An Indian Supper

I spent much of the afternoon in an overstuffed chair at a cafe with a new library find: The Indian Spice Kitchen by Monisha Bharadwaj. This treasure covers, in delicious detail, the spices, herbs, produce, and other ingredients that make the cuisines of India so distinctive and includes a couple of recipes to highlight each ingredient. Needless to say, dinner would be Indian. We made a quick stop at the local Vietnamese market for ginger, chiles, cabbage, cilantro, and a few other things because, naturally, surrounded by all that produce, the menu just kept growing in my mind.

I came home and whipped up the following three dishes: Punjabi aloo, chana masala, and spiced cabbage. Aloo means potatoes, and this dish is the first Indian dish I mastered years ago using a recipe from Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian. It's very versatile and can be made in a number of different ways. Sometimes I add peas for color, greens for the vitamins, or chickpeas for extra protein. It hardly matters what you do as the dish will still be delicious. You can find my take on the the original recipe here.

The chana masala I've written about before. I found the recipe on Orangette a few weeks ago and have now made it 4 times. It never disappoints, especially reheated for breakfast.

As for the cabbage, it was a snap. I heated some coconut oil and added mustard seeds, waiting until they popped. Then into the pan went a thinly sliced red bell pepper and a good pinch of turmeric. Once the pepper was soft I added half of a green cabbage, very thinly sliced along with a pinch of salt. I stirred and fried until the cabbage was soft and sweet.

Early on in the process I'd thrown some rinsed basmati rice into my darling little rice cooker along with a broken cinnamon stick and a few crushed cardamom pods. Of course I wished for some freshly baked flat breads and a nice chutney or two, but this was spur of the moment and I was quite happy with the meal I'd whipped up. I think The Picky Ones ate sandwiches, which left us with lots of tasty leftovers.

Miraculous Chana Masala and Butterscotch Layer Cake

This morning I made uppma for the third time this week. I am hooked! Today's version had bell pepper and peas and I forgot the cashews. I chopped a few and sprinkled them on after the fact, but I much prefer the texture when they're sauteed early on.

I spent much of today reading food blogs, trying to learn a thing or two. There are so many great writers out there! I've always loved Orangette, surely one of the best of the best: lovely writing, beautiful photos, tempting recipes, and a format that is easy to navigate. While visiting there today I looked up a chana masala recipe from some time back, gave it a try and I was not disappointed. It was easy enough to make and turned out absolutely delicious over steamed basmati rice. That would have been enough for me but an actual miracle occurred when I placed it on the table. Neither boy turned up his nose. There were no disparaging comments, and no one went off in search of the peanut butter. They actually ate the richly sauced chickpeas, "weird" spices and all.

That unexpected blessing put me in a fine enough mood to tackle a cake I've long wanted to make. Butterscotch Layer Cake (another Nigella Lawson item) always sounded divine but that bit about making caramel always threw me. I've done it before, but I always find it ridiculously stressful as you stand over the stove and wait and wait and check to see if it's dark enough yet but it's not and you wait some more and then it's burned and you have to start all over again. That whole routine makes me grumpy.

I guess I felt unusually strong this evening. I held out until the caramel just barely smelled burnt and the resulting sauce was delicious and disaster free. The cake itself was not spectacular, it was rather nondescript. Also, while I was certain that I had 8" cake pans, they were nowhere to be found. There's probably a box of baking items somewhere that failed to return from Passover exile--it happens every year--but I foolishly thought I could wing it in 9" pans. And, of course, the cakes were thin and skimpy looking. I was trying to think some way to improve the height factor when bananas came to mind. Nigella even suggests the option of inserting dead ripe bananas between the layers but I decided that bananas sauteed in butter and a sprinkle of brown sugar might be perfect. It wasn't--it was all too sweet and cloying but perhaps I'd simply done too much sampling of the splendid cream cheese-caramel icing. Everyone else was pretty happy with the cake.