Dum aloo

There are some combinations that you just cannot go wrong with - Luchi and Dum aloo is one of those. The puffed white puris and the potatoes cooked in an aromatic mix of spices is a pairing that is meant to be.
When I decided that I was going to make luchis for this blogging marathon themed on Bengali cuisine, I knew that I had to pair it with Dum Aloo. I immediately remembered the Dum Aloo that my friend D had cooked and brought to work one day and promptly sent a mail to her asking her if she could send me the recipe. Despite being bogged down by work, she did so within 10 minutes of getting my mail and I've followed her recipe to the T. Thank you D for a keeper recipe.

What you need:
Potatoes - 1/2 kg, boiled, peeled and cut into small pieces
(The original recipe calls for baby potatoes, but I had none on hand)
Tomato - 4 large, finely chopped
Oil - 2 tsp
Turmeric powder - 1/2 tsp
Salt - to taste
Ginger - 1 inch piece, julienned and some more crushed to get about 2 tsp of ginger juice
Separately dry roast and powder the following:
Corriander seed/dhania - 2 tbsp
Cumin seeds/jeera - 2 tsp
Red chillies - 5 or 6
Black pepper corns - 5 or 6

Heat oil in a pan. Add the julienned ginger, followed by the chopped tomato, salt and half of the powder. Cook on low heat until the tomatoes soften. Stir in the potatoes, the rest of the spice powder and about half a cup of water. Stir well and boil for a while until the spice mix coats the potatoes well. Add the ginger juice, a tsp of ghee and mix well. Remove from heat and serve hot with luchis.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other marathoners doing BM#22.

Kashmiri Dum Aloo for Indian Cooking Challenge

The Indian Cooking Challenge set for us this month by Srivalli is Dum Aloo. I have tried several versions of this dish before, but haven't ever cooked it using the dum method of cooking which involves sealing the cooking pot tightly with flour paste and letting the curry cook in its own steam. The recipe sounded easy enough and I had all the ingredients on hand. I completed this challenge within days of Valli posting it.

What I think of the dish:
The dish looked fantastic. As far as the taste goes, while it was not bad, it doesn't have me singing praises of it either. I felt that the taste of fennel in it was overpowering despite using less than the amount suggested. In fact, I had to scrub my kadai several times to get rid of the smell. There was a bitterness in the dish that lingered in the mouth even after I finished eating.
A change that I made from the original recipe is removing the skin of the potatoes. Somehow, I just didn't find it appealing to leave the skin on.
Overall, I prefer the other versions of this dish that I've tried before and will stick to those from now on. I do like the idea of dum cooking, though, and might do that more often.