June 7: Recipes from Naveen's Cuisine

Inspired by our Indian cooking class at Naveen's Cuisine, we decided to try to make two of the dishes we learned that evening -- kachumbar (vegetable salad) and murgh curry (curry chicken).

(Since Naveen doesn't list these recipes on his website, I'll describe what we're including and how much of each ingredient. We also doubled the salad recipe because we had 2 cucumbers from the produce box that week.)

First, we started to make the kachumbar. To make the salad, you chop up a ton of vegetables, and marinate them in lime and spices. No oil needed. Our first step was to peel and chop two cucumbers. 

Then dice up a cup of red radishes. 

Dice two cups of tomatoes.

Cutting those tiny V-shapes is my go-to method for "coring" (if that's even the right word) tomatoes.

We combined all of this into one bowl.

We minced 1/2 cup of red onion and chopped 4 tablespoons of fresh cilantro. All of that also went into the bowl.

Then we mixed the "dressing" -- 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of garam masala (we did not have chat masala, which is what the recipe calls for), and the juice of two limes.  This is covered in saran wrap and goes into the fridge for 15 to 30 minutes to marinate.

According to what I found online, chat masala and garam masala are not interchangeable. Oops.

On to the curry!

This is my job...Paul gets a little emotional over onions. They're just onions, Paul!

The coloring is a little hard to see here, but this is a TON of chopped ginger. Ton being the exact measurement we used.

We heated 4 tablespoons of oil in the pan, then added the ginger, onion and garlic and cook (with the lid on) until golden brown. Next, we added the chicken, and cooked it for 7 minutes or until the meat starts to turn brown.

The recipe called for ground coriander. We had "full-sized" coriander, so we used our coffee bean grinder to make it into ground coriander. The coffee tasted -- interesting the next morning. 

"Full-sized" coriander? Now I'm just making stuff up.

We added in 3/4 teaspoon turmeric, 3/4 teaspoon garam masala, 2 teaspoons of ground coriander, and 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper. We cooked this mixture with the chicken for about 7 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Then, we added 1 cup of chopped tomatoes, and mixed everything in well. Then we added 2 - 3 cups of water, so the chicken became completely submerged. Everything is brought to to a boil and cooked on medium heat until tender.

We served the curry chicken on a bed on white rice, topped with some chopped fresh cilantro. 

 

The curry came out nice and spicy -- especially the sauce. The curry came out less thick than we remembered, so maybe we cooked it down more during the class. 


So as I mentioned earlier, we had used garam masala instead of chaat masala for the vegetable salad. It tasted good, but I remember absolutely loving this salad-- so the next time I make it -- I would definitely use the again with the chaat masala instead.