Neglected Cookbook Project: Gingery Chickpea Curry

This is from the very first cookbook on Indian cuisine that I ever got, the day after my first Indian meal.  I was in England, visiting my husband while he was doing his Master's over there, and he took me out to this charming curry house down the street from his flat.  The next day, I found Recipes from the Indian Spice Trail at a used bookstore two streets over.  I browsed through while I was there, but we had a lot going on, so it was on the flight home that I read most of it.

It's an odd and fascinating blend of travelogue and cookbook, being a companion piece to a BBC radio series.  Being a sort of journey-through-food, the recipes are divided by region and often subdivided further by ingredient, focusing on the handful of predominant flavors of the area.  This means I usually start hunting in the index when I want to make something with a specific ingredient (like this week, when red bell peppers were on sale and I really wanted to use them in a curry), which is not my normal method of finding recipes, so that may be, in part, why I don't use this book nearly as often as it deserves.  Until now, I really had only made one recipe from it, a cinnamon-scented caramelized rice that can be tricky to pull off without burning, but goes so, so well with super-spicy curries.  I haven't made it for a while, I should really make it again soon....

This recipe starts out as a side dish without any red pepper in it at all, but one of the variations recommends stuffing the chickpeas inside peppers and baking them.  From there it wasn't much of a stretch to simply include it in the curry to begin with, very similar to my bean and broccoli curry, which was so good I made a second batch that same week just to freeze for later.

One note: while I cook most of my own beans from dry, I don't have an inexpensive source for dried chickpeas, which is why I use canned here.  If you're cooking them yourself (which I highly recommend you do, if you can) the steps remain basically the same, you just leave out the bell pepper and dramatically lengthen the cook time from twenty minutes to whatever your brand of dried chickpeas recommends.  The original recipe assumed dried and says 1-3 hours, depending on brand, and suggests canned as a time-saver. Throw in the bell pepper for the last 20-30 minutes and you're good to go!

Gingery Chickpea Curry

• 3 15-oz cans chickpeas (garbanzo beans)
• 1 large red bell pepper, chopped
• 2 to 3 inch piece ginger, skinned and minced finely, divided
• 6 cloves garlic, minced finely, divided
• 2-4 thin green chillies, half left whole but slit, half seeded and finely chopped
• 1 large onion, finely sliced
• 2 tbsp ghee or butter
• 1 1/2 tsp cumin seeds
• 1 15-oz can diced tomatoes
• salt to taste

Combine the chickpeas and bell pepper in a large saucepan, and add just enough water to cover.  Stir in half of the minced ginger, half the minced garlic, and the slit chillies.  Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat the ghee or butter in a skillet and fry the onion until soft and golden (which should take just as long as the simmer, I won't lie and say you can caramelize onions in 5 minutes like so many recipes do.)  Add the rest of the ginger and garlic, and the cumin seeds.  Fry another minute or so until the garlic is fragrant and the cumin seeds start to pop.  Stir this mixture into the chickpeas.

If a lot of water is left, remove some of it now; then mash some of the chickpeas against the side of the pan to thicken what's left.  Stir in the undrained tomatoes and heat through.  Season to taste, and serve with plain boiled rice.

Cooking Challenge Week 21 - French - Curried Celery Souffle

Alright, so it's really a French/Anglo-Indian fusion.  I've never made souffle, but I have several good all-around cookbooks that, between them, tell me pretty much how to make everything.  One of them (Kitchen Sense, which I know I mentioned before) has a Carrot and Ginger Souffle recipe which, in the description, says souffle can be made with pretty much any vegetable as long as you cook it until tender and puree it.  It then goes on to say, throw in some curry powder for a nice variation.

So that immediately reminded me of two things: 1) one of my favorite soups is curried celery soup, and 2) that I had half a bunch of celery in my crisper drawer.

And that's how this bizarre inter-cuisine love child was born.

The things I learned on my first souffle foray:  it really does start to fall immediately after it comes out of the oven, even if you've done everything right, which I'm pretty sure I did; and while it's delicious, it's an awful lot of trouble for something that doesn't make good leftovers.  What would one do with leftover souffle, anyway?

It's not a fail, certainly, but I don't think I'll be making it again.  It's good to know I can, though.

