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Spices

Spring Onion & Poppy Seed Curry

23/04/2019

Frühlingszwiebel und Mohn Curry in PfanneI grew up with eating a lot of poppy seeds and absolutely adore them. They somewhat make me feel snug and my grandmothers poppy seed cake is one of my most delicious childhood memories.

After marrying my Bengali husband I figured that Bengalis love their poppy seeds as well. They are used lavishly in Bengali cooking, but in a very different way to what I knew.

Posto is the Bengali word for poppy seeds and they are mostly ground to a creamy paste, which is often mixed with vegetables and eaten with rice. It’s fascinating how a familiar ingredient incarnates to something else in a different cultural background. I quickly fell in love with this posto. And my husband, on the other side, became a big fan of poppy seed cake. Yeah.

This recipe for poppy seed curry is loosely adapted from a dish our Bengali cook Budhan-da cooks. Traditionally posto is cooked with white poppy seeds, but it also tastes nice with the black variety. It’s best eaten together with some plain white rice, but we also like it over mashed potatoes.

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Spring Onion & Poppy Seed Curry

For 3 - 4 people.

Ingredients

  • 60 gram poppy seeds (white or black)
  • 2 medium potatoes
  • 3 - 4 spring onions
  • 1 tablespoon mustard oil 
  • Salt to taste

Instructions

1. Add the poppy seeds and 100 ml water to a small blender and grind the seeds to a paste. Add a bit more water if it feels too dry.

Grinding the poppy seeds properly is the most important step in this recipe as poppy seeds only release their flavour when ground. The paste won’t be completely smooth, but don’t give up too early. You will understand it best by rubbing it between your fingers and tasting it. Once the seeds are broken down properly it will feel slightly creamy and the taste will change. Set the paste aside.

2. Peel the potatoes and cut into small wedges. Boil in salted water till almost soft.

3. Separate the white and green parts of the onion. Cut the white onions into wedges and the green part into 2 cm long pieces.

4. Heat the oil over medium high heat and add the white onion wedges. Fry for 3 - 4 minutes till they are soft and slightly brown. Add the potatoes and green onion pieces and fry till soft. Add a few tablespoons of water if necessary. Reduce heat too low.

5. Now add the poppy seeds paste to the pan. Clean the blender jar with another 100 ml water and also add this. Heat through and it is ready to eat. Make sure you don’t cook the poppy seeds too long, especially the black poppy seeds tend to get unpleasantly dry quickly.

Filed Under: Salty things, Spices

Mukhwas – Digestive Spice and Seed Mix

03/04/2019

Mukhwas, digestive spice and seed mixHave you tried these colourful, candied fennel seeds, which are served in Indian restaurants at the end of a meal ? They are called mukhwas – mouth freshener. Chewing digestive spices and seeds after a meal is an ancient Indian tradition and already the Mughal emperors where chewing mukhwas to freshen their breath and digest one or the other mutton better.

In India you can find mukhwas not only in the form of colourful candy, but made from a variety of spices, seeds and herbs. Spices often develop their soothing qualities best while being chewed and I feel a bit of mukhwas after a meal is also a really nice ritual.

And it is super simple to make your own wholesome digestive mix! In my recipe you will find not only fennel seeds but cardamom, sesame seeds (supposed to be good for the teeth), linseeds (a bit extra fibre), nuts and berries. Did I mention that it also tastes really good ?

Mukhwas, digestive spice and seed mix

1 vote

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Mukhwas - Digestive Spice and Seed Mix

adapted from a recipe on www.tarladalal.com

Ingredients

  • 2 tablespoons linseeds
  • 3 tablespoons fennel seeds
  • 2 tablespoons white sesame seeds
  • 2 tablespoons black sesame seeds 
  • 6 green cardamom pods

For serving:

  • Goji or other dried beriies (optional)
  • Pistachios, chopped (optional)
  • Sugar crystals (optional)

Instructions

Remove the seeds from the cardamom pods and grind them with mortar and pestle into a rough powder. Put aside.

