The starting point for this recipe idea was spinach and paneer cutlets. I made them at my daughter's house in Chennai and everyone liked them. Afterwards, I thought they might be nice with a sauce, then I thought 'Why not cook them in the sauce, Ashy?' I jotted down the idea in my little notebook, so that I would remember it when I got back to the lab. I also wrote, 'What seasonings to use?'
A couple of weeks later, I was in Munnar, a hill town in the mountains of Kerela. Munnar is surrounded by tea plantations and the town is essentially a tea processing town. In amongst the tea plantations, however, there are many small spice gardens, usually on steep ground where it would have been impractical to plant tea. I spent some time in various spice gardens. They're very pleasant places to be for several reasons. Firstly, most spice plants require some degree of shade, so when an area is cleared for planting, many of the original forest canopy trees are left to provide the shade. It is mostly the forest understory which is cleared, then this replaced with spice plants, such as cardamom or black pepper vines. Sometimes coffee bushes are planted too. Also, as the land is usually steep, the ground is often terraced with low dry stone dykes and, altogether, this creates a very picturesque setting where, so long as you don't start harvesting the spices or crashing through the valuable bushes, you are generally free to wander at will.
Another reason I find the spice gardens good places to visit is the number and variety of birds which are attracted to them. Many of the endemic species of the Nilgiri and Malabar hills are becoming rarer because of habitat destruction, but the spice gardens provide little havens for them to live in and lots of migrant birds from northern parts also spend the winter there. An early morning visit, before the rickshaws full of plantation workers disturb the peace, when the birds are at their most active and the sun is just beginning to shine though the canopy, dappling the undergrowth with patterns of light and shade and warming the air so that the smells of the flowers and spices begin to fill the air, is a truly wonderful experience.
Another reason? Well, wouldn't you like to see how spices grow? In their fresh state they don't look anything like the ones in the shops. A few days after Munnar, I was in Kumily, a village set in similar surroundings about 100 km to the south, and I visited a plantation shop to buy newly harvested and dried spices. I got cinnamon, cardamom pods, cloves, nutmegs, mace and black and white peppercorns. Thus the question of what seasonings to use for the koftas was answered, since that was the first recipe I tried when I got home and I wanted to use some of my new spices straight away. Here's what I did.
Ingredients
For the kofta:
A large bunch of spinach
About 250g of paneer, chopped or crumbled
A handful of breadcrumbs
A couple of heaped teaspoons of flour
A splash of olive oil
A few crushed black peppercorns and a little grated nutmeg
Salt
For the sauce:
I onion
2-3 cloves of garlic
4 teaspoons of tomato paste
Olive oil
A small piece of cinnamon stick
A half teaspoon of crushed coriander seed
Salt
Hot water
Wash and roughly chop the spinach and steam it without adding water, for 7 or 8 minutes. Leave it to cool then mix all the kofta ingredients together and mash the mixture well (Take the paneer out of the fridge and leave it to warm up a little while the spinach is cooling - It will be easier to mash).
Using a deep frying pan, fry the chopped onion in oil until it starts to brown. Add the crushed garlic, cinnamon stick and coriander and stir for a minute until the garlic smells strongly. Add hot water to a depth of about two thirds of the pan and stir in the tomato paste and salt. When the sauce starts to boil, form the kofta mixture into balls and lay them in the pan. You should get about six balls from the mixture. Cover the pan tightly and after five minutes, turn the heat down to simmer gently for about another 25 monutes.
If you want to have rice with this dish, which I would recommend,
put the rice on to cook as soon as you cover the kofta pan. When it's ready,
turn off the heat and leave the pan covered until the kofta is ready.