Curry in a not so Hurry...

At first when I was craving crazy varieties of food I though it was due to the bland restaurant scape here. Now with the tease of warm weather, I'm thinking it may just be spring that is making me want crazy spicy food. I LOVE Indian food people.... LOVE!! Yes, with many exclamations. And I always wanted to know how to cook it. But with cheap Indian right off our old subway stop it was hard to get motivated to learn. So now is the time. I had never attempted to make this kind of food before and although it came out great it took my like aaaaalllll day to make everything. However, I did make the paneer and Nann from scratch and the bread takes 4hours to rise...

As I scoured the Internet for recipes I found the most adorable woman on youtube named Manjula. She has a ton of amazing videos and I totally imagine her to be my Indian Grandmother or Great Aunt or something. We laugh and make Nann bread and she teaches me all about reincarnation and where to buy the best Hing. Or at least that is what I pretend when I'm alone in my kitchen puttering around on Saturday. Seriously people... I need to make some friends here and not like the kind you find on youtube and make friends with in your brain.

The first dish I made was Palek Paneer. I made the paneer myself and it came out amazing. Here is a tip to all you amateur cheese makers out there. I bought pasteurised grass fed milk at the health food store and it worked great!! I have had some terrible experiences making cheese from regular pasteurised (Not UHT) milk that failed to make a curd do to heat damage and what not. This milk made the BEST curd. It was very firm and I can't WAIT to make Mozzarella out of it.


The next dish I made was Chicken Tikka Masala. But Ooooooppss I only had one breast of chicken. So I improvised and use the remainder of my paneer and some string beans to fill out the meal. It was actually really tasty. I might make it this way next time weather I have the chicken or not.


The next and last thing was the Naan. Which I had started of course, many MANY hours before. I of course did a garlic Naan which Big D loves. The naan proofed up more than I expected and I'm sure I didn't roll it out thin enough. But by then we were about to to faint with hunger so I just threw it in the oven. Still tasted great.

Even now I'm looking at these pictures and hoping I did Auntie Manjula proud... Sigh.. Hopefully I will meet some real people soon even if they can't cook.

xoxo
Fast Alice