Curried Celery Souffle
(adapted from Kitchen Sense and The Cook's Encyclopedia of Soup)

• 7-8 stalks celery, trimmed and sliced
• 1 medium white onion, peeled and roughly chopped
• 1/4 cup heavy cream, sour cream, plain yogurt, or buttermilk (I used yogurt)
• 1 tbsp curry powder
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• salt and pepper to taste
• 4 tbsp (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup milk
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 6 large eggs, at room temperature

Preheat the oven to 425 F.  Grease a 2-qt. baking dish or 8 individual ramekins.

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil and cook the celery and onion until very soft, 20-25 minutes.  Drain, transfer to a blender or food processor, add the cream/yogurt/whatever, and process until very smooth.  You should have about 1 1/2 cups puree; discard any extra.  Add the curry powder and oregano, then season to taste with salt and pepper.  (Over-season slightly at this point, as adding the egg whites will dilute the flavor some.)

In a small saucepan, melt the butter.  Add the flour and cook, stirring, for 2-3 minutes until the flour smells toasted.  Add the milk, a little at a time, stirring constantly to form a thick paste.  Mix in the celery puree and cook over low heat 5 minutes.  Remove from the heat and cool another 5 minutes.  Stir in the lemon juice.

Separate the eggs, one at a time, placing the whites in a mixer bowl and whisking each yolk into the cooled celery mixture.  When all six are done, beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt on low speed until just frothy, then increase the speed to high and beat until stiff peaks form.  Gently fold the whites into the celery mixture, stopping as soon as the mixture is a uniform texture--don't over-mix!

Gently spoon the mixture into the casserole or ramekins and bake 15 minutes (for the individual servings) or 25 minutes (for the casserole).  Serve immediately.

Bean and Broccoli Curry

I have been a fan of Indian food ever since I was introduced to it on my first trip to England.  My then-future husband took me down the street from his flat to a little curry house, and I fell in love.  With the food, that is, I was already in love with him.

I came home from that trip with no less than three cookbooks on Indian cuisine, and several years later, when two of his British friends hopped the pond to visit us, they brought another one with them as a thanks-for-having-us gift.  I'm still working my way through it, picking it up every few months to see what jumps out at me, begging to be made, and this latest is no disappointment.

Though, to be fair, I did modify it some, leaving out spices I can't get locally and relying on a pinch of curry powder to replace curry leaves, something that would shock a purist, I know.  I like authenticity, but I'm not so uptight that I will forgo making a dish just because one of the ingredients can't be had!  I also ended up adding broccoli to fill it out a bit.  I think it's a good addition--I've seen quite a few recipes from other cuisines that pair white beans and broccoli, and many, many curry recipes are prefaced with "use whatever vegetables you like/have on hand" so I wasn't too afraid to experiment.

Bean and Broccoli Curry
(adapted from Anjum's New Indian)

•  2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 tsp brown mustard seeds
• 1 medium onion, peeled and chopped
• 1 tsp ginger paste (or 1/4 tsp ground ginger)
• 5 large cloves of garlic, peeled and minced
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp mild curry powder
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• 1/4 tsp red chili powder (or more to taste if you like it hot)
• 1 1/2 tsp ground coriander
• 3/4 cup coconut milk
• 1/2 cup water
• 3/4 lb broccoli, washed and cut into small florets
• 3 1/2 cups cooked cannellini (white/Great Northern) beans (that's about 2 cans, drained, if you don't cook from dry like I do)
• 2 tsp sugar
• 2 tsp lemon juice

Heat the oil in a large saucepan.  Add the mustard seeds and fry until they begin to pop, then add the onion.  Cook over medium-low heat, stirring often, until the onion is soft and golden, 10-15 minutes.  Add the ginger and garlic and cook one minute more.

Add the salt and powdered spices and cook 30 seconds more, until fragrant.  Add the coconut milk, water, and broccoli.  Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 8-10 minutes, until the broccoli is just tender.

Add the beans and simmer 5 minutes more to allow the flavors to marry.  Add the sugar and lemon juice.  If desired, mash some of the beans against the side of the pan, then stir them back in to thicken the curry.  Adjust the seasoning to taste, adding more salt, sugar, or lemon juice to balance the flavor.  Serve with rice or (my favorite) naan!