Heat a pan over medium-low heat and start roasting the linseeds for 2 - 3 minutes, while stirring constantly.

Add the fennel and sesame seeds and roast for another 5 minutes. The seeds shouldn’t turn brown while roasting. Add the cardamom powder to the seeds, stir one last time and empty everything on a plate. Let the mixture cool down.

You can store the mukhwas in a lidded glass jar for several weeks. It already tastes nice as it is, but you can add sugar, berries and nuts before serving.

 

 

 

Filed Under: Spices

Black Cardamom Tomato Rice

13/03/2019

Black Cardamom on Tomato RiceThis black cardamom tomato rice is one of the most satisfying meals I had in a long time! But it started very unglamorous out of leftovers thrown together for lunch.

I don’t like to chuck food and always try to make something out of leftovers. But honestly speaking I often don’t like food which lingered in the fridge. I could never do meal prep or so, as the thought of 3 day old quinoa gives me the shudders. Thus I didn’t expect much when I tossed some old rice and leftover spicy tomato sauce in a pan.

But once I tasted it I was staggered – it was better than the day before! I suddenly remembered that my grandma used to cook something similar when I was very little and that I loved this combination already as a toddler. She used much less spices though.

I mainly used black cardamom here as it’s one of my favourite spices and adds a smoky depth to the tomato rice. Black cardamom has big, rough pods and is stronger and less floral in flavour than its green cousin. Traditionally the pods get dried over open fire, therefor the smoky flavour.

You can cook the tomato rice from scratch or use leftover rice for it. I’ll explain both versions below.

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Black Cardamom Tomato Rice

For 3 - 4 portions.

Ingredients

You need thick bottomed a pan with a lid

  • 2 medium sized onions
  • 5 cloves garlic, smashed
  • 1 piece of ginger (3cm), peeled & grated
  • 2 tablespoons oil
  • 4 black cardamom pods
  • 3 cloves
  • 1 teaspoon cumin
  • 2  tomatoes, cubed
  • 100 ml red wine
  • 150 ml tomato puree
  • 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
  • 1 tablespoon sugar
  • 1 - 2 teaspoon salt
  • 4 tablespoon cream
  • 200 gram long grain rice (washed) or 3 cups pre-cooked rice*

Instructions

Open 3 of the cardamom pods slightly with a pestle. Take the seeds out of the 4th pod and crush them in a mortar, keep the powder aside.

Heat the oil I a pan and add the 3 cardamom pods, cloves and cumin (slowly and one after the other in exactly that order, from big to small). Fry them for a minute or so till it smells aromatic. Add the onions and salt and fry for about 5 minutes. Now add the garlic and ginger and fry for another 2 - 3 minutes, till the raw smell goes away.  Keep stirring and add the tomatoes, cardamom powder (from the 1 pod you crushed), fry till the tomatoes loose their shape. Deglaze with the wine and then add the tomato puree, cayenne, cream and sugar.

If you use raw rice please proceed as follows:

Add the washed rice and pour in water till it stands about 1cm above the rice. Stir and close the lid. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for about 10 to 15 minutes (please also refer to the cooking directions on the package of your rice, as cooking times vary widely)

If you use pre-cooked rice, please proceed as follows:

Add 200m water, stir and close the lid of the pan. Simmer for about 5 minutes. Then add the pre-cooked rice, sir carefully (if it feels to dry add a bit more of water). Simmer for a few minutes till the rice is hot.

Serve with fresh herbs, boiled or fried eggs, salad, pine nuts, etc.

Notes

*you could use pretty much any rice, but check for cooking time and amount of water and cooking time needed. Basmati and jasmine rice are more fragile than long grain or brown rice and you have to be carefully to not break the grains while stirring.

Filed Under: Salty things, Spices Tagged With: rice recipes, black cardamom, tomato rice, cooking with spices

Rustic Corn Flatbreads

05/03/2019

 

These rustic corn flatbreads are best eaten with the saag/leafy greens from my previous post. In India they are called makki ki roti. They are also nice with other curries, salads, etc. But eat them fresh as they will become hard if kept too long.

