Malai Kofta /Malayi Kofta

This malai kofta is very rich and can make you feel like eating in a royal palace dinner(for me atleast) .When we eat in hotels  we cant be sure when they made it or how much salt,cashews they put in making the gravy rich .When you make it home you can make it fresh and you can reduce the amount of cashew or cream going in to the dish .That is the very good thing making these gravies home.This month challenge to south team is malai kofta and is challenged by nupur  .We enjoyed the dinner yesterday night with these wonderful koftas and Rotis .It was so rich and so yummy ..Thanks nupur for the wonderful challange.Thanks to divya for starting this wonderful group .

Preparation time : 20 min
cooking time:40 min
Serves:2-3 

Ingredients :
Salt required
oil for tempering and frying the koftas.

Kofta :

• 1 large potato(boiled and grated )
• 1/2 cup curdled milk(50 grams paneers grated)
• pinch f garam masala
• pinch of chili powder .
• corn flour (for dusting)
• 3 tbsp corn flour

For gravy:

• 1 large onion
• 1 tomato(pureed)
• 1 inch ginger
• 2 garlic
• 1/2 tsp chili powder
•  pinch of garam masala
• 1/2 cup wholefat milk.
• 10 cashew(paste).

Spices:

• 2 cloves
• 2 cardamom
• 1 inch cinnamon
• 1/2 bay leaf

Method:
I used home made paneer for koftas and evaporated milk for gravy.
This gravy is very easy if you have the above two ingredients ready made.

Gravy:

• Puree a large tomato and keep it .
• Puree the cahews as well .
• In a saute pan add little oil and add Spices(cloves,cadamom,cinnamon and bay leaf ).
• Add coarsley chopped ginger garlic to it and saute for sometime .
• Add onions and saute until its translucent .
• Switch off the flame and cool it and grind it in to a smooth paste .
• Add it to the saute pan and turn the heat on .
• Add pureed tomato  and cook it for 5 min .
• Add chili powder ,turmeric and garam masala and stir well and cook it with required water (add enough water otherwise gravy will be too thick at the end) for 10 min until the gravy is little thick  and oil seperates out .
• Add cashew paste and cook it for 5 more minutes .

• Finally add the full cream milk or evaporated milk in low flame for another 10 min.
• Everything will come together add the required salt as well .

Koftas:

• Grate the boiled ,peeled potatoes .
• Grate the paneer as well .
• Combine the paneer,potatoes with chili powder,garam masala and enough salt .
• Mix well and make around 10 small balls out of it .
• Coat the balls with corn flour and deep fry it for 3 minutes (i fryed 3 balls at a time so it took me 3 minutes may be it varies depends on the climate and oil temperatture ).
• Fry it until the balls are golden brown.

Assembly/Serving  :

• Gravy has to be hot so if you have done the gravy before serving them heat it again .
• Add the koftas to it and add cream if required .
• Add chopped corinader leaves as well .
• Serve it with roti or any flat breads like naan ,kulchas .

Note:

• Original recipe calls for paneer as i attempted to make paneer home but i failed to make it so i used the curdled milk with corn flour .If you have paneer then the koftas would be perfect.
• Add cream if you prefer otherwise evaporated milk would give the taste of malai kofta gravy.
• My malai kofta was little spicy, you can reduce the amount of chili powder in gravy to make it little sweet.
• While frying the whole spices and onions if your oil is hot, fry the onions first instead of ginger garlic (if the oil is very hot and  u fry the ginger garlic first then ur dish may taste little bitter).
• You can use home made paneer and evaporated milk so i planned 1 hour before started cooking the gravy so plan accordingly .
• Evaporated milk has the lowest fat content(8 percent) compared to cream(30-36 percent) or heavy cream(36-40 precent).To know the difference in cream and evaporated milk you can check here 

To make paneer home :Homemadepaneer
To make condensed milk/evaporated milk home :Homemade milkmaid
Yummy paneer curry:Paneer butter masala(with less butter and no cream)