Kooking at Karma

My friend Charmain spotted a Wicount deal for a cooking class at Karma. Now, I've never eaten at Karma before, but I've heard that their food is legendary, so I paid over my R150 in the week of no credit cards (a whole other long story), and we went to the Fourways restaurant last Tuesday to learn how to cook Indian food.

Shyrose was our teacher - she's the owner, a lovely lady with an interesting accent and a very gentle way of teaching. Apparently there are some secrets to cooking good Indian food - although there are so many regional and cultural influences that it's ok to not be too much of a purist, apparently.

Secret no 1 is the spices. You add the whole spices (mustard seed, cumin etc) early on in the cooking process - and you don't cook them until they pop, as some recipes suggest. Rather just toast them a bit...

Secret no 2 - when you cook the onions, cook them until the flavour and colour you prefer. This will determine the colour and the flavour of the final product.

Secret no 3 - cook the onions first and then add the tomatoes... and then you cook them until they melt into one another. This is how you get a smooth gravy from a foundation of tomatoes and onions.

Charmain and I made a curried bean dish (way nicer than I thought it sounded) and onion bhajias. The surprise of the evening was the dip that was brought out for the bhajias and the potato kachoris - the recipe is below.

We rounded off the cooking lesson by learning how to make chocolate samoosas. Oh. My. Word. Easy really - melted chocolate, bit of cream, bit of butter, chilli flakes and almond slivers, all melted together and then refrigerated. Wrap up spoonfuls in samosa pastry (with cumin in it), and then freeze. Deep fry quickly in hot oil - the pastry goes all crispy, and the chocolate goes all gooey. Perfect way to round off a meal, even though it was a little (!) rich!

It was a good night out, and fun to do with a good friend. I'd recommend it as a different night out, for you and a friend, or for a group of friends. Eating the yummy food that you've cooked at the end of the evening rounds it all off very nicely! Just a note - don't get excited by the promised goody bag - it's a small bag of Spekko rice, a couple of recipe bookmarks and a travel brochure. But then you don't go to such a thing for the goody bag I guess :-)

Here's the recipe for the dip - be careful - it's addictive. It think it would go with just about anything on the planet. Anything at all.

Coriander and Mint Sauce

1 cup coconut powder

½ cup chopped mint

1 tspn salt

2 tbsp green chilies blended

1 cup chopped coriander

6 tblspn yoghurt

¼ cup water  (add as per your liking if you like it saucy add more water )

In a blender, blend the coconut powder and chopped mint, chopped coriander with a little water, yoghurt enough to purée Add the salt and blended green chilies. Blend until smooth.

I've just mentioned the two recipes to tease you into going, and to be fair to the restaurant. Shyrose emailed us about 12 recipes, for everything from the dreamaliciously delicious Butter Chicken to the startlingly divine Potato and Aubergine  dry curry.