Thursday, October 14, 2010
Painting by Numbers
I haven't been to any Indian restaurants lately, but I just heard about a new one on Milwaukee near my house. Instead, I've been cooking it up myself. The dish above is a regular sambar, with eggplant, radish, and potato, as well as a blend of lentils and spices. It's usually a first course of a South Indian meal, and it lends itself nicely to an accompaniment of plain long-grain rice and maybe a raita. You can make it a dozen ways, but the only downside is that it takes like an hour and a half to cook the lentils! I guess I could cut corners and make it with canned lentils or something, but at this point in my Indian cooking career, I usually stay pretty close to the recipe and paint by numbers all the way. Sometimes the instructions are a little ambiguous, but cooking Indian food gets easier and easier with practice.
This pot of goo is called Masala Beans Poriyal. It is pretty darn easy to make. The only annoying part is chopping up a boatload of green beans...my knife skills are not up to par! The rest is pretty easy. You just have to make a tempering out of chiles and coconut and some mustard seeds and dal and it comes together in like 20 minutes. I would give it a 4/10 in the Indian cooking difficulty level and a 6/10 in the taste department. Not so sure about combining coconut with green beans! The South Indians put coconut on everything though.
This is the finished product. I tossed some chopped coriander on the sambar and added a dollop of sour cream with paprika for dunking as if it were a chili. I liked the sambar a lot but the green beans were not executed as perfectly as I had hoped. I give myself a 7/10 for this effort...but on the 2nd try I'm expecting a little more umphh!
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Looks good! We should swap recipes one day! =)
ReplyDeleteThanks! Yeah we definitely should.
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