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Rustic Corn Flatbreads

For 4 flatbreads

Ingredients

Dry ingredients

  • 1/2 cup wheat flour
  • 1/2 corn flour
  • 1 teaspoon turmeric
  • 1/2 teaspoon ajwain seeds (optional)

Wet ingredients

  • 1 tablespoon oil & some ghee/oil for frying
  • Little less than 1/2 cup water

Instructions

Mix the dry ingredients. Add the oil and the water (you might not need all water) and knead for about 4 Minutes into a soft dough. Let the dough rest for 10 minutes.

Divide the dough in equal portions and roll them into balls. Flatten a ball by hand and rollout into a 18 cm disc with a rolling pin.

Put a little bit of ghee or oil in a little bowl and keep aside.

Heat a pan over medium low heat and start frying the flatbread without any oil. Change sides from time to time. Once the flatbread starts to get brown spots smear a thin layer of ghee or oil evenly on both sides.

Keep warm in a towel or some tin foil. Eat soon.

Filed Under: Salty things, Spices

Ghee spiced Cabbage Galette

23/10/2018

Ghee Weisskohl GaletteAlthough me and Budhan-da do most of the cooking in our house, my husband is a great cook too. His speciality is cabbage. It maybe seems odd to have perfected such an ordinary vegetable, but I love cabbage and he is the king-of-cabbage, so that makes us a great team.

Some form of cabbage is nowadays grown almost everywhere and most cultures have one or the other typical cabbage dish. In West Bengal cabbage is often eaten as bandhakopir torkari, a lightly spiced dish, with a perfect balance of sweet & salty, rounded off with a dollop of ghee.

The ghee gives the cabbage a silken mouth feel and makes the umami rich vegetable even more savoury. It really is the ingredient which elevates it to another level.

Indian ghee shouldn’t be mistaken with plain clarified butter because it can have great depth of flavour, from nutty undertones to a cheesy funk. For making Indian ghee the butter is cooked till the milk solids caramelize and the funkiness comes from fermenting the milk/cream before churning the butter.  There are regional varieties too, my parents-in-law in West Bengal mostly use a brownish ghee, which gets cooked for hours and is so strongly caramelized and intense, that you only need a tiny amount to flavour a dish.

I grew up with the uniform taste of german butter and butterschmalz (clarified butter) and discovering that there are so many more flavours hidding in the humble milk fat still feels exciting.

This cabbage is one of the best dishes to explore the magic of ghee. The recipe is based on my husbands, although I didn’t manage sticking to it completely and used it as a filling for a galette. This is actually totally unnecessary, but on the other side works fantastically well, so why not?

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Ghee Cabbage Galette

Ingredients

For the pastry dough

  • 160 grams all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 teaspoon table salt
  • 110 grams cold butter, cut into pieces
  • 60 grams yogurt
  • 10 ml lemon juice
  • 60 ml ice water
  • 1 egg for glazing

For the cabagge

  • 750 gram white cabagge, finely sliced
  • 1 tablespoon oil (I use mustard oil)
  • 1 piece cinammon bark (cassia)
  • 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
  • 3 cardamom pods, seeds only
  • 1 tablespoon ginger paste (or grated ginger)
  • 1 tomato, grated
  • 1 teaspoon turmeric powder
  • 1 teaspoon garam masala
  • 1 teaspoon salt (per taste)
  • 1 teaspoon sugar (per taste)
  • 1 tablespoon ghee

You will also need a pan with a lid

Instructions

Start with preparing the pastry dough. Mix the flour with salt in one bowl and the yogurt, lemon juice and water in another bowl. Sprinkle the butter pieces over the flour and rub them in with your fingers till you have a coarse, crumbly mixture. Take care to not overwork the dough, there should still be some bigger, pea size butter pieces. With a spoon mix in the water/yogurt mixture till a large lump forms. Wrap in plastic and rest in the fridge for an hour.

