IHCC Madhur Jaffery summary

Indian being one of my favorite cuisines and Madhur Jaffrey one of my favorite cookbook authors, I looked forward to the IHCC Madhur Jaffrey challenge. In the course of the six months, I made a lot of really good dishes, with just a few failures, including a pickle that was really icky, an eggplant dish that suffered perhaps from a bad eggplant, and an unpleasantly sharp mustardy fish. In general, though, we found lots of new favorites and enjoyed some old ones. In the course of the challenge, I got six new cookbooks (only one not second-hand) and enjoyed giving them a work-out. There are some Jaffrey recipes online, but, old-fashioned me, I much prefer paging through books to searching the internet

Old Jaffrey books

• Climbing: Climbing the Mango Trees (ISBN 009189929X). This is Jaffrey's autobiography and has a few recipes in the back. [1 recipe]
• Foolproof: Foolproof Indian Cooking (ISBN 155366258X). I've had this book a while, but haven't really used it, not sure why.
• MJ1: Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking (ISBN 0812027000), cookbooker . My second Jaffrey book. I got it after watching some of the associated series on the BBC. There are lots of good recipes; this book is frequently used. [11 recipes]
• Q&E: Quick and Easy Indian Cooking ISBN 0811811832), cookbooker . Another favorite cookbook. Everything can be done in 30 minutes. Much used. [7 recipes]
• SpiceKitch: Madhur Jaffrey's Spice Kitchen (ISBN 0517596989). Small, but good. [4 recipes]
• TasteIndia: A Taste of India (ISBN 0689707266), cookbooker . I loved this TV show and love looking at the pictures, but somehow don't use the book for cooking. I really should have another look and try to learn about the regional differences. [4 recipes]
• WofE: World of the East Vegetarian Cooking (ISBN 0394402715). This is one of the first cookbooks I ever bought. Love it. [6 recipes]
• WorldVeg: Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian (ISBN 0517596326). It took me a while to get into this big book. I started using it a year or so ago, and have found a lot of good recipes here.  [3 recipes]

New Jaffrey books

• 100Curries: 100 Essential Curries (ISBN 9780091940522). This was my new book and very annoying it is. It's full of recipes from other books, but gives no reference to them. [2 recipes]
• MJ@Home: At Home with Madhur Jaffrey (ISBN 0307268241). I bought this because there were quite a few posts from this book. Have used it quite a bit. [2 recipes]
• MJFarEast: Far Eastern Cookery (ISBN 0563213647). This was recommended to me by a friend, but I haven't used it yet.
• MJFamily: Madhur Jaffrey's Cookbook: Food for Family & Friends (ISBN 1851451528). Not strictly Indian food, but all kinds of food, arranged in menus. Has some good recipes, but handicapped by having no index. My copy formerly owned by a smoker and the book still stinks. [3 recipes]
• MJFlavours: Madhur Jaffrey's Flavours of India (ISBN 0563370777). Bought this during the IHCC time and have used it a lot. [6 recipes]
• MJInvite: An Invitation to Indian Cooking (ISBN 0394711912). This is, I think, MJ's first cookbook. I got it late in the IHCC cycle as part of a fat red book that included the British version of WoE, which has a different title. When I realized WofE was duplicated, the red book went into a recycle pile and I ordered another copy of MJInvite. A skinnier copy that doesn't stress the space available on that shelf. Haven't yet cooked from this (although I did make one of these recipes from 100Curries), but have enjoyed reading some of the first and last bits.

Recipes I tried 

Post	Recipe	Book, page	Rating (1-3)
Post	Green Soup (Hara shorva) an Indian cream of pea soup	MJ1, p177	+++
	Squid or Scallops in Spinach-Tomato Curry Sauce (Samundar ki kari) yummy, need to make this again with squid	Q&E, p72	+++
	Banana Halva (Kelay ka halva) a simple dessert using up ripe bananas	Q&E, p124	+++
Post	Indian-Style Scrambled Eggs with Potatoes and Cauliflower an omelet with Indian flavors	MJFamily, p160	+++
Post	Skewered Lamb Kebabs pretty good lamb kebabs	TasteIndia, p40	++
	Moghlai Spinach a side dish with color	TasteIndia, p36	+++
	Rice Cooked in an Aromatic Broth more work for not much effect	TasteIndia, p45	++
Post	Easy Fish Fillets in a Traditional Mustard Sauce something wrong with the sauce here	MJFlavours, p156	+
	Green Peas in a Creamy Sauce an old favorite	Q&E, p87	+++
	Spicy Cucumber Wedges a relatively new favorite	MJ1, p172	+++
	Vermicelli Pudding tasty, but still not quite right	MJFlavours, p255	++
Post	Sri Lankan Eggplant Curry (Vambotu Curry) something wrong, bad eggplant perhaps	WorldVeg, p189	+
Post	Shamsi Davis' Persian Egg and Potato Cake (Kookoo Seeb Zameeni) a lovely frittata sort of thing	WorldVeg, p538	+++
Post	Mrs Kumud Kansara's Coco Pista Pasand—Coconut Pistachio Sweetmeats even I can make Indian sweets; tasty but awfully sweet	MJFlavours, p88	++
Post	Pakistani-Style Grilled Lamb Chops flavorful lamb chops	MJ@Home, p119	+++
Post	Whole Chicken, Baked in Aluminum Foil (Murgh Musallam) delicious chicken	MJ1, p80	+++
Post	Pears Poached in a Saffron Syrup a dessert for any meal	MJFamily, p185	+++
Post	Stewed Dried Fruit another any time dessert, from the Caucausus	WofE, p388	+++
Post	Pakistani Goat Curry good, but not the best	MJ@Home, p130	++
	Gingery Cabbage and Peas another colorful side dish	MJFlavours, p67	+++
Post	Baba Ghanoush (Creamed Eggplant with Tahini) another baba ghanoush, a good one	WofE, p334	+++
	Easy Kebabs (Tala Gosht) lamb kebabs	SpiceKitch, p34	+++
	Shrimp with Garlic and Chilies (Lehsun Vali Jhinga) yummy shrimpers	Q&E, p17	+++
	Ajwain-Flavored Chicken (Murgh Ke Mazedar Tukray) tasty chicken	SpiceKitch, p32	+++
	Sour Potatoes (Khatte Aloo) super potatoes	100Curries, p11 (MJInvite, p38)	+++
Post	Saag Paneer with homemade paneer, good stuff	WofE, p240	+++
Post	Lentils with Garlic and Onion an old favorite comfort food	MJ1, p124	+++
Post	Lamb and Rice Casserole (Mughlai lamb biryani) long in the making, but worth it	MJ1, p154	+++
	Yoghurt with Eggplant good go-with	MJ1, p164	+++
	Tomato, Onion, and Green Coriander Relish a good relish	MJ1, p172	+++
	Light Rice Pudding (Phirni) good, a trifle sweet	Climbing, p262	++
Post	Chickpea Flour Stew with Dumplings (Karhi) something I've been meaning to make	TasteIndia, p42	+++
Post	Golden Sesame Corn Bread zingy cornbread	MJFamily, p156	+++
Post	Easy Chicken Kebabs very good and easy	Q&E, p15	+++
	Diced Potatoes with Spinach good stuff	100Curries, p140 (WofE, p53)	+++
Post	Mushroom Curry a new favorite	Q&E, p79	+++
	Gujerati Carrot Salad an old favorite	MJ1, p170	+++
	Shoba Ramji's Alimucha Oorga, Lime Pickle not perfect, but much better this time	MJFlavours, p211	++
Post	Pickled Green Chilies failure	WofE, p367	-
Post	Salabat (Ginger Tea) makes you feel better	WofE, p342	+++
Post	Sweet and Sour Chick Pea Flour Soup different but tasty soup	MJFlavours, p79	+++
Post	Greek-Style Lentil Salad good stuff	WorldVeg, p630	+++
Post	Potatoes Cooked with Garlic and Sesame Seeds Indian French fries, an old favorite	WofE, p55	+++
	Tangy Green Beans with Ajwain and Ginger a colorful side dish	SpiceKitch, p38	+++
Post	Onion Fritters (Pyaz ki Bhajia) onion bhaji, yay!	Q&E, p20	+++
	Lamb with Onions (Do piaza) good stuff	MJ1, p46	+++
	Rice and Peas with Garam Masala (Matar Aur Sooay Ka Pullao) good	SpiceKitch, p65	+++
	Yoghurt with Cucumber and Mint (Kheere ka Raita) our favorite raita	MJ1, p162	+++

