Recipe: Chef Saransh Goila's Sandalwood Galouti kebabs

While sandalwood is known to be a great coolant to apply on the skin, and used to mark auspicious ceremonies, not many know that it can add great aroma to a dish.

Chef Saransh Goila holds a dish of Sandalwood kebabs. Pic/Satyajit Desai

Chef Saransh Goila, an anchor and chef consultant for Food Food channel, added the beige powder into his kitchen ingredients after a stint in Lucknow. "I was in this tiny village learning how to many shawarmas in a food street that churned out 10,000 shawarmas a day. I decided to make something for the chefs as a gesture of my appreciation and saw some sandalwood sticks on the kitchen platform.

I had decided to make Galouti Kebab. I ground some sandalwood on a marble stone and added it to the ghee, which absorbs the taste and aroma of the powder beautifully," says Goila, who gives a few tips about Galouti kebabs. "First of all, it should be a melt-in-the-mouth texture, for which, minimum binding agent of flour should be added," he says.

Sandalwood kebabs
>> 3 cups hung yogurt
>> 1 small stick sandalwood
>> 100 g paneer
>> ½ cup prunes, chopped
>> Ginger-garlic paste to taste
>> 2-3 green chillies, chopped
>> 2 tsp freshly ground mix of cloves, peppercorn, jeera, cinnamon and cardamom
>> Salt to taste
>> 2 tsp fresh coriander leaves, chopped
>> 2 tsp maida
>> 1 cup bread crumbs
>> 50 g powdered dry fruits (cashew, almonds, pistachio)
>> 3 tsp ghee
>> 2 tsp lemon juice

Method
>> Take hung yogurt in a bowl. Add mashed paneer, ginger garlic, green chillies, red chilli powder, freshly ground spice powders, salt, dry fruits and flour to it. Mix well

>> In another bowl, mix chopped prunes, coriander, salt andlemon juice

>> Make a small patty with the above mixture and stuff it with prunes mixture. Now coat these patties with breadcrumbs

>> Heat ghee in a pan and add a pinch of sandalwood powder or 1 tsp paste to it (can add a bit more for additional flavour or if quality of sandalwood is not good). Ghee will absorb the taste of sandalwood. Strain it

>> Now pan fry or shallow fry these kebabs in this sandalwood ghee

>> Serve hotu00a0