Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Aloo Matar: Potatoes and Peas Curry

This dish takes some time to cook, but the preparation is pretty basic. Since it freezes well, Aloo Matar is in my arsenal of "make ahead" dishes. Assuming that you aren't cooking for a large group, the amount of ingredients used will create enough food to leave you with leftovers aplenty.

One of my simple pleasures in life is enjoying the aroma of this dish filling my home. All of the spices make it smell so good. I hope that you find cooking (and eating) it to be just as enjoyable!



Ingredients
- 3 medium onions, peeled and chopped coarsely
- 9 cloves garlic, peeled
- 4 large tomatoes, chopped
- 4 1/2 cups peas
- Approximately 4 pounds (equals about 4 large) potatoes, peeled and cubed.
- 8 cups vegetable broth
- 1 cup extra virgin olive oil (I used unfiltered, that's why it's so dark green. I've tried many kinds of olive oil in this recipe, and all have had tasty results.)
- 2 tsp ground ginger
- 1 1/2 tsp chili powder
- 1 tsp paprika
- 1 tsp turmeric powder
- 4 tsp coriander
- 1 1/2 TBSP salt




How To Cook It
1) Put the onions and garlic cloves in a food processor or blender. Purée untill smooth.
2) Blend in the ginger, paprika, chili powder, turmeric powder, and coriander to the onions and garlic.Allow the mixture to sit for about five minutes or so that everything can meld together.
3) Heat the olive oil in a large, deep pan. Add your the ingredients from steps 1 & 2 and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until the mixture deepens in color (the onions and garlic are browning in there, it's just difficult to see because of the spices) and the oil beings to separate out.
4) Add your tomatoes and salt. Cover the pan and (continuing to stir frequently) cook everything down until the tomatoes, onions, garlic, and spices look like a rich gravy, or curry paste.
5) Gently fold in the potatoes and peas, coating them with your curry paste.
6) Pour in the vegetable broth and simmer until the potatoes are cooked through and the broth boils down to your desired consistency (about 1 hour in my case).
7) Serve over rice or with naan and enjoy!

2 comments:

  1. Finally got a quiet evening to try this. Made some changes to fit it to the galley environment. We have no electrical appliances, so I just chopped the onions and garlic as fine as I could. We also use a pressure cooker to reduce our gas consumption. I reduced the stock to only 1 cup as the tomatoes provide plenty of liquid in the pressure cooker. It was heavenly!

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  2. I never would have thought of using a pressure cooker for this. Neat! :)

    P.S. Is that you Cindy Ann?

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