Priya Makes Roasted Aloo Gobi

In the movie Bend it Like Beckham, there's this one scene

where like, well this will probably get cut,

[laughs] where the lady, she's being measured

for a sari, and they say, we're gonna find a way

to make those mosquito bites look like

juicy, juicy mangoes, and it's one of the greatest

food references in a movie ever.

[laughing off camera]

[upbeat music]

Hi, thank you, back so soon.

Today we are making one of my favorite weeknight dishes.

It's called roasted aloo gobhi, so you've probably

already heard of aloo gobhi, whether you saw

it on an Indian takeout menu or in the movie

Bend it Like Beckham, right, it's like the movie

that her mom is trying to get her to make aloo gobhi.

I feel like that's how most of my friends

know what aloo gobhi is, but I will take it.

For a long time, I didn't like this dish.

And I think there were two reasons,

either they deep fry the cauliflower and potatoes,

aloo means potato, cauliflower means,

[laughs] aloo means potato, gobhi means cauliflower.

On the one hand, we have the people who deep fry

the cauliflower and potatoes before they saute them,

and it just gets kind of oily and heavy,

and on the other hand, we have people who just

saute everything together, and it just gets

very soggy and mushy, but my mom discovered

this trick of roasting the vegetables

before you cook them, so the vegetables get

charred and crispy and sturdy, and they hold

their own in the pan, so we're gonna make

this ingenious version of the dish today.

So basically, you wanna cut the potato

in two inch matchsticks, basically like slightly skinnier

steak fries, so, ugh, this is basically,

exactly what you're looking for.

The photo of this is really pretty in my book.

This is from Indianish, and this is what you're

going for, this is what we'll be eating later.

I love this shot, yum, all right, back to the taters.

So I think the best way to do this,

is to cut these into threes, and then cut it in half.

Just like little small french fries,

I'll do these in threes.

Now that we're done chopping, we're gonna arrange

this and our cauliflower florets on a sheet tray,

douse them with oil and roast them at 400 degrees

for 30 minutes, we're not looking for them

to get totally wilty, but we do want them to get

crisped and charred around the edges,

so that's the whole point of roasting them.

I really do think that my childhood

would have been a lot harder without Bend it Like Beckham.

I rewatched it with a bunch of my friends,

and just seeing the sheer joy, like how much they laughed

at it and how much they loved it, not because it was

making fun of Indians, but because it was embracing

Indian culture, I own it on DVD, and I've

watched every single bonus feature.

Okay, so now we're gonna drizzle two tablespoons

of olive oil, you can use any neutral oil

that you like, but my mom and I love olive oil

because it has this really bright, fruity taste

which is gonna go really well with all of the

warming spices, you're gonna wanna let it

soak into the nooks and crannies of the cauliflower

like that, just a little massage.

The reason you're cutting these to be this way

is to be about the same size of a cauliflower floret,

because you want these to cook at the same rate,

and one thing not to get browned

and crisped before the other, so we're gonna roast these

for 30 minutes, and then 15 minutes in we're gonna flip

'em around just so that everything browns evenly.

Cool, so while the cauliflower cooks,

the really great part about this recipe

is that you can basically finish most of the dish

while it's cooking, we're gonna go over there,

we're gonna heat up som oil, toss in some spices,

onions, get it looking nice and translucent

and charred, and then we'll add in our

cauliflower and potatoes once they're ready.

Add our lime juice, ginger, mix the whole thing together

and we're done, all right, so we're gonna heat up our oil.

Just gonna wait for that to shimmer in a little bit.

Then we'll add our cumin and our turmeric.

This turmeric is so dark, no I'm just intrigued

by different varieties of turmeric.

Oh no, I tried painting my nails for this episode

but I can never paint my nails without

them chipping immediately, without we're gonna put in

our cumin seeds, and as soon as they turn brown,

which should be pretty quickly, so I mean,

you all know the drill by now, as soon as you can smell

the toasty, nuttiness of the cumin seeds,

and they turn a darker shade of brown,

then we're ready to add our next spice.

We're building our flavors, another really good

indicator that your spices are ready

are when they start dancing around in the oil,

this little thing. You look great.

And I love the earrings. Thank you.

You're so on brand. I know.

[Priya] You're like I'm Gabby, I'm the quirky

test kitchen manager. With my lipstick on.

Yeah. I love it.

Thank you. And we're gonna throw

in our turmeric, and basically we're just swirling

our turmeric in the oil, letting it dissolve.

I'm 95% sure that this is true,

that the way to activate turmeric's health benefits

is to heat it up in oil, all right,

now our onions, I love that sound, so basically

we're gonna cook these until they are translucent

and starting to caramelize, I feel like I haven't

taught you all a Hindi word in a while.

This is a good one, when you really wanna

compliment someone or say way to go,

or like, when a kid speaks their first words,

you say shabash. Shabash?

Shabash, and you say it, the Indian mom way to say it

is shabash, like oh my gosh, look what you did.

You successfully sauteed onions

without burning them, shabash.

Our onions are looking great, you can see they've

gotten a nice car on them, they're starting

to caramelize but they're not quite caramelized.

This is exactly where we want them to be.

So we're gonna add some ginger,

which is just, look at how beautiful this julienne is.

