONS of Indian powdered chilis. Yikes! I reduced that to 2 tablespoons, substituting paprika for the remainder, but even so, it was too screaming hot for me to do anything but taste. When I encountered a recipe that sounded like it had promise, it was at the blog site called Hebbar's Kitchen. I used that recipe as a starting point, altering a few things as I went. I added more red chilies, more mustard seeds, more sugar. I added in some asafetida and turmeric. What I liked best was the method, which was simpler, IMHO.

As it turned out, while quite hot, this pickle is not as screaming hot as the last one, and it had flavors I could actually taste. I love it!

Allam Pachadi

Makes about 14 ounces

Allam Pachadi

Small ball of "seedless" tamarind
Boiling water for soaking the tamarind, about 3/4 cup
2 tablespoons cooking oil
1 1/2 tablespoons channa dal
1 tablespoon urad dal
1/2 teaspoon brown mustard seeds
1/4 teaspoon fenugreek seeds
1/4 teaspoon asafetida/hing
8 dried red Kashmiri chilies, broken
15 to 20 curry leaves, depending on size (mine were small)
2.5 ounces / 75 grams ginger root (about 4+ inches worth), peeled, in small chunks
4 cloves garlic, in small chunks
2 - 3 tablespoons jaggery or light brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon turmeric powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

TEMPERING:
1 tablespoon cooking oil
1/2 teaspoon brown mustard seeds
4 - 6 curry leaves
2 whole dried red Kashmiri chilies

Soak the tamarind in boiling hot water for at least 20 minutes to soften.

Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a skillet and add in the channa and urad dal with the first half teaspoon mustard seeds and fenugreek seeds. Stir constantly until the dals just start to turn golden (not brown) and everything is fragrant. Add in the curry leaves, broken chilies (I did not use the seeds that fell out), the ginger and garlic. Cook this, stirring quickly until the garlic no longer smells raw, just a minute or two, then pour all the contents of the skillet into a blender container. Add in the turmeric powder and salt.

Separately, pass the softened tamarind through a sieve, pressing it through with the back of a spoon to get as much pulp as possible, using some of the soaking liquid to facilitate the process. Keep remaining soaking liquid aside. Add the tamarind pulp tot he blender, and blend the whole batch to a puree. You may need to add some of the reserved tamarind soaking liquid in order to puree the pickle. I had to use the better part of the entire 3/4 cup of liquid to blend the mixture down. 

Separately, heat the tablespoon of oil for tempering (meaning added flavors) and add in the mustard seeds, curry leaves and the two dried whole chilies and toast briefly. Pour this over top of the pickle when serving. Or, just stir it into the mixture. Store the pickle in a clean glass jar with a tight fitting lid and refrigerate up to 3 weeks. 

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Another thing I am working on for this dinner is dessert. I truly despise deep frying, so I am not making Gulab Jamun, and I do not want to make more paneer, as it has become nearly impossible, what with the ultra-pasteurization that has become so rampant, so I am not making Rasgulla, which now that I went to paste in a link, I realize I never posted my recipe! 

Rasgulla, recipe soon

At one of my Indian dinners I had made Gajar Burfi, a carrot fudge. This may sound strange, carrots in fudge, but after living in Guatemala as a young wife, and finding how many veggies went into desserts, I was no longer fazed when reading about carrots in fudge; it is absolutely delicious! So I thought I would return to that. But then again, I can never leave well enough alone, so I went looking at some Indian sweets recipes I had looked at before but never made. I opted then, to make an assortment of small batches of sweets, so we can all pick and choose. My first new recipe is called Badam Katli (Thin Almond Fudge). Since I used the recipe mostly as I found it, from Swasthi's Recipes, at Indianhealthyrecipes.com, while I will post what I did here, please read her recipe, made the long way.

My one error was cooking the mixture just slightly too long, as it really dried out. Good, in a way, because it is certainly not sticky, but I could absolutely not get the nuts to stay adhered to the top. I used almonds, since it is almond fudge, instead of the pistachios used in Swasthi's recipe.

As most of these sweets are festival or holy day treats, they are often made truly special by gilding with edible silver or gold foil. I happened to have silver foil on hand, so I used it.

Badam Katli / Thin Almond Fudge

My understanding of the word 'katli' is that it means thin, as with rolling out the fudge into a thin layer. The meanings of different words gets mightily confusing at times, and I have seen this recipe, nearly identical, called Badam Burfi or Badam Halwa.

