Spicy PURIS with a mild veggie KORMA!

Woke up this cool to cold morning, felt a pica for some hot spicy stuff!

Planned for Puri Bhaji. My bitter half would not have allowed me to make my fav greasy platter if she had known, so waded into the kitchen before she got up. Though to be fair, she came right into the spirit of the thing once she was up and had twisted my ears till they nearly came off!

So the puris are mine, and the korma her creation.. I chopped up the veggies for the Korma, and then kneaded and rolled out the puris while sweetiepie made the korma.

Spicy PURIS with a mild veggie KORMA!

Preparation time: 1 hour (needs 2 adults that don’t get in each other’s way)

Feeds: 3 adults & 2 small kids (who don’t like food at this time!)

Difficulty: Simple (you can’t mess it up!)

Ingredients:

For the puris:

1.       Wheat flour – 3 big cups (made about 15 big puris)

2.       Salt – 2 teaspoons

3.       Hing (asafoetida) – 1 pinch

4.       Black pepper powder – 1 teaspoon

5.       Oil – 1 teaspoon (to coat your palm & fingers, so the flour doesn’t stick!)

For the korma:

1.       Potatos – 5 medium-sized ones, washed dried and peeled, then diced into 1cm squares.

2.       Beans – a bunch of crunchy ones (I took about 2 dozen) – cut into 1 cm-long pieces

3.       Carrot – washed peeled and cut into itty-bitty pieces

4.       Green peas – a cup, frozen ones put into water right from the freezer

5.       Ginger & garlic – both peeled and grated, about 2 tablespoons

6.       Onion – 3 medium sized ones, cut into slender half rings.

7.       Green chillies – 2 long fresh ones, sliced vertically. (More for decoration!)

8.       Chilly powder, salt, turmeric, garam masala – to taste (MS Office says “Chilly” is wrong spelling, but I’ll use Inglish, so there, Bill Gates!)

9.       Coriander powder – 1 tablespoon

10.   Saunf (Aniseed) – 1 teaspoon

11.   Mustard – 1 teaspoon

12.   Coreander leaves – a bunch (to garnish; chop these up fine after washing)

13.   Coconut milk – 2 cups (made in the mixi by grinding & sqeezing out grated coconut from the freezer)

Okay, the puris first. I threw in ingredients 2 to 4 in a tall vessel with a wide mouth, then poured in wheat flour right from the bag (so my measures would be approximate). Kneaded these together, trickling in water to keep the whole thing just sticking together. (For those of you amateur cooks, dough for chapatis need more water, that for puris less.. More water means the puris drink more oil when you fry them!) Towards the end, wiped oil on my fingers to make the ball of dough soft and the stuff sticking to my fingers off.

Then rolled these out into balls (each should be pressed smooth with no cracks, perfectly round and of the size of a lemon – yes, I am a perfectionist and a sadist, but you’ll understand why when your puris roll out nice and round!)

Get a rolling board / stone and a rolling pin, coat the board with a bit of powdered wheat flour (only for beginners – so the dough doesn’t stick.) Flatten each ball of dough into a round pancake, then roll it out, dipping it in flour in between. Set out the puris on a big platter / paper so they don’t stick to each other.

This is what mine looked like:

Meanwhile, Priya (Purnima) was in the kitchen, with the vegetables I had chopped up.

She boiled the vegetables with a little bit of water, in a glass-topped kadai for 5 minutes on our induction cooker, stirring them in between. Keep the top on while the veggies steam, so you lose none of the nutrients and they turn out softer.

She stopped when the veggies were soft and shiny, and put them aside in a vessel.

In a kadai, heat 5 ml of sunflower oil; throw in half spoon aniseed, the ginger garlic paste, chopped onions and green chillies. Roast these till the onion looks golden brown and the chillies look glazed. 

Put in a table spoon of coriander powder, quarter teaspoon of turmeric powder, chilly powder to taste, a pinch of garam masala powder. Roast these again.

Add the boiled vegetables, 2 cups of coconut milk and salt to taste. Baste these together, add chopped coriander to garnish, and serve hot (with lots of love!) Don’t stint on the coconut milk, as that’s what gives the sweetness and mildness to this curry, making it edible to our little ones and old parents.

I ladled out some of the korma into a bowl, arranged 3 fluffy puris on a plate, and handed the smoking-hot platter to our 8-year old, Ashu. The way her face bloomed with a big happy smile made the whole thing worthwhile!

Now go out there, collect all the ingredients, and start cooking up a storm yourself!