Recipe 9 and 10 - Dhaniwali Murgh Korma and Kulfi

Because it's a bit cold these days, I wanted to do something with a bit of spice last weekend, so I decided to try out one of the curries from my Indian curry book. As a dessert I picked the Kulfi recipe from another book, because that recipe might be interesting for Nicole, who wanted something that goes well with an Argentinian summer and I figured ice cream would fit the bill.

Dhaniwali Murgh Korma

The book
The curry recipe is from "Indische Currys" by Camellia Panjabi (ISBN 3-88472-811-3), a present from my sister-in-law Eva. I think this is the first time I'm trying a recipe from the book, even though it's been a while since I got it. Before you get to the actual recipes, there's a 50 pages long introduction about the regional differences of Indian cuisine, the philosophy behind it, more information about curries, chillies, how to use herbs and spices and tips and tricks. There's even a table for combining the right colors, chillies, herbs and spices and side dishes. I really appreciate that the author took the time to explain all the whys and whats to Europeans who have no idea about Indian cuisine, but of course I didn't have the time to thoroughly read 50 pages of background information before getting started. So if I got it wrong, blame me for skipping this part.

The ingredients
1 chicken of about 1kg
5 garlic cloves
10-12 strands of saffron
5 green chillies
2 onions, chopped
375ml creamy yoghurt
4 tablespoons ghee or oil
4 cloves
8 green cardamom capsules
10cm cinnamon stick
1/2  teaspoon ground curcuma
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
salt
1/2l chicken broth
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 tablespoons chopped coriander


The recipe
Boil the chicken in 750ml water with 2 garlic cloves for 3-4 minutes. Remove the chicken and let it cool. Put the liquid through a sieve and set it aside for later.
Crush the remaining garlic and mix it with 125ml of water. Soak the saffron in 4 tablespoons of water and squeeze the saffron with the back of a spoon. Puree onions and green chillies in a blender. Whip the yoghurt with a fork and set aside.
Heat ghee or oil in a pot and roast the onion mash for 12-15 minutes until golden brown. Mix in cloves, cardamom and the cinnamon stick, then the ground curcuma. Add the pieces of chicken, the garlic-water mixture and the yoghurt and stir; cover and let simmer for 7-10 minutes, until the liquid is gone.
Add ginger and salt and give the chicken time to take on some color, about 3-4 minutes. Add enough chicken broth to produce a sufficient amount of sauce.
Let simmer on medium heat for about 40 minutes. When the chicken is cooked through, sprinkle with saffron water, pepper and coriander.

The testing
This started off badly, though that wasn't the recipe's fault. The garlic I had bought was moldy and the 2 yellow onions I had looked great from the outside, but were rotten on the inside - yuck! So I had to make do with the remaining 3 garlic garlic cloves that I still had and red onions. I couldn't get a decent looking whole chicken, so used chicken fillets with bones.
What confused me a bit was the chicken broth in this recipe. First of all, boiling chicken for 3-4 minutes sounds like a recipe for food-born illness disasters. The short-term temperature rise gives the bacteria in the chicken meat a chance to reproduce faster, imho. Also, they didn't specifically mention that the chicken water is supposed to be the chicken broth mentioned in the list of ingredients, so I wasn't quite sure whether I had get some extra chicken broth. I think you're meant to use the water from the chicken, but a short explanation would have been nice. The soaking of the garlic in water seemed a bit unnecessary. Why not just add the garlic and water without soaking them first? Maybe having all the garlic cloves would have made this step more meaningful.
After adding the water and the yoghurt there was so much liquid in the pot it would have taken ages to get rid of it, not just 7-10 minutes. I'm inclined to say that just adding garlic and yoghurt would suffice - forget about the water, just add water if you think it needs more liquid.

The result
We ate the chicken curry with rice and it smelled lovely.

The verdict
The taste was great with balanced flavors, not too spicy, but not too lame either. The meat was tender and juicy. Unfortunately, our digestive systems had issues with the dish for unknown reasons. Was it the chicken? Chicken bacteria paranoia kicking in? The chillies? The onions? The cooked yoghurt? I don't know. It wasn't too bad, though, just made us feel slightly uncomfortable and that is not enough to put me off making more curries in the future. I'll do this again, but with a few adjustments, even if that might affect the authenticity of the dish.