IHCC: Good-bye Madhur!

It's hard to believe this IHCC session is over now. For a very long time, Jaffrey has been a frequent guest in my kitchen, but never as often as in these last six months, when we've had at least one Jaffrey meal each week. Tonight I planned a bit of a celebration in honor of this.

For a starter we had Green Soup (Hara shorva) from Indian Cooking (p177). A kind of Indian cream of pea soup, it turned out to be really simple to make and quite tasty. It takes a bit longer that what I would call quick, but is really simple, so that makes up for a bit of time.

First simmer a chopped potato and a chopped onion in chicken stock, along with a cube of ginger, ground coriander and ground cumin. When the veggies are done, fish out the ginger, then add some chopped coriander, a green chili, frozen peas, salt, lemon juice, and ground roasted cumin. Simmer till the peas are done, then blend. I used my staff mixer, but a regular blender would work fine. When you're about ready to serve, stir in some cream and heat through. That's all. Pretty and tasty.

For a main there was Squid or Scallops in Spinach-Tomato Curry Sauce (Samundar ki kari) from Quick & Easy Indian Cooking (p72). It was the picture of the squid that attracted me to this dish, since I haven't cooked them in quite a while now, but I have scallops in the freezer wanting to be used, so I chose that option. And it's another winner from the Quick&Easy book.

You starting by popping mustard seeds in hot oil, then adding garlic and ginger. When the garlic turns golden, stir in a spice paste of cayenne, turmeric, cumin, ground coriander, salt, pepper, grainy mustard, and water. (Be sure to read the information about choosing the mustard. You can use the same stuff for Pork or Lamb Vindaloo on p33, which is a super recipe and amazingly easy for delicious taste.) Then stir in some tomatoes (I deseeded and chopped fresh ones, rather than using canned), spinach, and water, and simmer for ten minutes. Add the scallops or squid; when they're done, stir in some coconut milk. Serve over rice or noodles. Yum!

And a celebration wouldn't be complete without dessert, so we finished up with Banana Halva (Kelay ka halva) from the same book (p124). This is a really easy dessert you could make any time you have some bananas getting a bit ripe. A half recipe made two nice servings.

Mash your bananas and fry them in ghee or vegetable oil until they are brown and very soft. Turn the heat down low and stir in a bit of sugar. Stir in chopped pistachios and walnuts. I spooned the halva into individual dishes and set them in the fridge to cool to room temp while we ate, then served them topped with a bit of crème frîache.

Now it's time to put away all my Jaffrey books that have been stacked or spread about the dining table for many months now, new friends on the left, old friends on the right.

This post is shared with this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs.

IHCC: One Pot Wonders

Almost every week, about the hardest thing these Jaffrey challenges has been choosing what to make. Her books are (still) full of dishes I want to make right away. For this week, I already had a short list of several ideas when I ran across this one, Indian-Style Scrambled Eggs with Potatoes and Cauliflower in Madhur Jaffrey's Cookbook: Food for Family & Friends (p160). With part of a cauliflower in the fridge and some potatoes in a cupboard both wanting to be used soon, this was just the thing. I was making dinner for two, thus a half recipe, but happened to have enough cauliflower and potato for a whole recipe, so I cooked the full amount of veggies.

You start by sizzling some cumin seeds in hot oil. I used ghee, rather than vegetable oil, and about half what was asked in the recipe. After a few seconds, you add about half an onion, finely chopped, and fry till that's softened. Then you add some chopped potato and cook till the bits begin to brown. Then you add cauliflower bits, a chopped chili, and some grated ginger. (Earlier in the day, I had boiled several potatoes to keep in the fridge until I could use them. With the pot of hot water sitting there, I went ahead and cooked the cauliflower most of the way. This shortened the time needed for cooking the veggies later.) If they had been raw, you would need to add a slog of water and cook, covered, till they are pretty well done.

