Need to stop asking my cousin for recipes...

My god!! At this rate, I cannot even imagine how big I'll become (just to make sure that you understand what I mean, I'm not very small now!).

Just to give you a little background, I've been pestering my cousin for her recipes for about 3.5yrs now and this limitless annoying has insipired her to start a blog (now, isn't that a good thing :-) ) and even dedicate that to me (cho chweet of her, wudn't you say so?!)

A few weeks ago, I was having guests at home and was asking her for suggestions and one of them was dum aloo. I've had what my mom makes, but never tried it myself. Recently, I found some really cute small potatoes and decided that they are for dum aloo.

Yesterday, I decided to make it as a sidedish for naan. Checked the ingredients for the recipe, and was surprised to find that this recipe did not include onions. I wasn't sure if this could be true. So, I waited for my cousin to come online (time zones... I live in Germany), asked her and she assured me that it indeed has no onions, but assured me that it'll turn out to be excellent. I was a little skeptical though.

But the end result, a nice creamy dark red gravy, with nice brown potatoes floating in it. A swirl of fresh cream on the red gravy and some fresh green coriander to garnish. Now, does it sound exciting enough? If not, go on, try it soon. You'll know what I mean.

This is what you need:

Baby potatoes

For the gravy:
Nice ripe tomatoes (pls do not use tomato puree, the dish will loose its freshness), ginger, garlic, cashew nuts, fennel seeds, cumin seeds

Others:
Few full cardamoms, some kasuri methi, a tsp of honey, full cream, coriander leaves, and salt.

This is how I made it:

Roughly chopped a lot of tomatoes, added some ginger, garlic, a few cashew nuts, some red chillies, and about a tsp each of cumin (jeera) and fennel (saunf) seeds, boil all these with enough water until the tomatoes were done.

Clean, peel and par boiled small potatoes with some salt. Heat some oil in a wok, and deep fry potatoes after pricking them with a fork. When this was being done, the tomato mixture would have cooled down considerably. Blend it into a smooth paste.

Heat some oil and/or butter in a pan, add 8-10 whole green cardamom and then the paste. bring it to a boil and then simmer until oil separates from the mixture. Now add some kasuri methi, a tsp of honey, enough salt and the fried potatoes, and simmer for a while.

Add a few tsps of fresh cream, finely chopped coriander and serve hot.

Note:

This has been adapted from tarladalal.com

I did want to make a picture yday, but never got around to do it as we were too hungry and I wanted to make a pic from what was left over, but again, the color, smell and everything about it just did not let me to do anything but eating it, so I devoured them greedily.

Let me tell you something, when you get around to make it, pls throw away your cutlery aside and use your hands. I just cannot get enough of the smell.

It is so sinfully rich with the cream, so you can substitute this with milk, but again, it cannot be the same as mine, I assure you. Come on people, you don't make it everyday.