Major kitchen upgrade & some Indian food

I can't seem to manage to take photos of any food (I guess we just eat it too fast)...  So instead, I will show you my very exciting new kitchen.  But I think to fully appreciate it, you have to know what my old kitchen looked like.   So here goes...

Old kitchen:

As you can see, the only counter space is on the little island there that we bought.  We had 3 burners on the stove (who has only 3 burners?).  The oven wasn't big enough to fit a large cookie sheet.  The refrigerator is 3/4 size.  And the sink is kind of small too.  But it worked.  And I did a lot of cooking anyway.

But now, I have this lovely kitchen. With a DISHWASHER, and a relative abundance of counter space, and a large sink, and an oven that could probably fit 4 big cookie sheets.  Plus many new gadgets, pots, knife block:

And so, what have I been up to in this new kitchen?  

Well last night I adapted a Manjula's Kitchen recipe to make my own low-fat vegan zucchini koftas.  (Her recipe is deep-fried and cooked with cabbage rather than zucchini.)  They were delicious.  I highly recommend them.

Here's how it works:

Koftas

2 cups shredded zucchini

1 cup besan (chickpea/gram) flour

1 tbsp ww flour

2 tsp chopped cilantro

1 tsp shredded ginger

1 green chili pepper

1/2 tsp cumin seed

1 tsp salt

TO fry:

canola oil

1/2 tsp mustard seed

1 tbsp sesame seed

Set up your steaming basket, bring water to a boil.  THEN, mix kofta ingredients together to form a soft dough, and drop the dough into the steamer by the tablespoon-full.  (If you let the batter sit too long, the dough gets soggy and you will need to add more besan flour.)  Cover the pot and steam on medium-low heat for 15-20 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the dumpling comes clean.

Then remove dumplings from pot.  Heat canola oil for frying in a skillet.  Once hot, add the mustard and sesame seeds and stir fry for 30 seconds or so.  Add the kofta to the skillet.  Fry for a few minutes until golden.

Gravy

3 medium tomatoes or 1 can 15 oz of tomatoes

1 tbsp or so of ginger (or 1/2 inch minced)

1 chili pepper

canola oil for frying

pinch asfetida (hing)

1 tsp cumin seed

1 tbsp besan/gram/chickpea flour

1 tbsp ground coriander

1/2 tsp turmeric

1/2 tsp paprika

2 tbsp (soy) yogurt

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups water

1 tsp sugar (if using unsweetened yogurt--soy yogurt is usually a bit sweet, so I omitted this)

2 tbsp cilantro chopped

NOTE: if you don't have asfetida, you could try to substitute 1-2 cloves of garlic and 1/2 an onion or so, panfried before adding the tomato mixture.  You may want to also slightly reduce the coriander in this case. 

In a blender, puree the tomato, ginger, and chili.  Heat oil and pan fry the asfetida, cumin, and besan for a minute or two, until fragrant and golden.  Add tomato mixture, coriander, turmeric, paprika, and cook until mixture reduces by half.  Add yogurt.  Cook another 2 minutes.  Add 1 1/2 cups of water, and salt.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium/low, and cook for several minutes until thick and reduced.  Add sugar to taste.

Add kofta dumplings to the gravy and let simmer for 5 minutes.  Remove from heat.  Add cilantro.  Serve with yogurt and rice or chapati.  (We made chapati.)

And for dessert?  This low-fat chocolate beet cake, because we got beets in our farm share and neither Josh nor I are crazy for them.  This wasn't the best cake ever, but it hit the spot.  Next time I would either add more sugar or mix in some chocolate chips.