Cooking, recipes, how to

benazir's blog

Aloo Kofta

I have an easy dish for you and this is aloo kofta which means potatoes and meatballs in Urdu. It is swimming around in this yummy curry. This is a dish I have to eat by itself because the potatoes themselves are real high in carbs and it is not a competely diabetic friendly dish. I think I can get by with eating one piece of potato from this dish and the other two are the actual meatballs otherwise kofta themselves along with some plain yogurt without bread even.

You will need to do in avance before making this dish is some prepwork like making the kofta. This involves taking 1 lb or 1 kg of either beef, lamb, goat, chicken, veal or turkey keema which gets trainslated in to mince or ground meat. Place it in a sieve and run it under cold water in the sink and shake it a litte to get it to drain faster. Take care that you do not have keema pieces flying everywhere. Now place this in a bowl and add either 1 handful of either rice flour or besan as a binder. Shape in to a little bit bit bigger then marble size of the meatball. Repeat until no more keema mixture is in the bowl that it is completely used up and set aside in the refrigerator.

Next make Garam Masala and chop yur vegtables. You will need 3 potatoes scrubbed and quartered, I don’t peel but you do you and I do me so it is a me thing that I want to retain the vitamins in my vegtables. Chop 1 green chili, 1 onion or shallot, 1 onion, 1 tomato, 3 cloves of garli, 1 small knob of ginger. Arrange this on a large plate so it is easier for you to use when you need it and now is the time and this is not a dump and go recipe so be careful.

On stovetop in a standard sized coldero add 1/4 cup of either corn, canola, olive or sunflower oil on high heat and let the oil get hot and add first the onion or shallot and let it cook until it turns brown then add your garlic, green chili and ginger. Stir and add the contents from the mortar and pestle being the garam masala,1 pinch each of turmeric, paprika, red chili powder and pink salt. Also instead of adding turmeric powder that you can cut off a tiny piece of turmeric root which I bought fresh and washed them then put them in a zip baggy and placed in the freezer. They freeze well too. Crush the small piece of cut turmeric root in mortar and pestle to grind and add the the pot. Stir and add your tomatoes,

Now you have an empty plate for now and all you have to do is cook the tomatoes until they are mushy. I recomend 3 cups of water and here it is going to be divided and not all in one go. Just a tiny bit for now and you can use it by the tablespoonsful to keep the tomatoes from burning. Before making the curry base I suggest you lower the heat between medium and low. After the tomato is a mush then you can add slightly more water and then the meatballs further reducing the heat to low and cook covered for 15 minutes. Now add the quartared potatoes and cook for another 15 minutes. This keeps te meatballs from breaking apart and keeps them intact. Shut heat off and top with 2 pinches of cilantro.

Go back