Experimenting on Guests Again…This Time It’s Indian-ish
We had another cooking challenge when we invited my friend Gaby over for dinner. She doesn’t eat dairy (doesn’t like it) or gluten (doesn’t make her feel good). No dairy means no butter which means none of our typical French dishes. She was open to being experimented on so we opted for Indian.
If you remember from about two weeks ago when we cooked Indian for my friend Alicia, I was a little stressed because I hadn’t developed an understanding of the flavor profiles. Still haven’t but we are working on it.
While Rei was at school, I watched a few YouTube videos and stumbled into a few from Bon Appetit with Priya Krishna. She made the dishes look so easy, and we already had many of the spices, that I decided on four different ones from her cookbook, Indian(-ish) with a few modifications. When are there not any changes? That’s like our whole brand right now.
The garlic-ginger chicken with cilantro and mint needed to marinate for 2 hours so that was the first thing on our list. It was a simple marinade of garlic, lemon juice, fresh ginger, cilantro, and mint, amchur, turmeric, salt, and red chili powder. For those of you without an intimate knowledge of Indian spices (or any knowledge, like myself), amchur (or amchoor) is a dried mango powder. Apparently it has the same effects as lime or lemon juice? How does a mango powder have the same effects as a citrus juice? What has the world come to? (It’s a green mango~Terri)
So chop chop chop (with only one, actually two, cut fingers…WTF!) and into the bag it went with the chicken. And then into the fridge for 2 hours. Wait — when did you cut your fingers? I know I’m oblivious but I didn’t realize how much…(I’m fine; it’s just a flesh wound~Terri)
The second dish was roasted aloo gobi (potatoes and cauliflower) which meant that we needed to start by roasting the potatoes and cauliflower in some olive oil. I cut up a second head of cauliflower for the matar paneer since I decided to replace the paneer (cheese) with roasted cauliflower. They are both white, both chunky, and soak up sauce well so why not? Please never describe anything as white and chunky ever again — it makes me think of cottage cheese which, in my not so humble opinion, is disgusting.(Makes me think of tapioca but I don’t know how you feel about that, Rei.~Terri)
Our chickens got the scraps as treats as I was chopping away and we were rewarded with two eggs. The girls haven’t been laying lately so this was a delightful surprise. Bawk Bawk.
We got a pretty early start and I thought it would be best to get everything chopped, measured and prepped. The picture shows the ingredients for the matar gobi. Tomatoes, onions, ginger, coriander seeds, cardamom pods, cumin seeds, turmeric, asafetida, and a green chile. The frozen peas were defrosting in the sink. Isn’t this pretty? Mom and I both have a thing for mise en place, I have to admit.
Meanwhile, Rei got a snack board out for us as we were prepping dinner. Gaby wasn’t due for a bit and dinner wasn’t going to be until around 8 so snacks! I am sure Rei will have a comment about this one. I ate too much snackwise…I was barely hungry for dinner :/
Look who we caught snacking! I quickly put him to work setting the table. lmao look at his face! Caught red-handed!
I watched a video on sourdough bread and showed it to Rei so we decided to get some starter from some friends (thanks Brett!) which resulted in an impromptu dinner party Sunday night. To be clear, I was already interested in sourdough starter (I tried to start one a couple weeks ago unsuccessfully) and Mom just now became interested because of some video, and thus pushed for us to try it again. Eh, c’est la vie.
Rei reduced the starter in order to feed it and instead of putting it in the compost bin, they fried it like a pancake with some zaatar on top. We sprinkled it with some kosher salt and it was pretty tasty. Might need to be cooked a little longer next time but it was a yummy late afternoon snack. Not too bad at all, but I agree that I should have made it thinner and cooked it longer ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And then like magic, dinner was ready. Well, actually, it seems I did a lousy job taking pictures. What you are seeing up close is the matar gobi with peas. We decided to serve family style so after sprinkling with fresh, chopped cilantro, onto the table it went. Yeah, there were a lot more steps that we didn’t show — oops! Maybe next time?
