Mmmm... Indian food! Most Americans have made some Italian food, Mexican dishes, and possibly even tackled a French or Chinese dish or too - even if they were highly Americanized. But I don't know too many people that have tried Indian food, let alone tried to make it themselves.
I tried Indian food for the first time two years ago when I was presenting at a conference in Indianapolis.
Hmmm...
Indianapolis? I never made the connection before.
But I actually had it in Bloomington. It does live up to its name. Nearly everyone has a garden and they are all such lovely gardens! I would highly recommend a visit. And the city had some fabulous places to eat, too! I had curry chicken and my husband had tandori chicken. YUMMY!
So when I was in Scotland last year, I was already hip to Indian food. AND, would you believe that Indian food is VERY popular in Scotland? Who knew?
I ate on the run, mostly while I was there. I bought a lot of foods at the grocery deli counters, and they always had a huge assortment of tasty Indian food. Since I could buy by the piece, I took the opportunity to try out some new stuff. One of these was pakora.
ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS!! I ate them all the time!
So, when I got
my new favorite cookbook, probably my favorite recipe book of all-time, I marked the pakoras on my list of recipes to try.
I made them last week, and as usual, I didn't have all the right ingredients, so I improvised. Maybe that is a talent.
Here's the recipe as is in the book:
- 6 TBS gram(besan) flour
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp chili powder
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1-1/2 tsp white cumin seeds
- 1 tsp pomegranate seeds
- 1-1/4 cups water
- 1 TBS finely chopped cilantro
- your choice of vegetables
- vegetable oil for frying
Well, I thought I had besan (gram flour), which is a flour made from chickpeas/garbanzo beans; but alas, I did not. SO, I took some dried chickpeas and ground them into a powder with my blender. Only realizing afterwards that taking canned chickpeas and grinding them up would have been much easier! Oh well, NEXT TIME!
First you add everything but the cilantro and vegetables. Using a grinding mixer (I used a hand mixer), blend until smooth. Instead of white cumin seeds, I used cheap-brand cumin and PLENTY of it! 1-1/2 tsp my ass! I used cayenne pepper for the chili. You can use any kind of chili pepper you want. Some pepper may be too distinct for this dish, but off hand none come to mind - so just use what you want. I also threw in extra gram and some regular flour because the batter was so soupy. I figured that the batter should have the consistency of onion ring batter.
I also threw in extra pomegranate seeds. This is my first run in with a pomegranate. Interesting fruit. I will have to find more uses for it. But it is SO expensive! I figured since I had gone through so much trouble getting the sucker open and really didn't know what else I would use it for, I should throw extra seeds into this recipe. I think I used about 3-4 TBS.
Once the batter is the way that you would like it, mix in the chopped cilantro. Once again, I threw in extra because I LOVE cilantro!!
Start heating a few inches of oil in a heavy pan. The pakoras should be able to float. Or if you have a deep fryer you can use that too. I used peanut oil.
Once the oil is hot enough to fry, mix the vegetables of your choice into the batter. I would suggest using fresh vegetables. I used frozen mixed veggies with the beans, peas, corn, lima beans, and carrots - but we all agreed that even though the pakoras were very good, they would have been great if I had used fresh veggies.
Cauliflower is a good one to use for this. I also chopped up potatoes and added this to the frozen mix veggies. That was really good. Just use what you like. I do have to say that this batter makes lima beans delicious (well, probably as delicious as lima beans can get anyway).
Using a slotted spoon, spoon the veggies out of the batter and into the hot oil. Becareful the oil isn't too hot or the batter will burn and the veggies won't cook. Turn the pakoras once they appear to have browned nicely on the underside. Fry the other side until it is also deep brown.
Using another slotted spoon, take the pakoras out of the oil and place onto a plate lined with a paper towel to drain the excess oils.
The finished pakora pictures didn't turn out that great, but the pakoras sure were tasty!
Serve these hot on their own or you could make a yogurt sauce for them. They are also very good reheated later.
Many people might not think about getting funnels for their kitchen, but I use mine all the time. I especially like mine because the opennings are actually big enough for things to pass through without clogging them up; and they are so colorful.
I know that every house already has a cheese slicer. Probably one like this one. I grew up with a slicer like this in my house and never really cared for it. It is difficult to get straight slices. You usually end up with knocked knuckles and a block of cheese that is scooped on one end.
So when I was out looking for new gadgets for my kitchen and saw this cheese slicer at $8.99 (Fleet Farm of all places), I had to have it. Isn't it beautiful? AND it slices beautifully too. You can get super thin slices or really thick slices, whatever you need. It is really easy to use, you don't have hold onto the block of cheese, and the marble keeps the cheese cool too.
I got this recipe from the 1000 Vegetarian Recipe book. I'm telling you, I LOVE that book!!
This is what it looks like all mixed up. I also added some salt and pepper.
