Dum Aloo Kashmiri #Disaster No. 2

Ran into another disaster, and managed to ruin not just once but twice. Here's what I was following :

http://www.sanjeevkapoor.com/kashmiri-dum-aloo.aspx

So the idea is soak them potatoes in salted water and then deep fry them, which I obviously din't have any issues in doing.  Apart from splashing some hot burning oil onto my hands.

Got the fennel powder and the cardamom powder mortar-pestle'd. Whipped some yogurt, now here is the tricky part, the recipe says to the whipped yogurt add kashimiri red chilli paste, cardomom powder and fennel powder.

Now since I could not source kashmiri red chillies I used the red chilli ka techa, am not sure what that you call in english. Its like a paste of lemon juice red chillies and a whole bunch of other things. See - http://manishams.blogspot.com/2009/10/red-chilli-chutney.html.

Apparently this has lemon which I did not know and so here's what happened :

Attempt 1 
Got the oil going, added the hing and the clove powder. Now this was close to getting burnt and the oil was really hot, added water to it and then the yogurt mixture. In less than 2 minutes boom!!! the yogurt had split.

Attempt 2
There was no salvaging what happened above, quickly got another round of fennel powder and cardmom powder in the mortar and pestle'd away. Now  I was thinking the yogurt split cuz of the very hot pan and very hot oil.Got the yogurt mix ready. As soon as I added the clove powder and hing to the oil, took it off the heat and added the yogurt mix. Quickly added the fried potatoes to this, thinking that the potatoes will help with the splitting problem. But no that was not meant to be, the damn thing split again in two minutes.

Now here I was 10 minutes remaining for me to get ready and leave to office and I had spoilt :

1. A full box of curd
2. Two hand full portions of Fennel
3. About 15 cardomom thingies
4. About 10 Cloves
5. Around 15-18 small potatoes which were such a pain to peel

And had nothing to take with me. Disgusted decided to give up, but then the wife steps in and quickly the picks the potatoes out of the split gravy, saute's them and shoves it into the box.

So here's the what not do for the Dum aloo Kashmiri

1. South Indian Ranjak aka Mirchi cha Techa is not kashmiri red chilli
2. Dont over heat the oil if you wish to add yogurt to us.  Adding yogurt and potatoes with the pan off the heat is a good idea.
3. Tone down on the Fennel powder, the recipe says take a table spoon of fennel thats alot. And if you end up like me having to only eat the potatoes then fennel is all you will taste.

And possibly don't cook at all. Order the damn dum aloo karshmiri from the around the corner restaurant.