Bengali cauli

When we were in India earlier this month, we went to a great Bengali restaurant in Delhi with Nalin's brother called Oh! Calcutta. One of my favorite dishes on the buffet that day was a cauliflower dish in a lovely gravy made of coconut, mustard, some spice. So simple and so wonderful. So tonight, I decided to try my hand at that dish. With the limited time I had to surf the web to find a comparable recipe (with Nooa trying to sit on my lap, press the keys, and grab the mouse), I soon gave up and decided to wing it. I had taken some fish out of the freezer to have on the side, and it was already nearly 6:00, so I needed to get going. I would love to say that I recreated this dish perfectly, but that would be quite an exaggeration. It turned out pretty good, though. And the salmon curry was a nice complement. You will notice that I don't add much spice (in terms of chillies) to most of our food. The main reason for that as much as we like spicy food ourselves, we are cooking for the kids as well. Nalin and I use a lot of pickle or chillies on the side, but you can spice up the dish to your liking.

So here's what I did:

Cauliflower in yogurt, mustard, and coconut
Ingredients: olive oil, onion, cauliflower, garlic, ginger, turmeric, salt, cumin seeds, a little masala spice mix (coriander, turmeric, fenugreek, chillies, cumin, cinnamon, clove), a dash of sugar, some frozen grated coconut, mustard powder and seeds, cilantro.

• Heat olive oil in the pot and throw in some mustard and cumin seeds. Chop up a half onion, three or four cloves of garlic, and about a square inch of ginger and add that to the hot oil. Saute for a few minutes. As the onion, ginger, and garlic is cooking, cut up one small cauliflower.
• Add the cauliflower and about a tsp of kosher salt to the onion and garlic. Mix together about a half cup of yogurt with a little water and add some turmeric, a little masala spice mix (this is optional, as I just happened to have it handy; any curry/masala would work, but one with fenugreek is nice), some mustard powder if you have it (otherwise, a little prepared mustard should be fine), just a dash of sugar, and set aside.
• Once the cauliflower has browned a bit, Add the yogurt mix and about a fourth a cup of coconut (we keep a bag of frozen coconut in the fridge that you can easily defrost with a little cold water running over it in a colander). Stir well and put the lid on and cook on low for about a half hour until the cauliflower is quite tender and has soaked in all the yogurt mix.
• At the end, take off the lid and turn up the heat for about five minutes. Top with some chopped cilantro.

Salmon curry with roasted tomato

Ingredients: wild salmon, onion, garlic, ginger, roasted tomatoes (I'll talk more about this essential part of my kitchen later), lime, salt, turmeric, cinnamon, ground cumin, and a little tamarind paste dissolved in water.

• Cut up the salmon in nice sized chunks. Add about a teaspoon of turmeric, a little cinnamon, about a teaspoon of ground cumin, and some salt. Mix into the salmon and add a little lime.
• Heat the olive oil in a cast iron or enamel pot. When hot, add the salmon to brown. While the salmon is browning, cut up a half onion, a couple garlic cloves, and a little ginger. 
• When the salmon has browned a few minutes, add the onion mix and about a half cup of roasted tomato puree*. Mix in the tamarind water. Cover and cook for about 20 minutes.

I served these two dishes with rice and a little yogurt, chutney, and pickle on the side. The boys are quite fond of fish, and mixed with the cauliflower and rice, they ate everything (but the pickle and chutney). Not quite the Oh! Calcutta experience, but I guess home in Chicago with my limited Bengali food experience, it will have to do.