Here is Neo asking if he can have some yet. Doesn't it look like you could just stuff him in one of the manicotti?
Put the stuffed pasta in a grease baking dish. Pour pasta sauce over the top. I made my own with tomatoes I canned from my own garden, but you can use what you want. The sauce should just about cover the pasta.
Mine didn't quite make it to the browned stage since my son kept hounding me about when it would be done.
I started the recipe very similar to how I made the marmalade: slice the clemetines thinly, add 1/4 cup lemon juice -- or you could also thinly slice a lemon, add 1/4 cup sugar -- I used brown sugar for extra flavor and because I was going to jazz up the marmalade with a little spiced rum, about 2 cups of Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum to be exact (or as exact as I ever get in my recipes!).
I also added a couple tablespoons of dried cilantro. I mixed everything together in a large bowl. You need a large enough bowl for the chicken that you are cooking since you will be marinading the chicken in the marmarumalade. By the way, my clever husband came up with that name. I like to name my dishes fun names, and I think that name fit well.
When I put the chicken in the bowl, there wasn't anough marmalade marinade to cover the chicken sufficently, so my husband suggested using fruit juice. I used 2/3 of a can of 100% apple/passion/mango frozen juice concentrate.
It came out a little crispier than I had intended but the clay pot cooker did its job of keeping the chicken moist, and it was DELICIOUS!! 
Coronation Chicken was invented by Constance Spry who wanted to serve something new and special for the Queen's Coronation lunch in 1953.
I usually don't go to sales parties, but a friend that I don't see that often was having a Pampered Chef party, so I went. I wasn't intending to buy anything, but I walked away with a pizza stone. I felt like I had fallen for the peer pressure and I regreted it immediately since the stone was $25.
It did not take me long to find one here though. One of my new favorite stores is the World Market from Costco. It ROCKS!! Way better than Pier One. It actually has things that you would use everyday at very good prices. My husband was all for trying anything that would make a really good cup of coffee so he put it in our basket. $25 for this one.
The top is attached to the strainer thing, so that when you pull on the top knob, it pulls the strainer up. You have to pull the whole strainer out and put the ground bean in the bottom.
Use boiling water. The hotter the water, the better tasting the coffee will be. Also, using good tasting water dramatically affects the taste of the coffee. I use the water from our Britta filter pitcher.
Stir before putting the strainer back in the decanter. Push the strainer down slowly. If it gets hung up, pull up a little, then continue pushing down. The finer the grind, the harder this part can be - but it is easy to get the hang of it.
Serve the coffee immediately.
Pour 1/2 bottle of a good wine into a large, stain-free bowl. I used a Mirassou pinot noir. I would have drank it, but I had opened it the night before and fell asleep after two glasses and left it out over night. Interestingly enough, it turned from a fruity, woody flavor to one more like green olives. Mmmm... green olives!
Place the marinaded chicken in a pan for going in the oven. I used the clay pot cooker, but you could use regular pan or a dutch oven. Whatever you got. In a regular pan, I would suggest adding about 1 inch of the marinade to the bottom of the pan to keep the chicken from going dry.
In the clay pot cooker, I cooked it for two hours at 450 degrees. I'm not sure what it would be in a regular pan: 1-2 hours on 350 degrees? I would cover with tin-foil for first hour if in a regular pan, and then crisp the skin for twenty minutes without tin foil.
Some were wondering about cleaning the clay pot cooker and I had said that it would build a nice patina that would make it gradually easier and easier to clean. Here you can see it is building a nice one. This is about the fourth time that I have used the cooker and it was easier to clean than even the last time I used it. Took me about 3 minutes with some baking soda, hot water and a scrub brush.
The top isn't getting much of a patina, but then not much food touches it so there's not much to clean.
Start heating a few inches of oil in a heavy pan. The pakoras should be able to float. Or if you have a deep fryer you can use that too. I used peanut oil.
Once the oil is hot enough to fry, mix the vegetables of your choice into the batter. I would suggest using fresh vegetables. I used frozen mixed veggies with the beans, peas, corn, lima beans, and carrots - but we all agreed that even though the pakoras were very good, they would have been great if I had used fresh veggies.
Using another slotted spoon, take the pakoras out of the oil and place onto a plate lined with a paper towel to drain the excess oils.
Ah! Making these noodles was a test in patience. Not because they are so hard to make, they are actually quite easy. It was due to a series of unfortunate events. First, I spilled hot oil all over the stove and floor. It took nearly an hour to get it all cleaned up. Then I realized that I didn't have enough sesame seeds. Then, while I was toasting what little seeds I could find, I had to help my son chop the cilantro and I ended up almost burning the seeds. Then, when I put the peanut butter in the pan, it nearly burned too, even though I had the heat turned down to "warm". All while I was making the noodles I kept yelling "bastard" so my husband SSB suggested that would be a good name for them. I wasn't sure how they would turn out considering all the problems, but they were NUMMY!!
