It seems like madeleines are all the rage right now. I’ve been sitting on this recipe for months and of course when I come back to post it, I see recipes for madeleines everywhere!



If you’re not familiar with them, madeleines are French cookies that are really more like little cakes. Best served warm from the oven, they have a lightly crisp exterior that gives way to a light, spongy, interior that is redolent of butter and should be barely sweet, just so to make them the perfect companion for afternoon tea.  

I first made these cookies for my New Year’s Eve party at the very end of 2010. The menu for my party had a bit of an Indian slant, so I took my Earl Grey tea shortbread cookies and simply swapped out the Earl Grey tea for regular black tea and added all the spices that go into a comforting mug of Indian masala chai. [Please, folks, don’t call it “chai tea” – chai means tea in Hindi so you’re calling it “tea tea” – masala chai is the correct term for the now-common Indian beverage of milky, spiced black tea.]

I wasn’t sure how these would go over at the party but they were a hit, particularly among two of my close friends who literally stood in front of the stand on which these cookies were resting for about a half an hour while they systematically demolished the entire platter. Thanks for leaving some for the rest of the guests, guys, but also thanks for the huge praise.

My dad's birthday was a few weeks ago, and, as I do for everyone in my family, I make them a birthday cake.  In the case of my dad, I always make his favorite cake - my signature pistachio-cardamom cake with rosewater frosting - but even though I love it, too, I was starting to get a little tired of it.  I considered making a mango kulfi cake, but that's my mom's birthday cake, and I was also just not in the mood to make a cake this year (I blame it on the interminable stretch of damp grey days).


A few weeks ago, I had spent some time conjuring up a short menu of simple spring desserts (for a now-defunct project), one of which was a meyer lemon pudding with brown sugar-sesame seed tuiles.  For whatever reason, that one had really stuck in my head, so I ran with the idea of pudding and decided to make it mango.

One of my resolutions for this year is to actually use the cookbooks that are on my bookshelf instead of ignoring them and letting them collect dust. One of those books is Raghavan Iyer's 660 Curries, which I received a few years ago but didn't have much luck with. However, after reading lots of reviews, I've decided to give it another shot. One of the recipes that I've been meaning to try - from this book or otherwise - is dal makhani, a creamy concotion comprised of lots of warming spices and black lentils.


There are a few common denominators to most recipes for this dish - black lentils (whole urad dal), a smidge of red kidney beans, cumin, chili powder, onions. But the numerous variations beyond that were clearly indicative of the many different ways this dish can be prepared. However, the main common denominator was one that made this dish something that I never made: soaking lentils and kidney beans overnight.

Happy new year! I know I’ve been totally slacking on posting regularly, but I’ve come up with a few ideas to maximize my use of time, so hopefully I won’t be as negligent on here anymore (at least not for the next few months…I also have to kick the wedding planning into high gear – I’m getting married in eight months!)

Anyway, a few weekends ago, I went on a baking bender and made tons of cookies for a friend's family's holiday party as well as to take down to my fiance's family's house for Christmas (I still can’t reconcile palm trees + Christmas lights). Among the many cookies I made were these little shortbread cookies.

Palak paneer is commonly called saag paneer despite the fact that there actually is a difference between the two. Technically, palak paneer is made with spinach and saag paneer is made with mustard greens and spinach, but most restaurants (and home cooks) make their versions with just spinach and call it saag paneer anyway.


My mom, however, has always correctly called her version of it palak paneer (yet another testament to her excellence in the kitchen). I’ve always liked my mom’s version of it better than anything I’ve had at a restaurant, and I’m not just saying that because she’s my mom – she really is an amazing cook.

This is the first of three recipes that I'll be posting from 660 Curries. Don't forget to leave a comment by 9 pm on Sunday, May 18th to be entered into the drawing for first of three copies of the book (see this post for details).

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I had a ton of fresh spinach that I had gotten at the market earlier in the week, so a spinach recipe was in order. I was all set to search the index of the book for spinach recipes, but it so happened that when I opened the book, I landed on the page for this recipe. Since I had almost all the ingredients on hand, I decided to go for it.

Most of the ingredients for this recipe are either already in your house or easily available, but it does require one very special ingredient that is only available at Indian grocery stores: sambar powder. Sambar powder is a South Indian spice blend that is not only used for making sambar (as the name might imply), but also for flavoring vegetable curries. It's made by roasting spices and lentils and then grinding them to make a powdered spice blend. South Indians are apparently the only people in the world who roast lentils and use them as seasonings, either whole, as in this green bean dish, or ground as in this eggplant curry and tomato and lentil stew. Roasted lentils lend a nutty and almost sweet flavor to dishes, and the result is unlike any other seasoning I've ever had.

