Tested Indian recipes

We don’t have a thread on this topic, and there are good and bad recipes out there for every kind of food. A while back, I had tried some Indian dishes from a cookbook and got poor results. Now, I’ve found a good site for authentic dishes, and am just starting to try the recipes, inspired by the delicious food at an Indian friend’s home. It turns out that my previous failures were really just the result of bad recipes.

I’m a brand new student in this realm, but as I go, I would like to share the links with you one by one as I test them and get good results. I’ll add tips based on my own errors or experience, and hopefully others here who cook Indian food (and may have VASTLY more experience than me) can chime in.

Two tips in advance for others who might make the same foolish errors I did:

  1. Don’t use store-bought yogurt. It has to be completely unsweetened, and the ones marked ‘plain’ here may in fact be sweetened but with no other flavors added. Make your own or source unsweetened stuff.

  2. Consider halving the chillies or chilli powder in any particular recipe, so as not to nearly kill your better half (or third in my case). Some of these recipes are still fiery at half strength. You can always add more at the end after tasting the results.

Here are the recipes I’ve tried so far and liked very much, and notes:

Thool Zamboor, onion and tomato based Kashmiri egg curry Flavoured with a mix of dry spices.
Note: easy and delicious.

ALOO GOL MATOL, baby potatoes cooked with a spicy masala powder and finished with lemon juice.
Note: If it ends up too spicy or sour, you can fix that with some coconut cream.

DUM MURGH: Delicious chicken flavour with rich spice and cooked on its own steam
Note: don’t use sweet yogurt! :blush:

MALBARI MUTTON: A popular spicy mutton preparation from Kerala
Note: 800g of mutton is equivalent to about four trays of frozen hot-pot mutton, if you don’t have a convenient source of bone-in cubed mutton. This is a delicious dish, and it’s not worth the trouble to make a half batch, so get the full amount of mutton! This made a lovely snack just now, atop rice, with a green veggie on the side.

Naan bread, Madhur Jaffrey’s version
Note: I put a Lodge Double Play grill/griddle (cast iron) on the floor in my oven, and a shelf near the top element. I preheated to 250C for half an hour or more, to get as close to tandoor heat as I could. Be sure to wet both sides of the naan before putting it in the oven. I find it hard to move a thin, wet naan into a confined oven space without accidentally folding it on itself or getting burns, so I tried a new method with great success: after rolling out the naan, and misting each side with spray water (or patting with wet hands), put it on a sheet of oven paper, atop a wooden peel or the back of a cookie sheet, and use that to slide it into the oven like a pizza. Bake about 3 minutes on the cast iron (or a pizza stone), then use the peel or tongs to move it to the top shelf underneath the broiler to brown it.
I aged my dough in the fridge overnight to try to get more flavor out of it and to let the gluten relax so it would be easier to roll out thinly, and that worked fine.

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Lovely thread, Mr Bones. You’ve got me drooling.
Cooked up a Dum Murgh once and it was real good.

Thanks, gotta try some of those. I used one from that cookbook in the indian store, it came out pretty good.

What’s a good yogurt source?

Old live yogurt plus scalded and cooled whole milk, kept warm overnight. EDIT: That’s next on my list of things to start making myself. Sounds quite easy. We have a thread on that. I’m tempted to get one of those yogurt makers where you can open a 1-liter carton of milk, add the old yogurt, put the whole carton in without having to sterilize anything, and it’s ready when you wake up the next day. But I’m interested in finding one with a variable temperature control and higher capacity so I can conveniently deal with mesophilic versus thermophilic cultures, to make everything from buttermilk and sour cream to yogurt and cottage cheese. (Yes, I realize I can do all these with a thermometer and a double boiler, and time and patience, but when you make so many things from scratch, you start looking for ways to do a few things more conveniently. I’d really like a large crockpot with an accurate and widely variable thermostat.)

Interesting!

I looked around for years before finding a Patak paste. As far as i know only Jasons in 101 stocks it. The Madras is very tasty. Since its a paste, a single jar provides many meals, depending on what you are cooking, but usually a table spoon is more than enough.

I usually add some additional spices to taste , such as cinnamon but it forms an excellent base and much better than the dried powders IMO.

I promote it for my own selfish desires that enough people buy it and it remains in stock. Costco recently had some quick to heat daal, it wasn’t fantastic, but made for a good accompaniment to a main meal and was sad to see they no longer stock it.

