Date Tamarind Chutney and Aloo Tikki Chana Chaat

Whew, that's a mouthful of a post title. But a tasty mouthful, I promise you.

Over my decade-long stint as a home cook, there are several things for which I have made the journey from home-made to store-bought and back full circle to home-made. The sweet and tangy date-tamarind chutney is one of these. It is one of the first things I learned to make from scratch, in Bombay. Once I was running my own kitchen in NYC, bottled store-bought date tamarind chutney had a permanent place in my fridge door. Then in the last couple of years, I was annoyed at buying something that is so simple to make at home, and I'm back to making my own. 

This tamarind chutney is a minimalist version calling for, count 'em, all of 4 ingredients: dates, tamarind, jaggery (unrefined sugar) and cumin-coriander powder. OK, salt and water too. 

In the recipe below, I have written down approximate quantities for each ingredient but the truth is that dates, tamarind and jaggery are all ingredients with unique personalities. One brand of tamarind may have a different degree of sourness than another brand, and so on. These ingredients are also not easy to measure. Try wrestling nuggets of jaggery into a measuring cup or scooping out exact quantities of sticky tamarind. The solution is to just use approximate quantities of the ingredients and rejoice in the fact that every batch of chutney you make will also have a unique personality.

All the ingredients are available wherever Indian groceries are sold. 

Date Tamarind Chutney

1. Mix together in a saucepan.

• 1 cups water
• 1 cup soft pitted dates 
• ¹⁄₄ cup jaggery (unrefined sugar)
• ¹⁄₄ cup tamarind concentrate (tamicon is a good brand and easy to find)
• Salt to taste

2. Bring the mixture to a boil, then simmer for 10 minutes.

 

3. Let it cool, then blend to a paste in the blender. Add water as needed to make a sauce.

4. Taste and add more of tamarind or jaggery or salt to get the sweet/tangy/salty balance you like best.

3. (optional) Add ground cumin and coriander and cayenne pepper to taste. 

4. Refrigerate. Can be frozen!

Pour on anything and everything and pretend you are enjoying chaat from your favorite vendor. I made this chutney specifically for some Aloo Tikki Chana Chaat. It is the North Indian cousin of the ragda patties. I don't know if what follows is a particularly authentic recipe; it is just my way of making it.

Chana for Aloo Tikki Chana Chaat

1. Soak 1.5 cups chickpeas overnight. Rinse them well and pressure cook them until tender.

2. Heat 1 tbsp. oil and fry 2 minced onions until lightly browned.

3. Add the following and saute until fragrant:

• Ginger garlic paste
• Turmeric powder
• Red chilli powder
• Coriander-cumin powder
• Chana masala (chhole masala), the best you can find or make
• Amchur powder
• Salt to taste

4. Add 3-4 chopped tomatoes and fry for a few minutes.

5. Add cooked chickpeas and bring to a boil. Simmer for 10 minutes. Mash in some of the chickpeas to thicken the curry. 

To assemble the chaat, layer the following in a bowl: 

• Aloo tikkis: I make them very simply, nothing but boiled mashed potato and salt (and sometimes bread as a filler) formed into patties and shallow-fried, as shown in this recipe. You can add spices to the tikkis if desired.
• Chana 
• Minced raw onion
• Minced cilantro
• Sev
• Date tamarind chutney
• Whipped yogurt (optional)

There you have it, chaat that feels like a special treat but packs in plenty of nutrition among the layers of flavor. 

Feeding a Crowd: Wraps, Indian Style

To someone like me who usually cooks small portions for my family of two, cooking for a crowd needs a little bit of planning and some simple math to scale up the recipes. Today, I made a tray of wraps for a potluck, and I wanted to jot down the proportions for future reference.