Baking Challenge Week 11 - Savory - 'Appetizer' Cheesecake EPIC FAIL!

Seriously, it was disgusting.  We each took a single bite, then I took a picture for posterity, then I threw the entire thing away.  I hate to waste food, but there was absolutely no saving this.

I won't share the recipe--why perpetuate awfulness?--but it was an unsweetened cheesecake flavored with curry powder and shredded cheddar cheese and condensed cream of chicken soup.  Strange, but I thought it at least had potential.

And I was wrong!  The texture was bad, the flavor was off-putting, the smell was....indescribable.  In a bad way.

As a bonus, it was supposed to be the second installment of the Neglected Cookbook Project, as it was from a cheesecake cookbook that I've only used once before.  But I love cheesecake, and won't hold the cookbook responsible, because I'm sure the hundreds of other, non-savory, cheesecakes are fine.  I'll make one of them soon to erase this wretched failure from my brain and taste buds.

Baking Challenge Week 7 - Valentine's Day - Kheema Pot Pie

This week feels backwards, with my V-Day dessert being my cooking challenge entry, and my main dish being the baking entry--most of my baking entries, by their very nature, have been desserts!  But I just had to have those jello shots, and there's no possible way that could be construed as "baking", so I invented this new pot pie to fall in love with.

It's based on a favorite curry of mine, kheema (also spelled keema or qeema), a heavily-spiced Pakistani dish of ground meat, tomatoes, onions, and whatever other veggies you like, normally served with some sort of flatbread and plain yogurt.  It manages to be both exotic and comfort food at the same time, which I just love.

How did I come up with this idea?  I've seen a few curry pot pie recipes floating around, but they're all basically a normal chicken pot pie with curry powder added...which just doesn't do it for me.  Once I knew that I wanted a pie for my main dish, and that I didn't want chicken (we ate a lot of chicken last week), kheema was one of the first things that came to mind, because I make it with beef.  (It's more often made with lamb, but lamb is prohibitively expensive around here.  If you like lamb better and it's available, by all means, use it instead!)

I made the curry proper the day before, both because it's a rather long process from start to finish if you were to do it all the same day, and because I have yet to meet a curry that doesn't taste better reheated the next day.  It could certainly be done all in one go, but allow some time for the curry to cool before adding the egg and filling the crust.

The full recipe of kheema makes enough to fill two pies; if you don't want two pies, make half the recipe, or make the full recipe and freeze the unused half for later.  If you just want the curry and not the pie, skip the egg and pie crusts and scoop that stuff up with some naan or roti!

Kheema Pot Pie
(adapted from Curry Cuisine)

• 3 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 large onion, quartered and thinly sliced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tsp ginger paste
• 1 15-oz can diced tomatoes, undrained
• 2 large russet potatoes, peeled and very finely diced
• 1 tsp hot red chili powder
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 lb. ground beef (or lamb)
• 3 tbsp chopped cilantro leaves
• 1 egg, beaten, per pie
• Enough pastry for a double pie crust for each pie being made, either purchased or homemade (I like this recipe)

Heat the oil in a large saucepan and cook the onions over low heat, stirring often, until soft and golden brown.  Add the garlic, ginger paste, tomatoes, and potatoes and stir well.  Add the chili powder, turmeric, cumin seeds, coriander, and salt.  Cook, stirring frequently, until the oil separates out.

Add the ground beef and stir to mix with the spice mixture.  Cover the pan and simmer over low heat 35 minutes.  Remove the lid and cook a further 8-10 minutes, until most of the liquid has evaporated.

Here, either refrigerate the curry overnight and continue the next day, or allow to cool somewhat before proceeding.  This would be a good time to make the pie crusts, if you're going homemade.

For each pie, mix one beaten egg with half the prepared curry.  Fill the bottom crust, smoothing the curry in an even layer.  Lay the top crust over, seal all around with a fork, and slash a few vents on top to allow steam to escape.  (The hearts are cute, but wholly unnecessary.  I did it to make the pie more lovey-dovey for the theme.)  Bake in a 375 F oven for 35-40 minutes, until golden brown.  Rest 5 minutes before slicing.