Spicy Indian at Home

Since I was still craving spice, I decided to go Indian tonight. I had recently watched a taped episode of Aarti's Party which is what I decided sounded good tonight. The menu was Beef Vindaloo, Whole Wheat Chapatis, and Cucumber Raita.

I started with the dough for the chapatis by combining whole wheat flour, sea salt, and water until a ball formed. I kneaded the dough for about 10 minutes and let it rest for 1/2 hour.

Meanwhile I toasted some cumin seeds, a cinnamon stick, whole cloves and whole black peppercorns for a minute or so and then ran the toasted spices through a coffee grinder until ground to a powder. These went into the blender with ground turmeric, paprika, cayenne pepper, ginger, garlic and apple cider vinegar to make a wet masala.

The wet masala was added to a skillet in which a red onion had been sauteed with a serrano pepper which had been slit in half and were nicely caramelized. The wet masala was allowed to cook down for a couple of minutes before sirloin beef cubes were stirred in and coated with the masala mixture. Some hot tap water went in to the blender to catch the rest of the wet masala mixture and poured in the skillet with the beef. Once the mixture came up to a boil, the heat was reduced, the pan covered and allowed to simmer for 30 minutes.

While the beef was simmering, it was time to turn back to the chapati dough. The dough was divided in to 12 portions. Each was rolled out, brushed with a little olive oil, folded over twice, sealed and rolled again in to a triangular shape. They each went in a hot cast iron skillet and lightly brushed with a little more olive oil before being flipped and cooked until golden brown.

The salad was a cucumber raita which started with 2% Greek yogurt, an equal amount of shredded cucumber, a clove of garlic, some fresh minced mint, salt, golden raisins and freshly ground black pepper.

This was a wonderful combination since the heat from the vindaloo was cooled by the raita and chapatis.

I'm looking forward to trying this with another protein source the next time.