Indian Feast

I was moved to cook a small Indian feast today. Mostly I cooked because I never cook anymore (thanks to the awesomeness of Rose), I took an Indian cooking class, and I LOVE Indian food! After I had already made my decision to try out some new recipes I realised that it's also a day designated for cooking curry.

Apparently a family from China asked a Singaporean family to stop cooking their smelly curry. This started an online movement to cook curry today - Hey! We're Singaporean, and we live here, and we cook curry, and you are guests!! (That was the Singaporeans speaking, not me). So, I cooked Indian food that smelled really good - but I didn't use any curry leaves. I was halfway there.

I took an Indian cooking class with my team at work, from this woman. We learned to make two chutneys, daahl, potato filling and dosas. I warned my team that dosas were not a good thing for cooking classes, since we will never make them at home, but they wanted it. We did enjoy eating them, and we did make them, so that was pretty cool, but I will never make them at home. Since that class, approximately ten days ago, I have been dreaming about this green chutney. So, today I made the green coconut chutney (which is South Indian), and I made a chickpea dish and potato and pea dish - both North Indian. I stopped at the chappati guy on the way home from tekka market and got fresh chappatis to eat with it all. This means that I made Indian fusion - all North Indian plus that southern chutney. Holy yum.

I documented my cooking with some not so beautiful photos. But it can show how actually accessible Indian cooking is.

The first photo is the chutney - grinding lemon, chillies, spring onion (green onion), coriander (cilantro), mint, and coconut. First I ground it a while (though my mortar and pestle are a wee bit small for this chutney), and then I put it in the blender. After I tempered, adding some oil, mustard seeds and cumin seeds (cooked). Poof! Done and AMAZING!!

The second photo shows some preparation for my potatoes/peas and chickpeas (separately). You can see the end product of the chutney in the grey poupon jar in front of the toaster (did I mention yum?). Then there's my masala set in front, plus some prepped spices in the front right, and my fresh mint and coriander (cilantro) in the front left. Don't forget the baby formula in the back right.

The last photo was when I put mustard seeds in a dry pan, to make them pop and then add the oil, garlic (front row, left), onions (back row, left), ginger (front row, middle)...some spices and the potatoes (back row, right). After this, I added the peas, a bit of water, cooked, fresh mint, and DONE. YUM (after a bit of salt...).

If anyone wants recipes, email me, and I'll send them to you!