If you were scrambling the eggs, you'd now push the veg to the side, scramble the eggs in the middle of the pan, and mix in the veggies when they're almost done. Rather than scrambling the eggs, I decided a little practice making omelets was in order, so I heated up the cast iron skillet I use for omelets and made a couple. Of course, this meant dinner turned into a two-pot, one-dish meal, but the head dishwasher didn't complain.

Having a double amount of filling, I overfilled the first omelet, causing it to split, and making not such a pretty picture. Never mind, it tasted wonderful. The cauliflower-potato-onion mixture was simple and delicious, and seemed to go really well with the eggs. This is definitely something to make again.

This post is shared with this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs.

IHCC: Kebab Krazy!

Kebabs! There are so many recipes in Jaffrey's books to choose from. Looking for something new and untried, I almost made some hamburger kebabs from one of my new Jaffrey cookbooks, but decided instead to use up some lamb from the freezer. I found an interesting kebab recipe in the Delhi chapter of A Taste of India and decided to make a meal from that chapter.

I enjoyed many episodes of this series on TV, but have not cooked very much from the book. I love looking at the pictures of various parts of India, the food and the people, but somehow the recipes haven't been that appealing. Maybe this is because the book is organized, not by courses, but by area, so its mains and sides are scattered through the book.

Skewered Lamb Kebabs (p40) are different from your usual sort of marinated and grilled kebab. Traditionaly Delhi's cubed meat kebabs are made with meat that has been partially cooked before grilling. This makes the cooking fussier, but allows the flavors to permeate the meat. 

For this recipe, the chunks of lamb first marinate for an hour in yogurt spiced with ground coriander, grated ginger, cayenne, lemon juice, oil, and salt. To start the cooking, turmeric and garam masala are mixed with more yogurt, then the meat and its marinade are stirred in. This mixture is brought to a simmer and cooked low, covered, for 30-40 minutes until the meat is almost done. Then the cover is removed and most of the liquid is boiled off, leaving a thick paste. Now you can skewer the meat cubes and either charcoal grill them or grill them under the broiler, which is what I did since bbq weather has definitely not arrived yet. 

I served the kebabs with Moghlai Spinach (p36) and Rice Cooked in an Aromatic Broth (p45), so that the whole meal was Delhi-flavored. The spinach was quite good and easy (I used frozen spinach since the fresh stuff at the store looked pretty dubious). This will make a nice addition to my repertoire of food-with-color for Indian meals. The rice was good but didn't seem like the extra effort of making a highly flavored broth added that much.

This post is shared with this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs.

IHCC: Potluck!

Potluck is always a fun thing to plan for dinner. And this week's potluck looked like it would be cooked on shopping day, which makes fish a good choice. Rummaging through my stack of Jaffrey books, I found Easy Fish Fillets in a Traditional Mustard Sauce (Flavours of India, p156). Jaffrey suggest serving this with plain rice. Easy to do. For a veg, I chose Green Peas in a Creamy Sauce (Quick & Easy Indian Cooking, p87), which is an old favorite and truly quick and easy. For an accompaniment, to munch while things were getting ready, there were some Spicy Cucumber Wedges (Indian Cooking, p172). If I had time and energy, I thought, I'd make some Vermicelli Pudding (Flavours of India, p255). The store had some lovely cod fillets on special for the day, so I bought one to share for dinner.

Game plan: Start the pudding on its way. Prep the cuke sticks, down to pouring on the lemon juice and spices. Prep the stuff for the peas, which cook in one shake of a lamb's tail at the last minute. Prep the stuff of the fish. Start rice. Make fish.

The mustard fish recipe looked like a sure thing. Grind some mustard seeds and a dried chili together and mix with water. Make a paste with turmeric, cayenne, and water. Rub the fish fillets with turmeric, salt, and mustard oil and let them sit for 10 minutes. Prepare some panch phoran and hot chilies for the final cooking. While the fish are broiling, the sauce is prepared by heating mustard oil, then adding the panch phoron. When the mustard seeds in that begin to pop, stir in the turmeric paste and some extra water. Then stir in the mustard paste. Bring to a boil, add salt and the chilies, stir, and remove from the heat. Pour the sauce over the fish, then simmer for two minutes. Serve.

Sounds good. Made a pretty plate. First bite—yuck! Unpleasantly strong taste of mustard. The recipe says to stir the ground mustard-chili into water and let the seeds settle. But the seeds never settled. Even after half an hour, the mixture remained uniformly grainy in texture with no settling apparent. Maybe I ground the seeds too fine, although they it looked coarse to me. Or maybe the recipe meant 4 teaspoons of mustard seeds, rather than 4 tablespoons. At any rate, we both scraped off as much of the sauce as we could, then mixed the fish with the rice. This was reasonably good.

Vermicelli Pudding is one of our favorite Indian desserts. I've been playing with the recipe in Indian Cooking (p102) for years (my first notes are dated 1995), and never quite succeeding. The taste is right, but I always seem to end up with a pudding that is too thick. Finding the recipe in the newer (both to me and publishing-wise) cookbook, Flavours of India, I thought I'd give that a try. Unfortunately, I didn't compare the recipes beforehand, and followed this recipe fairly closely. Again, the result was tasty, but still too thick. This recipe is finished with a few drops of kewra water, which I don't have; instead I used a tiny amount of rose water, which I barely notice, but my husband doesn't like. That bit was missable. (The older recipe is topped with chopped pistachios. We both prefer this.) This recipe uses less milk but more vermicelli than the older recipe. That might be the single biggest problem, since it seemed  much too dense with noodles. This recipe also calls for the seeds of cardamom pods to be added without crushing or grinding, which is esthetically not as nice, I think. It also uses much less ghee to toast the vermicelli. This was certainly edible, but I think I'll try yet again by combining aspects of the two recipes. One of these days, I'm going to nail this one!

