On Friday, Brian spontaneously decided to attempt making Malai Kofta, those quite spiced little potato dumplings regularly visible at Indian buffets, floating in a creamy coconut-based totally gravy. This dish had generally been a favorite of his in Indian eating places, but he found it a bit demanding that there constantly seemed to be an excessive amount of sauce and now not enough dumplings. And on the grounds that he knew he had a can of coconut milk inside the pantry for the sauce, he belief, why no longer deliver it a strive?
Many recipes for Malai Kofta name for paneer, an Indian easy cheese. Since we didn't have any of that reachable, and considering we've were given been trying to lessen down on dairy besides, he placed a vegan version of the dish at One Green Planet, which used a aggregate of potato, carrot, and peas for the dumplings. (It additionally known as for 2 tablespoons of chopped toasted cashews, which gave him an possibility to dissipate a touch handful of those that had been lurking in our pantry for a while.)
However, he nevertheless ended up having to make quite some substitutions to this recipe make it work with what we had in our pantry. These covered:
- Replacing the chick pea flour in the kofta, which we didn't have, with regular flour.
- Replacing the tomatoes in the sauce with canned crushed tomatoes.
- Replacing 1 cup of coconut milk and 1 cup of water with one can of reduced-fat coconut milk from Trader Joe's. In the first place, that was what we had, and in the second, using the whole can didn't leave us with any little dregs left over that might be hard to use up.
- Replacing the serrano pepper, which we didn't have, with 1/4 of a jalapeno pepper, which contains about the same total amount of heat.
- Replacing the yellow onion, which we don't keep on hand these days since I found they tend to disagree with me, with half of a milder red onion.
- Omitting the cilantro from both the kofta and the sauce, since (a) we didn't have any, (b) it's expensive to buy at the store, and (c) I don't care for it much anyway.
- Increasing the salt in the gravy from a barely detectable quarter-teaspoon to a full teaspoon.
- Adding a teaspoon of brown sugar to the gravy to sweeten and soften the flavor.
Between the vegan recipe and the modifications Brian made to it, this dish came out a chunk splendid from the variations we'd had earlier than. One change that Brian favored changed into that the recipe made hundreds of dumplings, so we must take as many as we appreciated in preference to being constrained to 1 lonely little kofta swimming in a sea of gravy. I additionally noticed that the feel of the dumplings themselves seemed to be chewier, in all likelihood because of the absence of the crumbly paneer or possibly due to the flour-for-chick-pea-flour substitution. They had been though pretty tasty, however a piece tough to cut via with a fork. It almost appeared like that they had work higher as a finger meals, with the gravy on the aspect as a dip, as opposed to a prime direction served in a bowl over rice. But apart from this minor quirk, the dish became pretty much much like the most effective we'd enjoyed before in Indian eating places: lightly highly spiced dumplings in a tangy gravy flavored with coconut.
As to whether or now not we might make it again, I'd say it without a doubt is especially up to Brian. I liked it and can sincerely be willing to devour it once more, however I didn't find it impossible to resist loads that I'd request it mainly. So it is a query of whether he turned into glad enough with the results to be inclined to put within the work required to make it. Asked approximately this, he stated it