Prepare the cabbage. Heat the oil over medium heat and once it’s hot add the cinnamon, cumin and cardamon seeds (in this order). Fry the spices till they release their essential oil and smell nicely. Add the ginger and grated tomato and fry till the raw smell disappears. Add the turmeric powder and finely cut cabbage. Stir and fry for a minute or so till everything is nicely mixed up. Reduce the heat to low, cover the pan with the lid and let the cabbage steam in its own juices till it’s soft (ca. 10 min). Once the cabbage is done season with garam masala, salt and sugar. At last add the ghee and stir it through.

Let it cool down. Once it’s cool, separate the egg and mix the egg white into the cabbage. Mix the egg yolk with a bit of water and keep aside for glazing the galette later.

Assemble the galette. Heat the oven to 180 degrees. Flour your working surface and roll the dough into a 30 cm round. Transfer it to a parchment lined baking sheet. Distribute the cabbage in the middle of the dough, leaving a 5 cm edge. Fold over the edge, pleating where it’s necessary to make it fit. Glaze with the egg yolk.

Bake for 30 - 40 minutes till golden brown. If the cabbage turns too dark, cover it with a piece of tinfoil. Take out of the oven, let it cool a few minutes and cut into wedges. It also tastes nice cold.

Filed Under: Salty things, Spices

Bengali Tomato Jam

11/09/2018

Bengali Tomato Jam with Panch PhoranIn West Bengal (the eastern Indian state where my husband is from) lunch is not something thrown together spontaneously, it has a particular order and choreography of dishes and flavours, always centered around a big plate of rice.

There is no Bengali meal which consists only of a single dish, there is always a variety of dishes served, although the amount of dishes cooked is getting less with each generation. One of the most unique features is that the different dishes are never eaten together. Each is served in it’s own right, so that the subtle flavours of Bengali cooking don’t get mixed up. My mother-in-law always eats last as she is so busy handing us one dish after the other (this always annoys the feminist in me, but I think she really doesn’t mind).

A traditional meal should always start with something bitter to increase your appetite and activate your digestive system (mostly in the form of bitter melon or neem leaves). After that you have something fried,  dal, one or several vegetable dishes and then comes the fish or meat. The finishing touch of the meal is always something sweet. Although in West Bengal this doesn’t mean dessert but mostly a dollop of sweet spicy chutney which you gracefully lick with your fingers from the plate (there could also be yogurt or mishti doi with it). After that you are full, happy and if it’s a weekend you retreat to a good afternoon nap.

Panch Phoran Bengali Five SpiceAlthough the traditions are fading, the clear order of flavours and dishes is an important (and beautiful) concept of Bengali cooking and a strong distinction to other Indian cuisines.

My mother-in-laws favorite part of the meal is always the spicy sweet chutney and the recipe which follows is based upon her tomato chutney recipe. Traditionally it is cooked with dates and a bit loose. I personally prefer to make a tomato jam out of it as it keeps longer and the firmer texture offers more applications. We also eat it in sandwiches, as a dip or with some cheese. It is sweet, has a bit of heat from the chili and is spiced with Panch Phoran, the sensational Bengali five spice mix.

Panch Phoran is a blend of 5 whole spices and depending on which seed you bite on you’ll get a bit of a different flavour. It’s an exciting spice and absolutely worth buying. It should be available in most Asian stores and online. And don’t worry it’s not a one-trick pony and can be used in many dishes, I’ll keep posting recipes with it.

1 vote

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Bengali Tomato Jam

For 3 - 4 glasses.

Ingredients

1,5 kg tomatoes

600 gram sugar

8 gram pectin

1 teaspoon salt

3 teaspoons grated ginger

1 tablespoon chili powder

2 tablespoon Panch Phoran

60 ml apple cider vinegar or lemon juice

Instructions

Wash the tomatoes and cut them roughly. Mix the sugar with the pectin.

Add the tomatoes, salt and sugar to a big pot. Simmer over medium heat for 15 - 20 minutes.

Meanwhile heat a little pan and roast the panch phoran till the spices smell aromatic (use your nose, you will understand when they are ready). Take the spices immediately out of the pan, so they don't burn.

