Vegan

Navratan Korma Recipe

admin July 3, 2023July 3, 2023

Navratan Korma Recipe

My vegan Navratan Korma is a decadent but healthy dish with a luxurious sauce of cashew cream that coats perfectly cooked veggies like potatoes, carrots, green beans and bell peppers. This is the dish to impress friends and family with.

A Navratan Korma is what Indians call a “shahi” dish: a food so sumptuous that it is fit for royalty.

This is not your everyday Vegetable Korma, as delicious as that is. Cashews and raisins melt into a luxurious, silky, creamy white sauce that coats perfectly cooked and tender cauliflower, carrots, green beans and potatoes. It’s a dish you might imagine yourself eating at a fine restaurant or in a palatial dining room with that extinct species called an Indian maharaja. 😉

But why aspire to that when you can have this fancy dish in the comfort of your own home?

Eaters outside India often refer to “Indian food” as if it were a monolithic entity, but as someone even a little more than casually acquainted with the intricacies of Indian food would know, there is no such thing as “Indian food.” India is an ancient country, with many regional and religious flavors, and mixed into the food are not just these diversities, but also the tastes and ingredients contributed by those who migrated into India over hundreds and even thousands of years, and stayed there.

Navratan Korma comes from what is known in India as Mughlai cuisine — the cuisine of the mughuls or moghuls, Persian invaders who set up vast empires across the Indian continent (Shahjahan, the guy who built the Taj Mahal, was one of them). Mughlai cuisine has a distinct flavor and even distinct aromas of its own, and it generally uses lots of meat, nuts and dry fruits — all ingredients that, in those days, were more accessible, perhaps, only to royalty.

The word “navratan” literally translates to “the nine gems,” and the story goes that the name of this dish possibly derives from the Mughal emperor Akbar’s nine famous and talented courtiers referred to as “navratan” or the nine gems. Another story attributes the name to the fact that the dish is supposed to be a melange of nine vegetables.

Despite these fancy antecedents and associations, the Navratan Korma is a rather accessible dish to even those of us who are not royalty. It is not a difficult dish to make and you do not need nine types of veggies (although you could certainly use them). And although there are a few separate steps involved, befitting a royal dish, it should take you no more than an hour to cook up.

Ingredients for Navratan Korma:

Onion
Ginger
Green chili peppers (like jalapeno or serrano)
Garlic
Cauliflower
Green Beans
Potatoes
Bell peppers
Cashews
Peppercorns
Green cardamom
Cloves
Cinnamon sticks
Vegan yogurt
Golden raisins
Garam masala
Extra firm or super firm tofu (optional if you want to make this soy-free)

Ingredients

1 large onion (cut into large chunks)
1 tablespoon ginger
2 green chili peppers (like jalapeno or serrano)
5 cloves garlic
½ head cauliflower (separated into medium-sized florets)
1 medium carrot (cut in a ½-inch dice)
1 cup green beans (cut into a 1-inch dice)
2 medium potatoes (cut in a ½-inch dice)
1 large bell pepper (cut in a ½-inch dice)
½ cup cashew nuts (divided)
1.5 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 teaspoon peppercorns
4 green cardamom pods
5 cloves
1 inch piece cinnamon
½ cup vegan yogurt
2 tablespoon golden raisins
1 teaspoon garam masala
10 oz extra firm tofu (cut into approx ½-inch cubes)

Instructions

Place the cauliflower, carrots, green beans and potatoes in a large saucepan. Add half a cup of water, bring to a boil, cover and cook for five minutes. After five minutes, add the green beans and bell peppers and continue cooking another five minutes or until potatoes are tender. Drain and remove to a bowl. You can reserve the cooking water and use it as a stock instead of water later in the recipe.
Place the onion in a saucepan, cover with water, bring to a boil, cover and cook for 10 minutes. Drain the onion, put it in a blender, and make a smooth paste.
Crush the garlic, ginger and green chili peppers, preferably with a mortar and pestle (or food processor is fine). Set aside.
Blend half the cashews (¼ cup) into a very smooth paste in the blender with ½ cup water)
In a large saucepan (you can use the one you cooked the veggies in), add 1 tablespoon of oil and add the cinnamon stick, cloves, cardamom and peppercorns. Saute for a minute until they start to change color and become fragrant.
Lower the heat and add the onion paste. Continue cooking for another 7-8 minutes, stirring frequently to keep the paste from sticking to the bottom of the pan.
Add the crushed ginger-garlic-green-chili-pepper paste and saute another minute. Now add the cashew paste and the yogurt, mix, and continue cooking for another five minutes. Stir frequently to avoid sticking.
Add all of the cooked vegetables and tofu. Mix well and add a little more water if needed (you can use the reserved water from cooking the vegetables as needed). You want the gravy to be thick enough to coat the veggies, and not too runny. Add salt to taste.
Let the korma come to a boil and cook another five minutes for all of the flavors to blend. Turn off the heat.
In a small saucepan, heat the remaining ½ tablespoon oil and add the remaining ¼ cup of cashews and raisins. Stir-fry until the raisins become puffy and the cashews start to become golden.
Pour the cashews and raisins into the korma, sprinkle on the garam masala powder, stir once to mix, and serve.

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