Roast Eggplant "Paneer" "Curry" & "Tandoori" Chicken

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Roast Eggplant "Paneer" "Curry" & "Tandoori" Chicken:
with so many quotations marks, I should just call this something else entirely, right? ;)

(Yes, I am a self-confessed quotation mark addict. "Bisteeya", "Caprese", "Singapore Noodles", "Clafouti", "Streusel Brittle", "Duck Coop Pie", "Beignets", "Fish n' (Banana) Chips". Etc. Etc. Etc.)

A long, long while ago, I read something in the paper about Bal Arneson and her cookbook, Everyday Indian: 100 Fast, Fresh and Healthy Recipes . As the title suggests, the premise of the book was that one can make these updated, modern Indian dishes easily and quickly. When I saw the book being sold at Costco with a very agreeable price, I went ahead and bought a copy.


nice colors!

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We happened to have some eggplants lying around, so the "Baked Eggplant with Paneer" seemed like a good recipe to start with. Instead of baking the eggplants and heating up a large oven, I decided to keep the heat to a small area and roasted them over a burner.



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After peeling them and mashing them, I was ready to start. I measured out my spices, and prepped the onions and ginger.



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I didn't actually have garam masala on hand, so I made my own ghetto version with some cumin, coriander, black pepper, and a touch of cinnamon. The recipe also called for turmeric, so I added that as well.



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I started by cooking the onions and ginger, then it was just a matter of adding the rest of the ingredients: tomatoes, spices, and green chili pepper. They cooked for a bit, then the "paneer" went in at the last minute.

Yes, as you can see, that is not paneer. We had these mini bocconcini, so we used those instead.



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As promised, this dish did come together quite easily and did taste very light yet filling.

We decided to go with our Indian theme and marinated some chicken in our butter chicken marinade, since I've heard that the marinade is the same as for tandoori chicken.

Although, thinking about it, I just realized that it's the tandoori chicken marinade that can be used to make butter chicken, but not necessarily vice versa.

Oops. I guess I really do need to use those quotations marks around "tandoori"! Especially since, of course, we did not use a tandoor as well!

In any case, my marinade consisted of yogurt, lemon juice. garlic, ginger, onions, my ghetto garam masala, and some salt and sugar. But, I think the butter chicken recipe needs to be a post for another day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandoori_masala
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandoori_chicken
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butter_chicken

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We grilled the chicken and, even though they look scary now all covered in yogurt like that, the yogurt eventually fell or "burned" off during cooking. Oh yes, as you can see, we didn't bother with the red coloring.



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And that's it! Grilled quote-unquote tandoori chicken, with a roast eggplant quote-unquote paneer quote-unquote curry. With some rice, it made for a mighty nice, easy, "Everyday Indian" meal.

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Recipe
Baked Eggplant with Paneer
from Everyday Indian: 100 Fast, Fresh and Healthy Recipes

4 eggplants
2 tablespoon grapeseed oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 tablespoon grated ginger
2 cups cubed tomatoes
1 green chili, finely shopped
1 tablespoon garam masala
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup cubed paneer, panfried

Preheat oven to 350F. Place the eggplants on a baking sheet and bake for 1 hour. Peel off the skin and mash the eggplant gently with a fork.

Place the oil, onion, and ginger in a non-stick skillet over medium-high heat and cook for 5 minutes. Add the tomatoes, green chili, garam masala, turmeric and salt, and cook over medium-low heat for 5 minutes. Gently mix in the eggplant, reduce the heat to very low, and cook for 1 minute.

Mix in the paneer, cover the dish, and let it sit for 5 minutes before serving.

Beef "Ribbon" Kebab (Pasanda Kabab) with Cilantro Chutney

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India is the region featured in this edition of Regional Recipes. We had to rack our brains for what to make. We ruled out curries right away just because of the fact that I'm not a good enough photographer to make curries look good! ;)

So, onto our search for non-curry Indian dishes. Since we only had three books with Indian recipes -- the two of them being 50 Great Curries of India and 660 Curries-- we had to go with Madhur Jaffrey's From Curries to Kebabs. Of course, we had to be careful to choose Indian recipes (as opposed to curries from other places).

Pasanda Kabab it is!


