Khuri Kitchrie is one of my all time favourite Indian meals. The excitement of this dish comes from the many side dishes it is served with. The main parts being the rice and khuri. The rice is cooked with turmeric, giving it a lovely golden colour and the Khuri has mustard seeds, curry leaves and green chilli making it subtly fragrant and delicious. This simple combination of a yoghurt curry served with rice, leaves it open for a variety of side dishes to be served alongside it. In a previous post, I’ve mentioned crispy aubergine, pumpkin curry and fish in a tomato chutney as some of the accompaniments to this dish, you can find those recipes here. In this post, I will share more delicious vegetable sides including a very simple Peri-Peri Prawn dish that can be eaten with this or on its own.

INGREDIENTS:

Khuri 

Ingredients:

• 1 cup Fair Cape Amasi/ Double Cream Yoghurt
• 1/4 tsp garlic
• 1-2 small fresh chilli
• 1/4 onion
• 1 Tb dessicated coconut
• Handful fresh coriander
• salt to taste
• Vagaar: 1tsp black mustard seeds, fresh curry leaves, jeera (whole cumin) and few Tb oil.

Method:

1. Make a paste in a magimix or blender with all ingredients except the yoghurt/maas.
2. Add paste to the yoghurt and mix with 1/4 cup water and 1 Tb of chana flour.
3. Make vagaar with above ingredients and add to Khuri

Serve with Yellow rice (basmati or bimri rice, boiled with 1/2 tsp haldi, salt) and steamed. You can also add 1Tb of pre-soaked oil dhal to rice before boiling. There are many variations.

Spicy Aloo (potato):

Ingredients:

• 1 – 2 potatoes, peeled and diced
• 1 tsp chilli flakes
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• 1/2 tsp salt
• oil for cooking

Method:

1. Mix all the ingredients together and fry in a few tablespoons of oil on high heat.
2. Add a little bit of water to help it cook until soft, then continue cooking until water evaporates and potato goes crispy.

Spinach:

Ingredients:

• 1 – 2 cups spinach, cut up (chiffonade/shred)
• 1/2 onion, diced
• 1 tsp cumin
• oil for cooking
• salt to taste

Method:

1. Sauté onion in a little bit of oil/ghee/butter. Add cumin and wait until they start sizzling then add spinach.
2. Remove from heat when it just starts to wilt, the residual heat will continue cooking the spinach.

Date Chutney:

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of pitted dates, soaked in boiling water to soften
• 1/4 onion
• 2 – 3 green chillies (less if you don’t like it hot)
• generous handful of mint
• 2 Tb of brown vinegar
• salt to taste

Method:

1. In a food processor or small chopper, blend the dates, onion, green chilli and mint.
2. Add the vinegar to taste (start with 1Tb) and add more if needed, then add salt.
3. There should be a balance between the sweet/salt/tangy.

Peri Peri Prawns:

Ingredients:

• Prawns, cleaned
• 1 – 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 1 – 2 tsp chilli flakes
• 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
• squeeze of fresh lemon juice
• generous amount of peri peri oil to coat the prawns.

Method:

1. Marinate the cleaned prawns in the above mixture. There are no amounts as you can add to taste and make as many or little prawns as you like. I did not add salt because prawns are high in sodium.
2. I used 6 prawns because I just wanted to have a taste of the prawn. I’ve made this before with 1.4kg of prawns and you just need to coat everything well enough and have a balance between all the ingredients.
3. Fry in a pan on both sides until the prawns are cooked.