1796 Foods

818. Jaggery

Curry again. Yayyyyyyyy. 

Literally I can never have enough. I just ate a big bowl of leftovers for my lunch before writing this post, and this picture is already making me want it all over again. I’m perhaps just a teensy weensy bit obsessed. Oh, and I just decided yesterday that I’m going to one of my favourite Indian restaurants for my birthday.

Anyway, this post is actually about jaggery, which is an unrefined type of cane sugar. It comes in a big hard block, and it tastes like heaven (well, like treacle), not that I’d recommend you eating a lot of it by itself. I often use just the tiniest bit to give a hint of sweetness to curries and other dishes, like in the same way you add a teaspoon of sugar to tomato sauces to bring out the flavour. 

818 down, 978 to go

758. Vindaloo

Vindaloo is not a curry I would never ordinarily pick. Usually (in the UK at least), vindaloo is a curry which is made to be extremely spicy and is often ordered by guys after a few beers to prove how resilient their tongues are. However the other week I went to Purple Poppadom, which is a fancy, modern Indian restaurant in Cardiff. You can read my full review of it here. For once, I trusted that the vindaloo would be authentic and flavourful rather than just a hit of chilli so I plumped for it. This was pork vindaloo, which is a traditional meat for Goa, and it had a delicious rich flavour which just a nice kick at the end. The whole meal was fantastic and I can’t wait to go back.

758 down, 1038 to go

752. Mung Beans

A little while back I went out for what I thought was drinks with two friends, and turned out with me getting dragged along to a meetup for people who use Ruby, which is a programming language I have zero knowledge of. Unsurprisingly I concentrated on the food! We went to a vegetarian Indian restaurant (much to the chagrin of my carnivore friends), which I loved as vegetarian curries are some of my favourites. For my main course I had a mung bean curry with cashew and cinnamon rice. It was delicious. The beans in the curry had obviously been cooked for a very long time and they were all broken down and really creamy. I would love to visit the restaurant again if I can persuade people to go another meal without meat!

752 down, 1044 to go

730. Cauliflower Bhaji

I don’t often get to eat vegetarian dinners. Whilst I love meat, I do like to have vegetarian meals occasionally, so often I’ll make something without meat if I’m just cooking for myself. This time I made myself two curries - a dal, and a cauliflower bhaji, which just means a relatively dry cauliflower curry. I made mine with big chunks of cauliflower, canned tomatoes, onions and lots of spices.

730 down, 1066 to go

711. Melokhia

I have to make a slight confession, there actually isn’t any melokhia in this picture. I was planning on putting it in the curry, but I (thankfully) tried some before I put it in the pot and it was so bad that I decided against it. I read that it was supposed to be a bit like spinach, and I suppose that it was, if you got all the bitterness from an entire bag of spinach and concentrated it down into one single leaf. Would not recommend!

712. Amchur

On the other hand, there actually is amchur in the dish. Amchur is a spice made from dried green mango, which means that it has a really sour, tangy flavour. I made a raita dip and added the amchur in place of lime juice and it worked really well.

712 down, 1084 to go

699. Rogan Josh

A while back my family and I went to an Asian buffet restaurant. And by Asian I mean Asian. They had Indian food, Chinese food, Korean food, Thai food, Japanese food and probably a bunch more. There was so much I wanted to try, but I didn’t want to totally overload my plate so I got little tiny bits of everything. One of the curries I got was rogan josh, which is a lamb curry with a rich, red sauce. The meat was chewy (which is why I don’t usually ever order lamb curries unless I know the place is amazing), but the sauce was great.

699 down, 1097 to go

674. Coriander Seed

As you all know, Indian food is my favourite, so I often make curries at home. Normally I tend to just make it up as I go along but for once I actually used a recipe - Turkey saag aloo from John Torode’s Chicken recipe book. I used whole spices including coriander and cumin seeds, dry toasted them in the pan and then ground them all up in my new pestle and mortar. My friend Sarah got me the pestle and mortar for Christmas and it weighs about 400 pounds and I love it and now I just want to grind everything.

674 down, 1122 to go

661. Lamb Dopiaza

This was the main course that I served for New Year’s. I made a lamb dopiaza, which is a lamb curry with lots of onions, a saag aloo, homemade onion bhajis and coconut and coriander chutney, all served with rice and naan bread. I got a fantastic Indian cookbook for Christmas so most of the dishes were made or at least inspired, from recipes in there.

661 down, 1135 to go

624. Bhindi Bhaji with 625. Okra

I know that a lot of people really don’t like okra, because when cooked it can go pretty slimy. Personally it doesn’t bother me at all and I actually like the flavour - I think it works great with spices, like in this bhindi bhaji with is literally just an okra curry.

625 down, 1171 to go

604. Mutter Paneer

Indian food! YAY! Mutter paneer is a vegetarian curry of paneer (which is an Indian curd cheese) and peas. It sounds a little weird but it’s super tasty. The paneer has that usual squeaky curd cheese texture which is oddly pleasing, and the peas add a nice sweetness to counter the spicy sauce.

604 down, 1192 to go