Trying to tease out the meanings and differences, Wikipedia had some things to say that made sense. I know these will not apply in every instance, but in this case, I'm just going with it. Any 'Burfi" (sometimes "Barfi" but I prefer the other spelling for obvious reasons) type fudge candy is made using milk, whether Khoya, plain milk, condensed milk or powdered milk (and sometimes all of them). My Carrot Burfi recipe in its original form, would use khoya or a cooked down milk, which can take literally hours and hours of stirring. Not gonna happen! I used powdered milk and it came together in minutes. Yum!

Halwa, on the other hand does not use milk, but generally uses a sugar syrup to create the mixture, but without milk.

Similarly with any recipe for laddoo/laddu/ladoo, whether deep fried or made quick cooked or simply ingredients mixed together (similarly to Bourbon Balls at Christmas time), are always made into round balls. Laddoo made with cooked semolina is on my list of things to try for this upcoming dinner as well.

On to the recipe. Simple and delicious. I doubled the recipe as it stood on Swasthi's site, but I did not quite double the amount of sugar. They are delightful.

Badam Katli

Badam Katli or Thin Almond Fudge

Made about 20 - 25 pieces

2 cups fine almond meal with no brown skins
1 cup + 2 tablespoons white granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/2 cup water
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Almond slices or pistachio pieces for decoration

In a medium skillet over high heat, place the sugar and water and bring to boil. Stir, and once the sugar is all dissolved, add in all the almond meal and cardamom. Lower heat and while mixing, it is best to take the skillet off the heat. Mix well with a wooden spoon or silicone spatula until all the almond meal is evenly distributed, with no lumps. Return the pan to the heat and keep it at a simmer, because the mixture, as it boils, sends up geysers akin to watching lava burst from a volcano and with similar effect. You WILL get burned! Stir, quickly and constantly, to keep this from occurring. It will take about 6 to 8 minutes of stirring before the mixture comes together as one mass. Pour out onto a greased plat until it cools slightly.

Do not cool too long or you will not be able to knead the mixture. Knead the mixture until it comes together smoothly (I used a silicone spatula to do this, lifting, turning and forming over and over until smooth - it was just too hot!)), then place the mixture onto a piece of parchment and roll with a rolling pin to flatten. Place sliced almonds or pistachio pieces on top and roll again to make the nuts set evenly with the top of the fudge, which should be no more than 1/4-inch thick. With a sharp knife, trim edges neatly, then cut into about 1-inch wide strips. Separate the strips and cut into small squares or into diamond shapes. Store in a tightly sealed container. 

My passion is teaching people how to create a harmony of flavors with their cooking, and passing along my love and joy of food, both simple or exotic, plain or fancy. I continue my journey in ethnic and domestic cuisines, continuing my journey to explore diverse culinary experiences and hopefully to start you on a journey of your own. Join me also at A Harmony of Flavors on Facebook, and Pinterest.

Another Indian Dinner and New Recipes to Try

I have another Indian dinner set for November 3rd. Two other couples will be joining my husband and me for this dinner, and it's been a while since I made a large dinner - probably last Thanksgiving. I know six people for dinner is not a "large" dinner party, but when it comes to Indian food with all the prep work involved, it can become onerous. 

I have been trying out new recipes, since one of the people who will be attending cannot eat nuts. So many Indian recipes use nuts in one way or other, even down to grinding them to use as thickeners instead of our method in the US, of thickening with flour or cornstarch. So I finally settled on making a Lamb biryani dish as the main course. I wrote about my biryani, which was heavenly, in my blog post of September 28th. I got all the kinks worked out of the recipe, and have things ordered in such a way as to make it as smooth flowing as possible. 

Mulligatawny, first try

Then I thought of making a soup. The Indians really do not make what we know as "soup". They make "gravies." All their thin, either watery or slightly thickened recipes, that we would call soup are meant to pour over rice and/or be scooped up with a local form of bread. But still, being here in the US, I figured I would attempt one of the soups that we know as "Mulligatawny." In reality it is called Milagu-thanni and is translated as Pepper Water. I have read countless recipes and watched countless videos on this recipe. All of them are different. Some are so different it is hard to tell if it is the same kind of recipe. 

When I first tried this out, I followed a recipe from a cookbook I found many years ago, called the Bombay Palace Cookbook. In this recipe, the soup calls for the use of ½ pound of besan. Besan is flour made from ground chickpeas. This soup was meant to serve 6 to 8. With that much of the chickpea flour, the whole pot of water seized up into such a thick mass that it became difficult to even stir, much less cook the little red lentils, also in this recipe, through to doneness. I don't know if this was a typo in the recipe, but I will be rectifying that when I recreate this soup. I think in all the myriad recipes I read or watched since, none of them have called for besan flour or even chickpeas. Most seem to use tiny amounts of toor dal (split dried pigeon peas) and/or gram dal, still leaving the finished soup very runny. Some few had a very slight thickening after pureeing, depending on the amount of these beans or lentils used. 

