Tandoor Aloo Potatoes With Spices Done With Fire!!!

It's been crazy up here in wine country. actually it's crazy everywhere but since this is where I am presently this is my crazy. We've been laying low since I recovered from covid. We were laying low before too. What that means is we haven't socialized, eaten out, (even contactless pickup) or gone anywhere (we are walking the dog) except to a hospital or doctor's office since this whole thing started. Meanwhile, my cooking muscle since I've been up and about again, is really getting a pandemic workout.

If that isn't enough, we've had lightning strike wildfires, rolling blackouts, and temperatures in the 100+ category. We're trying to get a script turned in and it's hard to work under those conditions. We've had our bags packed to run, and fortunately we didn't have to. We were also told to limit water / power use, and NO fires no way no how. So no outdoor cooking, not that anyone would want to stand in 103 degree temps over a fire pit. So far so good.

Last weekend we got a break, when more lightning was predicted, meaning the possibility of more fires, but the weather gods/goddesses decided to cut us a break, sent a a bit of rain and held the lightning. The fires are still burning but are much more contained, and people who had to flee their homes in the evacuation zones are being allowed to go back home. We're not out of the woods here yet, but hopefully the woods will not still be on fire.

I took advantage of pleasant temperatures and the ability to use my Homdoor Tandoor oven to do a little Indian cooking, and one of the dishes worked beautifully with the tandoor oven. It involves potatoes and is one of the simplest dishes  there is. Potatoes aka Aloo, simple boiling potatoes, basted with spices and then roasted on skewers in the tandoor till they are charred on the outside, spicy and soft on the inside. There are a lot of ways of doing this dish, this is how I do it.

Tandoor Aloo

Here's What You Need:

Several medium sized yukon gold or boiling potatoes

2 Tbs vegetable oil

2 tsp cumin seeds

1 serrano chili finely chopped, either seeded or unseeded (depends on how hot you want it)

2 tsp mashed coriander seeds

1 tsp red chili flakes

1/2 tsp turmeric

2 tsp amchur  (dried mango) powder

1/2 tsp cumin ppowder

2 tsp lemon juice

salt to taste

a handful of chopped fresh cilantro

 

Here's What To Do:

You can par boil/ partially cook the potatoes to soften them a bit before skewering them, just don't cook them all the way through.

After they are cooked, you can leave the peel on or not, as you wish. Set them aside.

What we do here is prepare a basting sauce that will be used on the potatoes as they cook and then the remains of it drizzled over the finished dish.

First, get your spices ready.

Dice the chili pepper.

Crush the coriander seed with a mortar and pestle.

In a skillet or kadhai heat 2 Tbs vegetable oil. When the oil is hot toss in the cumin seeds.

Let them toast. As soon as they get fragrant (less than a minute) toss in the  serrano chili, and crushed coriander seed.

Now add chili flakes, turmeric, dried mango powder (amchur), roasted cumin powder, and salt. Stir these around and cook them for a few seconds. This is your basting liquid. Set it aside

Rub the potatoes with oil and thread the potatoes on oiled skewers.

Fire up your Tandoor Oven. The potatoes cook at 400 degrees for about  5 minutes, if you are doing these on a grill the same applies.

Brush the potatoes with the spice marinade

Place the skewered potatoes in the tandoor or on your grill.

Let them roast for 5 minutes.

After 5 minutes take them out and brush them with the spice mixture again . Put them back in the tandoor for another 5 minutes.

When they are done, take them out and off the skewers.

Place them back in the kadhai with the marinade, coat them. 

 Drizzle them with lemon juice.

Sprinkle them with the chopped cilantro.

Ignore curious fans....

and serve them up!

Serve these spicy potatoes alongside any dish, meat or veg. Scoop the insides out of the charred skins and enjoy. 

I'm really enjoying the tandoor and especially enjoying cooking stuff fresh out of our garden in it. 

We're supposed to have more record breaking temperatures up here this Labor Day weekend.  Reports are of 102-104 degrees so I've got something cool planned. Watermelon Chaat. so stay tuned! Follow along on Twitter at @kathygori  

Kashmiri Eggplant And Apples, A Simple Dish For A Cold Spring Day.

