The Wilky Way

So I’ve been working hard on my cooking skills recently, and have tried a lot of new recipes that I’m looking forward to sharing. I’ll start with my latest though, which, in celebration of National Curry Week (yes, there’s a National Curry Week!) was a chicken and sweet potato coconut curry with a side dish of palak paneer. It was pretty delicious, and not TOO hard to make – except for the fact that I’m a bit rubbish with timings so ended up doing a pretty decent headless chicken impression towards the end.

Excuse my photography skills, plus I’m not too skilled at plating up, so it’s not the most beautiful dish you’ll have ever seen, but YUM! I LOVE Indian food and managed to throw this all together so that it actually tasted good. Plus this made more than enough for the two of us for two days on the trot, so I got to put my feet up and revel in my achievements while my creation was heated up the next day.

I actually made the cheese for the paneer the day before, because I was thinking ahead. I never normally do the planning in advance thing, but I’m pretty sure you can get away with doing this all in one evening. The recipes were from a few different sources, which I’ve included here, and despite a rather vague palak paneer recipe, it all worked pretty well. The spinach did taste like it was missing something, but then I didn’t do the ghee thing at the end, so that probably explains it!

Paneer (cheese) recipe

So cheese is really complicated to make, right? WRONG! It’s so super duper easy even I managed it just fine. And it has TWO ingredients:

Ingredients:

2.5 litre Milk
11/2tsp vinegar or 1/2tsp lemon juice or citric acid

Directions
1) Boil the milk in a pan.
2) When it’s boiling add lemon juice or vinegar or citric acid which ever you are using, while stirring.
3) If citric acid is being used, dissolve it in 2-tbsp water before adding.
4) When milk curdles full turn off the gas and keep aside for 5 minutes.
5) Pour it on to a cotton/muslin cloth and tie it with a tight knot.
6) When all the water is drained from the paneer shape it into a rectangular block. (I didn’t bother doing this so mine was more of a ‘splat’ shape)
7) Now place the cloth under heavy weight for 2-3 hours before using it.

See? Couldn’t be simpler…

So, once this was ready I was able to use it for my side dish:

Palak Paneer recipe

Ingredients:

500gms Fresh Palak (Saag) (Spinach!)
100gms Paneer (I used all I had)
2 Onions
Grated Ginger (I used a chunk of about 2 inches)
Garlic paste (I used a couple of tsp)
5-6 tbsp oil
1 tsp pure ghee
Garam masala to taste (No idea how much I used)
Red chili powder to taste (Just a weeny sprinkle, but I wish I’d used more)
1 tsp cumin powder
Salt To Taste

Directions:

1) Clean and wash palak (spinach) nicely.
2) Boil the spinach in water and cool it. (pleasantly vague here, I think I boiled it for about 5 – 7 minutes until it was pretty soggy looking)
3) Now mash it in a mixer.
4) Heat oil in a kadai (dunno what this is, I used a wok). Add ginger-garlic paste and stir-fry for a minute.
5) Now add onions and fry till golden brown.
6) Add all spices except red chili powder.
7) Now add the spinach and little water if needed and cook for 4-5 minutes.
Cut paneer into pieces (Paneer can be fried to golden brown in a seperate pan or can be used as it is). (I didn’t do this, but again wish I had, it would have been a bit nicer I think)
9) Add Paneer pieces to the gravy and cook until done.
10) Take out in a bowl.
11) Just before serving, heat pure ghee in a small pan.
12) Hold the pan over bowl, add chili powder and immediately pour on the indian palak paneer. (I completely ignored both of these steps, but think it would have been better if I’d bothered)
13) Caution: Don’t allow chili powder to burn .

So, that was my nice, but not as nice as it could have been, Palak Paneer.

Now for the crowning glory of my dish, the really delicious and creamy curry. I stuck to this pretty much to the book, but the curry was a teeny bit watery for my taste, so I simmered it for another 10 minutes or so until I got the thicker consistency that I prefer.

