Hi folks,

I have an interesting recipe for a kofte curry which suggests using roasted 'chana dal' in the kofte mix. Although it doesn't say so, I presume the dal would be roasted and ground to a powder. Unfortunately, I won't be able to get any chana dal in before I cook this dish. I have a couple of questions:

1. Would it be fair to assume this would act as a binding agent and breadcrumbs would be a good alternative?

2. I do have some mung dal and separately some dried lentils (although on the unopened packets they are out of date by a 3 months or so). Is the sell by date important on dried pulse and would either of these be a good alternative?

Many thanks

James.

PS : Quick responses welcome, as cooking dish tonight!

if I may jump in here, Mamta, I would just leave it out, unless you have besan flour (sometimes called 'chickpea flour'). The channa would add an absorbing quality to the kofta, and add carbohydrate, so that if you fry them, the carbs and the protein react to form nutty/roast flavours. However, I like just to simmer kofta in a sauce, when I don't add any binding agent. Watch the cooking very carefully, and test the koftas frequently, they get hard very quickly. I use lamb, beef will beome tough.

Great. Thanks Lapis - I should get a good nutty flavour as I will be grinding roast cashews to put in the koftas too.

Cheers

James.

I presume you are making a vegetable kofta curry?

Lapis has already answered your question. Chana dal, as well as besan, are used as binding agents in all kinds of koftas and kebabs in India. Besan is made from whole Bengal gram, chana dal is split and skinless bengal gram.

If you don?t have besan/chana dal, bread crumbs will work, perhaps with a beaten egg as well. Plain flour will also work, though it won?t give the nutty flavour of roasted chana dal. I am not sure if mung dal will work as well, urad dal might.

For lentils and dals, sell by date is not that important in the climate of UK, as long as they are not years old.

Thanks Mamta / Lapis,

The koftes were lamb based. I did manage to pop out and get some chick peas to roast and grind. The end result was superb - basic kofte mix being lamb, coconut, ground roasted cashew, roasted poppy and fennel seed, ginger, garlic, chili and turmeric, then braised in a wonderful gravy. It was time consuming but very special and worth it probably for a dinner party rather than a Monday night for two!

James.

sounds like you took a great deal of care with it, and it rewarded you, what more could one ask?

Just a thought. Did you use chickpeas or channa dhal? As discussed here recently, they are different, although channa is often referred to as chickpeas. Channa is smaller, and does not have the characteristic flavour of chickpeas. Roasted channa is available in packets, often called black channa or Hindi/English variants.

Cooking kofta in a sauce is not easy, I have found, as it is so easy to overcook them, and they turn out quite hard. Cooking 'til just done is something to be practiced, as just relying on cooking times does not take into account pan size, pan temperature or ambient temperatures. The only simple way to ensure 'just cooked' is to cut into the kofta, but then the cook ends up with small kofta; the other possiblity is a temperature probe, but some experimenting is necessary in finding the temperature when the koftas are ready.

Hello James

Your Koftas sound delicious, I am glad they turned out great :-).

Mamta