#34…check and mark!

#34) Cook Indian food

Good heavens, when’s the last time I checked in on my 101 in 1001 list? Too long, right? (Not that you all are keeping track, but I am. And I like to pretend I’m having a conversation with you guys, so that’s why I asked.) I thought I’d revisit the list and see if there were any goals I could check off easy enough. A few I need to get to blogging because while I may have tackled them, the blog doesn’t know that yet!

For this project, I wanted to go out on a limb and try my hand at cooking Indian food for the first time. When it comes to Indian food at restaurants, I pretty much stick to one or two courses I love the best. But I’ll be honest and say I haven’t eaten Indian all that much. Nick, never at all. So I knew I was brave asking him to eat MY version of this ethnic cuisine first. I told him if he liked what I was serving him, then I KNOW he’d love what he’d be served in a restaurant. So here’s to trying new things, buying new spices and traveling the world from our dining room table. Oh, AND crossing another goal off the 101 list!

I decided to make the Pioneer Woman’s Chicken Tikka Masala because it seemed like a fairly easy recipe to follow and well, because it’s Ree Drummond, you KNOW it’s going to be good. Here’s a peek at the ingredients—chicken breasts, yogurt, tomatoes, butter, onions, garlic, ginger cilantro. Please ignore those bottles of vitamins on the window ledge—it’s the only way I’ll remember to take them every morning. (And thanks to my recent stress fracture, my doc has me taking calcium supplements marketed for 80-year-old women…I’m getting old I guess!)After sprinkling an assortment of spices on the chicken, you’ve gotta slather them in the yogurt before putting them on a cooking rack in the oven. To all you vegetarians out there, I apologize for this next visual: A sample of the spices you’ll need — I had the cumin and coriander, but the garam masala was another thing all on its own. And of COURSE the local grocers wouldn’t have it in stock, so I kept it in my Amazon cart and the next time I was placing an order for a few things, threw one of the tins in there with it (it was only a few bucks) Here’s the point in this project where I asked my husband to take a few shots of me cooking. He’s snap happy, firing away, but of the 20 he took, would you believe these are the only two of me he actually got in focus? I know what you’re thinking ’cause, see, that look on the left there? That’s my own look of disbelief. This is why he doesn’t shoot with me That nifty tool to the right there is my Pampered Chef chopper (I love it so much I even blogged about it last fall). That thing is AMAZING at chopping up ingredients for a course like this — ginger, garlic, onions. Check, check and check! The recipe called for broiling the chicken, which I was hesitant to do because I always feel like when I broil something, it goes from done to charcoal briquette in about 30 seconds. I was hovering over that oven like nobody’s business!

Here’s the point where you start to get what I call the “mush” going. This is the garlic, onions and ginger sautéing on the stove with the diced tomatoes. It’s at points like this where I think, “Is this gonna taste good? I mean, it kind of looks like dog food.” (Now I’ve probably grossed out vegetarians AND pet owners—my bad!) Ahhhh…let’s add some of that heavy cream, shall we? Now it’s starting to look like the Indian food I love to order! The secret to the kick in this dish is lots and lots of red pepper (I wrote that and said it in my head in my best Julia Childs impression at the same time). At this stage of documenting this project, I’m beginning to realize just how hard it is to cook and take photos at the same time. Hats off to you for making it look so easy, Pioneer Woman! Tossing in the cilantro with the chopped up chicken and now it’s really starting to looking yummy! While all of this is going on, I was trying my best not to burn the basmati rice I had cooking on the stove. For some reason, while I usually ace cooking projects in the kitchen, I fail spectacularly in two areas: cooking rice and warming up soup. We have tossed out three pans in our 5 years together as the result of those two things. Oh, and the secret to that yellow coloring? The addition of tumeric to the boiling rice. So THAT’s how they do it! And, finally, VOILA!!! (can you use a French cooking term to discuss the merits of a yummy Indian dish? ) More than anything, what made the work of this dish worth it was the fact Nick went back for seconds. Can’t wait to try this one again!

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