A couple of Indian recipes

Yesterday I decided to cook a couple of curries for dinner using my new ghee! Here are the recipes for my versions of Bombay potatoes and Chicken Saag. I preferred the potatoes while Soph preferred the Saag, but I'm pretty pleased with both recipes, rich and fresh, served with some boiled rice flavoured with fennel seeds and cardamom.

Bombay Potatoes

Ingredients

Some boiled waxy potates

2 tblsp Ghee

1/4 tsp Crushed Fennugreek seeds

1 tsp Mustard Seeds

1/2 tsp Fennel seeds

1/4 tsp Turmeric

1/2 tsp Chilli powder

1/2 tsp Black onion seeds

1/2 tsp Salt

Method

Heat the ghee in a big pan and add the spices. When they become aromatic and the mustard seeds begin to crack add the potatoes and salt and shallow fry for 10 minutes until potatoes have some colour and have absorbed the fragrant oil. Add more ghee if required, I don't really think you could put too much in!

Chicken Saag

Ingredients

Chicken thighs

2 tblsp Ghee

1 Chopped Onion

Lots of Garlic (I think I used 6 or more cloves!)

2cm Cube grated stem ginger

2 or 3 Sliced Tomatoes

Green Chillis

4 Cardamom pods

4 Bay leaves

1 tsp Garam Masala

1 tsp Cumin seeds

1 tsp Ground Coriander

1/2 tsp Turmeric

Cooked Purred Spinach (containing small amount of water)

1/2 tsp Salt 

Method

Brown the chicken pieces in a little ghee then put them to the side before continuing. Next heat the remaining ghee in the pan and add the onion. Slowly fry the onion in the ghee until transparent and add the spices, bay leaves, ginger and garlic, cooking on a medium heat for a further few moments. Next add the chillis and chicken to the pan and continue to cook for 5 mins at a lower heat. Add the Saag (purred spinach) and salt and simmer until the chicken is tender and the sauce has reduced and darkened in colour. Finally add the chopped tomatoes before serving. Some fresh coriander would be nice too at this point but sadly I didn't have any to hand.

Ghee. Just the beginning!

Been dying to do some proper authentic Indian cookery for ages. I have tried a few times in the past but have struggled to get good results, putting the problem down to not daring to use enough fat and not using ghee because I simply didn't have any. I decided to make my own ghee this time so that I could try some new Indian recipes in the future. I have also heard its nice on toast and with eggs and stuff too!

I only needed to pick up only a few Ingredients and equipment for this task:

2 blocks (500g) of good, organic, unsalted butter
Cheesecloth/Muslin
Stainless steel Funnel (wide opening, perfect for Jam and Chutney!)
500g/ml Jar for the finished product (went out and got a great Weck jar with metal clips and a cool flat glass lid!)

As for the method, I followed very detailed and well written instructions that I found at 'a smart mouth' which go into lots of detail about the process of clarifying and cooking the butter to get the perfect flavour and colour. Be warned though that less butter will mean that the cooking time is dramatically reduced. For my 500g of butter, it took approximately 20 minutes until the bubbles began to fizz, the mixture began to smell of caramel and the milk solids began to brown at the edges.

Also, I think it is important to remove the ghee from the heat and strain into the Jar as soon as it has reached the desired stage to stop it from over cooking. This means having the jar/muslin/funnel ready... unlike me!

Freshly filtered ghee, complete with fizzy bubbles

Ghee will solidify and keep for months, if not years, at room temperature

Hot Chilli Sauce

Recipe makes about 1L of very hot sauce

With hundreds of chillis soon to go to waste from my two plants I decided to make chilli sauce. I eat a lot of hot pepper sauce so I have lots of bottles saved and could also do with a way to reduce the amount I spend on it. A quick breeze around the internet gave me plenty of ideas for a recipe. As my chillis are hot and small I have decided to bulk out the sauce with carrots, hopefully reducing the heat and retaining the hot pepper sauce colour. Here's the recipe I used for my first attempt at making chilli sauce:

Ingredients

30-40 Birdseye Chillis
1 Onion
6 Cloves of Garlic
8 Small Carrots
100g Brown Sugar
1 tsp Cumin
1 tsp Turmeric
1 tsp Mustard
1 tblsp Tomato Puree
1 tsp Salt
500ml Cider Vinegar

Method

Lightly caremelise the chopped onions, garlic carrots and add the spices, mustard, sugar, salt, chillis and vinegar and bring to the boil. Try to avoid choking to death on the spicy/acidic fumes which will fill the kitchen! Simmer until carrots are tender (I cant remember how long this took, maybe about 30 mins on a medium/low heat). Once cooked, blend in a liquidiser and decant into sterilised (heated in oven until dry and hot) glass bottles, lid and label. the sauce should be ready to eat after 2-3 months of maturing.