Add the roasted panch phoran, chili, ginger and vinegar to the tomatoes. Taste the jam once and check if the amount of vinegar and chili feels right. Eventually add a bit more. Bring the mixture to a rapid boil and continue boiling for 5 minutes. Fill it into sterilized jars, close and turn upside down while still hot.

Notes

Different pectin brands might work differently, check the label for amounts. Toamtoes are naturally high in pectin and a small amount will do.

 

 

Filed Under: Salty things, Sweet things, Spices

Sweet Corn Saffron Dessert

03/09/2018

Sweet Corn Saffron DessertIt’s sweet corn season in India, although sweet corn isn’t the most typical Indian ingredient and only used in a few traditional recipes, but you can often find it roasted as a roadside snack. When I met my husband we often bought some roasted corn from a street stall, while we were floating aimlessly through Delhi. It would be a very romantic memory if the corn didn’t get stuck between my teeth all the time.

In the Punjab dried corn gets ground into Makki ki Atta (a slightly grainy flour) and thick yellow flatbreads are made out of it. They are smeared with ghee and eaten together with cooked mustard leaves. In Rajasthan they make a sweet rice pudding or kheer out of fresh corn (Bhutte ki Kheer). The young corn gets grated and boiled together with milk, sugar, cardamon and saffron till it becomes a thick, sweet pudding similar in texture to Indian rice pudding, but with the sweet aroma of corn.

If you get relatively young and fresh sweetcorn the texture of the traditional recipe is fantastic! But if your corn isn’t really young (or you use frozen corn) you face the problem of unpleasant pieces of corn skin, which I don’t like. Thats why I made a soft and silky sweetcorn dessert out of the traditional recipe, it still has the pleasant aroma of corn but won’t disturb any first date with unpleasant bits. In the recipe below I explain both versions.

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Sweet Corn Saffron Dessert

For 3 - 4 people.

Ingredients

  • 1,5 cups corn (from 2-3 fresh cobs or frozen)
  • 500 ml milk
  • 1/4 teaspoon saffron
  • 1,5 teaspoon starch
  • 1-3 tablespoons honey

Decoration

  • chopped nuts
  • edible silverfoil
  • pomegranate seeds

Instructions

Grate the corn with a boxgrater from the cobs & catch all liquid which is extracted from the cobs.

Give the corn, liquid and milk into a blender and puree it. Strain the mixture through some cloth or nutmilkbag. Press as much liquid out as possible.

Grind the saffron in a mortar with a bit of sugar. Mix the starch with 2 tablespoons of cold milk.

Put the cornmilk into a pot and simmer on medium heat for about 10 minutes. The milk should reduce by 1/3 and become a bit thicker. Stir regularly. Add the saffronsugar and boil a little more. Then stir in the starch with a whisk, increase the heat and bring it to one more boil. Take of the stove.

You can add the honey now or drizzle over the cream just before serving (I prefer that). You will have to adjust the amount of honey according to the sweetness of the corn.

You can serve the cream warm or cold. If you cool it you should keep a piece of foil directly on top, though no skin is forming.

If you want you can whip it a bit before serving. Decorate with chopped nuts, edible silverfoil or pomegranate seeds.

Notes

Traditional version:

If you want to make the original dish from Rajasthan you add the grated corn directly to the milk and boil it till it has a slightly liquid rice pudding like consistency. You won’t need any starch in this case. All other ingredients stay same.

You can also add 1/2 teaspoon cardamon powder (I feel it diverts too much from the sweet corn flavour)

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Sweet things, Spices

Smoky Cinnamon Tomato Sauce

20/08/2018

Tomatoes are everywhere on my social media feed at the moment and people praise their heavenly, late summer aroma. I have to admit though that I rarely have eaten really good, flavourful tomatoes. The german standard tomato simply isn’t as good as it’s Italian or Spanish relatives. Also tomatoes in India are only average and not even our homegrown tomatoes are anywhere near to what I ate on holidays in Italy.

Pasta with Smoky Cinnamon Tomato SauceBut I actually don’t mind, as even the standard tomato has a lot to offer. One of the reasons why tomatoes are such popular fruits is probably because they are natural umami providers as they contain high levels of glutamic acid. Indian cooking embraces this quality and many dishes contain tomatoes in their base gravy, where they provide acidity, volume and savouriness without the taste of tomato.