The Marinade

marinade ingredients

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We chose this recipe because it looked very easy. Make the marinade and broil the kebabs! Even the marinade didn't seem to have a lot of ingredients.


left: more marinade ingredients; right: finished marinade

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The only hardship in making the marinade was that I had to brown some onions first. Then, everything just went into the blender. I made some minor substitutions because I had to use what we had.

That's browned onions, raw onions, yogurt, olive oil, almonds, ginger, garlic, red chili flakes, nutmeg, ground coriander, and salt.

I sliced our flank steak into long strips and marinated them. We left them there for about 2 days.

Cilantro Chutney (aka "Green Sauce")

left: sooo green; right: finished chutney

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The blender got a workout with this recipe. I blended a whackload of cilantro leaves, a jalapeno pepper, some garlic, lemon juice, salt, and a touch of water to make the blending easier. I then added this mixture to yogurt.


Ribbon Kebabs


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To cook the kebabs, I weaved them onto five large skewers. Madhur Jaffrey describes this zigzagging as "forming Elizabethan ruffles." That has to be the best recipe instruction.

I then simply broiled each side of the skewers until the meat was browned and lightly charred.

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I love the presentation of beef being in ribbons.

The pasanda kabab was absolutely delicious -- and the cilantro chutney just elevates this "street food" into dinner party fare.

My only regret was we did not have hot, buttery naan to go with these kebabs.

One word of caution: we might have left the beef marinating too long (overnight and half a day). It resulted in a slightly mushy texture. The texture did not take anything away from the flavour though, but for a perfectionist, 2 to 4 hours marination would be sufficient to infuse the flavours into the beef.

The cilantro chutney goes with a lot of things: the beef, mashed (or boiled) potatoes, some greens. . .We even had one guest dipping popcorn into the chutney! It was quite an inspired pairing: I nabbed some kernels and they were totally delicious!


We're submitting this to Regional Recipes, a blogging event created by Blazing Hot Wok that celebrates food from all over the world.

The region for this edition is India. The round-up will be hosted by Darlene of Blazing Hot Wok.

Regional Recipes information

Our Regional Recipes posts:
Greek Meatball Soup (Giouvarlakia)
Simmered Saba Mackerel with Daikon Radish (Saba Oroshi-ni)
Thai Fried Chicken
Roast Pork Belly with Puy Lentils
Beef "Ribbon" Kebab (Pasanda Kabab) with Cilantro Chutney
Canadian Onion Soup with Oka Cheese
Muffuletta
Börek with Beef Filling
Korean Pork Bulgogi (with Muu Namul, Kong Namul)
Lobster Congee from a Lobster Feast
Pork Jowl (Pork Cheeks) with Brown Sugar Rub
Beef Salpicao
Cuban Arroz con Salchichas (Yellow Rice with Vienna Sausages)
Cuban Pastelitos de Guayaba y Queso (Guava and Cheese Pastries)
Vietnamese Spring Roll (Cha Gio)
Grilled Fish Fillet on Oregano
Pastéli (Greek Sesame Snaps)



Recipes

Beef "Ribbon" Kebab (Pasanda Kabab)
from Madhur Jaffrey's From Curries to Kebabs: Recipes from the Indian Spice Trail

Serves 4 to 6 as a main course, 8 to 12 as appetizer

1 medium onion, rings
1 medium onion, chopped
4 tablespoons yogurt
3 tablespoons mustard oil (or extra-virgin olive oil)
1 tablespoon blanched, slivered almonds
1 tablespoon peeled and finely chopped fresh ginger
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1-2 teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon mace
2 teaspoons ground coriander
2 1/2 pounds beef flank steak

Fry onion rings in 1/2 cup oil until medium-brown. Save oil and set aside.

Add browned onions, and all the rest of the ingredients (except beef) into blender and process into smooth paste to make the marinade.

Cut meat into 1/4-in slices across the grain. Marinate the beef slices, 2 to 6 hours.

Preheat broiler. Zigzag ribbons of meat onto skewers, as if you were forming "Elizabethan ruffles." Push ruffles tightly against each other. Brush all sides with oil used to brown the onion rings. Broil 5 inches from the broiler untl all sides are lightly browned.