Kulfi ice cream

The book
This is from "Eiscreme. Der perfekte Genuss." by Susanna Tee (Tee? Why is she not writing "Tee. Der perfekte Genuss"? Anyway, ISBN is 1-40544-924-1). Though it seems like I'm constantly browsing through this book, I can't remember actually using any of the recipes before. This indicates that it looks good (it does!) and that I'm a lazy bastard who's looking at ice cream recipes, but ends up buying the store-bought stuff (I am!). I think this one was also a gift, but I can't remember who gave it to me. What happened to writing a dedication on the front pages? Probably vanished with amazon's gift delivery service.


The ingredients
1.5 l milk
12 cardamom capsules
100g caster sugar
150g pistachios
60g ground almonds
160g cream (at least 36% fat content)

The recipe
Put milk into a large, heavy pot, add the cardamom and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 45 minutes, until the milk has been reduced to about half the amount. Add the sugar and stir until it has dissolved. Put the milk into a bowl and let it cool. Cool for at least 8 hours or overnight.
Put the pistachios into a bowl, cover with boiling hot water and let stand for about 1-2 minutes. Remove and shake off excess water. Rub off the skins with your fingers and cut the pistachios into pieces.
Pass cardamom milk through a sieve and stir in the ground almonds.
Freeze the milk in an open container for 1-2 hours, until it starts getting firm at the sides of the container. Put into a bowl and blend with a fork or a mixer. Whip the cream to soft peak stage and combine it with the milk mixture and half of the pistachios. Put it all back into the container and freeze for another 2-3 hours until firm. Cover and keep freezing for longer storage. For serving, garnish the ice cream with the remaining pistachios.
If using an ice cream machine, combine the milk mixture with the whipped cream and start freezing according to instructions. Once the ice cream is almost frozen, add half the pistachios.

The testing
I could have done with more detailed instructions for cooking the milk. I have one recipe for rice pudding where the instructions are quite specific - bring to a boil on high heat, while stirring constantly; reduce to low heat, cover, stirring every once in a while, etc. - you get the idea. In this recipe, however, they don't even mention stirring. Hm, boiling and simmering milk for 45 minutes without even stirring sounds like a bad idea, would probably ruin the oven, the pot, 1.5 liters of milk and my nerves. But how much stirring, how much heat, cover or no cover? I played it safe and stirred most of the time. Covering and leaving it on its own on low heat would only make me a nervous wreck anyway, always expecting it to get scorched or to boil over any minute. This can be seen as a meditative exercise, especially if combined with music. The milky cardamom smell goes well with that. After boiling the milk mixture already tasted quite sweet - very yummy, actually - so I used only 50g of sugar and that was really enough for my taste.
The pistachios were trying to resist my efforts to remove their skin. In the end I won, but next time I would probably rather try buying some that have their skins already removed or do without those bloody little bastards.
Lucky me has an ice cream machine, so freezing the whole thing was a lot faster and easier, but I can still appreciate that they didn't assume everyone would own one and offered an alternative method.

The result
Ta-da!! The pistachios, as much as I hate skinning them, look gorgeous on the ice cream. Almost worth it.

The verdict
Yummy! Even food writer Jeffrey Steingarten, who once said about Indian desserts that they have the taste and consistency of face cream, might have like it. Roland liked it so much that he had a second helping. The rest of it we put into the freezer for later.
I would do this again, but next time I would probably leave out the pistachios. Ice cream with hard bits always leaves me wondering whether I should have it melt in my mouth or chew it - confusing! After preparing the milk I noticed that the Indian curry book has a kulfi recipe as well. Instead of boiling the milk for an eternity, they use condensed milk. Though the time saving that can be had by using condensed milk is tempting, I doubt that it would taste as fantastic as the homemade cardamom-infused stuff. The really good things in life need some time and dedication, I think.