These wraps have some Indian flair, stuffed with a crunchy salad and either a paneer pepper filling or a vegan chickpea spinach filling. My goal was to make each filling juicy enough that it would be tasty but dry enough that it would not make the wraps soggy. Both fillings can be made a day ahead of time and stored in the refrigerator. As with most Indian curries, they actually taste better if made ahead of time. With the curries ready to go, making the salad and assembling the wraps is quick and easy.

The proportions given below were enough for 10 wraps with each filling.

1. Chickpea filling: This was a rehash of the palak chana recipe from last summer.

1. Soak ¹⁄₂  cups dried chickpeas overnight. Rinse them and cook them in a pressure cooker.
   
2. Heat 2 tbsp. oil. Add 1 tsp. cumin seeds and saute 2 medium minced onions until they are browned. 
3. Add 2 tsp. ginger-garlic paste, chana masala, turmeric and red chilli powder to taste. 
4. Add ¹⁄₂  bag frozen chopped spinach (or a bunch of chopped fresh spinach), 3 chopped tomatoes and salt to taste, then simmer uncovered until everything is cooked through and the mixture is quite dry. 
5. Taste the mixture and if it is not tasty enough, spike it with some chaat masala or paprika or both.

2. Paneer filling: This was a rehash of the kati roll recipe from a couple of years ago.

1. Heat 2 tbsp. oil. Saute 2 medium red onions, cut in large dice, and 2 large red/yellow peppers, cut in large dice, until the vegetables are seared and tender.
2. Stir in 2 tsp. ginger-garlic paste, 1 tbsp. kasuri methi, turmeric and red chilli powder to taste. 
3. Add 1 block/14 oz/400 g paneer, cut in cubes. 
4. Add 3-4 diced tomatoes and salt to taste. 
5. Stir fry the mixture until it is almost dry. 
6. Season generously with paprika, chaat masala and garam masala.

3. Salad

Toss together:
1 small red onion, thinly sliced using a mandoline
Wedge of cabbage, thinly sliced using a mandoline (2-3 cups)
2 medium carrots, shredded
¹⁄₂  bunch cilantro, minced
Juice of ¹⁄₂  lemon
Salt to taste

 4. The wraps: I used whole wheat tortillas from Trader Joe's. Any home made or store bought flatbreads would work well.

5. Assembling the wraps: Place some filling and salad in the center of the tortilla, fold in the side edges and roll it up. Warming the tortillas makes them more pliable. Use a bread knife to gently cut the wrap in half to make it easier to grab smaller portions.

The Bookshelf

I read a couple of books last week: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer and The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley.

I picked them up without really knowing what the books were about, so I was startled to find that these two books have several features in common: they are both mysteries of sorts, have interesting and fast-paced story-lines and the protagonists in both the books are young children who are extremely smart, articulate, precocious, who have lost a parent and who have a major sass mouth on them. Unfortunately, I have very little patience in general and even less patience with impudent children. So while there were portions of these books when I thought the children were clever and entertaining, there were other times when I dearly wanted to be there to send these kids to their rooms. All in all, these are good reads.

I'm making an appetizer tomorrow and a dessert on Saturday to share with friends. If either recipes turns out to be blog-worthy, I'll come tell you about it. See you then!

Greens and Beans

Connections are everything, they say. "It's not what you know; it's who you know". Apparently, the right connections can get you a job, a business contract, all kinds of opportunities in life. But the very best connections, as far as I am concerned, are my foodie connections, this network of bloggers that are all tied together by their passion for food and cooking whether or not they have anything else in common. These connections can get you the things that really matter ;)

One such connection landed me a lot of goodies only a few weeks ago. While I was in Mumbai, I got a warm invitation to visit the home of the Saffron Trail. Nandita cooked a wonderful dinner for V and me and we enjoyed several hours of engaging gup-shup even though we had never set eyes on each other before that evening. Before I left, Nandita generously gave me some fantastic gifts, one of which was a nondescript packet of masala powder called "Goldiee chhole ka masala". With a gleam in her eye, she promised me that this is a fantastic spice blend and you need nothing other than the basic onion and tomato gravy to make a authentic mouth-watering chana masala with this stuff.

