Garam Masala

Prepping for last post's Korma, John and I made garam masala ourselves. You can purchase garam masala in the store pre-ground, but it usually has nowhere near the pungency you can create by making your own. In fact, when we smelled our finished masala, the difference was so great that we just dumped our store-bought spice.

I think garam masala is very fun to make - it is visually appealing, with all of your spices laid out to roast, and the aromas of the roasting spices are delicious. John ground the roasted spices in the mortar and pestle and then we mixed in a pinch of saffron.

There are different versions of garam masala, but most include the following basic spices. Sometimes recipes call for saffron or rose petals. Our recipe called for saffron.

Here are the ingredients you need:

2 tablespoons cumin seeds
2 tablespoons coriander seeds
2 tablespoons cardamom seeds
2 tablespoons black peppercorns
1 (3-inch) stick cinnamon, broken up
1 teaspoon whole cloves
1 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon saffron (optional)

Now, toast all of the spices except for the nutmeg and saffron. Do this by putting them into a dry, heavy skillet (we used cast iron) set on medium-high heat. Be careful and watch the spices. They should give off a slight smoke as they roast and the aroma will be sweet and spicy. If you burn them at all, you will need to start completely over. The flavors will be full-bodied after about 10 minutes of toasting, with some variance depending on the type of stove you are using.















After the spices are toasted, grind them to a powder along with the nutmeg and saffron in either a spice grinder, or, as we used, a mortar and pestle.















It should keep from 3 - 4 months in a tightly-sealed container away from heat and light.
















The spice on the right is the garam masala; the spice on the left is turmeric.

Posted by Sara.

Chicken Korma with Saffron Rice

If you have been checking this blog for updates, you may have noticed that not much has been cooking lately. This is more a reflection of my laziness with respect to blogging than actual inactivity in the kitchen. We have been cooking more simple meals lately, such as vegetables with vegetables...nothing particularly photogenic.

So, moving on to today's recipe: Chicken Korma. I have still not been able to reproduce exactly the taste of this dish at our favorite Indian restaurant, but this dish was really excellent on its own merit, and did in fact taste like Indian, as opposed to my eggplant catastrophe a few weeks ago. Recap: I spent something like 3 hours in the kitchen making "Indian" eggplant (I substituted eggplant for meat in a recipe, go figure) which tasted afterward like funky Italian. John and I both agreed: it doesn't taste too bad, but if you spend 3 hours in the kitchen, you want it to taste like you spent 3 hours in the kitchen.

Today's recipe comes from Jamie Oliver. There are many recipes for chicken korma online, but this one looked especially terrific to me - promising in part due to its not skipping time-consuming steps like marinating overnight.

Note: I included some pictures below of the saffron rice we made. This is easy: steam rice until slightly underdone (this will depend on the quantity of rice. Look at the package and steam about 5-7 minutes less than the full cooking time.) Remove rice from heat. Sauté onion and spices (cumin, coriander - whatever you like) in ghee or oil until soft. Add soaked saffron water (first picture) and the onion-spice mixture to the rice and let steam until done. Add some raw snap peas and green onion.

Ingredients:

1.kg Chicken breast or mini breast fillets
1 heaped tablespoon of finely grated fresh ginger
3 cloves of garlic, minced
150g thick (plain) yogurt
1 dried red chili
2 finely chopped onions
1 tbsp ghee or veg. oil
1 tbsp ground coriander
Pinch of ground black pepper
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp garam masala
water
75g creamed coconut
salt, to taste
2 heaped tbsps ground almonds
finely chopped Coriander Leaves, to garnish
juice of 1/2 lemon

Instructions:

1. Cut the chicken breasts into bite sized chunks
2. Mix the chicken with the ginger, garlic and yogurt. Cover and marinade for 12 hours or in the fridge overnight.
3. Liquidise the chopped onion and red chillies, add a little water if you need to. blend til smooth.
4. Heat the ghee/oil in a pan.
5. Add the ground coriander, ground black pepper, turmeric and garam masala and stir fry for about 1-minute over a low heat.
6. Turn up the heat, add the onion and chilli paste and stir fry for 10-minutes.
7. Add the chicken and the marinade and continue to stir fry for another 10-minutes.
8. Add the creamed coconut and enough water to *just* cover the chicken and bring to the boil, stirring until the coconut is dissolved. Stir in the ground almonds.
9. Reduce heat to low, cover the pan and simmer until the chicken is tender (30-40 minutes).
10. Remove from heat, add lemon juice and salt to taste. Mix well.

The one thing that we did in addition to the above was make our own garam masala. This is very easy, and will be its own blog post. John helped a lot in the kitchen...since there was a lot of prep.

Here are the pictures of our saffron rice and Korma:

S