In a medium sized bowl, mix the onion, tomatoes, cucumber and cilantro. Season with salt and pepper. Add the yogurt and mix well. Let sit at least 15 minutes but no more than two hours before serving.
I read cookbooks like a novel. If I need a lift, I buy a cookbook. Actual I buy a pair of shoes first then read the cookbook while glancing at the new shoes on my feet. That truly does put me in a good mood and back in the kitchen with my new high heels! When the head of fundraising for our children’s school asked me to organize a community cookbook to celebrate the 50th anniversary of our school, I never imagined how much I would enjoy the project. I know she was thinking of a smattering of recipes in a binder, but I saw a professional cookbook with tested recipes, headers and comments. She wanted the book by December and it was January.
First I bought two books on recipe and food writing and studied. I also interviewed some of my cooking mentors that wrote books and all they said was edit, edit, edit. Through a community email I asked for help from the parents at the school and had a coffee to enlist my crew and cherry pick some key people. Someone to choose and learn the software, someone to work with the design, someone to coordinate the recipe testers, a person or two to write about the history of our wonderful school and a community to give recipes.
As the recipes came in I began to realize how much I LOVE to write, review and edit a recipe. I ran home from work excited to get onto my computer to see what recipes were sent me. Kind of like now, looking at my homepage to see if any new comments or ratings came in! While we had a group of 35 testers, I tested more than 50% of all the recipes. I definitely choose the best ones to test AND to this day I cook about ten of those recipes on an everyday basis.
I received recipes that were just a list of ingredients with cryptic instructions, recipes so perfect I KNEW they came straight out of a cookbook and the author needed to be recognized. I received a recipe for coke cherry jello that I REALLY wanted to like but all in all, they were all good home cooked recipes without much packaged products. I then took all of these different formats and began changing them to a single recipe style as the books taught me. I took some liberties and changed recipes to make them better. Sautéing an ingredient to build more flavor, putting in a homemade dressing when it called for bottled, changing an order to make it easier. Once I was done, I edited the recipe at least twice more before I gave it to my recipe testers. I asked the testers to interview the recipe originator to ask where they got their recipe and why they chose the recipe in the first place. The tester’s results helped me make sure the instructions were clear and also guided me in writing the headers.
When we were done, which meant editing each recipe at least 10 more times on top of my work, I got nervous. I had made so many changes to our community’s cherished recipes, they might feel the new “perfected” recipe was not their own anymore. When we were almost ready to hand over our finished product to our computer software wiz, we were all concerned we might have to go back to the drawing board and rewrite recipes! We all agreed though, we had to print them out and send them to the recipe originator and ask for their approval. We gave them five days to respond, if we did not hear from them, it was a vote of approval. Those five days were long but to our surprise, we got more compliments than complaints. A few did feel that I made things too complicated and they were right. To make both of us happy, I changed the recipe back to the original and then in the tester’s comments, gave the recipe for the homemade dressing, for example. It worked and the book was a complete success and we had it in our community’s hands before Christmas break!
Tonight we had one of my favorite recipes from the cookbook, Indian Butter Chicken. It was given to me by my twin. We always get confused for each other and I LOVE it because she is a doll! It is one of her good friend’s recipes and she was kind enough to share it with us.
Indian Butter Chicken with Raita
This dish must be accompanied by the recipe at the end, raita. It cools the heat of the dish, add a fresh crunch and acts like your vegetable. I made this dish last night, in December so was worried about the tomatoes. I bought cherry tomatoes and they were surprisingly good. If they weren’t, I was going to use extra cucumber. You can make raita a number of ways and may do not call for tomatoes at all. So if your tomatoes are bad, do not use them.
Indian food can be a bit difficult with wine pairings because of the spiciness and complex flavor blends. My first thought would be a Gewurztraminer again more dry and the same with a Riesling. But like my last wine recommendation, this dish also goes well with beer!
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 onion, minced
- ¼ teaspoon cinnamon
- 2 inch piece ginger, peeled and sliced
- 3 cloves garlic, skinned
- 1 to 2 Serrano chilies or to taste, roughly chopped
- 1 cup chopped cilantro leaves with stems
- 2 pounds skinless, boneless chicken thighs or breasts cut into small pieces
- 12 each blanched almonds and raw cashews, ground fine in a food processor
- 1 ½ cup peeled, seeded and chopped tomatoes
- 2 tablespoons tomato paste
- 1 tablespoon Tandoori paste, available in any Indian grocery store
- 1 teaspoon salt or to taste
- ¼ cup sour cream, or more to taste
- Cilantro leaves for garnish, chopped
- ½ cup sliced almonds, toasted for 7 minutes in a 350 degree oven
Heat oil is a large sauté pan over medium heat. Add onion and cinnamon and fry until the onions are lightly browned.
While the onions are cooking, place the ginger, garlic and cilantro in a food processor and pulse until completely minced and smooth. Add to the onions along with 2 tablespoons of water and cook until the mixture is dry, about 2 minutes.
Add the chicken pieces and sauté until the chicken has turned white. Pour in the ground nuts, chopped tomatoes with juice, tomato paste and Tandoori powder; mix thoroughly. Bring to a simmer, cover, reduce heat to low and cook for 20 minutes.
Add sour cream, mix and simmer, uncovered for an additional 10 minutes on low heat. Salt to taste.Garnish with cilantro leaves and serve with raita (recipes below) and Bastmati rice.
Raita
- 1 small sweet yellow onion, chopped in ¼ inch cubes
- 2 small tomatoes, cut in half, seeded and chopped in ¼ inch cubes
- 1 cup cucumber, seeded and chopped in ¼ inch cubes
- ½ cup chopped cilantro, lightly chopped
- ½ teaspoon salt or to taste
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- Freshly ground black pepper to taste
- ½ cup plain whole fat yogurt
In a medium sized bowl, mix the onion, tomatoes, cucumber and cilantro. Season with salt and pepper. Add the yogurt and mix well. Let sit at least 15 minutes but no more than two hours before serving.
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