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Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Indian food....again

Oh Indian food, why are you such a conundrum for me? You perplex me. You dupe me. You deceive me. You trick me. Trick me into thinking that I can easily and flawlessly make this dish at home, only to have it be an utter disaster!


 In my defense, kind of, ok, not really, but whatever. That sentence had way to many comma's in it and made absolutely no sense. Anyways...I was given an Indian squash by my wonderful co-worker, Usha. She knows that I'm trying, desperately and failing miserably, to cook Indian food at home, so she thought I'd love it. And I do, really. I tried to Google a picture and explanation of the vegetable, but I couldn't find anything. All I found were sites for the sport squash.


So, I got this squash and I was kinda sorta given a recipe for it. Archanna, another co-worker, told me that there is no recipe, it's so easy! I looked at Archanna very skeptically. But Archanna, my attempts at Indian food have been a disaster, I think I need a recipe. No, really Clarissa, this is soooo easy. You'll be fine! Okkkk....If you say so!


Lies, all lies! It goes a little like this: you take the squash and peel it and dice into a not very big dice (that's a direct quote). Then you take a little onion, but not too much, and tomato. And of course garlic and ginger (but of course!). Turmeric for color and a pinch, only a pinch of garam masala. A touch of butter or oil and cook it in a pressure cooker for a mere 10 minutes. Done!


Here is where the problems started. I don't have a pressure cooker. I Googled some more and came up with the idea of using my slow cooker. I figured that since the veggies only cook for 10 minutes in the pressure cooker that it would only take an hour or so in the slow cooker. Yeah, about that. No. No, it did not take an hour or two hours or even three hours. Nor did I get the abundance of liquid released from the squash like I was told would happen. I knew I should have kept Archanna on speed dial for this!

On the flip side, I did make some tandoori chicken that actually did turn out quite well. Tandoori chicken is simply a yogurt and spice marinade that sits over night and is grilled. I put the chicken on a bed of cumin and pea rice and called dinner done!

 

Do you have any good fool-proof Indian recipes that I can steal???

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