Chicken, sweet potato and coconut curry

Ingredients:

1 tbsp sunflower oil
2 tsp mild curry paste
2 large boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite-size pieces
2 medium-sized sweet potatoes , peeled and cut into bite-size pieces
4 tbsp red split lentils
300ml chicken stock
400ml can coconut milk
175g frozen peas

Directions:

1. Heat the oil in a deep frying pan or wok, stir in the curry paste and fry for 1 minute.
2. Add the chicken, sweet potatoes and lentils and stir to coat in the paste
3. Pour in the stock and coconut milk. Bring to the boil, then simmer for 15 minutes.
4. Tip in the peas, bring back to the boil and simmer for a further 4-5 minutes.
5. Season to taste before serving.

1 Comment | In: recipes | tags: cheese, chicken curry, chicken curry recipe, chicken sweet potato and coconut curry, curry recipe, Indian cheese, Indian food, national curry week, palak paneer, recipe, sweet potato curry recipe. | #

With my current enthusiasm for cooking, I’ve been looking at a lot of cooking and recipe sites, which meant I was lucky enough to come across Recipelook.co.uk. This is a sweet site – one of my favourites -  in which readers send in drawings and diagrams of their favourite recipes.

The idea is to use as little text as possible and some of the artists have come up with some really creative ways of presenting their recipes.

Some of these are so pretty I want to print them off and frame them somewhere in my kitchen!

Ultimately, these are a good way for culinary clutz’ like me to understand nice, simple recipes, without too much confusion.

No Comments | In: art, recipes | tags: art, cooking, drawing, Recipelook.co.uk, recipes. | #

Last night, in an attempt to settle further into my latest ‘domestic Goddess’ role I made some home-cooked lamb and feta burgers.  Well, does it still count as being a domestic Goddess if the BF did most of the hard work? I mean, it was my idea, and I was most definitely overseeing proceedings so I’m going to count that as a point for me. Plus I whipped up some super amazing home-made tzatziki to go with, so I did half the work. Definitely.

The burgers and dip tasted pretty incredible, so I thought I’d put the recipe up here for others to make/enjoy as much as I have.

The recipe from the burgers was from allrecipes.com and the tzatziki recipe was from a Greek fellow who posted on the Jamie Oliver recipe swap forum.

Lamb and Feta Burgers

Ingredients

4 large unpeeled garlic cloves

500g minced lamb

½ cup crumbled feta cheese

¾ teaspoon dried oregano

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon black pepper

Directions

1. Set 4 whole garlic cloves in a small skillet over medium-high heat (these smoked quite a bit so maybe open a window!); toast until spotty brown, about 5 minutes. Peel, mince and set aside.

2. Break up lamb in a medium bowl. Sprinkle roasted garlic, feta, oregano, salt and pepper over meat; stir with a fork to combine. Divide into 4 portions. Toss meat back and forth between cupped hands to form a ball. Pat with fingertips to flatten to about 4 inches wide.

3. Heat up some oil in a frying pan until it’s super hot and then whack in your burgers. Each one took about 5-7 minutes, turning half way through.

Tzatziki

I would never have thought of adding red wine vinegar to this, but it tasted amazing.
Ingredients

1 cucumber

500g Greek Yogurt

3-4 garlic cloves, crushed

salt, pepper

extra extra virgin olive oil

red wine vinegar

Directions

1. Peel the cucumber and grate it using the smaller side of the grater (if you’ve got one of those four sided jobbies). Place the grated bits into a sieve and squeeze as much water out as possible.

2. Mix together the crushed garlic, Greek yogurt, and grated cucumber with a bit of salt and pepper.

3. Add about 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil and 2-3 tablespoons of vinegar and mix again.

*additionally to this I added a healthy sprinkle of finely chopped fresh mint. Yum.

No Comments | In: recipes | tags: burgers, lamb and feta, recipe, tzatziki. | #