hungry_dan
Assistant Cook
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2008
- Messages
- 4
Hi there, hope someone can help me out with this. I'm cooking for a bunch of people on Sunday, and I intend to cook with an Indian theme. I'll be doing Bombay Potatoes, Spinach Pilau, home-made Poppadoms (also some store-bought Naan breads cos I'm lazy and have never baked in my life) and a Chicken Dopiaza recipe from recipezaar (I did try to include the url in this posts but unfortunately do not have enough posts to do this). It calls for 3 bay leaves, 8 whole cardomoms, 4 cloves and 8 peppercorns to be sauteed before adding ground spices and then tomatoes & water before the chicken goes in.
My one concern with this recipe is the sheer number of potentially annoying ingredients left in it: as I'll be doubling the amount there could be 6 bay leaves, 16 cardomom pods, 8 cloves and 16 black peppercorns left in the dish if I don't fish them out. The recipe doesn't say anything about removing them, but do you think I could get away with removing them after adding the ground spices but before adding the tomatoes and water? Otherwise I could have people choking on bay leaves, spitting out cloves and cardomoms and breaking their teeth on peppercorns! I have considered grinding the peppercorns up, but will that significantly affect the flavour of the dish? If I were to grind the cardomoms up, would I still use the same number or would the extra dissipation, and the fact that it's remaining in the meal mean that I should use less? Also, I must confess to never having used cloves, would it be alright to grind these also? If so, 6 bay leaves would be an acceptable hazard!
Cheers in advance for any tips!
My one concern with this recipe is the sheer number of potentially annoying ingredients left in it: as I'll be doubling the amount there could be 6 bay leaves, 16 cardomom pods, 8 cloves and 16 black peppercorns left in the dish if I don't fish them out. The recipe doesn't say anything about removing them, but do you think I could get away with removing them after adding the ground spices but before adding the tomatoes and water? Otherwise I could have people choking on bay leaves, spitting out cloves and cardomoms and breaking their teeth on peppercorns! I have considered grinding the peppercorns up, but will that significantly affect the flavour of the dish? If I were to grind the cardomoms up, would I still use the same number or would the extra dissipation, and the fact that it's remaining in the meal mean that I should use less? Also, I must confess to never having used cloves, would it be alright to grind these also? If so, 6 bay leaves would be an acceptable hazard!
Cheers in advance for any tips!