We did the same with the aloo gobi which was our favorite dish of the night.
We did saag paneer two weeks ago and I decided to follow a different recipe (Priya’s) for this saag. Instead of putting it into the blender (which I needed for the matar gobi), Rei used an immersion blender to break down spices, specifically the coriander. Next time we will do the other recipe. I liked the other recipe better by a mile.
We didn’t use ghee (dairy) and instead used olive oil for all of the recipes. I wonder if the ghee would have provided a different mouth feel and more complex flavor profile. Probably not. I feel like we would have needed to change way more than just the oil to make the meal better.
I almost forgot the chicken. This was so easy and we liked it, too. The chicken was seared on both sides for a few minutes and then covered to cook for 10 minutes and then removed from heat for another 15 minutes. I thought it was a bit overcooked but Rei and Gaby thought it was perfectly juicy. This cooking method is a winner, by the way. Yeah, I don’t get what you think was wrong with the chicken — it was delicious, both flavor and texture. Definite thumbs up from me.
We served these dishes with some basmati rice. Next time we should probably make roti or naan.
Dinner was good but a little flat from a flavor perspective. Gaby commented that it tasted like Americanized Indian food. I have to agree. Each of the dishes had pretty much the same spices and flavors: garlic, ginger, coriander, cumin seeds, and turmeric. We used basically an entire jar of coriander just in the one night. It was crazy.
At the same time, it wasn’t bad given this was only the second time Rei and I have really ventured into this cuisine. We will continue to experiment and then once we are more comfortable and confident, I expect that we will incorporate some of the flavors into some of our other favorite dishes to create something new.
The evening was lovely and it’s really fun to experiment on new recipes and flavor combinations when friends come over. They get to be a part of the culinary adventure. Gaby is off to Tel Aviv for her own adventure. Glad she’s brave because dinner could have been a complete disaster.
It’s now raining where we live (yeah!) so Rei and I are going to head to the grocery store to see what jumps out at us. With the rain, we can go with something more suitable for cooler weather. It won’t be chicken (we had chicken the last two nights and on Thursday, we will be over-consuming turkey).
My son Adam is home from college and while I ask for his preferences or suggestions for dinner, he’s been no help at all. He says he doesn’t care but he wasn’t a fan of dinner last night. Oh well.
Rei, want to wrap this up while I get started on the dinner prep?
I am actually time traveling from when we made this dinner to blog about it real time, so here goes! (just kidding, this is after Mom and I got tonight’s dinner into the oven)
The saag was not the best texture (or taste, but that’s a separate issue), mainly because we used whole coriander seeds and then trusted the immersion blender to break them up into manageable pieces. Note to self and everyone else: don’t do that. After toasting the coriander, bust it up somehow (spice mill, mortar and pestle, whatever boats your float my dude) and THEN add the spinach and whatever else you want to put in. That way, you get some flavor without the crunchy surprise of whole seeds threatening to be the next big jawbreaker fad. (I agree; I like toasting the spices and then grinding them down.~Terri)
Anyways, Mom and I are thinking about expanding our mission/challenge (yet again) to an international focus, where we learn about and experiment with the cuisines of different cultures to get an idea of various flavor profiles and expand our repertoires! (I am so down for this — while Mom is singularly obsessed with France, I want to take a more open and inclusive approach and learn about all food styles to ever exist ever in the history of food. No biggie.)
The oven is beeping angrily at me (yes, I hear you, yes, I will check the daube now that the timer is up, no, I don’t think the other oven is better than you so stop asking and stop being so jealous I’ve literally used it like once in the past month which is nothing compared to how much I’ve used you — ) so I shall bid you adieu for now. (Wow, Rei, you’ve got odd chatter going on in your brain~Terri)
Until next time, ciao, and have a hontruculitus day!
Rei and Terri :)