She wasn't kidding! These Goldiee people know the formula, for sure. I made what tastes like a complex restaurant-style curry using basic pantry staples like black chickpeas, frozen spinach, garlic, tomatoes and onions. If you don't have this brand, use your own favorite brand of chana masala powder, or perhaps a home-made mix.

Palak Chana

Ingredients:
1 C black chickpeas, soaked for 8 hours, then cooked until tender
½ bag frozen leaf spinach
½ large onion, sliced thinly
½ t turmeric powder
1 t chana masala powder (or more/less to taste)
salt to taste
Gravy:
2 t oil
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1 ½ large onions, coarsely chopped
3 C canned whole tomatoes (with juice)

Method:
1. Make the gravy: Saute onions in oil until golden brown, add garlic and saute for couple of minutes, add tomatoes and saute for 5 minutes. Let the mixture cool for a bit, then grind together into a thick paste.
2. To make the curry, heat the oil and saute the sliced onion until golden.
3. Add the salt, turmeric and chana masala powder. Saute for a minute.
4. Add the spinach, cooked chickpeas and tomato-onion gravy. Bring to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes.

Make this curry a day ahead of serving if possible- the taste improves overnight!

To go with the rich chana masala, I used Shilpa's recipe for a fragrant pulao studded with whole spices. My only tweak was to use blanched almonds instead of cashews because that is what I had on hand. On a whim, I skipped the usual golden raisins and added some dried mixed berries (cherries, strawberries, blueberries) instead.


If I survive another day of this ongoing heat wave in St. Louis, I'll be back with a recipe for a summer drink.

Hummus and Kibbeh

A few people have recently asked me what I think of the vegetarian dining-out options in St. Louis. I am just starting to find out, actually. We moved here from NYC with zero expectations, and if every restaurant in town had been selling barbecue, I would not have blinked en eyelid. So it has been a pleasant surprise to find that almost every weekend, we are able to find a new place to try. I have no idea if any St. Louis residents actually read this blog, but more for my own record than anything else, I have started a small restaurant list here (there is a link in the right side-bar as well). Anyway, last weekend, we particularly enjoyed a dinner at a very cute local restaurant called "Stellina Pasta Cafe". It had been one of those exhausting weeks where the days went by in a blur, and with the rush between work and school and household chores and dog-rearing, V and I barely got a chance to have a normal conversation. A relaxed dinner with good food really cheered us up that Saturday evening! Grilled pita served with hummus and olives is probably the most common appetizer on restaurant menus in this country today, but this cafe did an exceptional job with it. I've made hummus once or twice before at home, it never really turned out well, and as we drove home, I reminded myself to give it another shot.

I happened to be thumbing through Suvir Saran's new book American Masala the next day (many thanks to the publishers for sending me a review copy), and lo and behold, came upon a recipe for toasted garlic hummus. I took it as a sign, and ended up making the hummus last night for dinner.
This is a very interesting cookbook- rather than focusing on one region, one course or one genre, it embraces the multifaceted nature of us home cooks. Like curious magpies hoarding shiny objects, cooking enthusiasts seem to collect recipes as they go along in their culinary lives. No matter what food we grew up eating and what cuisine we normally cook, our repertoire evolves into a unique collection that tells the story of our life- whom we met, where we have travelled, what tastes we lean towards. One recipe may be the hallmark of a local festival that we have started to celebrate; another may be learnt years ago from Grandma. Yet another may be from some out-of-print cookbook that we found at a garage sale. Well, this cookbook is essentially like taking a peek into Saran's personal recipe file- except that, instead of yellowing lined notepaper with ball-point scribblings (I only imagine his notebook looks like this because mine does!), it is a lush cookbook with vibrant photographs in jewel tones. This tendency of developing a wildly assorted recipe collection is especially true of those of us who live in foreign lands, and especially true of the US where so many cultures live and eat together. A single chapter in Saran's cookbook has dishes ranging from enchiladas to lasagna, from paella to biryani. Isn't this just the crazy way many of us eat today? Many of the dishes reminded me of the same things that so many bloggers tend to do: take a dish, apply a unique twist and make it your own. In this cookbook, for instance, I came across unusual flavor pairings such as cardamom-roasted cauliflower and chocolate-hazelnut torte with ginger, cloves and cayenne. The book has both vegetarian and meat-seafood dishes, everything from breakfast to desserts.

