I am contemplating making Mamta's chicken dopyaza for a few guests this evening and I was wondering if adding the yoghurt is essential or would I be able to get away with not adding it - it's purely a case of laziness because I can't be bothered going to the shop.
Andrew, I would say it's definitely not essential, it just means a more tomatoey flavoured curry, and different colour, of course --- yoghurt just adds a little tartness and creaminess. It's purely matter of preference. And some dopyaza recipes don't have yoghurt at all!
Use the recipe as a starting point!
PS dopyaza seems a fine spelling, I've also seen dopiaza - at the end of the day, these are just english representations of hindi words so... sometimes many spellings for same thing.
I would think that six tablespoons of yoghurt is a lot of moisture to leave out from the recipe. There is a big difference between a little 'gravy' and being bone dry
If you can't get to the shops I'd experiment and replace the yoghurt with coconut milk or perhaps double cream.
You can always add a little extra tomatoes or tomato puree, but not too much. If you have some cream, that will also help. But if you haven't, don't worry. as Kavey says, there are many versions of a dish. To be honest, I hardly ever make the same dish exactly the same twice.
I am reading the right recipe? My print out has no tomatoes in it at all! (That is why I thought it would be too dry without some moisture!!
Had a look at the recipe Winton, indeed it has no tomatoes. Just goes to prove what I said before, I don't make things exactly the same every time ;-).
Use 2-3 tbs. tomato puree instead of yoghurt. If you have some cream, you can add a little of it at the end, but only if it is double. Single cream sometimes splits. Take a picture of the one you make, I can add it as 'Chicken Do-pyaza' with tomato puree, instead of yoghurt.
Mamta
if derived from the original recipe (named after a courtier of Akbar's court (one of the navrattan) it would not have had tomatoes in, being too early for that fruit in India.
An original dopyaza is a korma (briased dish) so would have to have fat and water based ingrdients, so both curds (yoghurt) and ghee/oil/fat are essential for the best results.
If you use a recipe as a starting point, then use different ingredients/methods, you run the risk of spoiling it. On the otherhand, you might turn it into something different, but then you have changed it. What's the point?
I don't follow recipes any more, I think I know enough about cooking to make a good job of a meal. I've also cut down the number of spices I use, and their quantity, and place more emphasis on developing flavour, rather than just adding it.
Escoffier's recipes are just aide memoires, rather than detailed instructions. I think, if you have cooked enough dishes, one realises the re-occurring methods to produce flavoursome dishes.
What I did was I used the same spices that mamta has listed for the recipe, but instead of using yoghurt I used three medium-sized tomatoes (peeled) and about half a tablespoon of tomato puree.
I sliced a medium-sized onion into thick(ish) rings and fried it in vegetable oil until golden and crisp.
Then I added more oil to the pan and fried the green cardamom pods for a few seconds. I added one finely diced onion and four cloves of garlic and fried until golden. Added the ground spices (ground seeds of three green cardamoms, two tsp coriander powder, half tsp chilli powder, half tsp turmeric powder, half tsp garam masala and two tbsp dried methi). Added the chicken and cooked until sealed. Added the tomatoes and salt and covered the pan until the water started to come from the chicken and tomatoes. Removed the lid and cooked for about 20 minutes. Then I added chopped coriander leaves and the remaining fried onions.
The result is very good and I will be making it again.
Reading back on my last post I'd like to clarify that I removed the first batch of onions once they were golden and added them back into the dish at the end, along with the chopped coriander leaves.
I'm always confused when people say to seal the meat, I think the word is sear. One cannot seal meat. It will leak water (and other things like serum albumin), with chicken it is a pretty constant 35% loss. If one wants to develop flavour, add a pinch of fructose powder to the flesh/skin (no skin in India!), which helps to form chicken flavour, and fry.
The original dish was a braise of meat and whole small onions, in a dish sealed with a ribbon of dough, and cooked on a low heat, charcoal on the lid.
I am glad that your dish came out okay Andrew :)
It is said that this dish ?do-pyaza? is from the kitchens of Akbar, a great Mughal Emperor of India in the 16th century, and that it is named after someone in his court, can't remember exactly who! Do we really know if this is a true story or someone just made it up later on and it is indeed only a story?
Most of us cook everyday depending upon what we have in our kitchen/fridge and chop and change all the time. We roughly plan when we do our shopping, but not to every single dish. Well I don?t, unless I am cooking a specific dish and shop for it. Even then, I often forget something and then improvise. I take a recipe, sometimes adhere to it exactly, sometimes not. So if we stop thinking that it is a dish which has to be exactly so, then we can generally (not always) chop and change to suit what we have or what we like.
Lapis is right about tomatoes. Let alone in Akbar?s times, tomatoes are not often used in summer cooking in India even today, because they are very expensive at that time of the year. If tartness is required in summer curries (not called curries there), it comes from yoghurt or lemons or amchoor (mango powder) or anardana (ground pomegranate seeds) or tamarind and sometimes even citric acid. I guess they also have a tenderising effect on meats. I am sure if you look on the internet, you will find do-pyaza recipe without yoghurt and with tomatoes.