This post is shared with this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs.

There are only three more weeks of cooking with Madhur Jaffrey to come. And, then, I was very sorry to learn, I Heart Cooking Clubs is going to fold its tent and steal away into ether. This is the third cookalong that I've joined seriously and each of them has closed up shop shortly after I've joined. I'm beginning to feel like a jinx!

IHCC: Meat-Free But Flavorful!

Meat-free with Madhur Jaffrey. The big difficulty here is making a choice. Looking for something untried and interesting I found Sri Lankan Eggplant Curry (Vambotu Curry) in  World Vegetarian (p189).

You start by slicing the eggplant in 1/2" slices, rubbing it with oil, salt-and-peppering it, then popping it under the broiler for 4 minutes on the first side and 3 on the second. This gives slices that are a nice reddish color. These are quartered then tossed with salt, ground cumin, ground coriander, turmeric, ground fennel, cayenne, and lime juice.

To finish, you heat up some oil in a frying pan, add a bit of cinnamon stick, then some curry leaves, and finally some sliced onion. When the onion has browned a bit, you add the spiced eggplant and stir for a  few minutes. Then stir some in coconut milk and ground brown mustard seeds. Cook this for a few more minutes, correct any spices, and serve. This is actually quite a quick meal, and nothing is too difficult. But ...

• It was surprisingly bitter. We had trouble locating the source of this, but it seemed like while most of the eggplant in the dish was fine, some bits were nasty. I had bought two eggplants to make up the weight, thinking to use one and a half for this recipe and the rest for something later in the week. One of them, although it looked lovely on the outside, had a brown bit down through the middle from the stem-end. I discarded this, plus a bit extra, and sliced the rest. My guess is that even though I had discarded the part that looked bad and the rest looked fine, a nasty taste pervaded the entire eggplant. A dose of mango chutney mitigated this somewhat.
• The recipe calls for 1/2 teaspoon cayenne. In the recipe prologue, Jaffrey says that the original recipe called for 2 teaspoons. Since we tend to like things hot, I used that amount. First bite, seconds of nothing, then wham! Good stuff! But only if you like it hot. 
• I poured the 1 tablespoon of oil for coating the eggplant slices into a little dish and used my fingers to anoint the slices. There was lots left here, so I used that plus just a dab more to finish the dish.
• Two of us ate all of this dish, advertised as serving 3-4. Three maybe, four not, unless it were part of a larger meal.

After getting a taste of the heat, I quickly made of my favorite raita, Yoghurt with Cucumber and Mint from Indian Cooking (p162), as a go-with. It's better if it gets to sit around and ripen a bit, but good enough when it's tossed together just before serving.

This curry made one of those brown Indian meals. (I find it a challenge to avoid monochrome plates of Indian food.) Not the most attractive meal served over plain basmati rice. We were both surprised and disappointed by the bitter taste, but I will try this again when eggplants are in season.

This post is shared with this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs.

IHCC: Out of India

With my old World of the East Vegetarian Cooking and the more recent Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian, as well as several other of Jaffrey's books, at hand, I was really spoiled for choice with this week's theme. Which to choose, which to choose? In the end, I found several recipes for kookoos, an Iranian kind of frittata or Spanish-style tortilla, in both books which sounded appealing. I finally settled on Shamsi Davis' Persian Egg and Potato Cake (Kookoo Seeb Zameeni) from World Vegetarian (p538).

This is actually a fairly easy dish to make and turned out better than other frittatas I've made in the past. While you're boiling a pair of potatoes, you sauté finely chopped onion and garlic. When these are soft, they're set aside. Unfortunately the recipe instructions never tell you what to do with this. I reread them several times and asked for my DH's fresh eyes to do the same. No luck.

When the potatoes are done, you peel them while they're still hot, then rice or mash them. Stir in four beaten eggs, salt and pepper, and some chives. I added the onions here.

Meanwhile more fat is heated in a non-stick skillet (I used a cast iron one) and the eggy potato mixture plopped in. It's cooked on low for 15 minutes, then popped under the broiler for a short time. Then you turn the kookoo over (I used a plate to help, but more agile people can manage to do this directly in the skillet) and cook it for another 5 minutes. Jaffrey says this can be served hot, at room temperature, or chilled. We had ours hot for dinner, followed by a salad. Looking forward to the rest for lunch one day soon. I expect this would make a nice starter, cut in thin wedges, or a luncheon dish.

The recipe calls for a lot of fat (olive oil, olive oil and butter, or ghee), and I expect the amount for sautéing the onions could be cut by half, and the amount for cooking the kookoo could be cut by at least a third.

This post is shared with this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs.

IHCC: Show Your Love!

This week I made a sweet for my sweetie. He especially likes pistachios right now, so when I found the recipe for Mrs Kumud Kansara's Coco Pista Pasand—Coconut Pistachio Sweetmeats in Flavours of India (p88), I knew I'd found what I was going to make.

Indian sweetmeats are typically very sweet, and these are no exception, but the tastes are very yummy. You start here by making a paste of unsalted pistachios, confectioner's sugar, poppy seeds, and milk. The recipe calls for white poppy seeds, but I read on the web that white and black are interchangeable, so I used those. Perhaps if I'd had white poppy seeds to use, the pistachio paste layer wouldn't have been visible, so the flavor would have been a surprise.

Next you make a simple syrup that makes a single thread when dropped from a spoon into cold water. I'm not at all experienced with this kind of thing and found it a bit hard to see the "thread" when you drop clear syrup into clear water. But after several tries I did think I saw the shadow of a single thread floating, so I called it done. Off the heat, you stir in coconut and a powder of ground cardamom pods (yes, pods and seeds ground together). When that is well mixed, you stir in 1/4 cup of condensed milk. (Now what am I going to do with the rest of that can?)

While the coconut paste is still warm, you roll it into a 9" sausage, then flatten it. My coconut paste didn't want to hold together all that well, making me wonder if I didn't get the syrup "hard" enough.

