Slow cooker Dal Makhani

This recipe satisfied two wishes for me. One was to make more desi food in the slow cooker and the second was to make more vegetarian food in the slow cooker. Since dal makhani is slow cooked to begin with, the transition to the slow cooker seems like the natural evolution. For this recipe I looked at this, this and this for inspiration. I'm not sure if the kashmiri red chillis actually do anything, but I have them and I like using them. The one criticism I had of my finished daal was that it didn't have a smokey flavour. If I do this again I will add a dash of smoked paprika to add this. This is reflected in the recipe below.

Ingredients

First Step:

• 1.5 cups whole black urad daal
• 3 tbsp channa dal
• 3 tbsp ghee 
• 2.5 tsp ginger garlic paste
• 2 tsp salt
• 6 cups water
• 2 whole Kashmiri red chillis

Second Step:

• 2 cans red kidney beans
• 1 can pureed tomatoes
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg powder
• 3/4 tsp garam masala
• 1.5 tsp roasted cumin powder
• 2.5 tbsp kasuri methi 
• 1/2 tsp red chilli powder
• 1 tsp kashmiri red chilli powder
• 1/2 tsp smoked paprika
• 1 tsp amchoor powder 
• 3-4 tbsp butter
• 1/2 tsp black salt 
• 1.5 tsp ground coriander
• 1 tsp garlic powder

Before serving:

• 1 cup cream
• cilantro- fresh or frozen

Instructions

1. Wash the daals and add them to the slow cooker with all the ingredients in step 1. 
2. Cook on low overnight. For me this amounted to about 9 hours.
3. Mash the daal a bit with the back of the spoon and then add all the ingredients in step 2.
4. Cook on low for a further 4-6 hours.
5. The dal is now ready. I usually add the cream right before I serve.

Chorizo Apple Mustard Puffs

This recipe is from here. We modified it as follows but if I make this again (and I probably will make this again because it was yummacious), I will probably take the casing off the sausages, but won't separate the meat more than that. I enjoyed the pig in a blanket style of leaving the sausages whole but the skins were difficult to bite through.

Ingredients

Small pat of butter

1 apple, finely diced

8 small raw chorizo sausages

small handful parsley, chopped

400g pack puff pastry (4 plates cut in half)

1 egg, beaten

1tsp-ish Dijon mustard 

Method

1. Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. 
2. Put the butter and apple in a small pan and cook for 5 mins until the apple has softened, then cool. Then mash until its chunky but small chunks.
3. Mix in finely chopped parsley and a tsp-ish (more is probably better) of dijon mustard.
4. Thaw the puff pastry plates spread out individually until they are soft and pliable, but before they reach room temperature. Cut each one in half.
5. Add a spoon-ish of the apple mix and a sausage into each plate and then pull the plates and seal the edges around the filling.
6. Spray the baking tray down with butter, brush the tops with egg and then bake for 40 minutes. Around 15 minutes in, you should probably pull out the baking tray and remove the excess liquid and then pop them back in. 

Asian marinated baked chicken

This was super simple and absolutely delicious. It is probably getting added to our regular rotation. I used boneless skinless chicken thighs but the recipe says that bone in, skin on chicken would work better. We only marinated it for an hour (maybe) but the recipe calls for 12-24. If it was this good after an hour of marination, I can only imagine how good it would taste after 12! I found this recipe on Yummly after googling around looking for a good chicken recipe that would use up my scallions as well. I think the original recipe is from Chow.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup soy sauce (I used half dark soy, and half malaysian sweet soy)
• 1/4 cup dark brown sugar
• 3 tbsps fresh ginger (peeled and finely chopped, from 1, 3- to 4-inch piece)
• 1 tbsp chopped garlic (finely, from about 5 medium cloves)
• 2 tsps toasted sesame oil
• 1 tsp ground black pepper (freshly)
• 3 lbs bone in skin on chicken thigh (drumsticks, or breasts, or a combination of all three, I used boneless skinless chicken thighs)
• Scallions (bunch, I had 6) chopped 

Instructions

1. Place everything except the chicken in a 13-by-9-inch broiler-proof baking dish and whisk to combine. If I was actually going to marinate this recipe overnight I would probably do this entire marination in a big ziplock. I also added a drizzle of some hot and sour dipping sauce I had because some of the original comments suggested it needed some chili flakes.
2. Lay the chicken in a single layer in the marinade and turn to coat. Add half the scallions as well. Cover, refrigerate, and marinate at least 12 hours and up to 24 hours, turning the chicken at least once during the marinating time. (The one hour, room temp marination also yielded mind-blowingly yummy chicken. I suspect longer marination would be better for bone-in, skin-on chicken.)
3. Remove the chicken from the refrigerator and let it sit at room temperature for about 30 minutes. (This step is not necessary if using a ziplock bag for the marination.)Meanwhile, heat the oven to 475°F (250C) and arrange a rack in the middle.
4. Turn all the chicken pieces skin-side up in the dish (if you’re using drumsticks, just turn to recoat them in the marinade). Bake until the chicken is starting to turn a dark brown color, about 40 minutes. (We started with the dish covered and then removed the foil 20 minutes in and also turned the pieces over once while baking since mine were skinless.)
5. Set the oven to broil and broil until the chicken skin is crisped, about 3 to 5 minutes more. Skipped this step. Added remaining scallions over the top and ate with boiled white rice with the sauce drizzled over the top.

Delish.

Calories: As written, this marinade contains 577 calories (excluding the ginger, garlic and scallions as minimal.) As written, the entire dish contains 1617 calories (0.9 kg boneless skinless chicken thighs at 1000 calories) and probably yields about 4-5 servings (big eater servings :blush:) at 400 calories each. Add rice calories separately. Keep in  mind that you probably won't eat the entire marinade. We had most of it left over after drizzling some onto the rice. So I think a more accurate per serving calories count would be somewhere in the 300-350 range.