Tari Daar Aloo Kofta (Potato Kofta in Raisin-Tomato Sauce)

Battering and deep frying the koftas makes this recipe a little more labour-intensive than I'd normally want for dinner, but the recipe sounded too good not to try! The chickpea flour batter fries up beautifully and makes for very professional looking dumplings. I feel like the sauce was a little lacking, but a bit on sonth drizzled on top of the dish perked it right up.

Tari Daar Aloo Kofta

Slightly adapted from 660 Curries by Raghavan Iyer

Ingredients

Koftas

• 450g russet (or other floury) potatoes, diced
• 1/2 c. fresh cilantro¹, minced
• 2-5 fresh green Thai chilies, minced
• 6-7 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 Tbsp. coarse sea salt, divided
• 1/2 tsp. Punjabi garam masala
• 1 c. chickpea flour, sifted
• 1/4 tsp. ground turmeric
• 1/2 c. warm water
• oil for deep frying

Sauce

• 2 Tbsp. ghee
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 Tbsp. ginger paste
• 1/2 c. raw cashews
• 1/4 c. golden raisins
• 400mL tomato sauce²
• 2 Tbsp. chopped fresh cilantro

Directions

Koftas

1. Bring a pot of water to a boil and add the diced potato. Reduce heat to medium and cook, partially covered, for ~8 minutes.
2. Reserve 1 c. of the potato cooking water. Drain the potatoes and mash them.
3. Add the cilantro, chilies, garlic and 1 tsp. of the salt to the mashed potatoes and mix well.
4. Working with about 2 Tbsp. of the potato mixture at a time, form your dumplings. Shape them into eggs or cylinders as desired.
5. Combine the chickpea flour, turmeric, and remaining 1/2 tsp. of salt.
6. Whisk in the warm water to make a batter. (I ended up adding an extra Tbsp. or two of water because the batter seemed too thick to me.)
7. Pour ~5cm (2") of oil into a wok or similar vessel and heat it to ~180°C (350°F).
8. Coat four of the koftas in chickpea batter and carefully drop them into the hot oil. Cook, turning occasionally, until golden-brown all over.
9. Cook remaining koftas in the same manner.

Sauce

1. Melt the ghee over medium-high heat.
2. Add the onion, ginger, cashews, and raisins and stir-fry for ~5 minutes.
3. Add the tomato sauce and stir to deglaze the pan.
4. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, covered, stirring occasionally, for an additional 5 minutes.
5. Transfer sauce to blender jar and puree.
6. Return sauce to pan and pour the reserved potato cooking water into the blender jar. Swish it around and pour this into the pan with the sauce.
7. If using tomatoes rather than tomato sauce, stir in some salt.

Assembly

1. Warm sauce over medium-low heat.
2. Carefully add the koftas to the sauce and spoon the sauce over to completely cover them. DO NOT STIR!
3. Cover the pan and simmer for ~5 minutes.
4. Sprinkle with cilantro and serve.

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¹ I ran out of cilantro, so I ended up using a mix of cilantro and flat-leaf parsley. Parsley makes an okay substitute, but cilantro is better if you have it. ^Back
2 We ended up using diced tomatoes rather than tomato sauce. I suspect that commercial tomato sauce would have plenty of salt in it and thus wouldn't need any more added. If using fresh or canned diced tomatoes though, you may find that some additional salt is necessary. We added 1/4 tsp., but I think a 1/2 tsp. would've been better. ^Back