Coming back to the hummus: it is commonly made with canned chickpeas. In my hands, that does not work so well for some reason and I feel like the resulting hummus tastes "pasty" and "raw". This time, I soaked the chickpeas and pressure-cooked them, with much better results. I used way more (1 whole head) roasted garlic than what Saran suggested (2 cloves). Roasted garlic has a mellow flavor and I like using it generously. Also, he suggests using a broiler to toast the garlic- and I just used my toaster oven. The combination of toasted cumin and roasted garlic is so delicious here.

Roasted Garlic Hummus

(adapted from Suvir Saran's American Masala)
1. Roast 1 head of garlic until the cloves are soft (see methods here and here). Peel the skin off.
2. In a food processor bowl fitted with the metal blade, place 2 C chickpeas (preferably home-cooked, but canned should work too), 2 heaped T tahini (sesame seed paste), 2 T extra-virgin olive oil, juice of 1 lemon, peeled roasted garlic, 1 t toasted cumin seeds, red chilli flakes to taste, and salt and pepper to taste.
3. Process, adding a little water if required, to a smooth paste. Taste and add more salt or lemon juice if required. Serve with olives (I bought some delicious marinated olives from the olive bar at Whole Foods) and wedges of toasted pitas.

I wanted a hearty main course to go with this hummus platter, and decided to try a recipe that had been long book-marked: Potato Kibbeh from Vegan Feast Kitchen. The post gives a lot of interesting information about kibbeh- delicious morsels of potato and bulgur wheat. The recipe is easy easy- olive oil and sliced onions layered in a baking pan, a mashed potato-soaked bulgur (uncooked)-cinnamon-herb mixture layered on top, drizzled with more olive oil and baked until golden. Cinnamom gives a unique aroma to this dish, for sure.

I halved the recipe but loved it so much that I will definitely be making it again, especially when I have hungry hordes to feed! I used coarse bulgur because that was what I had on hand- but will look for a fine one next time I make this. I was also a big bore, as usual, and reduced the oil in the recipe, but it was delicious anyway. To serve with the baked kibbeh squares, I made an impromptu tzatziki-inspired sauce with yogurt, minced garlic, minced cucumber, cilantro and salt, and the combination was delicious.

P. S. You know that fall/winter is here when my food photos take a nosedive :D When supper-time rolls along, it is already dark outside and I have to take pictures in artificial light. Hence that awful yellow glow on the pictures. I need to learn how to take pictures in artificial light. Have a great week, everyone!

WHB: Falafel Bliss

This little post is my entry for Weekend Herb Blogging, a weekly event started by Kalyn that encourages food bloggers to talk about herbs and spices, fruits and vegetables. I use WHB as an excuse to bring new foods into my kitchen and explore their uses. This week, the host for WHB is Becky from Key Lime and Coconut!

My journey to falafel bliss has been a long winding road! The first time I tasted falafel was in the early years of grad school. At that time, I shared my apartment with a wonderful neuroscience student named Steph (also a vegetarian), and she and I took turns cooking dinner for our little family (and for the assortment of friends and neighbors who dropped in from time to time). We worked long hours and earned little, but ate like princesses, huge hearty gourmet meals cooked from scratch. Well, almost. Every couple of weeks, Steph would make falafel from a boxed mix. It was really quite good (or so I thought at the time), and we would generally enjoy it with some store-bought hummus or plain yogurt. Falafel is a very popular street food in NYC, and I often ate it on the run while out shopping in the city from the little carts on street corners.