Charred TomatoesMy recipe for tomato sauce takes a similar approach. With a very unique technique it magically transforms average tomatoes into an unbelievable hearty sauce which reminds me almost of eating goulash (which I think is a very desirable result).

It tastes fantastic with noodles but can also be used as a base for other dishes. The cinnamon might seem a bit out of place, but it  is a really good flavour combination which my grandmother taught me many years ago. In India cinnamon is actually only used in salty dishes..

You’ll need a big heavy bottomed pan or pot for this recipe. I use a cast iron pan with 28 cm diameter and high edges.

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Smoky Cinnamon Tomato Sauce

For 2 - 3 people.

Ingredients

  • 9 - 10 tomatoes
  • 2 tablespoons ghee or oil
  • 1 onion
  • 1 cup red wine
  • salt, per taste
  • 1 teaspoon sugar
  • 1,5 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Instructions

Cut the tomatoes into half and the onion into rough pieces. Heat the ghee/oil in the pan on medium high heat. Once it’s nicely hot lay the tomatoes in the pan with the cut side down.

Best to do that with a cooking spoon or something similar as the oil will splutter. Only add as many tomato halves as there is space, they should not lay to tight or overlap. In my pan fit ca. 9 tomatoes/18 halves.

Wait till the tomatoes have nicely browned with a few black spots. Don’t stir or move them around as this will release water and stop them from browning. Depending on your pan and heat source it will take around 5 - 10 Minutes. Half way through add the onion pieces and brown them as well.

Deglaze the tomatoes with the cup of wine and add another 1-2 cups of water. Reduce the heat and simmer the tomatoes for around 10 minutes. Add sugar, salt and cinnamon and roughly puree the sauce in a blender or with a handheld mixer.

Filed Under: Salty things, Spices

Syrian Tamarind & Rose Drink

10/08/2018

Already in my last post I wrote about how amazing tamarind is and so I’ll want to show you another tamarind recipe. Recipe feels a bit exaggerated as making the Syrian Tamarind Drink only takes 1 minute if you have the tamarind chutney from my last post ready. The recipe I show you is actually not the original version as this takes much longer. But I find my simpler version equally tasty, with a slight Indian touch and only dates as a sweetener.

I learned how to make the original version of the tamarind drink by my Syrian friend Bassam and I think he would also like my faster version. But I am not able to show it to him anymore. As he was not able to bring his family from Syria to Germany (where he had fled to from the war) he decided to return to Syria. I hope I will see him again one day!

Syria is surprisingly the only country in the middle-east where tamarind is used in cooking. In the 7th century camel caravans brought it via the silk route from India to Aleppo. From there tamarind established itself (instead of the more widely used pomegranate molasses) as an important souring ingredient in Syrian cooking.

The sweet-sour tamarind drink is mainly consumed in summer and especially during the holy month of ramadan. It is refreshing, good for the stomach and a tiny splash of rose water makes it intriguingly floral as well (rose and tamarind are a spot on flavour combination). The texture is silky and slightly thick and when you mix it in a blender it gets a lovely foamy head.

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Syrian Tamarind Drink

For 1 glass.

Ingredients

3 tablespoons tamarind date chutney

250 ml cold water

1-3 drops rose water

Instructions

Add all ingredients into a blender and mix for 1 minute. You can also mix it by hand and it will be delicous too, but not have the same smooth texture.

Go easy on the rosewater as this can be quite strong. The drink should have a lovely floral hint but not taste perfumed.

 

Filed Under: Drinks, Spices

Raw Pumpkin Salad with Tamarind Chutney

01/08/2018

I love pumpkin and as it’s a typical summer vegetable in India, we eat all kind of pumpkin dishes already since months. From an Ayurvedic point of view pumpkin belongs to the vegetables which cool the body and are an ideal food for summer. To cool down further in the Indian heat we often keep the stove off and I prepare the pumpkin raw as a salad.