I followed this recipe almost exactly as written in order to be able to properly review and critique it. On the whole, I would give it a rating of 6 out of 10. I like the combination of chickpeas and spinach, and I’m a fan of using South Indian spices in dishes, but there was a striking lack of cohesion in this dish both texturally and flavor-wise. I wouldn’t specifically make this again unless I made the following changes:

• Reduce the amount of mustard seeds from 1 tsp to 1/2 tsp - the flavor of popped mustard seeds overwhelmed the dish.
• Omit the ginger and fried onion/shallot – onions, shallots, garlic, and other allium members are never used in South Indian cooking; ginger is rarely used, and, if so, never with sambar powder and popped mustard seeds (my mother’s jaw dropped when I told her that the recipe called for mustard seeds and sambar powder AND onions and ginger). I couldn't distinctly taste the ginger and shallots, but I would omit them nonetheless.
• Reduce the amount of water from 2 cups to 1 cup and increase the simmering time to at least 20 minutes (from 8-10) - the final product was really watery and not at all cohesive in terms of texture or flavor. Reducing the amount of water by ½ and increasing the cooking time would allow for more of the water to get absorbed by the chick peas, for the chick peas to give off some of their starch and thereby thicken the sauce, and for all the flavors to blend together.
  

I might also use frozen spinach instead of fresh, because the delicate fresh spinach flavor was totally drowned out by the seasonings.

That being said, I think this would be a great weeknight dinner - it's quick, easy to make, inexpensive, healthy, and, with the aforementioned changes, probably really tasty.

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Chana Saag (Spiced Chickpeas and Spinach)
(serves 4)

2 tablespoons ghee (clarified butter) or canola oil
1 teaspoon black or yellow mustard seeds
1 tablespoon ginger paste
2 tablespoons fried onion paste (I used 2 tablespoons finely minced shallots)
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 teaspoons sambar powder
2 teaspoons kosher or sea salt
2 cups cooked chickpeas (I used a 15-ounce can)
2 cups water
1 pound fresh spinach leaves, well rinsed and finely chopped

***************

Heat the ghee in a medium-sized saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the mustard seeds, cover the pot, and cook until the seeds have stopped popping, about 30 seconds. Lower the heat to medium and add the ginger paste. Stir-fry until light brown, about 30 seconds. (Be careful with this step – the ghee will be very hot and the ginger will very likely splatter – I kept any splattering ghee and ginger out of my face by covering the pot and then pulling up the lid a bit to leave it ajar, then sticking a long wooden spoon into the pot to stir the ginger.)

Stir in the fried onion paste, tomato paste, sambar powder, salt, and chickpeas. Stir well to coat the chickpeas, then add the water. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Add the spinach and stir well to incorporate. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer, covered, until the mixture has thickened, about 8-10 minutes.

Serve with rice.

A few weeks ago, I received a copy of Raghavan Iyer’s book 660 Curries. As the title might imply, the book contains hundreds of recipes for Indian curries. What the title doesn’t imply, though, is that the book contains recipes from all regions of India, and not every recipe in this book is for what generally comes to mind when you hear the word “curry.”

The book opens with an introduction to and recipes for the foundation of curries: spice blends and pastes. Contrary to popular belief, there is no such thing as generic “curry powder” (so go throw away that bottle of curry powder you bought in the spice aisle in the supermarket), and Iyer does a wonderful job of providing recipes for and explaining the uses of many regional spice blends. What follows are literally hundreds of recipes that are organized into neat categories: appetizer curries, meat curries (I obviously skipped over those 160 pages), vegetable, lentil, and paneer curries, fusion curries, and side dishes. Indian food is incredibly diverse – dishes from Tamil Nadu are completely different from those you would find in Goa – and this book not only includes recipes from all the regions of India, but also explains the differences between the cuisines of the regions.

While I don’t think that this book is the ultimate guide to Indian cooking, I do think that it is an excellent resource for people who love Indian food and want to learn about regional Indian cuisine as well how to cook dishes that go beyond the narrow purview of the local Indian restaurant.

So, to that end, I’m giving away three copies of 660 Curries.