After all this, some use curry leaves, some don't. As the actual title is Pepper Water, some do use a fair amount of black peppercorns, but others use just a tiny bit. Some use a lot of chili peppers and some don't. This is another of those recipes that seem to have 100,000 different variations. 

My very thick soup was good in flavors, no doubt, but I will be making it differently when I make it for the dinner!

Allam Pachadi or Ginger Tamarind Pickle

So then on to dessert: I have Gulab Jamun in the freezer from the last dinner. I can make a syrup and two of our guests would get a re-run. Or, I could try something else. I settled on trying out Gajar Burfi, basically a carrot fudge. Don't knock it - we do eat carrot cake, after all!  I will be testing that recipe this week to see how it goes. I always have the gulab jamun...

And then I started wondering about "Indian Pickles." I keep wondering what the Indians mean by "pickle," because their pickles have nothing in common with what I know (upper Midwest U.S. girl) as pickles. The recipe I chose to try today was made with ginger and tamarind. The recipe called for 6 tablespoons of hot red chili powder. This is powdered dried chilies, not the stuff that goes into chili con carne. This is HOT!  And 6 tablespoons? Okay, I chose to make half the recipe. I also chose to use 2 tablespoons of Spanish paprika and only 1 tablespoon of the Kashmiri red chili powder I have. I mostly followed the rest of the recipe called Allam Pachadi on a website called Indian healthy recipes. It came out very nicely and while it is hot, it is just tolerable for me. Which means my husband won't touch this with a 10-foot pole, but I know at least a couple of my guests do like hot spice. It looks really pretty, for sure. This is my translation (grams to ounce or tablespoons, sequence of events and so on. Do visit Swasthi's website by clicking on the title above.

Allam Pachadi, Americanized, or Ginger Tamarind Pickle

Allam Pachadi or Ginger Tamarind Pickle

Makes one small jar, about 8 - 10 ounces

½ pound fresh, plump ginger root
6 tablespoons cooking oil, divided
100 grams of tamarind whole (about 8 pods) -   or compressed tamarind paste in a
    comparable amount
1 cup boiling water
2 tablespoons pure red chili powder
4 tablespoons Spanish paprika
¼ teaspoon turmeric powder
1 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons palm sugar or brown sugar
1 tablespoon fenugreek powder
1 teaspoon brown mustard seeds
4 -6 cloves garlic, smashed
20 to 24 fresh curry leaves
2 dried red chilies, broken
⅛ teaspoon asafoetida

Soak the tamarind in 1 cup boiling water for about 20 minutes.

Peel the ginger and slice thinly, then rough chop. Heat a skillet and use about 1 tablespoon of the oil to fry the ginger until it starts to brown, about 5 to 7 minutes. Set aside to cool completely. Once cooled, place in the food processor and process very fine.

Set a sieve over a bowl. Lift out one of the soaked tamarind pods at a time. Using hands, roll and press the flesh from the seeds and fibers, pressing the puree into the bowl. If a little water is needed, add only enough to rinse down. You want tamarind puree, not a liquid. I got about 6 tablespoons of paste. Add this to the ginger in the processor, along with the paprika and chili powders, turmeric and salt. Process to combine. Add in the palm sugar (jaggery) or brown sugar and the fenugreek powder and process again to combine. Taste for flavor. It should be balanced between sour/sweet/hot/spicy. If not, adjust to taste.

Heat the remaining oil in a skillet. Once hot, add in the mustard seeds and  stir until they begin to pop. Add in the garlic, curry leaves and asafoetida and stir until the curry leaves are crisp. Remove the pan from the heat. Scrape in the ginger paste mixture and stir to combine all the ingredients. Use all the oil, as it will surface and preserve the mixture for longer. Store in a glass jar, not in plastic.

It will easily stay in the refrigerator for a year, according to Swasthi's recipe.

NOTE: in the original recipe, it is stated that if desired one can add in a teaspoon each of Urad Dal and Channa Dal when frying the mustard seeds. I happened to have both, so I did this. They are toasted in the oil, and supposedly soften in the mixture as it sets.

My passion is teaching people how to create a harmony of flavors with their cooking, and passing along my love and joy of food, both simple or exotic, plain or fancy. I continue my journey in ethnic and domestic cuisines, continuing my journey to explore diverse culinary experiences and hopefully to start you on a journey of your own. Join me also at A Harmony of Flavors on Facebook, and Pinterest.