Lapis, ribbons of dough were to seal the pot, weren?t they? Modern pots have pretty close fitting lids, so are reasonably good. Cooking in a slow cooker or oven over longer period gives the same effect, don?t you think?
I agree about the sealing of meat. I hardly ever do it now, even for casseroles where you are supposed to ?seal? every piece, a few pieces at a time. I don?t feel that it makes much difference to the end result, but that is only my view.
I think as we learn more about cooking and flavours that we can get around flavour making techniques like sealing the meat (or more to the point browning and caramalising the outer edges).. we just add more spices, maybe extra stock and build up the flavour with those...
Steve
yes, Mamta, the dough is to seal the pot, so that it keeps the water/steam in, so that it does not escape, and so it does not need attention. This technique is called dumming, as you know. I tend to think this was a technique brought to India by the French, although dumming was used way before the French arrived.
Steve, frying meat does not seal it, meat is fried to brown it, but there must be a source of reducing sugar to react with the meat proteins, producing the flavours. AFAIK, there is no substitute for these flavours. In French cooking, the meat was dusted with flour before frying, therefore providing some reducing sugar (starch is a polymer of glucose which can break down to glucose, but slowly). Fierce heat just pyrolyses the meat proteins, as there is no sugar in meat (at least after 24 hours post mortem), and therefore no caramalizing.
Knowing more about cooking methods and what forms what provides a knowledge base for developing flavours; better than just bunging more and more flavours in. Flavouring is a subtle art, not a brute force science.
Thank you for that Lapis. Science of food is fascinating. I wonder how many cookery schools teach it, if any!
My mum used use the ?dum? technique for making her vegetarian biryani and a her special potato curry; Dum Aloo. She also taught it to all the cooks/servants that passed through her kitchen over the years My father, who was a chemist and a voracious reader, may have told her about it. He was always pottering around in the kitchen when he was home and may have told her to try it ?this way?. Or may be they picked it from professional cooks or Khansamas they employed for catering for their parties. I will ask her when I speak her next time. She is 90, but still has strong memory, much better than mine.
Dum Pukht restaurants in Delhi and now in other big cities that serve this kind of food, Oudhi or Lucknowi cuisine, are very popular.
I find it interesting that often unrelated topics trigger old memories. Or may be I am just getting old, old people do that ;-)!
Lapis I only said "sealed" as the term had already been used, I've been on here long enough to know better ! LOL I think we all have learnt many many things by posting and reading on here..
Anyway back to the flavours... browned meaty edges, giving flavour to the dish yes it does add some flavour a sort of extra meatyness.....but with no browning, add a little sugar, a little vinegar, touch of worcestershire sauce and some extra stock... just as tasty (if not more so) and no one would ever complain that you hadn't browned the meat off ! Its the elements of the taste buds that you make zing by giving them the things they can taste. The sugar/sweetness you would get by browning the meat, is simulated with a touch of sugar etc...
Basically its what mass production has been doing for years with its chemically enhanced dishes... They don't spend hours browning onions, frying 2 or 3 piece of meat at a time. They throw the lot into a giant pan and add a box full of chemicals to give those taste hits (its why Chefs (and smokers) put pinch after pinch after pinch of salt into food to 'enhance' the flavour.
I'm not saying you can boil a piece of steak then throw some sugar on and it will taste just like its been fried, but in stews you can work around and get very similar results...
Steve
you can boil a piece of steak then throw some sugar on and it will taste just like its been fried
LOL! Now that is a new way of eating steak!
Quick Steve patent the idea - 'Steve's spray on steak liquid!' Ingredients: caramelized sugar, bovril, water, MSG?!!
Probably find Bisto or Crosse and Blackwell have got there first!
Steve, I'm not looking for an argument, life's too short, but I must say I don't agree with your idea of 'flavour'.
Browning meat: heating meat protein (or any protein) with certain carbohydrates (glucose, lactose, fructose, but not sucrose - sugar) will form a group of very strong flavours, some of which are called pyrazines. These give a nutty/roast flavour. They are not formed any other way. They are present in 'roasted' spices such as coriander, cumin and methi. That's why we heat them to provide that roast/nutty flavour, and why one should only 'roast' spices for certain spice mixes (for dishes where one wants the roast/nutty flavour) but won't be heating the meat to high enough temperatures, like braising (kormas)and stews (vindaloo). You will not get a 'browned meat' flavour in stews as there is too much water for the reactions to occur.
It is interesting to note that in French cooking, meat stocks start with whole pieces of meat, which are roasted, then drenched in water and simmered for many hours with root vegetables (as a source of carbohydrate) to continue the development of flavour. Only the meat sticking out of the water gets brown. Finally, we end up with a stock full of those roast/nutty flavours. IMHO, there is no substitute.
Developing flavour (rather than just adding alien flavours) is the difference between mixing and cooking, IMHO.