Malai Kofta

A staff member at work today wanted to go home a tad bitty early; it was her brothers B'day and she was making Malai Koftas for him.

Hmmmmmmm.

Past few weeks ago I read in Nids bloggie that she'd made these yummilicious koftas WITH pictures posted to torture me of course.

Apparently it's not rocket science that goes into creating this magical dish. Feeling extremely adventurous, not to mention that the visions of creamy kofta gravy was driving me literally insane, I decided to try my hand at making them.

Popped out both Sanjeev Kapoors recipe book and the prep method on Nids bloggie, just so I'm both inspired and I don't make any goof ups mixing this instead of that. Supposed to take under an hour to get these puppies ready, and it took me close to 3! TeeHee! I felt like I was making explosives, handling the uncooked koftas as if they will explode in my hands, splattering the grated paneer filling all over me poor face. Carefully and very very slowly I managed to make 12 dumplings and fried them one by one. Oooooooo! They looked yummy and I almost chucked the gravy part, just wanted to bite into these and be done with it.

Next, the gravy was easy peasy... actually not, I always screw up the gravy. Somehow I still don't know how to get that smooth texture in the end instead of the lumpy, gritty texture I'm left with no matter how long I cook the damn thing. I variated a bitty and instead of adding the tomato puree to the fried onion puree, I added the masalas to the fried onion puree and broiled the entire mess till it turned a nice toasted shade of brown. To that I added the tomato puree and hmmmmm I admit it did look quite close to how gravies outta look. I let it boil close to 15 minutes and gobbled 2 koftas in the interim... could not resist. :P

Finally when the gravy looked "done" I switched off the gas and added the cream. Voila! Somehow I had managed to not fuck the entire thing up and it looked close to what I order from restaurants. I dropped the fried dumplings into the gravy and spooned the gravy over the puppies a bitty. So happy and hungry that I quickly ladled up a portion of it onto my plate and stood at the kitchen counter itself and ate it all. TeeHee!

It was definitely spicy (I have a generous hand when it comes to measuring out the chilly powder) and I think next time I'll try HARD to tone down the chilly factor and make it a tad bitty more bland. It was definitely rich, cause after one kofta I was like *BURP!* and forced myself to somehow finish the other one. So happy with myself, I never imagined I could make this dish at home and never imagined that it would actually taste good. *pats back*