Food Post: Tandoori Elk, Raita, and Cheesecake

Somehow we ended up with a ton of plain honey yogurt. I asked on FoodFo for some yogurt using recipes, and Werda suggested doing Tandoori Chicken and a cheesecake. I'm out of chicken, but decided to use some elk steaks instead.

Since I don't have a spice grinder, I decided to do things by hand to make my garam masala. I already had some of the spices powdered, but the cloves and black peppercorns had to be smashed up. Then I added the rest of the spices already powdered and mixed them up.



I roughly chopped the onion, garlic, and half green pepper since they would be going into the blender.



By the time it was blended in with the yogurt and spices, it was smelling pretty damn amazing.



The elk was frozen, so I pulled it out to thaw a bit, then unwrapped it and tossed it into a bowl with some lemon juice and salt, then back in the fridge to thaw a bit more while the yogurt sauce was being made.



It was still pretty frozen, but thawed enough to put a couple deep slits into it for the marinade to get into. Poured the yogurt over the top, then back in the fridge.


While the elk was marinating and thawing out, I worked on the raita that was suggested to go along with it. I used onion, mint, cucumber, yogurt, garam masala, and a bit of tumeric. Diced everything up fine and decided to add some dried mint as well as fresh for a bit of added minty flavor. Mixed it all up and put it in the fidge for the flavors to blend.



I also checked on the yogurt I've been straining out for using in cheese cake. Its a bit gross to see how much liquid comes out of it, but it is firming up really nice.

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Now it is all sitting in the fridge, the elk absorbing the marinade, the raita combining flavors, and the yogurt draining. And I'm off to take the dogs out for some running time, since they have been staring at me sighing the whole morning while I prep the food.