For many weeks I have felt no inspiration to cook. The week that we decide to paint our kitchen, the inspiration hits. Today's chick pea salad experiment was superb
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Dice about - 2 American size measuring cups of eggplant (preferably the small and round kind, second preference the large globular ones and the last preference the slender, long ones) and keep ready.
Grind together - 3 tablespoons of pottu kadalai (channa dalia - not channa dal), - 3 tablespoons full of corriander seeds, - 3 tablespoons of cumin seeds. If you can grind these dry, the fresh grinding can make a huge impact on taste. After the dry grind add wet ingredients - 5-7 green chillies, - 3-4 tablespoons of dessicated (or real) coconut and you can soften with water or buttermilk.
Add just enough liquid to make it into a paste, since it won't grind smoothly if it is too watery. You can also add salt to this paste and grind. Taste it and make sure that the heat is adequate. It should taste like it is hot enough to flavor a potful of more-kozhumbu without overpowering it.
Pour one quart carton of buttermilk (smallest carton from a U.S. grocery store - unless you can get soured buttermilk some other way) into a pot and start the heat on low. It is very important to keep the mixing the buttermilk while it slowly heats. The deal is that if you don't keep mixing it, the curds, whey and water will separate and it will boil at separate rates and curdle. So constant mixing on low heat and slowly increase the heat.
I usually get bored during this stirring process, so on the burner behind the pot, I put on a frying pan and heated some oil. In this oil, I put 2 tablespoons oil (you can skimp, but the eggplant will taste soggy instead of fried). Add - mustard seed, - curry leaves, - 1-2 red chillies (not necessary if your ground up paste is already super hot) and - 2 teaspoons of turmeric.
Put the eggplant in after the mustard seeds pop and toss with oil. Leave open on high heat with ocassional tossing. Add salt to the eggplant. All the while stirring the heating buttermilk.
When the buttermilk becomes uniformly hot, add in the ground paste and blend in. Keep stirring. Although it will appear to take forever, you can slowly increase the heat and it will begin to boil. Make sure that it doesn't rise like milk and make a mess. If you have stirred it with zeal, it will be a nice even blend, save for some solids that have formed at the top around the rim of the pot. You can let it boil for as long as it takes to reach the desired level of thickness you like. Add salt to taste (only after it uniformly boils, else keeping it uniform will become a harder task since the salt will reduce the boiling point of the water & whey).
Add the saute'ed eggplant and do not boil for too long lest the eggplant becomes too soft.
- 2 American size measuring cups of eggplant
(preferably the small and round kind, second preference the large globular ones and the last preference the slender, long ones) and keep ready.
Grind together
- 3 tablespoons of pottu kadalai (channa dalia - not channa dal),
- 3 tablespoons full of corriander seeds,
- 3 tablespoons of cumin seeds.
If you can grind these dry, the fresh grinding can make a huge impact on taste. After the dry grind add wet ingredients
- 5-7 green chillies,
- 3-4 tablespoons of dessicated (or real) coconut
and you can soften with water or buttermilk.
Add just enough liquid to make it into a paste, since it won't grind smoothly if it is too watery. You can also add salt to this paste and grind. Taste it and make sure that the heat is adequate. It should taste like it is hot enough to flavor a potful of more-kozhumbu without overpowering it.
Pour one quart carton of buttermilk (smallest carton from a U.S. grocery store - unless you can get soured buttermilk some other way) into a pot and start the heat on low. It is very important to keep the mixing the buttermilk while it slowly heats. The deal is that if you don't keep mixing it, the curds, whey and water will separate and it will boil at separate rates and curdle. So constant mixing on low heat and slowly increase the heat.
I usually get bored during this stirring process, so on the burner behind the pot, I put on a frying pan and heated some oil. In this oil, I put
2 tablespoons oil (you can skimp, but the eggplant will taste soggy instead of fried). Add
- mustard seed,
- curry leaves,
- 1-2 red chillies (not necessary if your ground up paste is already super hot) and
- 2 teaspoons of turmeric.
Put the eggplant in after the mustard seeds pop and toss with oil. Leave open on high heat with ocassional tossing. Add salt to the eggplant. All the while stirring the heating buttermilk.
When the buttermilk becomes uniformly hot, add in the ground paste and blend in. Keep stirring. Although it will appear to take forever, you can slowly increase the heat and it will begin to boil. Make sure that it doesn't rise like milk and make a mess. If you have stirred it with zeal, it will be a nice even blend, save for some solids that have formed at the top around the rim of the pot. You can let it boil for as long as it takes to reach the desired level of thickness you like. Add salt to taste (only after it uniformly boils, else keeping it uniform will become a harder task since the salt will reduce the boiling point of the water & whey).
Add the saute'ed eggplant and do not boil for too long lest the eggplant becomes too soft.
The end.
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