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

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

670. Egg Bhurji

Egg bhurji is an Indian version of scrambled egg with onions, chillies and potato. It should really have more egg in it than this but I managed to drop my last egg on the floor as I was getting all the ingredients out of the fridge so I didn’t have much choice but to just work with what I had! I boiled the potatoes until they were cooked through, then fried them up with some finely chopped onion and chilli. Once that was cooked I added the beaten egg to the pan and just stirred it around until it was scrambled. It was tasty and made for a nice change for breakfast.

670 down, 1126 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

652. Moong Dal

Moong dal are a type of lentil - I believe they are actually mung beans that are shelled so it is just the yellow piece from the inside. I love lentils; I really think that they are delicious, but usually I just stick to the little red ones that cook in 15 minutes. I decided to give these a try though and made a simple soup by just frying some onions with spices, adding the lentils and simmering in chicken stock. The result was tasty, but because you had to soak and boil the lentils first it really took a long time just to make a bowl of soup. I’ll mostly be sticking with the red lentils from now on.

652 down, 1144 to go

650. Muri

Muri is puffed rice - basically rice krispies - but rather than being eaten as a breakfast cereal, this is coated in spices and served in a wide range of Indian snacks and street foods. This here is one of the many snack mixes which I can get in my local supermarket (yay for authentic Asian sections), and combines the muri with chickpea flour sticks, peanuts, roasted lentils, hot spices and a bit of sugar. I have to measure myself out a little portion in a cup or else I would just sit and eat the entire bag in one go.

650 down, 1146 to go

644. Rice and Lentils

This entry on the list was really one of those items which can refer to a few different things - basically any dish which was a combination of rice and lentils would count. I chose to make kitchiri, which is pretty much exactly rice, lentils and not a lot else (onion and some spices). This is a dish that I used to make myself all the time at uni because not only does it taste great, it also costs practically nothing, and is made entirely out of ingredients that I have in my house at all times. It’s very easy, you just need to fry some onions and garlic, add spices (cumin, coriander, cinnamon, whatever you fancy), add rice and red lentils and stir them around, then just add stock gradually as if you were making a risotto.

645. Blade Mace

I haven’t added mace to this dish before, but I had some great chunks of blade mace that I bought on holiday so I thought I’d add some to give a bit of extra warmness to the spices. The flavour worked great, I just had to be careful not to eat it as it was the same colour as the rice turned out!
 

645 down, 1151 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