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

792. Chaat

My friends and I were having a discussion recently about if you could only eat one cuisine for the rest of your life, what cuisine would it be. Pie swayed between Japanese and Mexican, my friend Em went for Italian, whilst my friend Nik and I agreed that we would both pick Indian. My choice was probably pretty obvious considering the prevalence of all the Indian foods on this blog (and my overly enthusiastic reviews of almost all of them). I’m really interested to know what everyone else thinks so I shall be posting this as a question for you all to answer!

Chaat is one of the more interesting Indian foods. It is traditionally a street food dish but you can also find it in some restaurants as a starter or snack. I had this as my first course in the same restaurant as I had the mung bean curry - Vegetarian Food Studio in Cardiff. I can only recommend the restaurant as they serve ridiculously delicious food at very good prices (it makes me sad that I’m not longer a student as they do a crazy tiffin deal for £3.50 and I would probably get it just about every day). 

Chaat can describe a wide range of street food dishes, but they often include assorted crispy fried bits and pieces like puffed rice, noodles and lentils. Here they were covered in tangy yogurt and a tamarind sauce which are both typical sauces. It seems a little odd at first - kind of like you’re eating a bowl of curried breakfast cereal - but it’s really really good. My only complaint was that this bowl was too big even for me to finish on my own!

792 down, 1004 to go

791. Masala Dosai

Dosa are Indian pancakes make with a fermented rice batter. Masala dosai are supposed to be those pancakes topped with spicy potato, onions and peas. In my world, ‘topped’ translated to ‘smothered in a dump truck sized portion’ which of course made the pancake break into bits and the whole thing ended up as a big, messy smoosh on my plate. But presentation isn’t everything right?

The potato, onion and pea part was yummy. It was basically like samosa filling on a large scale, and spicy potatoey things always float my boat as the potato absorbs all the spices and just gets really tasty. The dosa I’m still undecided about. The taste was just so unusual that it was hard to decide if I liked it or not. In theory I felt like it should have been like Ethiopian injera (which I love but haven’t had recently enough to feature on the blog yet), but there was something different about it that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I think I shall have to give them a second try.

791 down, 1005 to go

772. Parathas

I’ve been indulging my love of Indian food again. I can’t help myself. It’s just so delicious; I want to eat it all the time. On this occasion I made a rich tomato chicken curry topped with crisp fried onions and served it with some paratha I got from the world foods section of the supermarket. Paratha are one of many Indian flatbreads and to me they seem like a cross between a chapatti and a roti - wholemeal flour-based with a flaky, layered texture. I’m not sure anything will ever beat a lovely, fluffy naan to my favourite Indian bread, but it’s always nice to have other alternatives.

772 down, 1024 to go

767. Urd

Beans and lentils are some of my favourite foods. I adore dal, and soups, and bean stews. So I was excited to try urd which is a different kind of small beans often used in Indian cooking. I decided to make a dal, and pureed it slightly so it had a smooth but still slightly chunky texture. The beans had this nice nutty flavour and worked really well.

767 down, 1029 to go

766. Coconut Barfi

Generally I assume that if something is under the candy or desserts category of my list I will like it. The foods on my list that I know I might not like are generally things like weird meats and shellfish. So when I saw this barfi, which is a type of coconut fudge, in a local Indian restaurant I assumed it would be nice. I was so wrong. It was just awful. It tasted like condensed milk (which I hate) and so much sugar and I could barely manage the tiniest bite. Never again!

766 down, 1030 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

715. Mulligatawny

Mulligatawny is one of my favourite soups. It’s spicy and chunky and filling and delicious. I think it’s one of those hybrid Indian/British dishes that came about when the empire was still around (like kedgeree). This particular one is with chicken, though you can have it made with other meats too.

715 down, 1081 to go