These days, when I browse through Pinterest and my favorite blogs all I see are pictures of delicious turkey, pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce and all things Thanksgiving. I drool over these, and tell myself, although we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, that I should make a pecan-pumpkin pie, or at least bake some Hasselback potatoes, if not a whole roast chicken (turkey still intimidates me). What is the point of being a food blogger if one can’t take inspiration from the food that is trending in the season? But laziness got the better of me, and I didn’t get anywhere beyond pinning several Thanksgiving recipes to my Pinterest board.
So, today’s post is a recipe from my tryst with curry over the weekend. A promise I made to myself, to keep me inspired and get me out of my routine of fail-safe recipes on weekends – I am attempting a curry a weekend, deriving inspiration from recipes from all parts of India.
This past weekend, I went with a recipe that I am very familiar with, Koftas or fried, ball-shaped patties made of Indian cheese (paneer) dunked in a luscious gravy made with tomato pulp and cream.
Malai Kofta
Ingredients
- For the Koftas:
- 1.5 litre full fat milk
- 1 lemon or 1 tsp white vinegar
- 2 large potatoes boiled and mashed
- 1 tsp garam masala
- 1 tsp turmeric powder
- 1 tsp Kashmiri chilli powder or paprika powder
- 1/2 tsp chaat masala
- 1/2 tsp salt to taste
- Oil for deep frying
- For the Gravy:
- 1 cup tomato pulp or canned tomato
- 1 onion ground to a paste
- 1 tsp ginger paste
- 1/2 tsp garlic paste
- 1 green chilli ground to a paste
- 1/4 tsp turmeric powder
- 1/2 tsp garam masala
- 1/2 cup cream
- 1/2 cup ground almonds or ground cashews
- 1 tsp dried fenugreek leaves methi leaves
- Salt to taste
Instructions
- Start by preparing the paneer:
- Cook the milk in a pot with high sides, letting the milk come to a rolling boil
- Add the juice of 1 lime (or 1 tsp vinegar) and reduce heat to a simmer
- Stir the acidic juice/ vinegar and let the milk cook for a minute more
- The milk will curdle and the solids will separate from the whey
- Turn off the heat, and let it cool
- Using a fine meshed sieve (or a muslin cloth),strain the whey from the solids
- The milk solids or paneer, is now ready to be used
- To the milk solids, add the potatoes, and the seasonings listed in the ingredients for the koftas
- Make small lemon-sized balls out of this mixture
- Deep-fry these balls and drain the excess oil on a kitchen napkin
- To prepare the gravy:
- Start by sauteing ginger, garlic and green chilli past in oil in a large saucepan
- Add the turmeric powder, garam masala and continue sauteing for a minute
- Add the onion paste and cook for 3-4 minutes
- Add the tomato pulp and ground almonds, and let this come to a simmer
- Reduce the heat, and the cream and fenugreek leaves and cook for another couple of minutes
- Add salt to taste
- Serve with some freshly made naan, or basmati rice
Notes
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