Pinch of paprika, and we're gonna do a few pinches

because I like things spicy, a pinch of asefatida,

which if you all remember from saag feta

is sort of this wonderful, MSG rich powder

in Indian cuisine, you just need a little bit.

But it adds this wonderful, oniony, garlicky

flavor to dishes, and to me, it's what makes

Indian food taste Indian, another word

that my mom likes to use to call my chopping skills

is dera, which means crooked, I try to say

shabash to as many Indian kids as I can

because I didn't get enough sabashes in my childhood.

This is looking great, oh my gosh, it really is.

The magic of television, people.

All right, so here's what we're looking for.

Cauliflower and potatoes are cooked,

they're not 100% cooked, because we're gonna be

cooking them more, they've got these nice, brown,

crispy edges, here, you should just,

that's what you're looking for, and basically

we're just gonna throw in our cauliflower and potatoes.

So the key here is to get not just the cauliflower

and potatoes, but the crispy charred bits

that have formed, any sort of crispy thing

that is stuck to the bottom, that is gonna add

amazing flavor to this, so all right.

This part is really annoying, somehow

my mom is able to just so beautifully do it,

but oh my god, I did it just like my mom.

[Man] Shabash.

I got a shabash!

You don't want the cauliflower and the potatoes

to start to break apart, but hopefully if

you've roasted your veg right, they've got a char,

they've got body, all right, so basically

we're gonna let this cook until everything gets

stained yellow and seems sort of incorporated,

you know like six to seven minutes usually does the trick.

Now we're gonna add a teaspoon of salt.

I feel like one of my biggest complaints about

Indian dishes is that yeah, they get,

it just gets kind of homogenous and gloopy.

And so my mom has come up with these techniques

over the years to keep things bright, to keep them

textured, not to throw my dad under the bus,

but my dad does not like roasting his aloo gobhi.

He makes it all in one pan, and it's so delicious dad,

I love your aloo gobhi, but it's just like,

just a little like, it's just a little sad.

No mushy sogginess here, so we're gonna turn the heat off.

Put in our lime juice, and then we're just gonna taste it

for salt and lime, and you can add more to your tastes.

I will probably add more lime juice because I love lime.

I'm predictably gonna put more lime juice,

and then we're gonna bring it over and garnish it.

All right. [groans] It wouldn't be

a Priya video with a number -- Without me struggling

to load something up, I'm no Andy Baraghani.

What? I was just comparing

my lack of muscles to your muscles.

All good things. Take a look

at her boyfriend when it comes to muscles, not me.

Oh that's good, we're gonna garnish this

with chopped cilantro, my mom garnishes most things

with chopped cilantro, it's just a way to add

a shot of zinginess and brightness to a final dish.

And it works really beautifully in this.

I'm gonna just rip some and put it over the top.

Also it's really pretty, I would say,

it's pretty much exactly right, and my mom made

the one that we shot for the cook book.

So this is, as you can tell, by proof of this video,

I made this, not my mom. [laughs]

Andy has decided to allow me to allow him to --

No I wanna eat, I'm just curious,

I wanna know exactly what I'm eating before I --

Okay, we've got cauliflower, potatoes,

they've been roasted. Kind of knew that part.

Then we added it to a pan that had

turmeric, cumin, onion, mixed it all together,

add ginger, hing, what else, paprika.

Any heat? Any what?

Chile, like any form of -- Yeah.

Paprika, but -- Paprika.

But there's no like, green chile or anything like that.

Yeah it's pretty mild, and then what else did we add?

Salt lime juice and cilantro, that's it.

Sounds great.

Mm, oh yeah, cool, this tastes just like my mom's.

This is what dinner is like in the Krishna household.

Really simple food, aloo gobhi, sambal.

I love how bright it is. Salad.

I extra limed it up, my mom uses like half the lime,

but I like it really limey. Bit of char on the cauli.

Cauliflower, I use you know -- What I didn't realize

until my mom told me, is that most people

when they're making aloo gobhi, especially for special

occasions, they deep fry the cauliflower

and the potatoes, and my mom doesn't like the

super greasy taste, so she just tosses it

in a little bit of oil and roasts it

so it gets nice and charred. Love that the spices

are not ground, they're like, you still could

see the seeds. I love that you can --

I use my fingers so I don't double dip guys.

Thanks Andy. Thanks guys.

So good, okay come on, you want a bite?

Yes. Can I just feed it to you?

No, there we go. Oh my god, thank you.

All right wait, I'm just -- Just eat it.

[laughs]

All right, and one more.

[Camera Woman] [laughs] Oh my god, that's so good.

Aloo gobhi people, there's a reason that Jess's mom

in Bend it Like Beckham was trying to get her to make it

the whole movie, it's a good dish.

There's something very Indian about feeding people,

it's sort of like a gesture of love, so thank you

all for making these videos happen, and now I'm just gonna

eat it straight out of the bowl.

Oh that was a good bite, that was like,

oh we have to close it, I'm the worst at closing.

We closed it. We closed?

When did I close it? Somewhere along the way.

[Man] Without even realizing it.

Wow, those are my best, my favorite kind of closings.

When I don't have to but like aloo gobhi, eat it tonight!

For breakfast. Yeah. [laughs]

Dinner. For a snack.

Shabash Priya. Shabash.

[Man] And cut.