Next you roll the pistachio paste into a similar length. My pistachio paste didn't really hold together that well, but it was fairly easy to make several string-like bits to lay out on the coconut. Then, using the plastic wrap that you formed the coconut rectangle on, you roll the coconut over the pistachio, making a little log. Cool this, then slice to serve.

We've been enjoying these (very) sweetmeats with our afternoon tea and coffee, and very tasty they are!

This post is shared with this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs.

IHCC: February Potluck!

Potluck time. So I asked Ed what he'd like this week. Lamb, he said. Having some lamb chops in the freezer to be used, I searched my stack of Jaffrey books for a new lamb recipe, one using lamb chops. In At Home with Madhur Jaffrey, I found Pakistani-Style Grilled Lamb Chops (p119). Thinking I had three lamb chops in the freezer, I bought an extra three. When I defrosted  my package, it turned out to be five chops, bringing me very close to a full recipe. And it indeed served three people (it's advertised as 2-3), when a friend showed up a dinner time.

The chops are rubbed with a paste of grated ginger, crushed garlic, lemon juice, salt, cayenne, freshly ground black pepper, and garam masala. Then they marinate for four to twenty-four hours in the fridge. When you're ready to cook, you brush them with some oil (I forgot this step) and broil them 3-4 minutes per side. I'm sure the barbecue grill would work fine too.

This is a really easy dish to assemble and the chops were delicious. It's perfect for a weeknight or company because you can get the meat marinating well ahead of time and the actual cooking just takes a few minutes.

I served this with dishes I've made before: Pan-Grilled Zucchini (p173) and Mushroom Pullao from Indian Cooking (p152).

This post is shared with this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs.

IHCC: Give me comfort!

Roast chicken is Ed's idea of comfort food. My idea of comfort right now is working on the freezer backlog. So when I found the recipe for Whole Chicken, Baked in Aluminum Foil (Murgh Musallam) in Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking (p80), I knew I'd found this week's idea for IHCC. Jaffrey presents this as her simplified version of the traditional murgh musallam. When I looked a bit on the web for a what a traditional recipe might look like, there didn't seem to be much agreement. There was often a tomato saucy component that's missing here.

First, the skinned bird is marinated in a blend of ginger, garlic, and yogurt with turmeric, cayenne, salt, and pepper. While that's sitting, you make a paste of onion, garlic, ginger, and sliced almonds with cumin, coriander, turmeric, paprika, cayenne, and salt. This mixture is fried (I used only half the oil listed), then lemon juice, black pepper, and garam masala are stirred in and the mixture allowed to cool.

When the chickie  has finished marinating, it's rubbed with the onion paste, sealed in foil, and popped in the oven for 1-1/2 hours. It comes out tender and smelling delicious.

This recipe ends rather abruptly, to my mind. There are no final serving instructions. What am I supposed to do with the juices that have accumulated? It feels like a final paragraph was edited out to save space.

I served the chicken with the suggested Mushroom Pullao (p152) and the non-suggested Spicy Cucumber Wedges (p172). (You can see we've already been munching these.) Yogurt with Cucumber and Mint (p152) was also suggested—this is my favorite recipe for raita—but I forgot to make yogurt last night so we had to skip this.

This post is shared with this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs.

IHCC: Sweet Endings

Indian cuisine is full of wonderful sweet things. Many of them are really too sweet for our tastes gulab jamun soaked in rose water syrup really sets both our teeth on edge. But there are some delicious creamy, milky, cheesy desserts waiting to be made. The hard part for this week's challenge was choosing. In the end, I took the easy way out and chose a fruit dessert that was simple-to-make and delicious—Pears Poached in a Saffron Syrup from Madhur Jaffrey's Cookbook: Food for Family & Friends (p185)

Peeled and cored pears are simmered for 25 minute is a simple syrup with cardamon pods, saffron threads, and lemon juice. After removing the cooked pears, the syrup is boiled down further. These are the plates waiting to be served. Before they got to the table, my DH added a scoop of vanilla ice cream to each plate. While this was very yummy, I'm not sure it wasn't a bit of gilding the lily.

Aside: France produces 20 kilograms of saffron each year. Last fall I visited a local safranerie where we got to pick the flowers and have a go at cutting the pistil from the flowers. The saffron I used tonight came from the shop there. The high price of saffron reflects the very tedious manual labor that's required to produce it.

This post is shared with this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs.

IHCC: Dried fruit!

Finding an interesting recipe to try using dried fruit was more of a challenge than I expected. Of course lots of Indian dishes have raisins, which really aren't very inspiring and choosing between the recipes was hard. Then I found Stewed Dried Fruit in World of the East Vegetarian Food (p388), a recipe from the Caucasus. Plus it was going to help use up a recently opened box of dried figs.

You can't get much easier than this for the cooking. Plop your dried fruit in a saucepan, add water, bring to a boil, and simmer for half an hour. Stir in sugar and simmer till it's dissolved. As Jaffrey suggests, I removed the fruit and simmered the juice until it was reduced quite a bit. The recipe calls for dried prunes, figs, and apricots, plus slices of lemon. I'm sure you could use whatever fruit you have available. Serve warm or cold, plain, or with yogurt or cream. They'll show up over ice cream for tonight's dinner, I expect.

This post is shared with this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs.

IHCC: Potluck!

The project for using up older stuff in the freezer led to a little leg of goat needing to be cooked. A bit of web searching turned up Jaffrey's recipe for Pakistani Goat Curry. This is reportedly from At Home with Madhur Jaffrey, a book I don't yet have, but have ordered because there have been so many tasty-looking recipes from that book posted for IHCC.

This curry is really easy to make and the resulting sauce is quite delicious. My little goat leg (from a kid, I think) was about half the size asked for the recipe. To compensate, I used most of the spices, cutting back only the liquid part. I couldn't cut my leg into chunks or even disjoint it, so I just cooked it whole in the pan and pulled the meat from the bones when it was done.

