Aloo Gobhi for GMT

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Aloo gobhi | The Novice Housewife

When I got married, my mom gave me a small diary with a few handwritten Indian recipes she thought I would find useful. I had never cooked indian food before I got married, so when I did start cooking once I came to the US, these recipes came very handy. One of the recipes in the diary was for aloo gobhi- a spiced potato and cauliflower indian dish. A favorite of many and a relatively easy and no hassle dish to prepare.

My mom is in Canada these days. She came to Canada to spend some time with my grandparents, since they were both very ill. She could not meet my grandmother before she passed away but was able to spend some time with my grandfather. She stayed on to spend time with her brother and his family in Canada and tomorrow she comes to visit and stay with me for a month. The other day when I was talking to her she mentioned that she had made aloo gobhi for lunch and since I had not cooked this dish in a while I thought of making it today. It also gave me an opportunity to click pictures and post a recipe for Garam Masala Tuesdays.

I have tweaked the original recipe a little after making it several times to suit my liking. In the original recipe, my mom did not mention kasoori methi, but I like the added flavor that it brings to the dish. You can leave out the kasoori methi (dried fenugreek leaves) if you cant find them but they are easily available at any indian grocery store. So is amchoor powder (dried mango powder), but if you can’t find it, use lemon juice.

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Shami Kebabs: Lamb kebabs with mint onion stuffing

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Lamb Kebabs | The Novice Housewife

Out of all the kebabs, shami kebabs are one of my favorites. Invented for a toothless nawab of Lucknow during the reign of the Mughals in India, these kebabs were made so fine that no teeth would be required to eat them and they would just melt in the nawab’s mouth. Or so the story goes. Who knows what the truth is. But whatever be the origin, my taste buds are thankful for their existence.

The recipe for these shami kebabs differs slightly than the tunde ke kebabs I have posted earlier. While both of them are soft and silky smooth in the mouth, unlike the tunde ke kebabs, shami kebabs have a mint-onion stuffing in them. And while the original tunde kebab recipe claims to have 160 spices in it, the spices more or less in both the recipes I use are the similar with a slight variation in the quantities.

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Chettinad Chicken curry : GMT

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Chicken Chettinad | The Novice Housewife

Chicken Chettinad | The Novice Housewife

I am a Sikh and have grown up on north indian cuisine. For a long time my knowledge of cuisines of the southern states of India was limited to dosas and idlis. But it is now slowly growing and some of my favorite dishes come from down south. The use of coconut and curry leaves in a lot of their dishes is what particularly draws me to the cuisine of the south, though the cuisine is not just limited to these two ingredients. The food of the state of Kerala is one of my favorites. Appam and stew, iddiyapams, kerala fish fry is something I could eat any number of times as possible in a week.

I could also eat this chettinad chicken recipe that I am sharing today every week.

Chicken Chettinad | The Novice Housewife

The recipe is from my favorite book on Indian cuisine: India: The Cookbook by Pushpesh Pant.

If there is one Indian book you want in your collection it should be this book.

Pushpesh Pant has written an encyclopedia on Indian cuisine and you can find recipes from all different parts of India. While the steps may sometimes require a little knowledge of indian cooking, the recipes have never disappointed me.

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