kaye16's Reviews
26 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 26Sort by: Title | Date | Rating
Madhur Jaffrey's Quick & Easy Indian Cooking
By Madhur Jaffrey, Philip Salaverry
Chronicle Books - 1996
"Hamburger" Kebabs--Chappal kebab : page 27
This is a book that I use frequently, and I'm still surprised to find yet one more super recipe here.
I made a halfish recipe using 350g beef. The beef wasn't triple ground by the butcher. Instead I put all the ingredients in the food processor and zapped it all together. Easy and absolutely delicious. Might be good on the bbq also.
Served with Fresh Red Chutney with Almonds.
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Beef or Lamb with Spinach : page 36
Good stuff! Having not grown up with a pressure cooker, I'm always amazed how it makes such tender meat in such a short time.
As with most recipes in this book, this is pretty easy to assemble. Except for the lamb itself, the other ingredients are things I usually have on hand.
I had 800g lamb cubes, so made one and a third recipe which was close to the limit of my pressure cooker.
- Knowing that Jaffrey's recipes often use quite a bit of oil, I didn't increase the oil. This was fine.
- I think I might coarsely chop the spinach next time.
- I used the max amount of cayenne. The result was nicely tingly, but not challengingly hot.
- There was a lot of liquid to boil off. It might be a good idea to measure the water a bit short.
- With the extra meat, we served two generously and have another biggish serving in the freezer. I served, only rice as an accompaniment. The advertised 4 servings must be for a meal where this is only a part.
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Cream? This can't really be Indian, can it?
Well, never mind, it tasted good, and would be a good company dessert, since you can have the cream and the apples ready, leaving the apples on the stove to warm up just before serving if you want.
Not especially Indian, could be served any time you want a fruit dessert.
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Delicious Chicken Bits : page 14
Every repeat of this says "Simple. Good." Serves 3-4 as main. (It's listed as an appetizer or snack.)
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Easy Chicken Kebabs (Murgh tikka) : page 15
Good stuff.
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Well, breakfast, brunch, or a light dinner. Easy and delicious. Serves 4 only as part of a selection. Serves 2 for dinner with a bit of salad.
- I have used ghee for the vegetable oil. This was good.
- Omit the second bit of salt. You can add more at table if you feel you need it.
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Fresh Green Chutney : page 113
Yes! This is the wonderful green sauce sometimes served in Indian restaurants. Delicious.
Be sure to divide the yogurt as the instructions indicate. If you put it all in the blender, the sauce is too runny.
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Fresh Red Chutney with Almonds : page 114
Another surprisingly good recipe. Neither of us are fond of raw bell peppers, but puréed in this sauce they are delicious.
Didn't add the optional dill. Something to try next time.
Made a whole recipe to go with a half recipe of .
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Gingery Cauliflower Soup (Gobi ka soup) : page 11
Every repeat is marked with an exclamation point. At our house, serves 2-3, rather than 4-6 as advertized.
See also, a similar recipe in Jaffrey's Spice Kitchen, p28.
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Green Beans with Mushrooms : page 86
Very good tastes here.
- Making a half recipe, you need more than half the water, but that's normal for this kind of thing.
- I never use the tomato, since we have tomato allergy in house.
- DH doesn't like his green beans "crispy". Even haricots verts, at 15 minutes are not quite done enough for him.
- Once everything is ready, this is quite easy to assemble at the last minute, well, at the last 20-25 minutes. It doesn't take too much attention and can be done while other things are finishing.
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Green peas in a creamy sauce : page 87
I've written "Half recipe serves 2-3", but on our last repeat, I wrote "1/3 recipe was too much for 2".
Can prep everything and finish at the last minute.
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Hard-Boiled Eggs Masala : page 41
Good stuff, easy and fast as they all are in this book.
I used frozen puréed (seedless) tomatoes from the summer bounty and only a pinch of brown sugar. Nice tastes.
Serves 2 as a vegetarian, one-dish main over rice.
Would serve 4 only as part of a bigger meal.
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Indian Mashed Potatoes : page 90
Funny idea, good stuff! Sometimes serve this with non-Indian dinners.
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Lamb Stewed in Coconut Milk : page 34
Delicious, as usual for this book.
- Pressure cooker.
- Even with that I don't think this would qualify as "quick". Maybe I was doing too much multi-processing, but it seemed to take me forever to get this ready to go.
