October of last year I travelled to India for a 2 month vacation. A trip to Hyderabad and some adorable moments with my niece; Diwali and a wedding at V’s parents’ place in Delhi; a family get together for my niece’s second birthday at my parents place in Allahabad and some fun meetings with friends were the highlights of my stay.
Here are a few pics from that trip.
With my niece, in Hyderabad
Kickstarting the new year with the first Garam Masala Tuesdays post of 2014 and I promise I will TRY to be more regular with it!
I have done a vegetarian version of momos before (and all the people who think meat versions are the only way to go, really need to give the vegetarian version I posted earlier a try). Today I thought I will share a chicken version.
As mentioned in that post, yes I am aware that momos or dumplings or dimsums- whatever you may call them- their origins are not Indian, but they are very much a part of Indian cuisine if you ask for my opinion. And whatever position you take on the origins of this dish, there is no denying that momos have always been popular as a cheap snack food in much of North and Eastern India and very much loved by all.
I know I have posted about Dal Makhani once before on GMT. And while this is more or less the same recipe, it is one that I make in the slow cooker now so I thought a repost of it was necessary. Plus, there are some changes (albeit slight) to the recipe, so thought would just post the revised recipe.
In the previous post I did give a brief introduction to Dal Makhani, but I found this article by a renowned Indian food critic, Vir Sanghvi, which dwells into the origins of Dal Makhani and as Vir Sanghvi’s research points out, the credit to the origins of dal makhani that we eat today can be attributed to Kundan Lal Gujra’s now famous hotel Moti Mahal in Daryaganj area of Delhi.
Another famous version of this dal is the five star hotel ITC’s Dal Bukhara. The Bukhara dal, according to the article, gets its thickness and creaminess from slow cooking. The chefs cook it on a low flame overnight and then, never take it off the fire. My father had told me about this earlier, so I thought of trying to cook it in my faithful crockpot and try to achieve restaurant style dal makhani and I am pretty pleased with the version I ma sharing with you all today.
The previous recipe of dal makhani I posted was a much more quick way of cooking the dal, but once I started cooking it in the slow cooker I have realized that without adding cream you can still achieve the creaminess and thickness of traditional dal makhani by just slow cooking it. Of course, adding cream and butter takes it another level of scrumptious goodness (Kundan Lal’s recipe has one kg of dal, 500 ml of cream and a full kg of butter!), but believe me, for the calorie conscious slow cooking the dal gives it the right amount of viscosity (and that rich taste) without the added fat.