India With Passion

Yesterday's lunch included two recipes from India With Passion, by Manju Malhi and Jason Lowe.

The first was aloo baingan jhol - potatoes and aubergine in tomato sauce, as I had a couple of aubergines that I wanted to include in the meal. I started to have some doubts about this soon after beginning to cook it. The recipe calls for thickly sliced onion to be fried over a medium heat for 2-3 minutes, which was just enough to take them to the "not raw any longer" stage. The tomato sauce is a bit of a misnomer as the dish contains only one medium tomato, and the addition of 400ml of boiling water close to the end of the cooking time made the dish far too liquid. Finally, the addition of the spices at the same time as all that water meant that their flavour was undeveloped. Overall, a bit disappointing.

That said, I would make this again with some significant tweaks - frying the onions for longer so that they brown, incorporating the spices during the frying stage and adding more tomato (potato, aubergine and tomato seems to be one of those universally tasty combinations) and much less water. I may also fry the potatoes and aubergine separately as a lot of the frying in the recipe was actually steaming.

Second was chholar dal - spiced bengal gram, with a recipe almost identical to the one on the author's website. I normally love dal in all its forms, as does my daughter, but this was way too bland. I think that it was the coconut cream that killed it.

Overall, I was disappointed as I have cooked from this book before (probably with some tweaks along the way) and enjoyed the outcome.

Aloo Baingan Jhol - Potatoes and Aubergine in Tomato Sauce (ingredients as written, instructions paraphrased and notated)

Serves 2-3

2 dried medum red chillies

1 tbsp coriander seeds

1 tsp cumin seeds

1 tsp brown or black mustard seeds

2 tbsp vegetable oil

2 bay leaves (optional)

1 medium spanish onion, thickly sliced

1/2 tsp turmeric

310g (11 oz) red or white potatoes, peeled and cut into 2cm cubes

310g (11 oz) aubergine, cut into 2.5cm cubes

2 garlic cloves, crushed

1 medium tomato, finely chopped

1 tsp tamarind concentrate

1/2 tsp salt

Grind the chillies, coriander seeds, cumin seeds and mustard seeds. Heat oil in a large pan and fry onion, bay and turmeric over medium heat for 2-3 minutes (I would have fried the onion for longer, adding bay and turmeric when it started to brown).

Add potatoes and fry for a minute. Cover and cook for 7 minutes until potatoes are tender, checking half way through that they aren't sticking (frying with semi-cooked onions doesn't do much for the potatoes here - I think in future I'd fry in a separate pan to brown the outsides, and then add to the dish for the covered cooking time).

Add aubergine and garlic, and fry for a minute. Add tomato and fry for a minute. Cover and cook for another 6 minutes (Again, I think I would fry the aubergine separately to brown. I'd also use either more tomatoes, or quite possibly a 200g tin of chair de tomate).

Add spices, tamarind and salt, and 400ml of boiling water. Cover and cook for 10 minutes (I'd add the spices much earlier - possibly at the same time as the bay and turmeric. Also, that's a LOT of water - the dish was swimming in it, which possibly contributed to the lack of flavour as so much had leached into the liquid. If I make this again, especially given the extra tomatoes, I'd probably not add any water at all).