From ianhoare@angelfire.com Wed Mar 24 09:11:54 2004 Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 14:10:45 +0100 From: Ian Hoare Newsgroups: uk.food+drink.indian Subject: Re: Blender advice needed [The following text is in the "utf-8" character set] [Your display is set for the "ISO-8859-1" character set] [Some characters may be displayed incorrectly] Salut/Hi Vijay, le/on Sun, 21 Mar 2004 10:39:19 -0000, tu disais/you said:- >I need to grind coconut gratings to make some chutneys and curries. I've got a recipe which makes a smooth paste out of freshly grated coconut, tomatoes, salt, chillies, garam masala and (previously soaked) cashews. I simply put the lot into the liquidiser jar of my big Kenwood, and worked it - stopping and pushing down etc - until finally it was reduced to the required texture. I can't pretend it went without ANY difficulty, but once more than half had been well reduced, the natural circulation in the goblet brought the rest down onto the blades. I also found that it helped to vary the speed. >7 speed and rahter powerful blender i got, brand name Moulinex, seems >inadequate. It does not smooth grind the stuff. And also i seem to run into >a problem if i allow it to run for a while, which is needed to grind the >dosa/idli batter. I've not made idli batter, but I _have_ found that Moulinex kit is not very good. I've had motors overheating when used near their recommended time limit, as well as serious bearings wear, and generally poor build quality. Their main advantage is that they're very cheap. I now don't have any Moulinex kit in my kitchen. I use the Kenwood Chef Major as my main mixer, and power centre (mincer, slicer shredder, liquidiser, beater, bread kneader, etc) I use the Magimix a lot for preliminary puréeing, slicing small quantities, grating cheese etc and chopping large amounts of onions, tomatoes, etc. It's unbeatable for that, though it doesn't purée as finely as the kenwood liquidiser. For small quantities of puree, such as thai pastes, chopping garlic and onion, herbs, I use the Braun chopping attachment to the plunging mixer wand. It's my most recent addition and it's brilliant for these jobs, I may sometimes finish off in a largeish granite mortar, for purees. Finally, for grinding dry spices, I use the Braun coffee grinder. @@@@@ Now You're Cooking! Export Format South-Indian Mixed Vegetable Curry (Kurma) indian, main dish, vegetables 2 tb raw cashews, chopped 340 gm tomatoes; concassee 60 gm fresh coconut; grated 1 ts salt 4 green birdâ^À^Ùs eye chillies; chopped 1/2 ts garam masala 4 tb coriander leaves; chopped 1 tb vegetable oil 1/2 ts brown mustard seeds 1 ts chana dal or yellow split peas 10 fresh curry leaves; if available 125 gm carrots; cut into 2cm dice 115 gm peas; if frozen, defrost 115 gm cauliflower florets; 2 cms 115 gm french beans; cut into 2-cm! 1 tb natural yoghurt This is one of the easiest vegetable curries to make. You boil any diced vegetables you like in flavoured water and then cook them briefly in a coconut-cashew sauce made entirely in a blender. This is usually eaten with rice or rice noodles. Grated, frozen coconut is now sold by most Indian and SouthEast Asian grocers. It comes in flat packets so you can conveniently break off what you need. You may also substitute desiccated, unsweetened coconut. Just soak it first in the same volume of hot water for 30 minutes and then add it, with its soaking liquid, to the blender. Cover the cashews in hot water and soak for 1 hour. Drain. Put the tomatoes, coconut, salt, chillies, garam masala and cashews into a blender. Blend until you have a smooth paste. Add the chopped coriander and blend for a second only. You should still see flecks of green. Pour the oil into a medium, lidded pan and set over a medium heat. When the oil is hot, put in the mustard seeds and chana ~ As soon as the mustard seeds begin to pop and the dal reddens, a matter of seconds, put in the curry leaves, carrots, peas, cauliflower and beans. Stir once and add 250 ml/8 fl oz water. Bring to the boil, cover, reduce the heat to low, and simmer for 3 minutes or until the vegetables are crisp tender. Stir in the paste from the blender and return to a simmer. Simmer gently, uncovered, for 2 minutes, stirring now and then. Fold in the yoghurt and turn off Recipe "Madhur Jaffrey's Ultimate Curry Bible" Contributor: scanned IMH Yield: 4 servings ** Exported from Now You're Cooking! v5.62 ** -- All the Best Ian Hoare http://www.souvigne.com mailbox full to avoid spam. try me at website