C41 Balti Paste

This is a homemade version of a Balti Paste similar in nature to Patak's and can be used in a similar manner. This is not an attempt to exactly replicate Patak's paste but it does use the same ingredients (almost) which can be located on their website or on the individual jars and also on the 'spices of india' website although the listed ingredients do vary slightly.

Ingredients

Makes approx 5 tbspn (75 ml)	Continued...
4 tbspn oil	¼ tspn dry parsley
1 tspn ground coriander	1 tspn salt
¾ tspn turmeric	1½ tspn tomato purée
¾ tspn ground cumin	1¼ tspn sugar
¾ tspn garlic powder	¾ tspn cider vinegar or white wine vinegar
¾ tspn ground ginger	¼ tspn lemon juice
¼ tspn fennel seeds	¼ - ½ tspn creamed coconut
¼ tspn cardamom seeds	5 tbspn (75 ml) hot water
¼ tspn black mustard seeds	2 tspn besan (gram flour)(see note 1)

Preparation

Grind the fennel seeds, cardamom seeds and mustard seeds to a fine powder in a pestle and mortar.

Cooking

Heat the oil in a pan over a medium heat and cook the 8 spices and parsley, stirring, for 1 min.
Stir in the salt, tomato purée, sugar, cider vinegar, lemon juice, creamed coconut and hot water and continue to cook, stirring for 1 min.
Stir in the besan and cook stirring for a further 1 min.
Allow to cool and spoon into a suitable jar and keep refrigerated.

Notes

(1) Besan can be purchased at some supermarkets and any Asian outlet.
(2) This can be used as an ingredient in cooking a curry much as one would use a curry paste such as Patak's.

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