My favorite Indian/Nepalese restaurant (Mt. Everest Restaurant for you Evanstonians - try it tonight!) has this amazing dish called “Ghost Pasanda” which I want to try at home. Their description of it is “Delicate pieces of lamb cooked in almond sauce and cream garnished with saffron, herbs and fine nuts.”
I’ve had it at other restaurants where it’s a pleasant, very mild cream or yogurt based dish. At Mt. Everest, it’s a feast for the taste buds - hint of heat, wonderful sweetness, creamy richness. I can definitely taste both the almonds and the saffron, as well as a number of other “herbs” I can’t identify. It’s simply a more complex flavor. It’s utterly amazing.
It’s also $11.95 for a fairly modest serving. :eek: My fat American ass could easily consume two servings, with a heaping healing of Naan on the side. My wallet, however, won’t support this lifestyle.
It’s probably a badami gosht recipe-basic lamb gosht (you can type that into google). The way you generally infuse the flavour of nuts is to make them into a paste-my mother does something similar for some spinach in tomato cream sauce with cashew paste for flavouring that she invented herself. I forget how she gets it into that paste, though…I think either in her special spice/nut grinder from India and then she puts in a mortar and pestles it down to a really finely ground concoction and then adds a little saffroned milk to make it into a paste.
Here is a recipe for Lamb Korma I found that uses cashews instead of almonds but I’m sure they could be used interchangeably. I believe this recipe reflects a Southern Indian style of Korma and may be a bit more “brash” than the Northern style you are seeking.
Lamb Korma
1 lb. Lean lamb, free of fat, cut into 1 inch cubes
½ tsp. Saffron (this is what makes the dish! don’t scrimp!)
¼ cup Boiling Water (to soak the saffron in)
½ cup Unsalted cashew nuts
2-3 tsp Green Chili paste (or 3 fresh green chilies)
1½ tbsp. Fresh ginger, chopped
1 inch Stick cinnamon
½ tsp. Cardamom seed
6 Cloves
3 cloves Garlic, finely chopped, or even better use a garlic press
2 tsp. Coriander powder
½ tsp. Cumin seed
1¼ cups Water
½ cup Ghee (clarified butter) melt the butter and skim off the milky “gunk”)
1¼ cup Large onion sliced
1 tsp. Salt
1 cup Yogurt
tbsp. Fresh Coriander, chopped
Directions
Place the saffron in a small bowl and pour 3-4 tablespoons of the hot water on to it. Let it steep for 10 minutes
Add the cashew nuts, chili paste, chopped ginger, cinnamon stick, cardamoms, cloves, garlic coriander and cumin seeds to a blender, along with the 1¼ cups of water. Blend for 2 minutes until you have a smooth puree. If you want a mild dish (and many people do) limit the chili paste to ½ teaspoon.
In a large saucepan, heat the ghee until it is very hot. Fry the onions until golden brown. Add the salt, the blended spices and the yogurt. Cook gently for 5 minutes stirring occasionally.
Add the lamb cubes, and stir them in well. Add the saffron and the water it has been soaking in. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and simmer gently for 20 minutes.
Add the fresh coriander a cook for another 10 minutes, until the lamb is tender.
Heh, I just left the Celtic Knot as it closed and the owner of the Indian rest. walked out with me. Had I known you wanted the recipe I would have gotten it. I will ask him for it the next time I see him, he stops into the Knot for a pint most nights.
**MikeG **- that would be so wonderful. At the risk of hijacking my own thread - Do you work at the Celtic Knot? Is it a nice place to hang out? Got any trad music I could come enjoy? Is this the place I hear the Nevin’s crew is defecting to, or is that a different place? I keep walking by and peering in enviously, but haven’t worked up the courage to go in yet.
I actually don’t think it’s a korma. Pasanda is a different type of curry from korma-I associate korma with north India a la Punjab and U.P. whereas pasanda and balti and momo and stuff I thought usually came from the Himalayan region like Uttaranchal and Kumaon and the mountain border area between India and Pakistan etc… Also, gosht means lamb in Hindi so it’s likely a pasanda and not a korma.
By the way for saffron you should soak the saffron in a little warm milk to release the flavour and you don’t need to use too much, otherwise it becomes bitter.
I don’t work there but Jamie, Patrick, Deb, Jerri, and a bunch more of the old Nevins crew are indeed there. I have been giving them a lot of business ( was there last night for a nightcap after Hopleaf) and I might stop by this evening for a Guinness or two. IM me if you want to meet up!
