I started with this recipe, but I made a few additions and substitutions. I also used more than 3 cups of vegetables...in fact I accidentally made enough Korma to feed a small army.
"Navratan" means "9 Gems," so the idea is to use a total of 9 vegetables, nuts, and fruits. I used cauliflower, sweet potato, white potato, green beans (frozen), broccoli (frozen), carrots, red pepper, golden raisins, cashews, and paneer (ok that's not a vegetable, nut, or fruit, but it's DELICIOUS). To be honest I don't think I've even seen an Indian restaurant use 9 different ingredients, so you can use as many as you want. The last Navratan Korma I had out was loaded with lima beans, of all things.
First off, before starting the sauce, I pre-cooked the non-frozen vegetables until almost done.
Oh and a quick side note - I'd never grated an onion before, but it sucks exactly as much as I'd expected. Prepare yourself for this. Maybe wear sunglasses while you do it.
Instead of tomato sauce I used half a can of tomato paste plus a few oz. of the tomato liquid from a can of whole, peeled, unseasoned tomatoes. The main reason for this being that tomato sauce from a jar is usually way too sweet and contains herbs like basil and oregano which have no place in this dish. I'm assuming that recipe implies the use of a simple, unsweetened, plain tomato sauce....more like tomato puree.
I also added an entire small can of lite coconut milk, since I needed more liquid and didn't want to keep adding milk or cream...this dish has enough fat in it already! Which reminds me, I used half and half instead of heavy cream just to make it the slightest bit healthier.
Since I had a huge amount of veggies and added a lot of extra liquid, I needed to adjust the spice proportions to compensate. My favorite method for this is just adding a little bit of each at a time, stirring, and tasting until it's the way I want it. I didn't have cayenne pepper so I used Sriracha chili sauce (this is so awesomely versatile) adding it 1/2 tsp. at a time. I also had some cardamom and ground clove in the pantry which I added sparingly.
Since the fresh vegetables were pre-cooked, I added them, along with the frozen ones, after the finished sauce had been simmering for a few minutes. Then I continued to cook it (covered) until everything was perfectly soft.
The fried paneer cubes went in last (try not to eat them all before they make it into the sauce - this may be difficult), then I covered the skillet and simmered a few minutes longer. As long as you keep it on very low heat and covered so the liquid doesn't evaporate, it's pretty hard to over-cook the veggies. Literally 1-3 minutes before you're about to serve the korma, add a small handful of roughly chopped fresh cilantro (did you know cilantro and coriander are the same thing??? I didn't until like 2 days ago!)
Here's what the finished product looked like:
Right before the Korma finished, I decided to throw together some Raita to eat with naan bread as a side dish. Again, I didn't measure (I hardly ever do but I'm trying to start so I can post recipes here that actually make sense), but here's an outline:
Non-fat greek yogurt + a little bit of plain, unsweetened Kefir (this isn't necessary but I was running low on yogurt, plus this helped acheive the thinner consistency I was looking for)
Juice of one lemon
One large cucumber, grated
Small pinch of salt
A few shakes of paprika to taste
A few shakes of cumin to taste
7-10 fresh mint leaves, finely chopped (more or less depending what you like)
Mix everything together and let it sit in the fridge so the flavors really develop. This stuff is delicious.
I served the Korma over Jasmine rice and the Raita with Trader Joe's garlic naan.
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