Yea, that's a thing. There's a faery for everything. Oh, right--fairy. Sorry, Uncle Sam.
And now for some background:
Loki, also called bottle gourd, is a long, pale vegetable something like a courgette, but crunchier. For this dish, it is grated, then squeezed of all its juices and subsequently mixed with spices, fresh herbs, and (usually) besan/chickpea/gram flour to form a thick paste. This paste takes a twenty-minute holiday in the fridge to firm up a bit and is then formed into dumplings and fried...DEEP. FRIED. The luscious, tantalizingly golden dumplings are then heaped into a creamy spiced tomato gravy, or sauce if you prefer.
My recipe has a vegan option, is kosher for Passover, and tastes better than your mother's matza balls. Guaranteed.
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Yes, I went there.
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And now for the recipe.
For the kofta:
1 medium loki/bottlegourd or firm courgette, grated and squeezed to remove most of its water
Matza meal, as needed possible up to one (1) cup. I don't deal in precision.
2 tablespoons chopped, fresh coriander (cilantro)
1 teaspoon amchur (dried mango) powder, or a squeeze of citrus
1 teaspoon cumin powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cooking oil (cottonseed or butter for Passover, Ashkies)
Yogurt or almond milk, as needed
Oil, for frying
Lasciviously luscious sauce to envelop your golden orbs of paradise*:
2 tablespoons ghee or cooking oil
1 medium onion, minced
1 jalapeño, minced
1 inch of ginger root, minced
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
1/2 teaspoon asafoetida
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon salt
4 medium tomatoes, diced
2 cups water, possibly more, with some broth powder mixed in if you like
1 cup heavy cream or coconut milk
Ze instructions:
1. Get the gravy going (pardon my alliteration). Heat the oil. Add mustard seeds. Wait a few seconds until they start jumping out of the pan onto your nice, new shirt, leaving a permanent oil mark as an eternal testament to your naïveté. Sometimes food is not your friend. Anywho, the mustard seeds are popping. You're freaking out. Toss in the asafoetida and turmeric. Give it a stir. Follow the spices with the minced pepper and ginger, stirring to homogenize. Now for the onion. Dump it in and take a breather because all the water in the onion will shut up those freaking mustard seeds. Kapow.
2. Cook until the onions begin to look like the onions you pray to see when you take the top bun off of your hamburger to add (insert condiment that tickles your fancy). Once the onions have reached golden brown delight, add salt and the tomatoes. Now, if your tomatoes aren't fresh (hey, I'm talking to you, people who buy tomatoes in the winter) you may want to throw in a few teaspoons of tomato paste. Otherwise, you might as well be adding cardboard or its flavor equivalent. In the winter, you're better off using canned tomatoes.
3. Cover with water after a few minutes of simmering and then put a lid on it. You may also cover the pot if you like.
4 Get the kofta...?koftas...?kofti...?dumplings going. Mix the gourd, matza meal and spices together. While you're wondering why I hate the Oxford comma, drizzle in some water until you can form a dough with the consistency of wet play-dough. Pop the whole thing in the fridge and check on that gravy. What, you thought the gravy was done? BAH. I hope you turned the heat down so that shiz don't burn.
5. Heat your cooking oil to 375 degrees Fahrenheit (for Celsius, please click here). After a handful of minutes, give the dough a poke and see if it has firmed up. If not, sprinkle in some more matza meal. If it's gone beyond your firming up expectations, take a chill pill and add some curd (that's yogurt to you, buddinsky) or almond milk, as your conscience desires. Give the mixture a good need--whatever it kneads--and form into balls the size of...well, balls, actually. Fry the suckers for a few minutes on each side or until a deep golden colour. I, for one, have never seen gold the color of dirt, but we use the terminology we have, n'est-ce pas? Make sure to do this in BATCHES of no more than five to keep the cold batter from f*&^ing with the oil you so patiently brought up to temperature. Drain dumplings on paper towels or a cookie cooling rack as you take them out of the oil.
6. When that's all done, check on the sauce, you nincompoop. You probably burned it Oy.
7. If you passed the test and didn't burn the sauce, proceed to step 8. If you failed miserably, well, you can find the appropriate step yourself.
8. Remove that bubbling cauldron of Rajastani goodness from the heat and add cream/coconut milk while stirring. Return to heat and taste for salt and spice. Remember that the kofta...koftas...f%^# it...are going to absorb some gravy and make things a tad bland. It should taste like something you'd want to eat with a spoon or just your face...pig. Also, it shouldn't be too thick. The consistency of light cream should do the trick. Add water, if needed, to achieve the aforementioned consistency. Or don't and suffer the consequences. Pitch in the dumplings and let them simmer. Let me repeat, SiMmEr, for 10 minutes in the hot sau...gravy.
9. Serve with rice, chapati, naan, or eat these little morsels all by their lonesome. Just keep in mind that they are deep-fried and quite literally floating in cream.
10. Think happy thoughts and love each other appropriately.
11. Oh and if you are eating with others, don't forget to garnish with some parsley or coriander or whatever leafy green shit you like to see on your food.
*The name of some Chinese restaurant somewhere. You know it's true. It's not racist if it's true, right?
