Food Network Friday – Ground lamb kebabs with pomegranate glaze, bengali spiced potatoes and raita

I think this is our second Aarti Sequeira Food Network Friday pick. Her series has just started to air here but I haven’t seen it yet. I generally like her approach though, which seems to blend Indian flavours in with traditional dishes.

I was excited about this choice as soon as I saw it for several reasons. I used to make some fabulous kebabs when I ate dairy and I knew that I could use them as a base idea for this dish. Secondly I’ve had one bottle of pomegranate molasses in my cupboard for at least 12 years and although I like it I clearly don’t use it very often.

Unfortunately the actual kebabs were a bit made up as I went along and I didn’t make very detailed notes, but they were so good I’ll definitely make them again so I’ll be a bit more careful when I do. But I can tell you that the base for them was – lentils! Probably not everyone’s first choice but they worked amazingly well.

I doubled the potatoes and mixed up my own panch puran mix as mine was quite old and didn’t smell of much so I binned it. Mine was black mustard seeds, cumin seeds, nigella, fenugreek and fennel seeds. Otherwise the potatoes were exactly as instructed and I just swapped soya yoghurt in the raita, so those two elements of the recreation were very simple.

For the kebabs, I boiled red lentils until just cooked and drained them. Then I mixed them with chickpea flour, plain flour, tahini and the shallot and herbs from the original recipe. I let the mixture sit in the fridge for an hour or so, then used damp hands to mould the mix around skewers. Then I cooked them on my panini press and used the pomegranate glaze (with the lemon juice which is listed in the ingredients but not used in the recipe).  The kebabs were fragile but they definitely worked and were an amazing texture and taste.

We loved the potatoes but there definitely weren’t enough for us as written. Fenugreek can be an acquired taste so if you’ve not tried it before you might want to just add a small amount.

We both loved this dish and thought it was a great choice – whoever picked it. I can’t wait to see what the others did.

 

 

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