Those instant daals were horrible. You could taste the preservatives in them…very plasticky in taste.

DB I have a few tried and tested recipes too, will they count?? :smiley:

I had a ball with the yogurt argument in India. I couldn’t have enough, while my Taiwanese friend would take a bit, cringe and pass it to me. “But it says plain right here!”. “Yes, dear, but even plain in Taiwan has sugar”. “No, we do not put sugar in yogurt”… Sigh

Actually, I found most Indian food I got was not as spicy hot as expected. True, it all had more flavor than usual, but nothing stomach upsetting, regret next morning kind of thing. Most spices used there are also used back home, so I think that helped. It is no Mexican fiery soup thinghie. :wink:

Dragonbones, I tried a garlic naam with butter that was superb. As to the rest of the dishes, I followed the “don’t ask, don’t tell, just eat” approach, so I have no idea how to recognize them just by the names.

In general, I can say I had no tandori chicken nor curry chicken, as there is such a variety of other dishes. Enjoy your explorations!

I used to make a great daal from scratch but don’t really have the time nor energy these days. Trinity has some ok-ish packets that make good bases, but you need to add a bunch of extra ingredients to make them taste good.

Nothing beats a thali at midnight in rural India, but I guess I’m not going to get that here :slight_smile:

Nothing beats a good chai in a sleeper train… :smiley:

That too.

Of course! Here I am, desperately trying to get people to share proven recipes, and experts like you are holding out on me! I bet you have more than a few – give us the good stuff! :laughing:

I’m really happy with the above-linked site so far, www.sanjeevkapoor.com, and with the results I’m getting from making everything from scratch (unlike some mixes I had tried in the past). When you dry roast the spices to bring out their fragrance then grind them yourself, they are just heavenly! Nothing out of a box can compare with that.

I really liked the tandoori chicken at several local places, especially Cafe India in Tianmu, so that’s one I want to try soon. :lick:

That too.[/quote]
Icon!! Superb. If you liked chai in train, then you are a native!!! Guess what??? I recently had someone turn down a perfectly good cup of cardamom chai.

Got myself some bags of chai and a couple of masala spices mix -for food or tea otherwise.

Wish I could find Wolf_Reinhold’s wonderful essay on the delights of real Indian food. He posted it on here at one point, several years back.

I did this one tonight and it was absolutely incredible:

CHICKEN HAZARVI

sanjeevkapoor.com/Recipe.asp … e&MenuId=0
I cut the pieces a little smaller and added tinned mushrooms (firmer), green and red pepper and onion to the kebab.
I used less chillis, and added a dash of turmeric and marsala. Next time, when I baste, I’ll add a touch of chili powder to the butter. :lick:

That sounds good, jimi!

Try it, DB. I was pleasantly surprised. Looks a little subtle and innocuous upon reading the recipe, but it really rocks. Add your own flair as all cooks should.

[quote=“jimipresley”]I did this one tonight and it was absolutely incredible:

CHICKEN HAZARVI

sanjeevkapoor.com/Recipe.asp … e&MenuId=0
I cut the pieces a little smaller and added tinned mushrooms (firmer), green and red pepper and onion to the kebab.
I used less chillis, and added a dash of turmeric and marsala. Next time, when I baste, I’ll add a touch of chili powder to the butter. :lick:[/quote]
Based on your recommendation, I did this one tonight. And, yes, it was good. I enjoyed the subtlety of the flavour very much. Funny, my wife thought it “wasn’t salty enough” at the first bite, but she soon warmed to it.

I used just 2 jalapenos instead of 4, couldn’t find “mace powder” anywhere (what the heck is that, anyway?) so made do with just the nutmeg, and added onions and green peppers to the skewers. Oh, but one other, crucial thing: I used chicken thighs with the skin on. That made it very yummy.

Oh, one other other thing: I only let it marinate for about 40 minutes, as I didn’t get started early enough for a three-hour marinate. Would that make a huge difference?

It’s the dried residue from those little personal defense sprays. Spray some on a large plastic sheet, let it dry, then use a scraper to scrape off the dried powder, and save it in a jar for kitchen use.

[color=#BFFFFF]Joke! From wiki: “This spice tastes and smells like a pungent version of Nutmeg, and for a very good reason … mace is the bright red membrane that covers the nutmeg seed. After the membrane is removed and dried it becomes a yellow-orange color. It’s sold ground and, less frequently, whole (in which case it’s called a blade).”[/color]