friederike's Reviews
3 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 3Sort by: Title 
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Indien. Küche und Kultur
By Tanja Dusy, Ronald Schenkel
Graefe Und Unzer Verlag - 2005
Hmm, I don't know. First of all, the instructions weren't really clear. You are supposed to grate the beetroot along with a few other ingredients and then fry it - though nothing is said about using oil BUT they do mention that you should add some water to prevent the beetroot from sticking to the pan. So then what is it, cooking or frying?
Once we had figured this out we made sure that the added water evaporated and that the beetroot was quite dry again. But once we added the yoghurt, the whole thing turned into a soup - didn't look anything like in the picture.
And it finally: all you could taste were the sweet beetroot and the coconut, the spices were hardly present (except for that one time when I bit on a piece of chilli).
Would I bother to prepare this again? I don't know. We prepared two side dishes today, this and Dhal with Coconut and Raisins to eat as a vegetarian meal, but maybe it just works better as a side dish to a (really hot and spicy!) meat main. Next time I would pobably use much more spices, fry instead of cook, and use less (and unsoaked) coconut flakes (or serve them on the side). I did enjoy that this was a way to prepare beetroot that did not involve cooking it for hours, so that was a plus.
We used soaked coconut flakes instead of coconut meat, a red instead of a green chili, and no curry leaves.
useful (2)
I had to improvise slightly, as I used canned and not dried chickpeas, which means that you do not know how much water you still need to add. I ended up adding something like 1 1/2 cups of water. Other things I substituted were Jaggery with brown sugar, Ghee with melted butter, and two green chilis with a red one.
I thought the step involving the ghee and the coconut flakes was a bit weird as the ghee is immedeately absorbed by the coconut flakes. But it worked, I only should have used a pan.
In the end, however, this dish suffered the same fate as Beetroot and Coconut Yoghurt, the other dish we had for dinner: the spices were hardly noticeable, all there was was coconut, and frying probably would have worked better that cooking. Again, it might work better as a side to a (really hot and spicy!) meat main, and next time I would use more spices, fry instead of cook, and use less coconut flakes or serve them on the side. And use more raisins (one tablespoon is next to nothing!) and perhaps some nuts for extra crunch.
useful (0)
The result was very nice, but that wasn't really due to the recipe. At the first attempt, the spices got burnt within more or less 5 seconds - I just don't think you should fry them on a high temperature, and I would probably also fry them without oil. Then the cooking time was too long, and 750ml water was too much to add. There is a correlation here, as that much time was indeed needed to let the water evaporate (and we didn't even cover the dish as instructed), but 30 min overall cooking time is just too much; try not more than 500ml water and 20 min cooking time. Also, the sauce, never mind how much water you let evaporate, is quite thin. I think next time I would consider using coconut milk instead of water to give more substance; and I think the flavour of coconut would fit right in.
Finally, while it was a nice dish, it wasn't hot at all. Spicy, yes, but not hot. Admittedly, we used red chilli peppers instead of green ones, and we added them midway instead of right at the end (no idea in how much this actually changed the dish). Not a big problem, in my opinion, but if they use the word 'hot' in the title...
Even though this dish contains potatoes, don't forget to serve it with rice or potatoes, or at least one or two vegetable dishes, otherwise it's not enough.
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