Kate's Excellent Lunchtime Adventure

Indian food has long befuddled me and I would often say I didn't like it particularly well. In part it was a texture thing--there seems to be an awful lot of softness-- and in part a basic lack of understanding about how things worked.

If I go out to eat, most places I feel like I can read through the menu and have a pretty good idea of what I'm going to wind up with. There are periodic suprises (like an infamous dinner in Budapest where I wound up with a pork chop topped with canned fruit cocktail and smothered in cheese) but for the most part I feel like I know enough about food and cooking that I can anticipate what will please my palate after reading a description.

This has not worked out for me very well with Indian food though. I'd order something and find my plate to be not really what I wanted and my neighbors' meals always seeming like a better choice. It was really hard for me to figure out what something was going to taste like with just a regional or stylistic name, not that a list of spices would have been much help. I had some really amazing Indian food in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia where I'd go out hiking in the morning for hours and then come back to a banana leaf curry lunch where I'd get rice and dal, three veg dishes, lime pickle and nan for $2. Stunningly good but I had no idea how any of it worked.

So, I resolved that before I could really say I wasn't very fond of Indian food I would have to learn how it works and how to make it. First I picked up a couple cookbooks and next I went to the bulk spice counter and stocked up with mysterious goods like fenugreek and cardamom pods. A few days ago I made some ghee and read through the Indian section in James Peterson's Sauces which was short but a great overview of how to put together a Indian style dish and in what ways the technique is similar to Western cooking and how it differs.

Today it was time to make something. I started simple, just a basic dal which seems to be the touchstone. I sauteed an onion, added spice once it was golden and then lentils and water and a pinch of salt which hung out covered on the stove until soft. A whirl of the immersion blender and then stirred in slivered garlic and cardamom sauteed in ghee.

Had it for lunch over basmati with a mango lassi. And it was good. And there's leftovers for tomorrow.

Chicken Wisdom

It is awfully hard to be mad, or even indignant, with the world if your day involves a roast chicken. Particularly if the day also excludes polite company so that you can stand in the kitchen hovering over the roasting pan picking with your fingers at the too hot chicken fresh from the oven, wincing at the hot flesh but knowing that the reward is the freed hot oysters dragged through a bowl of aioli and popped in your mouth.

Periodically I've run into a well meaning article on roast chicken that recommends roasting the bird and then not consuming the skin so that your meal is healthier. This is American puritanical tomfoolery about food at its absolute most offensive. Can you imagine: pulling a bird with its skin crisp and brown and gold and perfect for peeling off and letting your mouth drown its flavor and ...leaving it behind. So stupid. And a prime example of how something "good for you" is not good for anything about you.