 
   Living in Sonoma, Indian markets are few and far between. As as result I grow a lot of my own produce, and spices, but that's only good for a certain part of the year. In the winter we turn over the soil and let things go fallow before we fertilize and renew for the spring. That's when I have to go hunting for the things I need for cooking.  One of my favorite shopping spots is a Cambodian market in Santa Rosa, Phenom Phen. Since a great many of my favorite dishes are  from South Indian cuisine I find a lot of the vegetables and items that I need are available there. The only catch is, this market is about a 50 mile round trip for me, so I'm not there that often. When I do go, I take advantage of everything I can get. Their selection is amazing, and as Maude Lebowski would say, very very thorough.
   

The other day I made my run to Santa Rosa, and they had just gotten in a whole load of fresh produce including my favorite Indian eggplants. I bought a bunch and brought them home.

   One dish I hadn't made in a long time is a very very simple, mild Kashmiri dish from the north called Tsoont Vaangan aka Eggplants with Apples.This is a recipe from Mrs. Manohar Nath Kaul. I love this dish on working weekdays when I'm always looking for simple, easy, and quick recipes for lunch. With only a few ingredients, this is nearly as simple as it gets.

   The only ingredient that you may not have readily available is Hing also known as Asafoetida powder, however I've found it in some non-Indian markets in the spice section. This is a very powerful, truffle-like spice, made from a Rhizome and is often used in Indian dishes (sometimes for religious purposes) as a substitute for onions or garlic. It smells strong before cooking but when cooked has a garlicky or truffle like flavor. It's great in potato dishes. One only needs a tiny bit of hing so one small jar goes a loooong way.

Eggplants and Apples

 

Here's What You Need:

1 and 1/4 pound eggplant (I used the small Indian eggplant, but any eggplant will do as long as it's cut to proper size)

2  Granny Smith apples
3/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp turmeric
1/4 tsp ground fennel seeds
1/4 tsp Kashmiri chili powder or cayenne
6 Tbs vegetable oil (I use coconut oil)
1/8 tsp hing

Here's What To do:

Cut the eggplants into 3/4 inch thick slices on the diagonal. If you've got a big eggplant, halve and quarter it so the pieces are the correct size for cooking.

Cut the apples into wedges, don't peel them.

Grind your fennel seeds in a mortar or spice grinder.

Take the ground fennel seeds and mix them with the turmeric, salt, and chili powder. Stir in 1 Tbs of water and mix to a paste.

Set the paste aside.
Heat the vegetable oil in a skillet or kadhai, when it's hot toss in the hing powder and then the apple wedges.

Brown the apples lightly on all sides, then remove them with a slotted spoon and set them aside.

Put the eggplant slices into the same oil and brown them on both sides.

You may have to do this in batches. As the slices brown, take them out with a slotted spoon and put them with the apples.
When everything has been browned, put the apples and eggplants back into the pan together.

Pour the spice paste into the pan with them and stir gently.

Turn the heat to low and cook for about 10 minutes. Turn the apple and eggplant pieces over gently to coat them and make sure you don't break them.

Lift them out of the pan with a slotted spoon and serve them up.

   This is a very clean and simple dish with a delicate flavor, just right for  a day when you don't want to spend hours in the kitchen. It's also vegan, and gluten free. Coming up next more Indian seasonal specials and  While you're here subscribe to our feed!   And follow along on Twitter @kathygori 

Old Cauliflower New Tricks. Bake your Cauliflower Like A Chicken.

This is not your brain. This is your cauliflower.

This is your cauliflower on Indian spices. Whoaaaaaa!

   Just in case there's anyone out there who doesn't know the origin of this expression or hasn't watched a "very special episode" of anything, it references this Public Service Commercial which ran on the TeeVee way back in the 80's.



Ah yes, the 80's back when everyone wore stone-washed mom jeans, leg warmers, neon colors and big old shoulder pads.

No wonder they thought they had to warn everybody. That's yours truly on the far right. And later, working my best Annie Lennox...

...out with friends. Note big bling earrings and lots of hair wax. I was just waiting to get the call for the Addicted To Love Video.

   So we see how people can get weird and change, but an innocent cauliflower? What the hell happened to that thing up there?

   A vegetable trick that's what.

  There's a traditional Indian chicken recipe called Murgh Musallam. It's a complicated recipe that involves skinning a whole chicken, marinating it in a spice paste for 2 hours then making a fried spice paste, and when the chicken has had it's go-round in the first marinade, it's then rubbed  inside and out with the second fried spice paste. One then wraps the whole bird up in aluminum foil and bakes it for an hour and a half. This dish is freaking delicious. It is also something that is not done every day. You can see why. This is a special occasion company dish.

