I find books so much more detailed and descriptive that my imagination supplies me pretty vivid pictures of each scene, and then when I watch the movie I feel kind of cheated :-( I have decided in the future, I would only watch a movie based on a book, if I have not read the book itself. That way maybe I would watch the movie without making constant mental comparisons to the original book and end up enjoying the movie more:-)
While on the subject of books, I recently purchased a few Nita Mehta cookbooks. One was about Mughlai cooking that I rarely use, but the other one is just a compilation of various vegetarian Indian recipes, almost all of them from northern Indian cuisine. My eye fell on a simple sounding Mushroom peas curry that I tried almost as soon as I saw it. I tweaked the recipe quite a bit, but found that the end result was a fabulous curry. We just loved it, the basic sauce of this curry is so versatile that you could use it with other vegetables too. Give it a try, you may love this as much as we did... :-)
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Ingredients and Method to make Mushroom Peas curry
8 oz (approximately 225 gms) of button mushrooms quartered
2 cups frozen or fresh green peas (if frozen thaw to room temperature)
3 1/2 tbsp tomato paste
3/4 tsp garam masala
3/4 tsp coriander seed powder (dhania)
3/4 tsp red chili powder (or to taste)
salt to taste
water as required
4 tbsp finely cut cilantro (coriander leaves) for garnish
1/2 cup whisked plain yogurt (see notes)
2 to 3 tbsp oil
Grind together
1 large onion
4 tbsp cashew nuts broken into small pieces
1/2 tsp Caraway seeds (shah jeera)
1/2 tsp Cumin seeds (jeera)
2 dry red chilies
2 Thai or Indian variety green chilies (or to taste)
1 inch ginger
Grind together the ingredients mentioned under grind into a smooth paste adding just enough water to move the blades of your spice grinder.
Heat oil in a large heavy bottomed pan and fry the onion and nut paste in it on low heat until it turns into a light creamy golden color and the smell of raw onions disappears. Keep stirring this mixture to make sure that it does not burn.
Add tomato paste, garam masala, coriander seed powder, red chili powder and stir for 2 to 3 minutes.
Add 1/2 cup of water, boil, add mushrooms and peas and allow to cook on low heat for a few minutes.
Add 1 cup of water (or as required), salt to taste and allow the vegetables to cook until the peas and mushrooms are soft but not mushy.
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When the gravy is slightly thick and the vegetables are cooked, remove from heat and add well beaten yogurt.
Garnish with cilantro (coriander leaves ) and serve hot with pulao, plain steamed rice, paratha , roti or phulkas.
Notes
If you want a little creamier and less spicy version of this curry, add another additional 1/2 cup of whisked yogurt to the curry.
If you do not like mushrooms, you can substitute with a combination of other vegetables too in its place
This curry is off to the Healing foods-Onion being hosted by Priya and originally started by Siri