You begin by sautéing cinnamon sticks, cardamom pods, and sliced onion. When the onion begins to brown, garlic and ginger are added. Stir that around, then add the goat, some turmeric, ground coriander, and cayenne. Stir this for a few minutes, then add a bit of water, which you then boil off to make a nice paste for browning the meat. Now you add more water, cover, and simmer gently for an hour. Then you add potatoes and cook another thirty minutes until the potatoes are done. At this point the sauce was still a bit watery, so I thickened it with a bit of potato starch. Serve and eat.

The side dish is Gingery Cabbage and Peas, a Gujarati recipe from Flavours of India (p67). We liked this a lot, although not especially with this particular curry. I'm trying to widen my repertoire of vegetable side dishes and this was another new one.

This post is shared with this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs.

IHCC: Appetizers!

Neither Ed nor I are party people, and on New Year's Eve we're big stay-at-homes. I usually make and buy a selection of little goodies we can eat throughout the evening while we watch a film or play a game. This year, with appetizers as the IHCC theme, I decided to do a selection of Jaffrey's finger foods for our evening fare.

Here's most of the spread. Clockwise from the upper left, there's Baba Ghanoush (Creamed Eggplant with Tahini) (World-of-the-East Vegetarian Cooking, p334), pita quarters, Easy Kebabs (Tala Gosht) (Spice Kitchen, p34), Shrimp with Garlic and Chilies (Lehsun Vali Jhinga) (Quick & Easy Indian Cooking, p17), Ajwain-Flavored Chicken (Murgh Ke Mazedar Tukray) (Spice Kitchen, p32), and Sour Potatoes (Khatte Aloo) (100 Essential Curries, p11). 

The chicken, shrimp, and lamb are dishes I've made before, served as a main course, rather than as nibbly bits. I've not used this particular recipe for baba ghanoush before (or at least I didn't make a note of it), but what was most interesting about it is that I used frozen eggplant! A couple of months ago, I had an eggplant that wasn't going to get used. I roasted it, peeled away the charred skin, mashed it up, and froze it. And it worked great! If you like baba ghanoush (or other dishes with mashed roasted eggplant), this is something to do with your bounty. (I read somewhere that you can do this with or without the flavorings, but that it works best to freeze just the eggplant.)

The lamb was a bit that didn't get used for lamb biryani. I had about one quarter of the meat called for in the recipe and used about half the spices. The meat can be marinating for several hours, and the finishing is quite easy, taking very little attention, so it's a good party food. 

The chicken is one kip filet (skinless, boneless chicken breast half); this was about one third of the meat called for in the recipe. Again I used about half the spices. I left this marinating quite a while also. The finishing takes a little more attention than the lamb, but nothing is complicated, so it's also a good party food.

I made the shrimp dish with frozen cooked shrimp, rather than raw. To keep the amount parallel with the lamb and chicken, I should have cooked only half the shrimp I had, but opted to finish off the package. The rest will appear in another dish in the next days. This dish takes a little more last-minute attention, but could still work as proper party food.

The Sour Potatoes were delicious and a snap to make. You start with cold boiled potatoes, peel and cube them, then toss with salt, lemon juice, ground roasted cumin, freshly ground black pepper, cayenne, and chopped coriander. If you're in the habit of keeping boiled potatoes in the fridge (aren't we all?!), this could be a quick and healthy snack at any time.

This post is shared with this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs. It's hard to believe we're already half-way through six months of cooking with Madhur Jaffrey. It's been fun trying new recipes, revisiting old favorites, and finally making some of the treats that have been on my make-me-soon list for a very long time.

IHCC: Red and Green

Red and green for the holidays. Well the tablecloth is red and the spinach is green.

Actually, red things were hard for me to think of, but the green was easy. Saag Paneer has been on my make-me-sometime list for way too many years. It's a restaurant favorite, although sometimes the paneer can be a tad rubbery. With this week's them, I finally had the excuse I needed to give it a try. I found recipes in a several of Jaffrey's books, but went with the one in World-of-the-East Vegetarian Cooking (p240; the paneer is on p238).

As the red go-with, I chose Red Split Lentils with Cumin from Indian Cooking (p122). Red lentils are strangely mis-named. They're orange when you buy them and a rather unappealing gold color when they're cooked, but they taste good. This is a simple recipe I've made several times before so there was nothing new here.

Making the paneer turned out to be quite simple. You simply bring the whole milk to a boil, remove it from the heat, stir in some lemon juice, and let it sit for 15 minutes. Then you pour the curdled mixture into some cheesecloth and suspend it to drain overnight. (I used butter muslin, and have recently read that it's actually better for the job than what I know as cheesecloth. When I went to top up my stash of cheesecloth last year, not having found any in French shops nearby, butter muslin is what turned up in online UK shopping.) 

The recipe calls for 5 cups of whole milk; I used a liter and adjusted the lemon juice accordingly. It was strange to me that there was almost exactly a liter of whey after the curds were removed. And, actually, not much more liquid came off beyond the whey that originally formed. It could have evaporated, I suppose, but since it's been raining most of the time of late (we're building an ark), I would expect the humidity to be quite high already. The next afternoon the curds were very dry.

Because they were so dry, they didn't really want to hold together all that well, but after being pressed under a cast iron Dutch oven full of water for a couple of hours, the paneer was solid enough to cut up and cook with, although the pieces weren't all that pretty.

The dish itself is easy to make, although I was pleased to have help in stemming all that spinach. I had only about 500g of fresh spinach (rather than 1-1/2 pounds), but that's still a lot. (Next time I might try this with frozen spinach which will make it a really easy dish.) First you brown the paneer, then remove it from the skillet and sprinkle with with salt, garam masala, and cayenne. Using the same oil, you fry a paste of garlic, ginger, and a chile that you've already whizzed up with water. After 30 seconds, you stir in the finely chopped spinach and some salt, cover, and cook slowly for 15 minutes. FInally you add the paneer and some cream, cover, and cook for another 10 minutes. I cut both these times quite a bit short and it didn't hurt a bit.

We were both very pleased with the result. Although the paneer was not as pretty as what you might be served in a restaurant, it was definitely tender and tasty.

This post is shared with this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs.

IHCC: Foods To Warm You Up!

