Adventures In Indian Cooking

Journey with me, if you will, back in time to January 2009. The world was still in love with Obama, Michael Jackson was still alive and nobody had ever heard of balloon boy*. I made my resolutions, flush with the promise of a new year. And one of them was to learn how to cook Indian food.

Now, as 2009 limps to a finish, it's time to see how I'm doing with that. I would show you pictures, but I'm actually fresh out of leftovers at the moment. Although, perhaps, that's for the best. Indian, while the tastiest to my palate, is really not the most photogenic of cuisines. There's a reason why whatever photos do exist usually include an artfully placed green pepper or two. And that's so we know the goo we're looking at is supposed to be for eating.

Tasty, tasty eating.

But I digress. Between graduating and moving, I didn't start on this resolution until a couple of months ago. Since then I've tried my hand at chicken korma, chana masala, safaid keema, dum aloo and tari aloo. Right now my dum aloo is awesome, my chana masala is pretty good and both my tari aloo and chicken korma are tasty but could use a thicker sauce. The less said about the unfortunate safaid keema incident ("It looks like finely spice baby diarrhea!"), the better. My spice collection has expanded and the limits of my cooking abilities have never been clearer. So here are my helpful tips, in case you want to clip n' save for your own Indian adventures.

1. That mystery bag of spice you've had in your kitchen since forever could be many things, but it is probably not garam masala. No matter how much you may wish it to be or even use it as such. The smart money is on it being nutmeg or cinnamon though.
   
2. To get real garam masala, you should head to a spice store or at least one of those tiny Indian food markets. If you're in a hurry and the only place you can hit on your lunch hour is the Provigo, you'll probably end up with a less than satisfactory substitute. I'm to embarassed to say what I'm using, but the initials of my shame are "C" and "H."
3. Trust the salt in Indian recipes, but no necessarily the oil.
   
4. Sometimes there simply isn't enough cornstarch in the world to fix a cooking mess
5. Cooking naan bread is never going to happen, so just grab the stuff from the fine folks at President's Choice and call it a night.
   

But I'm becoming more and more ambitious. Tomorrow I'm making a plain saag to use up some spinach in the fridge. Then I'm braving what will surely be the treacherous lands of paneer making as the first step towards matar paneer. And then- who knows? Maybe you'll see me building a real tandoori oven in the shared courtyard.


*Neither had I until I checked Twitter earlier today.