This weekend I did my grocery at my regular one-stop shop - Whole Foods. I got all the ingredients of my kofta curry there and decided to make it this week's recipe. This is also for my vegetarian friends who had requested me to try some veg dishes.
Kofta generally mean meatballs, although, the vegetarian version is quite popular in India as well. When I saw meatballs in the aisle for frozen food, I asked myself if I could do an Indian twist on it. At the same time, I wanted to make a vegetarian dish. So, I moved towards the vegan section and saw these meatless meatballs. The other ingredients I needed for this were either available in the produce section or I already had at home.
Ingredients:
Meatless meatballs from the frozen aisle. I got the zesty Italian flavor - 1 pkt
Red onions - 1.5 medium
Grated ginger - 2tbsp
Garlic - 2 cloves
Tomato puree - 2tbsp
Green chillies
Whole cumin - 1tsp, bay leaf - 2, dried red chillies - 2
Garam Masala, paprika, turmeric
Salt & Sugar
Oil - about 1/3 of a measuring cup, but please eyeball the amount of oil as per your personal preferences
My husband picked up my daughter today. So, I got some headway in terms of timing. I grated the ginger, onion, garlic, green chillies together in the grinder. After heating the oil in a wok, I added the whole cumin, bay leaf and dried red chillies, followed by the onion paste. I added a pinch of sugar to caramelize the onion paste. Note that I did not add salt yet because I wanted the onions to cook by themselves first. After stirring this mixture on high for about a minute, I covered the wok and turned the heat to low.
By now, my daughter had arrived and was hungry, so we had dinner while the onion paste cooked on low heat for about 30 minutes. The oven was pre-heated to 400F. After about half an hour later, ensuring that the mixture in the wok no longer smelled of raw onion, I added turmeric, paprika and salt followed by the tomato puree. I was doing this with my daughter around me and noticed how quickly kids learn to imitate their parents when she imitated me smelling the vapors of the curry to check if the onion is thoroughly cooked. It was a really funny sight to behold!
If you don't have tomato puree at home, feel free to use chopped tomatoes or plain ketchup. I have used ketchup in my cooking too and it works great - just go easy with the salt and sugar. The mixture cooked on medium heat now for about 5 minutes.
I added water followed by the garam masala to the above mixture and let it boil. Meanwhile, I lay down the meatballs in the baking dish. When the curry in the wok started boiling and getting thick, I turned off the heat and added to the baking dish. The dish baked for about 30 minutes. I prefer baking to cooking the meatballs in the curry so that the meatballs do not get overcooked and do not break.
On my husband's recommendation, I added some final touches with chopped cilantro and the vegetarian kofta curry was ready!
This dish can be made with meat or meatless meatballs alike. If you like, you can also add some cream after turning off the heat to the curry.
Just wanted to add for my non-Indian friends that if you do not have spices like turmeric or garam masala handy, you can visit the international aisle and pick up a curry powder mix. The spices aisle sometimes carry these too. Any grocery shop that has an international grocery section, should have some form of these spices.
ReplyDeleteSounds great! One clarification though....If you did not deep fry the meat-less meat balls, and only baked them, then what did you use the 1cup of oil for? I guess using one whole cup of oil to make the gravy is not what you suggested :)....
ReplyDeleteGreat going Surupa....Waiting for more to come...
ReplyDeleteThanks Deepanwita for pointing that out. Yes you are right, the meatballs come already fried so I did not fry them. I actually cooked 3-4 times the amount mentioned here :-) Anyways, I think one-third of a measuring cup of oil should do it. 2 important things to note here: 1. ground onion curry requires a bit more oil than normal chopped onions 2. An actual measuring cup is a lot smaller than the cup in which we normally drink tea/coffee. I would recommend everyone to eyeball the amount of oil needed to cook the onions.
ReplyDeleteYou're right....The cups here are huge...So I always use a standard measuring cup. Also, another trick for using less oil, which I use is to prepare the masala with chopped onions, which takes both less oil and less time to get cooked, and then make a paste with the mixture in a magic bullet, before you add the water for teh gravy. Tastes the same, with less oil and time :), you can try that next time....
ReplyDeleteMany friends have asked me what the meatless meatballs are made of. I looked it up and saw that the main ingredient is soy protein, which is often used in Indian home-cooking instead of meat in veg dishes.
ReplyDeleteI just tried making this dish last night - it was SOOO delicious!! Homecooked Indian food is sooo much better, if I might say :) This was my first time making Indian food and I'm not a great cook by any means so Thanks Surupa for making it easy for all of us!
ReplyDeleteMy one comment to people who may not be use to making Indian food or curries, a food processor would be really helpful for grating the veggies (onions, garlic, chilli etc) but I did it by hand and chopped the onions and it still turned out tasty. Didn't look as good as Surupa's but that is to be expected.
Also, by 'whole cumin' - that means cumin seeds. I bought all my ingredients at safeway, and they definitely carry cumin seeds but it's just less common than ground cumin.
great going Surupa..will try the recipe !
ReplyDelete