Here's how it works: starting today and for the next two weeks, I will post the recipe for and my comments and thoughts on one dish from the book. I'll post each recipe on Monday (actually, the first one will be posted tomorrow), and I will be giving away one copy of the book each week.

To be entered into each weekly drawing, all you need to do is leave a relevant comment on the post for the weekly recipe – maybe what your favorite Indian dish is, or what your experiences with Indian cooking have been, or anything along those lines. I’ll randomly select a winner on the Sunday of the following week. Just make sure that you

1. Leave your comment by 9 pm Eastern time on that Sunday, and
   
2. Provide either a link to your own blog (where I presume I would be able to find your email address) or your email address in the format name at domain dot com – for example, I’d be raspberryeggplant at gmail dot com (Leaving your email address this way instead of in traditional format helps prevent spammers from finding your email address and adding it to their list. I don’t want you to get spammed. I care about my readers!)

This is my first giveaway of any kind, and I’m excited about it! Good luck!

I love samosas, but it’s hard to find a good one in my neighborhood in Baltimore. Now, before you tell me that there is not just one, but four Indian restaurants (actually, two of them are Indian/Nepali) within a 10 minute walk of my apartment, let me tell you something first: I’ve had samosas from three of the places (the fourth opened just a month ago), and none of them have been good. They’ve either been really greasy or the filling was flat-out bad (or both). So, what’s a girl to do?

Well, of course, the answer is to make her own. But wait – said girl (that would be me) hates deep-frying. I decided that the way to get around that problem would be to use puff pastry as the wrapper for the spiced potato and peas filling, and then to bake the samosas. The puff pastry is rolled out a bit so that it doesn’t get too puffy (thereby more closely resembling a regular samosa), but it is still light, flaky, and moist. The best part is that these samosas are incredibly easy to make - there's no need to make your own dough, there's no deep-frying involved, and you can season your filling just the way you like it. The end result: an easy and delicious snack that's probably better than the ones at your local Indian restaurant.

Now that it’s warming up, I’m returning to cooking with seasonal produce and doing so simply and minimally so as to let the vegetables shine. I’m on a current kick of cooking vegetables in a South Indian style, which involves just a few light spices and short cooking times. The result is a meal that is not only quick, but tastes fresh and delicious.


Unlike North Indian dishes, which frequently contain onion, ginger, garlic, and garam masala, South Indian food frequently utilizes roasted lentils, mustard seeds, and dried red chilis to provide a light yet distinctive flavor. The mustard seeds are popped in hot oil to release their characteristic flavor, and the lentils are then added to impart the oil with a nutty flavor. Red chilis provide a bit of heat, and asafetida provides an earthy flavor that is reminiscent of but not quite as pungent as leeks or shallots.

I really did not like green beans when I was younger. My mom made them two ways: French cut ones with garam masala and chopped ones with roasted lentils and coconut. My brother loved the former and I recall seeing them on the dinner table very often, but I didn’t like them – they were too spicy for me. She made the latter version less frequently, and I don’t recall really liking them, either. But, like most people, my taste buds grew up along with the rest of me, and now I love them. (Although, oddly enough, I used to really like broccoli but now I won’t eat it, ha!).

My mom has been teaching me how to make more South Indian dishes recently. I feel like an idiot for not having learned to do so earlier because not only is it really delicious, but it’s incredibly easy and quite healthy. My mom gave me the instructions for this one a few weeks ago and I think it is now one of my favorite things to eat.

Update (January 2011): Upon retiring his long-running Minimalist column, Mark Bittman selected his top 25 recipes and this was one of them.

Update (April 2008): Mark Bittman adapted this recipe and featured it in his Minimalist column in the New York Times.

I don’t think I need to reiterate my love for eggplant. My mom has been making this dish for many years, but I never bothered to learn how to make it.

A few months ago, I made a version of a chaat that I had eaten last summer at my favorite North Indian restaurant in New York, Devi. I served it to my mom when she was visiting and she loved it, which meant that it was a success; my mom holds Indian food to high standards, and why shouldn’t she – she’s been cooking it forever and makes the absolute best South Indian food ever (and I’m not just saying that because she’s my mom).

1. It’s one of my favorite things that my mom makes.
2. It can only be made in the summer/early fall because it requires green tomatoes.
3. My tomato plants died (from root rot, it seems) and so I had a large harvest of green and pinkish tomatoes on my hands.
4. 
5. I had no other produce in my house and sort of had to make this if I wanted to eat something remotely fresh.