A silky, faintly sweet-sour yoghurt soup thickened with gram flour and finished with a mustard seed tempering. Vegetarian, ten ingredients, twenty-five minutes.
Prep
10 mins
Cook
25 mins
Servings
4
Per serving
£0.60
Difficulty
easy
Gram flour is milled chickpeas, not wheat, which makes kadhi one of the most reliably gluten free thickened dishes in Indian cooking. It has to be whisked into cold yoghurt before any heat goes near it or you get lumps and a split sauce. Poured over plain rice this is proper comfort food.
Whisk the gram flour into the cold yoghurt in a bowl until absolutely no lumps remain, then whisk in 700ml cold water.
Cold, cold, cold. Adding gram flour to warm yoghurt guarantees lumps you will never whisk out.
Whisk in the turmeric, grated ginger, jaggery and 1 tsp of the salt.
Pour the mixture into a saucepan and set over a medium heat. Whisk continuously as it comes up to temperature.
Once it starts to steam, keep whisking for a further 4 to 5 minutes until it thickens slightly and just begins to bubble. Do not let it reach a hard boil or the yoghurt will split.
Turn the heat right down, add the slit green chillies and simmer very gently for 12 minutes, stirring every couple of minutes, until it thickens to the consistency of single cream.
For the tempering, heat the ghee in a small pan. Add the mustard seeds and wait until they pop, then add the cumin and fenugreek seeds for 15 seconds.
Add the dried red chillies and curry leaves and let them crackle for 10 seconds, watching that the fenugreek does not blacken, as it turns bitter fast.
Pour the whole tempering into the kadhi, stir once, taste for salt and sweetness and finish with coriander. Serve over plain rice.