Raw Pumpkin Salad with Tamarind ChutneyTo eat pumpkin raw as a salad is not so well known, but actually most pumpkins can be eaten raw and they have a wonderful mild, nutty flavour and are pleasantly crunchy. Some decorative pumpkins can’t be eaten raw, but you can use any common pumpkin or squash which is meant for eating. Raw pumpkin salad tastes best with a sweetish, creamy dressing and for my salad I borrowed the flavours from an Indian chaat. These are fantastic, north Indian snacks, which can come in wide variety of ingredients. They all are a wild combination of flavours and textures and taste salty, sweet, sour, crunchy and creamy, all at the same time.

Most chaats use some deep-fried item as the base, but the flavours also tastes great with crunchy pumpkin. The salad is done really fast and it’s the perfect healthy snack, which fills you up without being heavy.

Only the tamarind date chutney takes a little time. But once ready it’ll last for months in the fridge and also makes for a fantastic dip, ketchup replacement and can be used in many more recipes. Tamarind is a very versatile ingredient and injects a deep sour-savoury flavour in many dishes (Ottolenghi called it once one of his secret weapons). It’s really, really worth buying! I’ll be posting some more tamarind recipes in future to show you what it can do.

You’ll get tamarind paste in any Asian market or online and it’ll also last for ages and can be used for many more Indian/Asian/Freestyle dishes.

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Raw Pumpkin Salad with Tamarind Date Chutney

Enough as a snack for 2 people. The recipe for the tamarind chutney will yield one big jar and last for up to 3 months in the fridge.

Ingredients

Tamarind Date Chutney

  • 200 gram dates without stones, cut in small pieces
  • 5 tablespoons tamarind paste or 100 gram dried tamarind
  • 1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
  • 1 teaspoons salt
  • 1/4 TL teaspoon chili powder (optional)
  • 500 ml water

Salad

  • 1/4 of a medium sized pumpkin (hokkaido, muscat, etc)
  • 1 teaspoon lemon juice
  • one handfull fresh coriander leaves
  • one handfull boiled chickpeas
  • one handfull roasted peanuts (salted or unsalted)
  • 1 green chili, finely chopped (optional)
  • 250 gram yogurt
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 2 tablespoons tamarind chutney

Instructions

Chutney

If you use the dried tamarind you first have to make your own tamarind paste. Pour 1 big cup of boiling hot water of the dried tamarind and let it soak for 30 min. You can stir it from time to time to loosen it up a bit. After 30 min add the tamarind and water to a sieve and by pressing on it try to extract as much pulp as possible.

Quickly dry roast the cumin seeds in pot over medium heat till they change colour and smell aromatic. Then add 500 ml water and chopped dates. Bring it to a boil and let it simmer for about 5 minutes. The dates should dissolve in the water, depending on how dry your dates were when you started, it’ll might take a little bit longer. Pour the dates and water into a blender (or use a handheld blender) and puree it, strain through a sieve. Add the puree back to the pot.

Now add the salt, chili powder and tamarind paste (or the extracted pulp), bring to a boil and simmer till it has a thick pouring consistency (a bit thinner than ketchup). Fill in a sterilized glass jar.

As tamarind pastes vary in sourness you should taste the chutney. If it feels too sour add some brown sugar to it, till you feel it tastes balanced.

Salad

Peel and deseed the pumpkin, then grate it as rough as possible. I use a mandoline for it, but if a box grate is all you have you can use that too (it won’t be as crunchy though). Mix the grated pumkin with the lemon juice and green chili (if using), distribute on 2 plates and scatter the chickpeas, peanuts and coriander leaves over it.

Stir the salt into the yogurt, if the yogurt is very thick you can thin it out with a teaspoon full of water. Spoon the yogurt over the pumkin salad and top each plate with a generous tablespoon of tamrind chutney.

Notes

You can also add other ingredients to the salad. A handful of pomegranate seeds or some cubed potatoes or cucumber taste nice. If you are brave enough you can also crush some potato chips and add them on top.

Filed Under: Salty things, Spices

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