Aloo Kurma - First recipe on my blog site

When I was a young girl.....(Don't try to guess how old I am), one of the tasks that I always used to hate is cooking. My mother is a very good cook. In fact she loves to have a company when ever she is cooking. And unfortunately I never used to go into the kitchen. I used to help my mother in any other house hold work other than cooking. On the other hand my little sister always love to help my mother in cooking. Now she is a great cook. Ofcourse some times she experiments the recepies but most of the time it turns out to be tasty.

I didn't realize how wonderful it is in spending time in cooking until I came to US for work assignment. The place that I stay is a sort of village. Not many options for Indian food. And it was becomming difficult to have Bagels / Burgers / Pastas....I thought my cooking might be better than those american foods and slowly started cooking on my own. Kudos to Internet that any information we need, best location is "google.com". In the beginning, I used to experiment the recepies on my husband. Poor guy....He used to say excellent for any recepie that I make(I know that it is not very tasty). Now I think I am able to manage little bit of cooking. Ofcourse now I love cooking.

Here is one of recepies "Aloo Kurma" that I tried couple of times since I started cooking. Now it is comming out good. Here goes the recipe. This is one of the favourite dishes that my husband also likes.

Ingredients

2 potatoes boiled, peeled and cut into bite sized cubes.
1 juicy tomato cut into 1/2 inch pieces
2 Onion sliced length wise
4-5 green chilies slit length wise
1 tbsp ginger garlic paste
1 cup coconut milk(I prefer home made)
2 cloves
cinnamon stick small piece
2 - 3 bay leaves(tear into meduim size pieces)
1/2 tsp fennel seeds
1/2 tbsp poppy seeds paste (optional)
Red chilli powder (Use the mix of green chillies and chilli pwd as per the taste)
Salt & turmeric pwd

Procedure

Heat 2 tbsp oil in a vessel. Once the oil is hot, put colves, cinnamon sticks, fennel seeds(These only add flavour to the curry hence add only in small quantities)and fry for 1 min. Add the bay leaves, sliced onions, green chillies and fry for 5 to 10 min until onion turns golden brown color. Add chopped tomatoes, salt and termeric and fry for another 2 min. In case you wanted to have poppy seeds paste then put it to and fry for 2 min. Now the gravy is almost ready.

To this mixture add the potato cubes and fry for another 3-5 min. Once it is done, add coconut milk to the mixture, simmer the heat and allow it to cook for 10 min. Finally stir in the finely chopped cilantro. Goes well with Vegetable pulav, rice or chapathi.