   When we lived in LA, I would occasionally be asked by friends to come and teach them to cook certain Indian dishes. I always enjoyed this. One day my very very best friend in LA (who will remain nameless here) asked me to help her make this dish for a friend visiting from Canada. It seems it was the guy's birthday also, so she asked if I would I bake him a cake. Of course. She planned on serving this dish at a romantic lantern-lit dinner outside in their garden. Since the man had a plane ticket and needed to be at LAX  to return to Vancouver that very night, this complicated dish had to be set up like clockwork. I gave her a complete list of what would be needed and asked her to have all the ingredients ready to go when I arrived at her house early in the afternoon so that we would be ready to start cooking. I got over there with my equipment only to discover she had not bothered to defrost her chickens. Nothing was ready. No how, no way.

   Smash cut to the birthday boy leaving for Vancouver while everyone else at the party waited for the chickens to come to roost outside of the oven. That's the trouble with this dish made using chicken. Cauliflower however, that's a whole different story. There are a lot of recipes for Gobhi (caulifilower) Masallem, some are more complicated than others. This one which orginated with Julie Sanhi, is one of the best I've tried. It was so simple it was ready to serve in less than an hour. Always a good thing, especially if someone has a plane to catch.

   Another thing about this dish, the older the cauliflower the better. This is a little secret I learned from my friend Nisha Katona which you can see right here. So no need to run out and buy a fresh vegetable. Buy ahead and let it mellow a bit. Your mouth will thank you. This cauliflower is steamed for 8 minutes, covered (stuffed) with a spice paste and baked in the oven. When it comes out, cut into wedges and dressed with a delicious  tomato sauce. Cauliflower prepared this way can easily be the star of any vegan, vegetarian or paleo meal.

Cauliflower Musallam

Here's What You Need: 

3 tbs of vegetable oil
1 cauliflower, leaves, core, and stem removed.
1 and 1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1 Tbs finely chopped shallot
1 and 1/2 Tbs finely chopped fresh ginger
4 serrano chilies seeded and finely chopped
1/2 tsp ground fennel
1/4 tsp Kashmiri chili or cayenne
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
1 and 1/2 Tbs ground coriander
2 Tbs ground blanched almonds
1 tsp sea salt
1 Tbs flour (or gluten free flour)
6 sprigs of cilantro

Sauce

3 Tbs vegetable oil
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 can of tomatoes pureed
2 tsps cumin
1/2 cup of water
salt to taste
2 Tbs chopped cilantro

 Here's What To Do:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
Remove the leaves, stem and core the cauliflower, making sure to leave it intact.

Steam the cauliflower for 8 minutes.

When the cauliflower is tender, take it out and put it into a baking dish to cool.

Heat the vegetable oil in a skillet or kadhai.
When the oil is hot add in the onion and fry it until it's lightly browned.
Add in the shallots and ginger and fry them for a couple of minutes.

Add in the chopped serrano chilies and give them another minute in the pan.

Add all the other spices, the ground almonds and the flour.

Cook everything for another 2 minutes or so.

Add in the water and stir until you have a thick paste.

Take the stuffing paste off the stove and let it cool.
To stuff the cauliflower, push half of the spice paste mix in among the florets.

Spread the rest of it over the top and sides of the cauliflower.
Sprinkle the sliced almonds over the top.

Pop it into the oven for about 25 to 30 minutes, but before you do look on the bottom and make sure your baking dish is oven proof. Can''t believe I did that.

While the cauliflower is baking make the sauce.
In a skillet or Kadhi, heat 3 tbs of vegetable oil.
When the oil is hot, add in the onions and fry them until they are lightly browned.
Add in the cumin and fry it for another minute.

Add in the tomato puree, salt and water, bring the sauce to a boil.

Reduce the temperature to simmer and cook it gently over a low heat for about 15 minutes.
Take it off the heat and add in the chopped cilantro.
To serve this baby up, put the cauliflower on a serving platter, and cut it into wedges.
Ladle some tomato sauce over each wedge.

Serve it up and enjoy.

   This is a dish that will make a great entree for any veg meal. It is easily made gluten free by using gluten free flour, and of course it contains no dairy for the vegans or paleo eaters amongst us. Add a nice salad, rice dish, whatever you please and you've got an easy complete meal for a Meatless Monday, no defrosting and it's done so fast, nobody misses any planes.

   Coming up next , a great new book about the magic of food and family plus more vegetable tricks done easy. Follow along on Twitter @kathygori