Anu-la this is interesting to me and thank you for your input. As I google recipes for Korma and Pasanda, there are many variations but they all seem to share the same basic spices and ingredients and appear to be the same creamy “stew”. Is there a distinct ingredient that makes a pasanda different from a korma? I have noticed that the addition of turmeric and cream seem to be hallmarks of the pasanda… or are these just the cook’s variation in recipe? Are korma and pasanda just dialectically different or are they different in recipe?
I don’t really know what you mean by dialectically. I looked up that word and its primary meaning is “logically.” Do you mean that pasanda and korma are merely the same curries but with different labels b/c of the linguistic differences between Indian states or is this some sort of deep metaphysical question?
Well, curries in general are basically all meat or vegetable stews and I suppose restaurants just label them with impunity. But in terms of the food I’ve grown up eating, the main flavouring in korma is the heavy cream taste and all other spices fade into the background whereas with a pasanda there are some pronounced flavours like cardamom or rosewater coming through with a more pronounced nuttiness. Makhanis have more pronounced ginger garlic flavouring with no cream and oftentimes they dump some methi in there for good measure and on and on. Sometimes the differences are very, very subtle, though. Like my mom makes this thing called “uttapa” on a flat cast-iron pan (we’re Marathi) and my Sri Lankan friend’s mom makes it in this rounded wok-thingy which apparently turns it into an “appam” or a “hopper” but it’s actually really the same batter but god forbid you refer to his precious rounded uttapa as an appam, he’ll hit the roof.
Anu-la, yes, thank you! That is what I meant. Dialectical(adj.)/ Dialectically(adv.)- of, relating to, or characteristic of a dialect. I should have been more clear. Although, I think your anecdote revealed the actual dialectic of the subject!
I have had neither korma nor pasanda, so hearing from somebody who can actually pronounce the difference is very interesting and enlightening.
I have always been very interested in the regional differences of world cuisine and their sociological implications. From personal experience, I’ve found that you can discover much about a person’s culture and language by how they cook and what they eat. I’m fascinated.
Is there any particular region or ethnicity in India that proclaims culinary greatness over all others?
What’s your favorite Indian dish?
What’s your favorite American/other dish?
Ah, yes. This then would be the difference between this dish I now covet and a similar *looking *dish I’ve had at other restaurants - this is definitely a pasanda (more pronounced nuttiness), the others were korma (heavy cream taste).
I think every ethnic grouping in India is obsessed with itself so they would all self-proclaim their culinary greatness. The one thing that’s interesting to me is how my relatives only very rarely eat out. All of them (husbands and wives) have careers but they come home at night and make food entirely from scratch. My mom actually just gave up scraping coconut on this little stool thing with a spur-mostly after my father screamed and hollered and was like “we’ve been here for over twenty years now! Must you break your back when it’s readily available at the grocery store?” Anyway, since most of my relatives live in big cities (90% of them are in Bombay) they have access to friends and neighbours who can teach them about other styles of cuisines so rather than go out to eat they just master recipes that they give them. Actually, I was born in Belgaum in Karnataka where my father worked for a Canadian multi-national and my mom actually learned how to make stuff like dosa and idli and sambar from her Nair (Malyali) neighbour.
That said, some regions, at least in my opinion, are better at certain types of dishes than other regions. For instance, I would not expect the best meat curries and rotis/naans out of a South Indian and I wouldn’t expect the best dosas out of someone from UP. Fish is a curious thing-I’m actually from a really small quasi-subgroup of Maharashtrians known as Konkani people (we’re originally from Goa), who are famous for eating fish, even, the brahmins (Brahmins are generally supposed to be vegetarian). Usually I don’t expect to get good fish dishes in other people’s homes unless they are Konkani, Bengali, Keralite/other coastal states where the Brahmins have allowed themselves to eat fish. I’ve noticed my Sri Lankan friend’s family also eats a lot of fish. Then Gujaratis make really interesting veggie dishes like oondya and dhokla and ragda patties and the like. Then of course there is this awesome street food you can get in Bombay like pao bhaji, pani puri etc. etc. which no one in my family can eat anymore seeking as we would be at risk for hepatitis.
I can’t put a finger on my favourite Indian food but it would probably be all the fish stuff I grew up with (curries and pan-fried Indian mackerel, sardines etc…) with rice, daal or dali toy (a watered down, highly spiced poor man’s daal from Goa) with cuddi (this sour pink stuff made from soaking the dried skin of this fruit plant that grows in Goa/N. Karnataka), an Indian spinach curry with clams and this particular mango pickle from these wild mountain mangos called “amblis” that the tribal people bring down to sell at market. Then again, whenever I go home I beg and plead for idli and saambar. I generally don’t ask my mom to make me stuff like at most Indian restaurants unless we’re talking dosa restaurants.
I’ve grown up in North America (Quebec and later the US) but my favourite American dish is lasagne. Or maki sushi…isn’t that an American invention?
