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Zucchini Kofta
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Zucchini Kofta Subji

Soft zucchini koftas, made with chickpea flour and zucchini and creamy gravy made from tomato and cashews make a very rich and flavorful dish! Serve it with some hot roti, naan or rice.
Prep Time20 minutes
Cook Time20 minutes
Course: dinner, Lunch, Main Course
Cuisine: Indian
Keyword: courgette, Creamy, curry, glutenfree, koftas, shaak, subji, vegan, vegetarian, zucchini
Servings: 4 servings
Author: Devangi Raval

Ingredients

Tomato/Onion/Cashew sauce

  • 1 medium sized onion chopped
  • 1 big tomato chopped
  • 2 -3 cloves garlic roughly chopped
  • 1 inch ginger roughly chopped
  • 2 green chilies
  • 2 tbsp cashew nuts soaked in water
  • 1/2 tsp Turmeric powder
  • 2 tbsp ghee/oil
  • 1 tsp cumin seeds
  • 1 Bay leaf
  • 2 cloves
  • 1 small bark of cinnamon
  • 1/2 tsp Red chili powder
  • 1/2 tsp Coriander powder
  • 1 tsp Garam masala powder
  • salt to taste
  • 1 tsp Kasuri methi

Zuchchini Koftas

  • 1/4 cup corn starch or rice flour
  • 2 tbsp All purpose flour
  • 1 ½ cup zucchini grated
  • 1 green chili finely chopped
  • 1/4 cup onions finely chopped
  • 1 clove Garlic grated
  • 1/2 tsp turmeric powder
  • Salt to taste
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda/eno
  • Oil for frying
  • 2 tbsp coriander leaves chopped
  • Lemon juice
  • Cilantro for garnish
  • Few cashews for garnish optional

Instructions

Sauce

  • Take 1 tbsp ghee or oil in a pan. Add, chopped garlic, ginger, green chilies, onions and saute for few minutes. After they have softened up a little bit add in the tomatoes, and soaked cashew nuts too. Let it cook for few minutes. once cooked, let it cool. Once its cools down completely, blend everything in a blender. This will be our base sauce for the koftas. Leave it aside until we make koftas.
  • In the same pan that we saute'd our sauce ingredients, add 1 tbsp ghee or oil. Once the ghee heats up add in the cumin seeds. Once they start sizzling, add in other whole spices and the tomato-onion sauce. Add dry spices one by one. Add some water to thin it out about ½ cup. You can keep the consistency of the sauce as per your liking but remember once we add the koftas they will also soak up and change the consistency of the sauce.

Koftas

  • Shred the zucchini. Squeeze grated zucchini and remove excess water. Take everything including the zucchini and other ingredients of koftas in a bowl and mix to form a batter. The zucchini will release enough water to bring the batter together. So, at first if you are not sure if the batter is coming together just wait and watch.
    If we add more water, it will be difficult to keep the shape. By chance, if your batter is too runny. Add a little bit of more flour. Start with less zucchini and then add more if needed. You cannot leave the batter, immediately fry the koftas as Zucchini releases water.
  • While the batter rests, preheat some oil in a pot at 350 F at medium heat. Take some batter in a spoon and drop it in oil. They will all fry up to different beautiful shapes. Drop the rounds in the hot oil. You can use a spoon or your fingers to drop the batter. The batter fries up like fritters . You can also use small ice cream scoop. But, be a careful while dropping the batter in hot oil.
  • Fry them for few minutes, turning them halfway into frying until you get a nice brown golden colored koftas.
  • Remove them on an absorbent paper.

Assemble the dish

  • Mix well. Taste it if it needs more seasonings. As we have already cooked the sauce before blending it, it only needs a little bit of cooking time. Add the fried koftas and give it a stir. Let it cook for few minutes. Let it simmer for couple of minutes until they soak up the flavors and soften up about 5-7 minutes. Don’t try to mix them too much, if they are soft, they will break apart. Once it has the consistency you are looking for and you will be able to see the koftas have soaked up the sauce. Remove it from the heat.
  • Drizzle a little bit of lemon juice and garnish it with chopped cilantro and cashews. You can also add some cream or cashew cream (vegan) on top of the dish.

Notes

If zucchini releases too much water, add more flour and adjust the salt. Start with less zucchini and you can also squeeze out the liquid from zucchini. 
Don't let the koftas fry at high heat, they will burn quickly and the insides will be raw. So, go medium heat. You can also shallow fry them. 
A little bit of sugar in the sauce can balance out the sourness from tomatoes. 
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