- I was a bit short on meat; we thought it would only serve three.
- The recipe calls for "1 to 2 fresh, hot green chilies". There are no instructions for chopping or seeding them, so I plonked them in whole. Worked ok, I guess, but chunks or slices might have looked better.
- I used two chiles, plus all the cayenne. It was hot but in no way challenging.
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Lamb with Cardamom : page 30
Extra yummy. And easy.
Pressure cooker.
Serves 6, she says. I think it would be a stretch to serve 4 if there were some side dishes. Two of us managed to eat it all, but that was a bit of a stretch.
For the pressure cooker version, she has you add 2 cups of water. This was too liquid at the end. I think 1-1/2 or even 1 cup of water might be sufficient when using the pressure cooker.
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Mushroom Curry : page 79
This recipe has been tagged for a long time, but I've just gotten around to making it. Don't wait. Very good.
I used about half the oil asked and it was fine. (I often find Jaffrey's recipes use too much fat.)
A half recipe made a very tasty and satisfying dinner.
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Onion fritters (Onion bhajia) : page 20
I'm trying to reproduce the onion bhaji from my favorite recipe, and this is the closest I've come. The amount for the water ingredient is missing; I use a short 1/2 cup. I also slice the onion, rather than chopping it, since this is what I'm copying. Serve with her Fresh Green Chutney (p113).
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Onion Fritters(Pyaz ki Bhajia) : page 20
This is the only onion bhaji recipe I've tried, and it turns out quite nice. I'm not big on deep frying, but this is an occasional treat for us. In restaurants, bhaji are either fritters like this or long strips of onions slices. One of these days, I'll try this with slices rather than chopped onion.
The ingredient list omits the water. I use a short half cup, starting with about a third cup and adding more until the batter looks about right.
The mixing is easy and it can wait around for some amount of time. But the bhaji need to be served directly after cooking, so it's a bit fussy when there's company.
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Pork or lamb vindaloo : page 33
Very high payoff for minimal work. This isn't especially quick (well, maybe if you use the pressure cooker), but it's unattended for a long period. It's the only vindaloo recipe I've seen with coconut milk, but it works fine. We find the 4 tsps cayenne is fine, hot, but good. Two of us usually eat all of this in one sitting.
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Rice with Mushrooms and Mustard Seeds : page 102
I was a bit surprised to find a rice recipe in this book that I hadn't yet tried. Having some shiitakes needing to be used, I made this. For two, I used 1/4 of the rice asked (thus 1/2 cup) with about 1/2 of the rest of the spices and shrooms.
The result was tasty, not at all spicy, and would be fine with any kind of a meal.
The recipe as written, with 2 cups of long-grain rice, is supposed to served 4-5. I used only 1/2 cup rice for two and it made an enormous amoung (as expected). This would have serve 3-4 easily. Something's wrong with the quantity, but the taste was fine.
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Shrimp Steamed with Mustard Seeds : page 64
Quite tasty. Easy and relatively few ingredients. The last time I made this the steaming bowl tumped over and the shrimp were swimming in water rather than sauce. This time, I managed a more stable steaming setup. Good tastes, served over plain rice.
For the two of us, I used a 300g package of shrimp with all the sauce. The shrimp and sauce over plain rice were pretty darn good.
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Shrimp with garlic and chilies : page 17
Good, fast, simple. Half recipe served 2 for dinner.
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Have made this several times; surprised I haven't reviewed it before.
A nice Indian side dish, and a change from the usual browny/yellowy monotone. Slicing the cabbage takes a bit of time, but once the prep is done, the assembly goes quickly and the cooking can be done without too much attention, just an occasional stir.
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The Most Delicious Meat Cubes : page 29
Very good, yes. I've made this with pork and lamb, with and without the pressure cooker. Easy and delicious. In the PC, it needs more than 2tbl of water; a third to half cup is good.
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Turmeric Rice : page 100
A nice rice side dish, easy to do.
- Reportedly it serves four, but I find 2 cups of rice for four people quite a lot. I usually make 1/4 of the rice (thus 1/2 cup) with 1/2 the spices.
- The instructions have you only rinse the rice. If you have a bit of time to let it soak, it won't hurt. I usually let it soak a bit while I get everything else ready.
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This is side or a main, depending on your meal. Made without the tomato (allergy at our house).
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