Lola’s Kitchen: Korma Recipe

Posted March 6, 2015 by Lola in Lola's Kitchen / 16 Comments

Lola's Kitchen graphic

Lola’s Kitchen is a feature on Lola’s Reviews where I talk about all things related to food, cooking and baking. These posts can be recipe posts or more discussion type posts about food. I love cooking and spend some time in the kitchen almost every day, so I wanted to give it a place on my blog as well. The banner for this feature is designed by Michelle from Limabean Design.

I have made a lot of indian recipes to date and while this Korma is one of the more difficult indian recipes I made, it’s also really good. Mostly it takes it’s fair share of time and includes a lot of ingredients, but then again I oftenmake enoguh for two days so that compensates. It’s a thick and rich curry filled with vegetables, cashew nuts and coconut milk. It’s certainly worth a try. A wikipedia search to korma brought me to this description, which is very broad:

Classically, a korma is defined as a dish where meat or vegetables are braised with water, stock, and yogurt or cream added. The technique covers many different styles of korma.

So there are many variaties of korma. Last week I featured Tofu Korma Recipe, but that’s totally different from this korma, it has different spices and different taste.
This recipe is inspired by Ambika’s Kitchen. I found her version a bit too complex, so I simplified it a bit and I usually use whatever vegetables I prefer or have at house at the moment.
Close Up Korma

Ingredients

Ingredients KormaVeggies and other ingredients:

  • Potatoes – 4-5
  • Red bell pepper – 2
  • Onion – 1
  • Tomato – 1 (optional)
  • Green Peas or edamame beans – 1/2 cup
  • Lentils – 1/2 cup
  • Water – 1 liter/ 4 cups
  • Bouillon cube – 1 1/2
  • Coconut milk – 1 cup
  • Garlic – 7-8 cloves
  • Ginger – 1 inch piece fresh/ 2 teaspoons powder
  • Cashew Nuts – 1 cup
  • Olive Oil
  • Blender or hand blender

Spices:

  • Dried Bay Leaf – 2-3
  • Turmeric powder – 3 teaspoons
  • Coriander powder – 2 teaspoons
  • Curry powder – 2 teaspoons
  • Anise powder – 2 teaspoons
  • Cardamon – 2 teaspoons
  • Cinnamon – 1 1/2 teaspoon
  • Garam Masala – 1 teaspoon
  • Cayenne Powder – 1 teaspoon

This recipe feeds about 4-6 people. You can serve it with white rice or flat bread. You can add a tomato, but I found the taste doesn’t differ too much if you don’t have it. If you don’t have all the spices, don’t worry, just use whatever you have. In my opinion you really taste the cardamon and cloves in this recipe, so make sure to add those at least and some sort of curry/turmeric or garam masala so it at least looks like korma ;).
I usually make this korma for two days and it tastes even better the second day.

Method

  1. Slice and dice the potatoes, onion, paprika, garlic and ginger. Put the garlic, ginger and onion in the pan and bake till the onion is translucent.
  2. Now add the potatoes and paprika, followed by the coconut milk, some water, the bouillon cubes and the bay leaves. Cook this for 20 minutes in the pan. You can also cook the potatoes in another pan first, but I prefer just using one pot and cook it in there.
  3. In the meantime mix the spices in a small bowl and add it to the dish.
  4. Now throw the cashew nuts with some water into a blender or hand blender and blend.
  5. Add the remaining veggies that don’t have to cook as long, in this case the green peas and lentils. Stir well and cook for another 5-10 minutes.
  6. When the cooking time is almost over remove the bay leaves. Now add the nut paste.
  7. Eat!

Pictures

Baking the onion, garlic and ginger

baking onion

All the vegies lined up, potatoes sliced and diced: check! Paprika sliced and diced: check! Lentils and green peas accounted for: check!

slice and dice

Add the paprika and potatoes to the pan

add paprika and potatoes

Add the water, bouillon cubes and bay leaves

cooking

Cashew nuts, will they blend?

cashew nuts

Yes it will! Blended cashew nuts!

blended cashew nuts

And a close-up picture of the blended cashew nuts

close up blended cashew nuts

Mix the spices

mixed spices

Add the spices to the pan

added spices

Adding the green peas and lentils

adding other veggies

Add the blended nut pasta

adding nut paste

Korma

Korma in pan

Korma on plate

Korma

Variation Tips

  • Cauliflower. Like Ambika’s Kitchen does you can add cauliflower or carrots to the dish instead of lentils and paprika. She also adds french beans, which sounds like a nice addition. Just make sure to add these veggies with the potatoes in the first step.
  • Vary with veggies. While I prefer adding paprika, lentils, green peas you can basically add everything to this korma. I recently made a version with 1 paprika, 1 cauliflower and potatoes and it turned out great as well. I also added a broccoli to this dish once. You can throw in whatever veggies you like, just make sure to throw long cooking veggies in early and things that don’t have too cook too long only at the end.
  • Almonds. Instead of cashew nuts you can also use almond nuts or change a portion of the cashew nuts into almond nuts.
  • Meat Korma. You can add meat to this korma or Tofu, make sure to add it during step 5 with the veggies.

What’s your favourite Korma or Indian recipe?

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16 responses to “Lola’s Kitchen: Korma Recipe

    • This korma is so good, it takes some time and effort to make it, but then you can enjoy this yummy korma! I haven’t been to an indian restaurant for a long while and enjoy cooking indian food at home! I love the taste of indian food and how it’s tasty, but doesn’t have to be hot and it’s easy to make it vegetarian.
      Lola recently posted…Lola’s Kitchen: Korma RecipeMy Profile

    • I had a bit trouble making this the first time, but then I tweaked it a bit, so there were less steps and it worked better that time. And then there’s the spices ingredient list which is a bit daunting. I have a great asian supermarket close by for which we can get relatively cheap spices.
      Lola recently posted…Lola’s Kitchen: Korma RecipeMy Profile

    • I hope you give one of the korma’s a try, this one is a bit more complicated. And they both have a very different flavour.

    • This is one of my favourite dishes, I make it regulary as it’s so good. I love making korma’s/ curries from scratch, those canned or premade sauces are good, but it tastes very different if you make it from scratch. As long as you can get all the spices I certainly would recomend to try and make it from scratch once :). I hope you’ll give it a try and let me know how it turns out when you do!
      Lola recently posted…Review: Bride on the Run by Catherine Mann and Joanne RockMy Profile

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