Cooking Adventures: Seekh Kebab
As you may notice, I have a thing for trying to make food from other cultures. And when it comes to world cuisine, no food captivates me more than Indian cuisine. Perhaps this is because Indian food is as widely varied as its people. Many Americans, if they even know Indian cuisine at all, think that all of it is exactly the same. Well if a country with 1/3 the population and only 300 years of history can create nearly countless variations on BBQ, imagine what thousands of years of culture has done for Indian food.
The goal today was to make Seekh Kebabs. So technically the meal could have been Pakistani or Indian. If you’ve never had Seekh Kebabs, they’re supposed to look like this:
(Image courtesy of About.com/Getty Images/Brian Stablyk)
I didn’t make them from scratch. This time I had a mix. And any committed Hindu would have a heart attack upon hearing that I used beef. I’ll just have the heart attack later in life from eating the beef. So I followed the recommendation of the mix…kinda.
What went into the kebabs? Meat, ginger, garlic, a little oil, onions and a long green chili pepper all went together. Everything had been finely chopped or blended before mixing, which created a sloppy-joe like consistency. And there was the spice packet, the part where I cheated. It looked like it had garam masala, coriander seeds, turmeric and some dried greenish thyme-ish stuff. And I’m sure a few preservatives.
I didn’t think that the consistency was really correct. I thought about adding some egg to make it stick to itself better, but I just went with it. So what happened?
The skewers were completely pointless, to be honest. The meat was just like loose meat. But when you eat it over rice with some sauteed onions, yogurt and top it all off with some fresh chopped cilantro, it tasted fabulous. A little spicy, but not overpowering. Our visiting guest even enjoyed it! (Yes, I dared make this when a close friend was coming over to our place).
We also had some leftovers. I mixed the leftovers with yogurt, crumbled cornbread and shredded apple. It was really tasty.
So, as for my first food experiment of the year: Moderate success. Though next time I think I may do the spices myself (now that I’ve tried it) instead of using a packet.
Great Thanks: To my sister for implanting this idea into my head by buying me a bunch of Indian groceries a while back.
