skillz

[dwenius]

So this weekend I cooked Indian food for the first time. Actually, since I tend to get home right about dinnertime if not later, and given that most restaurants will happily take my money on those occasions when A. doesn't want to cook, I haven't actually, you know, cooked, in several years. Hmm, make that many years, as I ate out almost exclusively when I lived in the Haight. These days, I'll throw things together for myself, particularly with my current diet, but it's very possible that A. has never, in actual fact, eaten my cooking. Until yesterday.



Actually, courtesy of Madhu Gadia's _New Indian Home Cooking_ (which I believe A. has praised here previously) it was pretty easy. The main dishes in this book take about an hour, not 4-6 as is the norm for Indian cuisine, and for the veggies I found a quickie steamed-frozen-vegs-with-spices thing that worked so well I served it both nights. Frozen vegetables, so sue me, they were good.

Saturday was a curried chicken. I went with a handful of halved boneless chicken breasts instead of dealing with parts. As I was searing them white-on-the-outside in what looked to be wholly too little oil, I have the paralyzing suspicion that they are too big to cook fully in the 20 minutes the recipe allots. Having just recovered from food poisoning, I wasn't gong to take chances, so I went to grab them out of the pot and chop them smaller.

They promptly stuck to the bottom/sides/all over and tore, leaving meat strings baking in place. This caused the following comic relief. You have to realize: as the designated not-cook, I do the dishes a lot. Bits of meat sticking to a pot and getting cooked and cooked and cooked is a Very Bad Thing. Plus, while leaning over, I got a nice grease splatter in the corner of my eye; Owie! Now see me mildly lose my shit. Then I realize: hey, not my pot to clean! and down comes a shower of heavenly light, spectral voices chanting "la la la you don't have to clean!" and I forgot all about how big the breasts were (ba-dump). Over to the actual curry now.

The marsala base was tomato and onion, plus every herb or spice beginning with the letter 'c' (cumin, cardamom, cinnamon, coriander, cayenne, cilantro, and cloves of garlic (gnee)). 4 cardamom pods? That's a mighty big pot for only four pods. There were a few other bits, a dollop of nonfat yogurt here, some turmeric there, ginger, fennel...I was a bit worried about the fennel. but mostly, if it started with a 'c', it went in. I throw that all in, a half cup of water, and I'm looking at it thinking "Add chicken and simmer for 20 minutes? Simmer in WHAT?" At this point, A. comes home (yes, she left me ALONE in the kitchen, even) and confirms that yes, when using this cookbook she often wonders just where, exactly, the sauce comes from. At this point she also does me the great favor of chopping the chicken in half again, as describing my adventures so far reminded me that they still looked too big.

20 minutes later, we make the following discoveries:
1. Cutting the amount of cayenne in half is perhaps not cutting it quite enough.
2. That must be one pretty damn good cookbook, because this is taaaaaaaasty.
3. Even the veggies-- Frozen!-- are good. Mmmm, garam masala.

Immediately after dinner, I started work on Sunday's mean, Tandoori chicken. Parts, this time. The marinade is not unlike the curry, lots of C spices, 4 cardamom pods again...only four...but more yogurt, more tomato, and instead of fennel, two whole cloves. On paper, it was a very small change to the spice list, but to the nose, wow! Completely different. Also, the recipe called for red food color. Now, I realize these are modern times, and this recipe book is specifically low fat and quick/easy, but I have to ask: how did they make Tandoori food red without (or before) red food coloring? What is the "real" way?

I left the chicken to marinate for about 20 hours total, and pulled it out this evening. Tandoori cooking is, by comparison to currying, dull as rocks. It's barbecuing, without the grill and incumbent threat of injury. Despite the utter lack of a clay oven, I thought it came out pretty good, though not as good as the curry. For one, it looked like roadkill; I let it go in the broiler a minute too long or so and it blackened up on the outside. Inside, though, very tender, and pretty authentic tasting as far as I coudl tell. Again, the veggies complimented well, and on the upside, i have leftovers for work tomorrow.

Next weekend, I think I'll cook Thai. Watch this space.

Comments

[mrbalihai.livejournal.com]

We bought a miniature clay tandoori pot from Williams-Sonoma a few years back. It cracked in the oven the first time we used it, but yielded some fairly good results. Making decent naan still eludes me, although I've had some success with chapatis. Finally, I've found that there's really no substitute for using ghee.