SPINACH KOFTA ------------- [deep-fried balls of spinach and cottage cheese in tomato/cream sauce; a bit elaborate, but *very* tasty] Ingredients: 2 cups whole milk (= 1 pint = 1/2 litre) 2 tbsp white vinegar 1 lb spinach (~1.5 packages) 1/2 cup water 1 medium onion 3/4 cups crushed tomatoes 2 tbsp cream 1/2 tsp salt 1/2 tsp red chilli powder (Indian) 1/2 tsp black pepper 1 tsp paprika 1 tbsp coriander leaves 1 tsp sugar oil 1 tbsp all-purpose flour green chillis, finely chopped (1 or 2, depending on your bravery) 1/2 tsp turmeric 1/2 tsp crushed white poppy seed powder Directions: 1) Wet the inside of a pot, and boil the milk in it. When it's at a full boil, add vinegar; milk will curdle. Turn heat off and swirl milk around to keep it from coming to a boil again. Cover, let sit on warm element for 2 minutes, and you have cottage cheese. 2) Put cottage cheese in a clean dry cloth in a strainer or colander; rinse thoroughly until there's no vinegar smell left. Ring it out thoroughly till you have a cloth-wrapped ball of cottage cheese a bit smaller than a baseball (racquetball-sized, maybe?); hang it up so it can drip out its remaining moisture. 3) Remove the stems from the spinach. Wash, chop finely, and boil with 1/2 cup water for 2-3 minutes. (You can tell it starts to boil when the spinach starts to shrink down; after 2-3 minutes of boiling, the volume will be dramatically reduced.) Remove excess water and put it aside for later use. 4) Put the cooked spinach in a mixing bowl, and mash by hand. Add cottage cheese and flour, and keep mixing and mashing. Add sugar, salt, black pepper, and finely chopped green chillis. Mix it all up and form into balls ("kofta") -- should be a bit smaller than golf balls. 5) Heat enough oil in a pan to cover the koftas about halfway, and fry koftas until brown on the outside. Set aside. 6) Crush or blenderize onion -- it should be a paste. Discard all but 2 tbsp of the oil, heat, and fry onion with poppy seed powder till golden brown. 7) Add turmeric, red chilli powder, and paprika. Add crushed tomatoes and 1-1/2 cups water drained from spinach earlier. Cook the sauce until thick. Add koftas and boil for just 1 minute; serve immediately in a casserole garnished with cream and cut coriander leaves.