What kept me from trying to make falafel from scratch was the fact that I did not own a food processor. Now that I do own one, I wanted to revisit falafel and try making my own. After all, it is a delicious and nutritious sandwich, and a crowd-pleaser at that. So, off I went on a google search for a good recipe and boy, did I strike gold with this recipe! It is called My favorite falafel recipe, and all I have to say is, Mine, too!.

Falafel is the easiest thing in the world to make, but you just need to plan ahead a little bit. The recipe calls for soaked chickpeas, which takes about 8-10 hours if you soak in cool/warm water and 4-6 hours if you use boiling hot water. The idea is get the chickpeas rehydrated all the way through. I liked a tip that I found on this website: To check is the chickpeas are soaked all the way through, cut one open. If the color is even, without a chalky center, then it is fully soaked.

I followed the falafel recipe to the letter. The soaked raw chickpeas are placed in a food processor with other aromatic goodies like herbs, garlic, onion and cumin. A few pulses later, you have a beautiful mixture. Then a bit of flour and baking powder is sprinkled and the mixture pulled together into a ball that rests in the refrigerator for a few hours. This means that you can get all the prep done ahead of time. When you are ready to serve the falafel, heat up some oil and fry them up. I was very impressed by how non-greasy the falafel were, once they were drained onto paper towels! Do keep the oil on medium heat (and not high) so that the outside of the falafel does not get browned too quickly, before the inside gets cooked.


The true highlight of our falafel meal was the tahini sauce. A Mediterranean restaurant around the corner here serves their falafel with a choice of hummus or yogurt sauce. I really enjoyed the yogurt sauce and wanted to recreate it at home. Tahini is probably a staple in many kitchens, and an everyday ingredient for some, but I never really had to buy it before now.

All tahini is, is a paste of roasted sesame seeds. It has the consistency of peanut butter, as one might expect, and is glossy and unctuous. The recipe for the tahini sauce comes from one of the reviewers of the falafel recipe. Thank you, pastagirl9 from cincinnati, whoever you are, for this wonderful recipe:

Whisk together 1/2 cup yogurt (I used low-fat), 1/2 cup tahini, 2 tbsp lemon juice, 1 minced garlic clove, 1/2 tsp cumin powder and salt to taste. Add a few tablespoons of water if the sauce looks too thick.

That's it. When I made this sauce and tasted it, I danced a little jig around the kitchen. It was so good, I knew the whole falafel party was sure to be a success just based on that one sauce.


The final touch for the falafel sandwiches: a simple salad. Cut the following vegetables into small dice: 2 seedless baby cucumbers, 3 plum tomatoes,, half yellow bell pepper, half red bell pepper and half onion. Toss the vegetables with salt, pepper, minced parsley, minced cilantro and a dash of fresh lemon juice.


Finally, to assemble falafel sandwiches, simply toast some pita pockets (I used whole-wheat for the lovely taste, store-bought though). Slip 2-4 falafel into the pita, then garnish with lots of salad and a generous drizzle of the tahini sauce. Serve right away. The taste was so authentic and spot-on! Next time, I'm going to try making my own pita bread.

Falafel is a great option for feeding a crowd, like I did...I doubled the recipe, set everything out and let people assemble their own sandwiches, and everyone enjoyed every bite. The tahini sauce is so delicious, in future I will use it as a dip for a platter of vegetable crudites and pita chips. You can leave the pita bread out and simply serve the falafel with salad and tahinin sauce as an appetizer. I'm so glad I found this recipe!

P.S.: I'm excited to be Bookworm of the week over at The Perfect Pantry. Thank you, Lydia, for the opportunity to share my favorite food-related books! You just made my day!