Cilantro Chutney
from Madhur Jaffrey's From Curries to Kebabs: Recipes from the Indian Spice Trail

1 cup well-packed cilantro leaves
2-3 fresh hot green chilies, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
salt to taste
1 tablespoon lemon juice
3 tablespoons water
1 cup plain yogurt

Add all ingredients except yogurt into a blender. Blend. Beat yogurt until smooth. Mix in blended mixture.

Watermelon Curry with Cucumber

Yes. Watermelon Curry.

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I first had watermelon curry while I was attending culinary school. One class/kitchen session was spent on creating an Indian banquet. As you can imagine, the watermelon curry was quite memorable.

Then, we used the recipe from 50 Great Curries of India (it's a really informative book, highly recommended; there is now a 10th Anniversary edition available). Now, I'm basing this dish on that recipe, but tweaking it here and there.

Of course, it all starts with the watermelon.


Gigantormous!

I only needed 1/4 of that gigantormous watermelon. Here are the cubes.

I decided to add cucumbers to the dish. I've always thought that I didn't like cucumbers, but that was because I had always seen them raw. We made Hainan Chicken a while back and had to put cucumber in the soup. That was a discovery! I'm all for cooked cucumber!

I semi-peeled a fairly large English cucumber (leaving strips of peel on) and removed the seeds. I then cut them in large pieces (about 1-1/2").


Then, to make the flavor base for the curry, I took 1 cup of the watermelon cubes and puréed them. Into that juice went paprika, turmeric, coriander and minced garlic. I failed to add it this time, but some cayenne pepper would give a nice kick.



The original recipe actually calls for Rajasthan chile powder. I don't usually have that on hand (as I don't even know what that is). So, instead of substituting any old chile powder, I took the book's suggestion of using paprika instead. I also increased the amount of garlic and just minced it instead of trying to make a very fine garlic purée.

Into hot oil went some cumin seeds. The seeds danced briefly in the oil before I poured in the flavored watermelon juice. I let the juice reduce then added lime juice. The cucumbers went in next.



I let them cook until they were almost soft, then added the watermelon. The watermelon only needed to be heated through. The watermelon does release some liquid (because of the salt and the heat, however gentle and short). I took the cucumber and watermelon pieces out of the sauce after cooking and then reduced the sauce down again.



This watermelon curry makes a very nice side dish. We had this with some roast chicken that echoed the flavors of the curry. One could also serve this alongside grilled prawns or even a steak. It's a very good way to use up leftover cut-up watermelon (especially from gigantormous ones).

Watermelon has long suffered being typecast into sweet roles. It's about time it stepped out into starring savory roles. Will you help it?


Watermelon Curry with Cucumber by _ts
(Adapted from "Watermelon Curry" in 50 Great Curries of Indiaby Camellia Panjabi)

1/4 large watermeon
1 large (or 2 small) English cucumbers
cayenne pepper, to taste
2 teaspoons paprika
1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder
1 teaspoon coriander powder
3-5 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons oil
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 lime, juiced
salt and pepper, to taste

Cut up watermelon into 1-inch cubes. Cut the cucumber in half lengthwise and remove seeds. Cut into 1- to 2-inch pieces.

Take 1 cup of the watermelon cubes and blend/puree into juice. To the juice, add the cayenne, paprika, turmeric, coriander and minced garlic.

Heat oil in wok or sauté pan. When hot, add cumin seeds. They should lightly dance about in the oil. After 20 seconds, add the flavored watermelon juice. Simmer on low heat until reduced by half.

Add the lime juice and the cucumbers. Cook for about 3-5 minutes, until cucumbers are almost soft.

Add the watermelon and cook for another 3-4 minutes on low heat. Stir to make sure the cucumber and watermelon pieces are covered with the sauce. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Take out watermelon and cucumber pieces and let the sauce reduce again by half. Pour sauce over watermelon and cucumbers. Serve.


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We're submitting this post to Weekend Herb Blogging, a world-wide food blogging event created by Kalyn's Kitchen with the goal of helping each other learn about cooking with herbs and unusual plant ingredients.

If you'd like to participate, see who's hosting next week. WHB is hosted this week by Pam of Sidewalk Shoes.