Murgh Kofta

[Grub]

Murgh Kofta:

There's an amazing Indian hole-in-the-wall place nearby, with really great food. No decorations, save some airducts running along the ceiling -- I think it's an abandoned auto repair shop or something. For a while, an elderly woman bussed tables with a black garbage bag tied onto her torso as an apron. The menu was really short, but they have lots of other stuff, that they don't put on the menu -- in particular, some really great ocra. My kinda place.

Well, last time, I had the chicken kofta, and it was great, so I wanted to try recreate it. The only clues I got from the dish, was the whole black peppercorn and cloves that I found in it. It was sweet, so I thought it used coconut milk, but I later found out that the odd sweetness of the dish actually came from the spices.

This was a fairly involved dish to make, but it was fun. The sidedish is just sprouts stir-fried with some curry sauce from a jar, and wasn't particularly noteworthy. I would have used regular plain rice, but I think that gets a little repetitive.

This is the recipe I found online. It uses a LOT of spices, and I ended up leaving out the ground cumin for the sauce -- it uses both whole and ground, and I thought that would be too much. I'm not sure if I did the right thing or not.

Meatballs:

500 grams of chicken mince

2 teaspoons ginger paste

2 teaspoons garlic paste

2 tablespoons roasted gram flour

1 teaspoon cumin powder

1 black cardamom(s) powdered

1 teaspoon red chilly powder

1 teaspoon fennel (saunf) powder

1 teaspoon curry powder or garam masala (I used both: a sweet, yellow curry powder, and a spicy garam masala)

Curry sauce:

3 tablespoon ghee (used peanut oil)

2 bay leaves

2 cloves

4 green cardamoms

1 teaspoon black cumin seeds

1 teaspoon ginger paste

2 teaspoons garlic paste

1 onion grated

1 teaspoon red chilly powder

½ teaspoon turmeric powder

½ teaspoon cinnamon powder

2 teaspoons coriander powder

2 teaspoons cumin powder

4 large tomatoes pureed

4 cups chicken stock

salt and sugar to taste

4 tablespoons fresh cream (used half-n-half, but more than 4 tbsp)

Finely chopped cilantro for garnishing

Making the meatballs is just a matter of mixing and forming them, and then refrigerating them.

The sauce is simple, even if there are a lot of ingredients.

- Fry the ghee/oil with the first four ingredients to bring their aroma out, 10 seconds.

- Add onion, garlic, ginger, release liquid and brown, 10 min.

- Add rest of spices, 2 min.

- Add tomatoes, simmer for 10-15 minutes (I used chopped, canned tomatoes -- if you used pureed tomatoes it would take less time) -- I also used an electric handblender to smooth it out some.

- Add chicken stock, salt, sugar, simmer 5 min or until combined.

- Add meatballs, cover and simmer 20 minutes. I removed the cover and let it simmer for 10 min towards the end to reduce the sauce a little.

- Add cream/half-n-half/milk

- Garnish with chopped cilantro, serve.

My thoughts on the dish:

It was very good, but there was a sharp, bitter taste that struck me as slightly vinegary. There are so many spices in this dish that it is hard to discern what caused it, but I suspect the green cardamom pods. The seductive sweetness that I initially thought came from coconut milk was from the cloves, cinnamon and sugar. The dish had that really great curry aroma which lingered wonderfully in the kitchen. The leftovers smells fantastic too.

The meatballs had a very solid texture. I was considering adding grated/minced (and drained) onions for additional flavor, as well as some finely grated breadcrums, but decided against it for the first try. Next time I'll definitely do that, because these meatballs can easily handle it.

[vkn]

Murgh Kofta:

What a fabulous picture! The taste must be yummy-yummy. We make mutton-kofthas with my signature recipe, never tried chicken for that. Here is the inspiration. Thank you Grub. We are going to cook it this week. Cheers!

[Grub]

What a fabulous picture!  The taste must be yummy-yummy.  We make mutton-kofthas with my signature recipe, never tried chicken for that.  Here is the inspiration.  Thank you Grub.  We are going to cook it this week.  Cheers!

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Thank you very much! Your mutton-kofthas sound very interesting -- any chance you could share your recipe for it? I'm always on the lookout for some really great Indian recipes...

[scott123]

Grub, did the sauce have the bitter taste or did the meatball have it?

The ground cumin is indispensible.

The bitterness could be coming from the black cumin seeds. I'm not sure. They've been discussed quite a bit in this forum, but I'm still not certain what they are. It's also possible that the half and half might have curdled on you (vinegary). Just another guess, but this recipe seems like it has a lot spices. Cream helps to mellow flavors. By subbing half and half the spices could have ended up too strong tasting. Unless, of course, the spices were roasted/ground before beginning the process. But the recipe doesn't state that.

Although sugar (or honey) is a common doctoring agent in a lot of restaurants, the bulk of the sweetness should come from the onions. 10 minutes is too short for sauteeing the onion and too long for the garlic/ginger.

The secret to any good meatball, chicken included, is fat. Fat also helps to temper the bitterness of spices. Adding fat will improve the texture and taste immensely. The next time you make stock, freeze some of the chicken fat and use it when you make meatballs.

Honestly, I think there's better kofta recipes out there. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I've always perceived koftas to be a lesson in subtlety. This isn't a subtle amount of spices.

Edited January 27, 2006 by scott123 (log)

[Grub]

Scott, it was the sauce that tasted bitter, not the meatballs.

I'm always vary of ground cumin, because it seems like most recipes expects you to use pre-ground "supermarket" cumin, rather than grinding your own -- so I nearly always use less than what the recipe calls for. Freshly ground is just that much more potent. So in this case, when it called for both whole and ground (black), I decided to skip it. Maybe that was a mistake -- I'll be sure to use the ground stuff next time around.

But I'm quite convinced that what created this bitter-ish flavor, were the green cardamom pods. Incidentally, the onions took on an odd green-tinted hue as I cooked them, which I also believe came from the cardamom. So I've decided to cut that down from four to one, next time.

Re., onions, garlic and ginger -- yes, I think you're absolutely right. I've heard it said too many times to ignore now (about onion, garlic and ginger's cooking time), but there are SO many recipes that tells you to dump the three in at the same time, so I've just kept doing it. It makes perfect sense, that the onions should be cooking for about three or four times as long as the garlic and ginger. Why do so many recipes just dump them in at the same time? It bugs me -- makes cooking seem more like some kinda mystical, metaphysical mumbo-jumbo voodoo, than something that can be scientifically understood...

If you spy a better kofta recipe out there, please let me know. And thanks for the advice.

[rxrfrx]

If you indeed used black cumin seed, that's the source of the bitterness... just try tasting one