This was a topic open to a bit of interpretation. At first I thought something nice and hot would be in order, but then again, maybe a comfort food would be more in order. After yesterday's biryani feast, I opted for a tried-and-true dinner, a simple favorite we've enjoyed many times.

This was Lentils with Garlic and Onion (Indian Cooking, p124) with Simple Buttery Rice with Onions (Indian Cooking, 149). Then lentils are intended as a side dish, but I use them as a vegetarian main dish over rice. For a dinner for two, I made the full amount of the lentil recipe and a third of the rice. This is a very generous dinner, and there's a bit of the lentils in the fridge for leftovers night.

The lentils are started by frying some cumin seeds, then adding a goodly amount of garlic, then adding a chopped onion and cooking till it begins to brown. Stir in the lentils and water, bring to a boil, cover, and simmer at a low heat till the lentils are done, about an hour. Finally add some salt and cayenne and simmer a bit longer. I always use the higher measure for the cayenne, and a sloppily generous measure at that. The buttery rice is really good with many dishes. I use about half the butter asked.

This post is shared with this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs.

IHCC: Rice is nice!

Rice is nice, indeed, and Jaffrey's books are full of delicious ricey things to make. Some of them have already been posted this week. I wanted to do something more ambitious this week, but wasting two days waiting for a DHL package meant no chance for grocery shopping, and other commitments made Sunday the only "big" cooking day, so I'm feeling a bit rushed.

When I saw the rice theme, my first thought was of making a biryani, a favorite. Last week Ms. en Place made Shrimp Biryani, using the recipe I made in May. (It's good!) Shrimp is my favorite biryani, but since that has just been (well)done, I decided instead on my second favorite biryani, one with lamb. A check through my books turned up Lamb and Rice Casserole (Mughlai lamb biryani) in Indian Cooking (p154). A biryani is a festive dish, so dinner became a bit of a feast, with Yoghurt with Eggplant (p164) and Tomato, Onion, and Green Coriander Relish (p172), accompaniments recommended by Jaffrey. When I saw Jaffrey make this relish on TV, she said that mint could be used in place of the coriander or parsley. Since there is no coriander in the shops right now, I used that instead. The eggplant dish was already a favorite; the relish was new to us and a definite keeper.

Making the biryani is quite a long affair, nothing especially difficult but lots of wall clock time passes. You need to allow at least 5 hours from start to finish. It's easy to fit in the side dishes while the biryani progresses. And the last hour in unattended in the oven, so this could be a good company dish.

You start by rinsing, then soaking basmati rice for three hours. Then you prepare some saffron milk which also sits for three hours. You make a paste of chopped onion, garlic, ginger, and almonds. Then there are sliced onions to be crisped up for the garnish, as well as raisins to be plumped and almonds to be toasted. After your lamb chunks are browned and removed to a bowl, you fry the onion-garlic-ginger-almond paste till it starts to brown. You add the lamb chunks back to the skillet, and stir in some yogurt, a tablespoon at a time. When that's done, you add salt and water and let the meat simmer, covered, for 30 minutes. 

While that's happening, you grind up some cloves, black peppercorns, seeds from coriander pods, cardamom, cumin, and coriander seeds, ginger, and a chunk of a nutmeg. That gets stirred into the meat sauce, along with a dab of cayenne, and the mixture simmers for another 30 minutes. At the end of this time, you might need to simmer the pot uncovered for a few minutes to reduce the sauce. I didn't find this necessary, possibly because I was making a third recipe, so liquid tends to be a bit short. The meat sauce is spread on the bottom of a casserole dish. 

Meanwhile, the rice gets drained, stirred into boiling water, and cooked for exactly six minutes. This is drained, then piled into a hill on the meat. You make a hole in center of the rice hill, then pour the saffron milk over the sides and into the well. Bits of butter on the sides, a scattering of browned onions on top, and into a slow oven it goes, well covered, for an hour. At the end, you stir everything together, turn it onto a platter, garnish with the rest of the browned onions, raisins, almonds, and hard-boiled egg, and serve.

Ed said this wasn't quite as good as what's served at our favorite restaurant in Amsterdam, but it was a pretty close second.

Continuing with the rice theme, I made Light Rice Pudding (Phirni) from Climbing the Mango Trees (p262). Scented with cardomom seeds, this was tasty, if a bit too sweet for us.

There's a bit of a problem with this recipe: it calls for 100g or 2oz of sugar to sweeten 2 cups of milk. My scale was set for grams, so I weighed out 100g and marveled at the amount of sugar for this amount of milk. Of course, 100g is 3.5oz of sugar, which would have made it almost inedible, I expect. I used the 2oz (56g), and might cut it back a bit further (50g perhaps), since neither of us cares for really sweet tastes. The recipe is supposed to serve 4, but 2 cups of milk reduces quite a bit and we had only two servings from this. Also, we both thought it would be nice to toast the chopped pistachios a bit next time. But it was very tasty and easy to make, so I expect it will get made again.

This post is shared with this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs.

IHCC: Potluck!

This week it's potluck time at I Heart Cooking Clubs, a chance to make something that's caught your eye of late. I chose to make a chickpea flour stew with dumplings. I ran into this idea a couple of years ago, when looking for a way to use up some besan (chickpea or gram flour), and used this week's theme as an excuse to actually try the recipe. (N.B.: chickpea flour/gram flour/besan doesn't seem to keep long in the cupboard, but does well in the freezer.)

Almost exactly the same recipe can be found in Climbing the Mango Trees (p254), but I used the one in A Taste of India (p42), Chickpea Flour Stew with Dumplings (Karhi). I made a half recipe with all the spices (as I frequently do). You start this dish by making the karhi sauce, first frying some cumin seeds, fennel seeds, nigella seeds, and fifteen (count them!) fenugreek seeds with dried chilies, and adding some turmeric at the end. Then you stir in the mixture of yogurt, water, and chickpea flour and let it simmer away for 25 minutes.

Meanwhile you make a batter for the dumplings of besan, baking soda, and yogurt. The recipe calls for this mixture to be beaten vigorously with a wooden spoon for ten minutes. I was already thinking of using the food processor for this when I read Julie Sahni's very similar* recipe for Chick-pea Dumplings in Yogurt Sauce (Kadhi) in Classic Indian Cooking (p284). (Yes, that's a one-letter spelling difference.) Sahni admits that vigorous beating is "tiring and time-consuming" and suggests using the food processor instead. Yay!

*Sahni says that in her family they add vegetables to the sauce, frying potatoes and onions with the spices before adding the yogurt mixture. She also adds some ground coriander to the dumpling mixture, which might be a nice touch.

Oops, I slipped a gear while halfing the recipe and added all the yogurt to the food processor, so I ended up making all the dumplings. The batter is dropped by the teaspoonful into hot oil to be fried.

When they've turned a lovely reddish color, the dumplings are drained on paper towels (Jaffrey) or in water (Sahni). I did some of each, but can't say that we noticed the difference in the final product. (Ed found a whole menagerie in all the dumpling shapes.)

When you're ready to eat, you reheat the karhi/kadhi, add the dumplings, and heat gently for ten minutes.

As suggested, I served the dumpling stew with plain basmati rice. For a veg, I made one of my standard Indian side dishes Tangy Green Beans with Ajwain and Ginger (Spice Kitchen, p38), which is nice because you can get everything ready ahead of time, then finish in the last ten minutes or so with minimal attention.

For the two of us, I made half of a recipe that should serve six, although we had all the dumplings. I was expecting to have some of the stew left, maybe to serve over toast for lunch tomorrow. But we decided to be piggy and finished it all off. Strangely, though, we both thought that the sauce that had been standing for a bit was more flavorful that what was first served.

Jaffrey suggest serving this stew with lamb kebabs, rice, and a vegetable. That sounds like quite a good combination. Also, since both the sauce and the dumplings can be made ahead and reheated just before serving, this could be a nice company dish.

This post is shared with this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs.

IHCC: Bread Week!

There are so many Indian-style breads to make! Naan has been on my to-do list for a long time, hoping that something home-made will be 1) not too hard and 2) better than the grocery store stuff, which is hardly worth the money. But with last week's holiday leading immediately to a long weekend in Bordeaux, I haven't really had time to research what I'd like to make.

As I lay in bed last night (aah! back in my own bed!), I was pondering what I could manage to do bread-wise this week and how to fit it into the schedule. I reached for the only Jaffrey book that was close at hand, which turned out to be Madhur Jaffrey's Cookbook: Food for Family and Friends. There's no proper index in this book, only a list of recipes. Under the heading "Soups and Egg Dishes" I found Golden Sesame Corn Bread. That sounded like just the thing to go with soup or chili, which sounded like something that needed to be eaten in the next days.

This turned out to be a really nice cornbread. In one sense, it's a fairly standard recipe, using yogurt as a large part of the liquid. But it also has chopped chili, grated ginger, and chopped coriander/cilantro in the batter and a topping of fried yellow mustard and sesame seeds. The only criticism either of us could manage was that there were too many sesame seeds—the proportion of mustard to sesame seeds should be maybe 2:1 instead of 1:1. Otherwise, it has a nice texture and taste and made a nice accompaniment to curried zucchini soup from the freezer (part of last summer's garden bounty).

This post is shared with this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs.

IHCC: Root, Root, Root for Root Veggies!

This week's theme is root veggies, and Madhur Jaffrey's work is full of good things to do with them. It's a busy week so I considered making an old favorite, rather than trying out a new recipe. Let's see, there are the two very good, and frequently made, carrot salads on facing pages in Indian Cooking. There's Indian Mashed Potatoes in Quick & Easy Indian Cooking that I haven't made in a while. There's Potatoes Cooked with Garlic and Sesame Seeds in World of the Easy Vegetarian Cooking. And there are more. But finally I settled on an easy dinner of Easy Chicken Kebabs (Quick & Easy Indian Cooking, p15) and Diced  Potatoes with Spinach (100 Essential Curries, p140).

Aside: Chicken is clearly not a root vegetable, but I will mention that this is a great recipe. It's easy and delicious. I usually skewer the chicken bits and broil them, although they could be served as munchies for a party. I've made this many times, and I have never used the butter or oil for basting. The chicken is moist and tender from the yogurt marinade and we've never missed the fat. Maybe it helps crisp up the outside of the chicken bits, but this has never been a problem for us.

This potato and spinach recipe is somewhat similar to one in Indian Cooking, which I've tried and not especially liked. This recipe looked enough different that I thought I'd give it a try, especially since I had potatoes in the cupboard and spinach in the freezer, both wanting to be used. Jaffrey mentions that fenugreek greens would be preferred for this recipe, but that that's something not available in my neck of the woods. Spinach worked fine, and I suspect any of the strong-tasting greens would be great here.

You start by peeling, chunking, and boiling the potatoes, cutting into 2cm pieces. The recipe says this is equivalent to 1/4 inch, but of course it's not; probably 3/4 inch was meant. My potatoes were not done in the 6 minutes asked; it was more like 10 minutes. While those are cooking, you cook your fresh or frozen spinach, then chop it. Heat a bit of ghee (or vegetable oil) and stir in some black mustard seeds. When they start popping, add some chopped onion and garlic and turn the heat to medium. Stir until the onion begins to brown a bit, then add the chopped spinach. (Actually, the garlic browned well before the garlic, so I think it might be better to add that after the onion starts to soften a bit.) Cook the spinach about 10 minutes; I think this is just getting it very dry. Then stir in the potatoes, some garam masala, cayenne, and salt. I used the maximum amount of cayenne and it was nicely tingly, but not challenging.

Jaffrey's 100 Essential Curries book is a new one around here. I find it a bit odd, since I'm fairly sure there's nothing new here, but repeats of recipes that have appeared in other books. I recognize a fair number of them from books I already have. If anyone recogizes where this potato and spinach recipe comes from, please leave a comment. I haven't found it in a book I already have, but might need a new book based on how much we liked this recipe.

This post is shared with this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs.