Veggie Feast for the Last Day of Summer Vacation

I suppose that in the grand scheme of things the weekend before the new school year begins doesn't probably count as part of summer vacation since, well, weekends are set-asides in my mind. They're not school days, therefore a student isn't on vacation over a weekend, right?
Well, whatever way you want to look at the Sunday before the first Monday of a new school year, I aimed to do it up right (not necessarily big, since "big" things tend to make me anxious, but what doesn't make me anxious, Gentle Reader?) so that it might be enjoyed by all. Of course, the new recipe I planned to prepare for the evening repast I knew would not be enjoyed by all because the boys are loathe to eat a vegetable that isn't a red bell pepper, a green bell pepper (although the boy can be finicky about even these) or a carrot (so long as it's still crisp and tender). Eh, screw 'em. What do they know about good food anyway?

Marrakesh Vegetable Curry

1 sweet potato, peeled and cubed
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
1 onion, chopped
6 tablespoons olive oil, divided
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 t ground turmeric
1 T curry powder
1 t ground cinnamon
3/4 T sea salt3/4 t cayenne pepper
15 oz. chickpeas, drained
1/4 C blanched almonds
1 zucchini, sliced
2 T raisins
1 C orange juice
10 oz. spinach

1. Heat 3 T of olive oil in a large Dutch oven.
   
2. Add the sweet potato, eggplant, bell peppers, carrots and onion, and then saute over medium heat for 5 min.
3. Heat the remaining 3 T of olive oil in a medium saucepan, add the garlic, turmeric, curry powder, cinnamon, salt and pepper and then saute over medium heat for 3 min.
   
4. Pour the garlic-spice mixture over the veggies in the Dutch oven.
5. Add the chickpeas, almonds, zucchini, raisins and orange juice.
   
6. Simmer 20 minutes, covered.
   
7. Add spinach to pot, cook for 5 min. more and then serve.

Yield: 6 servings of undetermined size

Nutritional Info
Calories: 275Fat: 17.4 g
Protein: 5.7 g
Carbs: 28.5 g
Fiber: 8.5 g
Na: 735 mg

The Faudie's Futzings
Usually before I prepare a recipe from AllRecipes.com, I make sure to browse the comments to determine if the recipe as posted was found wanting or lacking by other folks. This time, though, I didn't but can't give a specific reason why. I probably just didn't have time since I don't have a lot of browsing time between the transcription training and keeping the boy entertained.

That said, I did futz. I had to, Gentle Reader, or else I could no longer call myself The Faudie because a faudie futzes.

• I so did not use 6 T total of olive oil. I used maybe a tablespoon in my old nonstick Dutch oven to saute the veggies. (Sorry to disappoint, Gentle Reader, but Chive the Dutchie stayed in the cabinet because I was too lazy and tired to clean him up afterwards because Chive does not go in the dishwasher.) For sauteing the garlic and spices, I used maybe 2 1/2 teaspoons of olive oil in a small nonstick pot.
• Speaking of the garlic and spices, I didn't saute them anywhere near 3 minutes. Do this only if you want burned, bitter garlic and spices. Get the oil nice and warm, add the garlic, add the spices a few seconds later and then shut off the heat once the wonderful scent hits your nose. If this process takes more than 30 seconds, I'd say you didn't have your oil warmed up sufficiently before adding the garlic and spices. For shame, Gentle Reader!
  
• I substituted about a quarter-cup of orange-scented cranberries for the raisins (I'd been snacking on them--bad me!--while preparing this dish and figured they'd work nicely, especially with the OJ). I usually love golden raisins that have grown plump and succulent in a fragrant, spicy sauce, but I suppose my sleep-deprived stupor and munchie mouth prevented me from grabbing the bag of golden raisins out of the pantry.
  
• I only used 6 ounces of OJ because the little cans I buy are 6-oz. cans. I rinsed the empty can out with about 2 oz. of water to get the remains of the OJ out and into my curry. That said, I found 8 oz. of liquid to be far too little. I don't know if I had too many veggies (I hadn't even added the chickpeas and spinach at this point) or had the heat up too high, causing the liquid to evaporate too quickly, so I popped the top on a 6-oz. can of pineapple-orange juice and poured that in. Yes, I know, Gentle Reader, that's hardly an obvious addition or substitution (especially since I had a carton of low-Na chicken broth in the 'fridge), but I figured, Hey, what the hell! The additional 6 oz. gave the curry some actual liquid, and the pineapple-OJ blend didn't throw off any of the flavors--at least not to me.
  
• By the time I added the chickpeas (soaked 'em myself--and, as usual, had too many), my Dutchie runneth over. So even though I had an 8 oz. (maybe it's 10 oz.) of chopped spinach all thawed out and waiting to be squeezed dry and added, I opted not to add it. I just didn't want to be cleaning up flecks of stray spinach off Lumpy (me and my laziness!), and as I thought about it more, the spinach seemed like too odd an addition.
  
• Even though I have sliced zucchini frozen and needing to be used, I didn't use it. I instead cubed a glorious (and aging) yellow crook-neck squash Mum had brought me from the garden of a family friend waaay back in mid-July, allowing me to then transfer the remaining three out of the Wally World reusable bag they've been sitting in on the bottom shelf of 'fridge #2 (yes, Gentle Reader, I now have two refrigerators, but that's a story for another time) and into the veggie crisper of said 'fridge. Hooray!
  
• Because I'd sauteed the squash along with the other veggies, I didn't cover and simmer the curry for 20 minutes. Five minutes or so after adding the chickpeas (they'd been sitting in 'fridge #1 after being prepared at 3 a.m. that morning--damn almost-full-moon insomnia), the curry was ready.

I'd wanted to prepare some brown rice to accompany the curry, but I discovered I'm all out. (Bad, bad me!) So I ate the curry on its own, and the lack of rice was hardly a detriment. It didn't have a good deal of sauce like other curries, and what little sauce it did have I soaked up with a bit of pita.

This curry packs a nice one-two punch: First you get the sweet of the cinnamon, and then a few seconds later, the kick of the cayenne comes. Yowza, that's damn good eats! Now if you're not terribly keen on having your taste buds kicked by a fair quantity of cayenne, you could probably reduce the amount to a quarter of a teaspoon or even use red pepper powder that's a bit aged and therefore lacking in kick. Omitting it might even be a possibility, but then you'd be robbing yourself of the fun of this dish.

Another charm of this dish is its versatility. You could probably fairly easily swap out veggies in this one. Why not have both yellow crook-neck and zucchini squash in it? Take out the sweet potato and add more carrots and maybe some diced tomato. Use only red bell peppers, or throw in a spicier pepper in addition to the bells. Go crazy, Gentle Reader. It's the best time of year to do it because a lot of great veggies are in season.

The dish undoubtedly helped Monday morning go as smoothly as it did, for I had the boy off to school and my big 'ol butt at the gym in good time with nary a drama-queen tantrum, meltdown or crying jag.

He's dressed.

He's excited.

He's got his screwiness locked and loaded.

Yeah, this boy is ready to roll. Watch out, second grade, because here comes the boy! May the FSM have mercy on us all (but especially his teacher.)

More Fun With Chickpeas

Never would I have imagined that we Boeckman-Walker would human residents of Chezbecome consumers of mass quantities of chickpeas. These legumes were unknown foodstuffs to me less than two years ago. Okay, sure, I knew of them, as did the husband, I'm sure, but they were not part of our childhood and early adulthood dietary intake. They're...foreign. And where I grew up, foreign was inaccessible and...bad, according to some folks, morons though they be.

But now chickpeas are a well-loved, familiar sight on our table. Since it's about the legume I can get the husband to eat, I'm always on the lookout for new, tasty chickpea recipes. Thanks to the thoughtful Christmas gift from my sister- and brother-in-law and the culinary wisdom of Madhur Jaffrey, I have another dish to add to the chickapalooza collection.

Easy Chickpea Curry2 C drained weight canned chickpeas (about 1 lb. 3 oz. canned weight)
2 smallish tomatoes (about 8 oz.), chopped
2" piece of ginger, peeled and chopped
4 garlic cloves, chopped
3-6 fresh hot green chilies, chopped
1 C cilantro tops, chopped
1 T ground coriander
2 t ground cumin
1/2 t ground turmeric
1/2 t cayenne pepper
1 1/4 t salt
3 T corn, peanut or olive oil
1 medium cinnamon stick
5 whole cardamom pods
2 bay leaves
1 C finely chopped onion
2 medium potatoes (about 9 oz.), peeled and cut into 3/4" dice

1. Drain the chickpeas in a colander.
   
2. Put the tomatoes, ginger, garlic, chilies, cilantro, coriander, cumin, turmeric, cayenne and 1 teaspoon of salt in a blender along with 5-6 tablespoons of water.
   
3. Blend the ingredients until smooth, pushing them down with a rubber scraper when necessary to improve even blending.
   
4. Pour the oil into a wide, lidded, medium-size pan, and set it over medium-high heat.
   
5. When the oil is hot, add the cinnamon, cardamom and bay leaves.
   
6. Ten seconds later, add the onion and potatoes, then stir and fry for 6 min. or until the onion is lightly browned.
   
7. Add the paste from the blender to the pot, then stir for a minute.
   
8. Cover the pan, reduce the heat to medium-low and let it cook for 6-7 min., lifting the lid now and then to stir.
   
9. Add the chickpeas, the remaining quarter-teaspoon of salt and 1 cup of water, then stir.
   
10. Bring the curry to a simmer, cover and cook gently over low heat for 20 min., stirring occasionally.

Yield: 4-6 servings of unknown size

Nutritional Info
I can't provide this information, but I'm sure you could figure it out for yourself. This isn't the most sinful dish every prepared, that's for sure.

The Faudie's Futzings
I've made enough curries over the past two years or so to develop a sense of when things are going right and when things are going horribly wrong. I'm sorry to disappoint you, Gentle Reader, but nothing went horribly wrong with this recipe, which comes from Jaffrey's From Curries to Kebabs: Recipes From the Indian Spice Trail. I ended up with a nicely thickened, very flavorful curry that's quite satisfying.

But yes, Gentle Reader, I did futz:

• I soaked my own chickpeas--about 2 cups worth. They'd actually been in a container in the 'fridge for about a week, since I'd finished off a big bag of the legumes and then just chilled 'em since the husband had wanted to have some cooked chickpeas on hand to snack on. He never got around to snacking on them, so I put them to use.
  
• I used a can of no-salt-added diced tomatoes. I don't feel horrible using them because (a) fresh tomatoes are kind of expensive; (b) fresh tomatoes are not terribly flavorful and (c) I haven't a bloody clue how to select fresh tomatoes.
  
• Because I used canned diced tomatoes and their juices, I didn't add the water to the blender. The juice from the can was sufficient for making the paste.
  
• I used canned chopped green chilies because I had some on hand--maybe a tablespoon and a half--from another recipe and wanted to use them before they went bad. I'd considered using the diced jalapeño I had in the pantry, but why open a new can when I have leftovers I can use up?
  
• I didn't have nearly a cup of cilantro tops, for I had to pick through the dregs of a bunch of the stuff I'd bought at HEB some weeks back to sort the slime from the...leafy. I really ought to find a better way to store cilantro than rinsing it, patting it dry, chopping off a good bit of the stems and then stashing it in a Gladware box in the nonfreezing portion of the 'fridge.
  
• I didn't use quite the full amount of cayenne called for. The boy has of late taken to complaining about the food I make being too spicy. Does that actually stop him from eating it? Rarely, but he'll bitch about it beforehand or afterwards like a dried up old biddy with nothing to do but bitch and moan. (Oh hell, my son is turning into my late Graga....)

Jaffrey is right to give this recipe the easy moniker because it is ridiculously easy to put together--if you don't mind dealing with the blender. My blender stays in its box on the top shelf of the pantry since it doesn't get much use, certainly not enough to justify giving it dedicated space on the countertop somewhere. I'm not a huge fan of cleaning the thing up because...well, I'm lazy.
I'm sure I could somehow pulverize the ingredients into the masala (for that's what the paste is, a masala) using brute force, some kitchen utensil and a large bowl--but, really, why go to that hassle when you can use the blender and probably clean it up in the time it would take you to even start to get to the paste consistency using brute force?

The potatoes, in my opinion, could be reduced in the recipe, especially since a person's more likely than not to eat the curry atop some rice, but I'm not a big fan of potatoes. The boys, however, seemed to enjoy them, especially the husband. He likes aloo matter but hates the peas that are part of that dish. With this curry, he gets tasty potatoes and a variety of pea he'll actually eat. And any time I can get the husband to eat legumes, I consider that a culinary miracle.

Sweets Fit for a Deity

Y'know what's great about Ganesh, Gentle Reader? A lot of things.

First off, good 'ol Ganesh has an elephant's head. There's a great story behind that, the type that sends a person to therapy for years:

"Well, you see, my dad, Shiva, the god of death and destruction, came home from war not knowing that Mom had decided to have a kid--me--to stand guard while she took her baths. Anyway, Dad came home one day while Mom was in the bath, and I dutifully turned him away, not knowing he's my dad and because Mom was, after all, in the tub. Dad, he freaked out at being turned away from his own home by some stranger, so what'd he do? He lopped off my head.

"Of course, as soon as he learned whose head he'd lopped off, he rushed out to make amends, vowing to take the life of the first living thing he encountered to replace my head. Bully for him and for me, that first living thing was an elephant. So while I guess it's great for family harmony that Dad tried to make it up to Mom for, y'know, lopping off my head, I'm stuck here with this elephant head. Not that I'm complaining or anything...."

Because of Ganesh's duty as his mother's bath guard, Ganesh is the patron god of entrances. But that's not his only realm of deity duty, which leads me to the second thing I find really cool about Ganesh: He's the patron god of writers and artists. Furthermore, he's linked with one of the great epics of all time, the Mahabharata (700 verses of which are the Bhagavad Gita). You see, Vyasa, the author of the Mahabharata, wanted to dictate the verses of his epic to someone capable of writing extremely fast and without mistakes. Lord Brahma decided Ganesh was the only person equal to this great task, and our elephant-headed bath guard used his own broken tusk to record Vyasa's tale.

There's a challenge between the author and his dictation taker, but that's another story.

Take that, Saint Francis de Sales! What epics did you record, huh? You just fell off a horse a few times. Sheesh, some patron saint you are.

Finally, what I also dig about Ganesh is that he's a candy freak. Ganesh loves him some sweets. Of course, sweets in India, called mithai, are a little different from those we devour mindlessly here in the U.S. I urge you, Gentle Reader, to score yourself some burfi or gulab jamun or laddu, sometimes spelled ladoo. Better yet, make some ladoo yourself, for it's Ganesh's favorite.

Besan Ladoo1 1/2 C besan (chickpea flour)
4 T sooji (coarse semolina for giving texture, not flour)*
1/2 C ghee (clarified butter)
3/4 C sugar
1 t cardamom powder
4-5 T almonds, coarsely chopped
4-5 T pistachios, chopped
1 T raisins
*Optionally, replace the sooji with besan to make this recipe gluten free.

1. Dry roast the besan over medium-low heat until it's aromatic.
   
2. In a second pan, warm the ghee over low heat without overheating. If it is solidified, then it will melt.
   
3. Add the ghee to the besan, mix well and then allow to cool from hot to warm. Don't let it cool completely.
   
4. While the besan-ghee mixture is cooling, add the raisins to the pan formerly containing the ghee to allow the raisins to plump slightly, then set aside.
   
5. Add the chopped almonds to the ghee pan, toast them 1-2 min. and then set them aside.
   
6. Add the sugar, cardamom, raisins, pistachios (if using) and almonds to the besan-ghee mixture, mixing well. Optionally, reserve half of the almonds for garnishing the ladoos after they're formed.
   
7. To form the ladoo, pinch off a small amount of the "dough," roll it between your palms to form a ball and then set aside to cool completely. If you reserved half of the almonds, press pieces of them into the ladoo you just formed or roll the ladoo in the almond bits, first rolling it in a small amount of melted ghee, if necessary, to help the almonds stick.

Yield: 10-20 ladoos, depending on the size you make

Nutritional Info
I got this great, easy recipe from a fellow food blog, ChefInYou.com, with some additions (namely, the pistachios) from a similar recipe on Indian Food Recipes From Bharathi's Kitchen. Unfortunately, neither blog had nutritional information for the recipes, but if you only eat one or two small ladoos, you'll be fine. Don't be Ganesh and gorge yourself!

The Faudie's Futzings
As I mentioned in the previous section, I added pistachios after finding them in the recipe on Bharathi's blog. Otherwise, I didn't really futz with this one too much because it was such unchartered territory for me.

Since this recipe was my first chance to work with besan, I wasn't quite sure what to expect when toasting it. I was expecting something warm and nutty, but I either had old besan (I'll admit that I bought two years ago and had never opened it) or burned it when trying to roast it because the aroma wasn't terribly appealing. Maybe the smell was just so counter to what I'd expected that my mind decided it smelled bad.

DK, the authoress of ChefInYou.com, provides great tips throughout her recipe, including this very important one: "The chickpea flour should be warm and not cool. We require the mixture it to be warm since this warmness will help the sugar to melt a bit thereby binding the flour--enough to bind it into ladoos." Additionally, she includes a troubleshooting guide with the recipe for those of us who have problems forming the ladoo.

Such as me. For even though I'd read this tip before preparing my ladoos, I think I might have let the "dough" cool too much because I had a hell of a time getting the suckers to adhere and not crumble apart in my hands. My "dough" was a bit on the chalky side, but I found enough brute force got the things to clump.

Oh, if you're curious, Gentle Reader, I didn't garnish my ladoos. I wasn't going that far with 'em since I was making them for my Saturday yoga class attendees and had other things to do that day. Maybe next time.

Despite the funky aroma my toasting besan had, the ladoos turned out to be damn tasty. With the help of the almonds and pistachios--and maybe the toasting 'o the flour--the balls had the nutty flavor I'd expected with just a touch of sweetness to satisfy. The boys both found them tasty, as did a number of my regular class attendees. In fact, one of my regulars even asked me for the recipe, which I couldn't remember in specifics at the time. Bad me.

If you're curious to try some mithai but don't want to wait until Pancha Ganapati 2010 to whip up some treats for dear Ganesh, give these babies a shot. You don't have to heat up your kitchen, and if you've had a stressful day, squeezing the ladoo into shape can be a great way to release some of that tension.

Om gam ganapati namah, y'all!

Okay, It's Not Exactly Indian

With Diwali happening this weekend--or at least on Saturday, according to my Hindu art calendar), I wanted to do something appropriate to celebrate, not just with the fam but also with my ever-dwindling number of students in my noon yoga class in South Austin. Mind you, Gentle Reader, I can't exactly bring curry, rice and naan to a yoga class, but I was inspired by the weekly dispatch I received from Indian cooking maven Tarla Dalal to make some sweets to share.

If I'd had time and courage, I would have tried a traditional Indian sweet. The FSM knows I've got recipes for various burfis and halvas out the wazoo in my ever-growing collection of Indian cookbooks. But when you're cooking for folks you only have a casual acquaintance with, you don't want to hit them with something that for them is probably really exotic and maybe even off-putting. So out went the idea, however fanciful it was, to make burfi. Instead, I whipped up a batch of molasses-spice crackles, another recipe I'd been eyeballing for a while, with the boy's help.

And with a wee bit of help from the boy, the more than 40 cookies we made were gone within two hours of their coming out of the oven. For that reason, Gentle Reader, I have no pictures of the savory and sweet treats to share with you. Fear not, though, for the boy has made me promise I'll make him another batch soon, so stay tuned for more on this topic.

In case you're wondering, I did have 20 cookies left come Saturday, so I took them to class. The gym was a ghost town since the Red River Rivalry started at 11 a.m., which means I had just 10 students. They were all very grateful for the treats and raved about them. Success!

Tomatoes A'Plenty
As for our Diwali celebration at home, it somewhat mirrored my attempt to share the celebration with my students. For you see, Gentle Reader, the husband and I had identified earlier in the week a Moroccan recipe from Ziryab: Authentic Arab Cuisine by Farouk Mardam-Bey that we thought held much promise of tastiness that the boy wouldn't overly object to being served. Come Saturday, the choice was either to make this recipe or have pork chops, which I'd picked up on sale Friday at HEB.

Yes, Gentle Reader, pork chops aren't exactly a great fit for Diwali, but they're even less appropriate than a dish from Morocco. Okay, yeah, there's vindaloo, which came to India from Portugal and is traditionally made with pork, but for all the Indian food I've eaten, I've yet to have vindaloo (my loss, I know) and highly doubt pork chop meat would be great for a vindaloo recipe. The dish from Morocco, in my mind, was far more appropriate since Arab cuisine was brought to India by various invaders and traders (although I think the Portuguese brought tomatoes to India) and incorporated into that deliciously varied landscape that is Indian cuisine.

Djej b-matisha
or
Chicken With Caramelized Tomatoes4.5 lb. very ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped
1 large chicken, cut into 8 pieces
1 chopped onion
3 garlic cloves, chopped
8 T butter
3 T honey
1 C water
1 C toasted blanched almonds
1 T toasted sesame seeds
1/2 t pepper
1/2 t ginger
1/2 t saffron
1 t cinnamon powder
Salt

1. In a heavy pot, place the chicken, tomatoes, butter, onions, garlic, salt, pepper, ginger, saffron and water, then cook over medium heat for 45 minutes.
   
2. Remove the pieces of chicken from the pot as soon as they are cooked.
   
3. Caramelize the tomatoes by stirring them frequently, and then add the honey and cinnamon, still stirring.
   
4. Place the chicken back in the pot for a few minutes to give it the flavor of the sauce.
   
5. Arrange the chicken in an attractive serving dish, pour the sauce over it and top with toasted almonds and sesame seeds.

Yield: 4 servings

Nutritional Info
Mardam-Bey does not provide nutritional information for the recipes in his book. That's probably a good thing because, well, do you really think 8 tablespoons of butter makes for a low-fat dish, Gentle Reader?

The Faudie's Futzings
If you think, Gentle Reader, that I probably did something about those 8 tablespoons of butter, you're right. But I'll get to that in a moment. First, I want to talk to you about tomatoes.

When I was growing up, my dad always had tomato plants in the garden. He loves tomatoes. I think Mum liked them too, but now her GERD has made them verboten to her. Anywho, the most my parents ever did with the tomatoes we grew was to wash them and slice them for salads or sandwiches. I suppose that if I enjoyed raw tomatoes I would have a better memory of what happened to our crops, but I don't enjoy raw tomatoes. Cook the suckers!

Because of my less-than-intimate relationship with raw tomatoes, I tend not to buy fresh ones for various recipes. Yes, Gentle Reader, I'm a lazy cook: I buy canned ones. But as Cook's Illustrated has noticed in some taste testings at its kitchens, canned tomatoes are more likely to have actual tomato flavor (the result of additives, no doubt) because the mass-produced fresh tomatoes available at your local grocery store are sort of like iceberg lettuce: no flavor whatsoever. It's been bred right out of them for the sake of size and speed. Why do you think heirloom tomatoes are all the rage?

Sorry, I digress. As I prepared to make these caramelized tomatoes, I was unsure what canned tomato product I should use. Did I use whole, peeled Romas? Could I use no-salt-added diced ones, but wouldn't those pieces still have their skin and also entail draining them? Would crushed tomatoes be to obliterated to properly caramelize? You can undoubtedly surmise, Gentle Reader, that I was in quite a pickle over the tomatoes. I wanted the right texture for the toms and didn't want to jeopardize the caramelization by having too much liquid involved.

In my indecision, I made a bold move: I bought fresh tomatoes. Big suckers too that were sure to have no flavor. And, as I learned as I tried to seed the damn things per the instructions I found in The Best Kitchen Quick Tips, the suckers weren't "very ripe" as specified by the recipe. By the time I was finished coring, peeling and seeding them, I had a big pile of juicy red guts on my cutting board. So much for trying to keep the liquid in check!

By the way, Gentle Reader, if you've never peeled a tomato, you have to try it. And I thought peeling roasted bell peppers was a hoot! There's something rather enjoyable about boiling a tomato for less than a minute, then dunking it in icy water then tearing away its flesh as easily as one might peel a sticker off a slick sheet.

Fun fun fun!

While I'll admit that I didn't exactly futz with the tomatoes, I did make a few changes to the recipe:

• Forget the whole chicken. I thawed two giant chicken breasts (again with the modern production techniques breeding out flavor in favor of size and speed) and cut them into smaller pieces so they'd cook faster. All that fuss with the tomatoes took up a lot of time, and the boy was getting crankier and crankier as he grew hungrier and hungrier, so this momma was in a race against the clock to get supper on the table.
  
• Forget the 8 tablespoons of butter. I poured in maybe 2 teaspoons of olive oil, heated it, browned the onions, then the garlic (minced from a jar) then put in the chicken, tomatoes, spices and water.
  
• Speaking of those spices, I inadvertently added the cinnamon at the wrong time. In my efforts to achieve mise en place while the tomatoes boiled, I combined the teaspoon of cinnamon in the little pinch bowl along with the saffron, pepper and ginger. Once the onions and garlic were browned and the chicken and chopped tomatoes were in the pot, I dumped the pinch bowl's contents into the pot and stirred. Only when I doublechecked the recipe to determine if the contents needed to cook covered or uncovered did I discover the cinnamon was to go in later. Oh well!
  
• I didn't use the almonds or the sesame seeds. I was so kerfluffled over the tomato fiasco that I just wanted to get the food on the table and totally forgot about the garnish.

Caramelization is a curiosity to me, Gentle Reader, because I only have a vague notion of what the end product of such a process should be. I believe that caramelization is simply heating a food hot enough and long enough so the natural sugars within it undergo some kind of chemical change. Yes, I suppose I could look it up somewhere (I understand there's this online encyclopedia thing that anyone can contribute any information about any topic to called Wikipedia....), but sometimes I prefer to live with my ignorance: It saves me from feeling like a total jackass in my own kitchen.

Whether or not I achieved caramelization with my tomatoes is unknown. The husband set to stirring the pot after I'd removed the cooked chicken, and I checked it every now and then to see how much the liquid had reduced (I was busy making strawberry fluff for dessert later--another far-fetched food for an Indian celebration). I'm not sure how long he stirred, but at some point I decided the stuff in the pot had reduced and thickened enough to add the honey, then I took over stirring until I figured the sauce was finished. Why did I do this? Haven't a bloody clue, Gentle Reader. Perhaps I too was out of my mind with hunger.

Despite the tomato fiasco and the half-assed preparation, the finished dish was incredibly flavorful. Adding the cinnamon when I did allowed the chicken to absorb even more of that sweetness. Happily, the saffron didn't get lost in the sweetness of the cinnamon and the honey and the caramelization, and it served as a delightful counterpoint. Served atop Basmati rice, it was rendered a curry--and while curry really isn't native to India in the grand scheme of things, what's more quintessentially Indian than a curry?

Next time, though, I'm going with diced tomatoes from a can.

The Faudie Had a Little Lamb

We've had a first here at Chez Boeckman-Walker: I prepared lamb.

Yeah, yeah, I know, Gentle Reader. It's lamb. Lambs--and grown sheep to some degree--are pretty adorable creatures. They're adorable on the same level as Bambi and bunnies and calves.

I hate Bambi. But yeah, bunnies and calves are pretty cute. I've never eaten rabbit and never will, seeing as how I had pet rabbits as a kid. I've eaten veal--or some meat that The Olive Garden claimed was veal.

We came to have raw lamb--boneless leg of lamb, to be precise--because I finally got around to reading The Kitchen Detective by Christopher Kimball. It was among some of the first cooking books I bought way back, but it's lingered at the bottom of the stack of books beside my nightstand. After finally getting through The Ten-Cent Plague (great premise, not so great execution), I thought I'd give Kimball's tome a try. After all...

I Heart Christopher Kimball

But as much as I heart Christopher Kimball, I've skimmed past most of the "case files" in this book. It's contents are all too similar to the types of food America's Test Kitchen tends to focus on: traditional, all-'merican (i.e., bland, New England) dishes that are the meat and bones of kitchen bibles of yesterday and today. Even the dishes that come close to the "ethnic" category are toned down.

That said, there was something about his case file for Indian-style lamb stew that made me not only carefully read it but also consider trying it. I mean, I should have flipped past it after glancing at its introduction:

American beef stew is satisfying [speak for yourself], dependable [read: boring], and, unfortunately, a bit dull [Amen!]. With just a few flavoring additions, the use of lamb instead of beef, and a couple of changes in cooking method, I set out to transform an American classic into something special.

Yeah, I know, Gentle Reader: Kimball's not even starting with an authentic Indian recipe, so why should I give this thing the time of day?

Blame it on another book: Ziryab: Authentic Arab Cuisine by Farouk Mardam-Bey. It's one of those odd finds from the Half-Price Books in Round Rock, which is the antithesis of Austin: unabashedly white, older, far from worldly. Anywho, this fascinating book is chock full of tasty-sounding dishes that primarily use lamb as their protein source. Unfortunately, many of these recipes include ingredients that I've yet to track down, and given my skinflintedness, I'm not quite ready to use a bevy of new-to-me ingredients for a really exotic-to-me dish.

In other words, losing my lamb virginity (Ewww! But better than ewe!) with a recipe with ingredients I know well from a source I trust seemed like a very reasonable, logical thing to do.

Lamb Stew With Cinnamon, Cloves, Cumin and Coriander3 T vegetable oil
3.5-4 lb. boneless leg of lamb, trimmed of visible fat and silver skin and cut into 1" chunks
1 1.5" cinnamon stick
6 whole cloves
2 onions, cut into 1/2" dice
6 medium garlic cloves, pressed or pureed
1 2" piece of ginger, peeled and grated or pureed
1 T coriander seeds, ground
1 T cumin seeds, ground
2 C canned diced tomatoes, drained
2 1/2 C chicken stock (if using canned, choose a low-sodium brand)

1. Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil in a large, heavy-duty Dutch oven, deep skillet or saute pan over medium-high heat.
   
2. Liberally season the lamb cubes with salt and pepper.
   
3. When the oil just starts to smoke, brown the lamb in batches, then set it aside.
   
4. Lower the heat to medium-low, then add the remaining tablespoon of oil.
   
5. Add the cinnamon stick, cloves and onion, then saute 5-6 min. or until the onion is softened and just beginning to color.
   
6. Add the garlic, ginger, coriander, cumin and tomatoes, then cook, stirring almost constantly, until the liquid evaporates, the tomatoes soften, the oil separates and turns orange and the spices become very aromatic (5-6 min.).
   
7. Add the lamb and chicken stock and stir to combine with the other ingredients, scraping the browned bits from the bottom of the pan.
   
8. Raise the heat to medium-high, bring the liquid to a boil, then lower the heat to maintain a gentle simmer and cook for about 1 hour (this time may vary) or until the lamb is very tender and the liquid has thickened. (If the lamb needs more than an hour to soften, cover the pot to keep the sauce from reducing too much.)
   
9. Adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper, then serve immediately.

Yield: 6 servings of unknown size

Nutritional Info
Dear Mr. Kimball fails to provide a nutritional breakdown for the recipes in his book. For shame!

The Faudie's Futzings
Since this recipe's my first attempt to do anything with raw lamb, I wasn't about to screw with it too much. But I did futz just a wee bit:

• I used jarred minced garlic. So sue me.
  
• I was too lazy and my hip too sore (damn bursitis) after doing all the prep work with the spice seeds and the onions and the lamb (more on that in a moment) to peel and grate ginger. So I used two relatively heaping teaspoons of ginger paste.
  
• I'm sure this does matter to Mr. Kimball because his book includes a rather lengthy expose on the importance of making one's own quality chicken stock and chicken broth and the differences between the two, but I used low-sodium chicken broth, not chicken stock.

The boneless leg of lamb the husband and I acquired at our insane first trip to Sprouts, the new "farmers' market" supermarket that just opened in Round Rock. It's very similar to New Flower Market in far south Austin, which we visited a few weeks back, in that it appears to be a scaled-down version of Whole Paycheck for folks who bike because they can't afford a car and wear Birkenstocks they got used from Goodwill, not brand new from Whole Earth Provisions. (You know, the real crunchy-granola, hairy-armpitted hippie types, not the overfed, laser-hair-removaled, Prius-driving crunchy-granola hippie-wannabes.) That Sprouts and New Flower call themselves farmers' markets is rather galling because they're nothing at all like farmers' markets. Very little of the produce is local, and much of what we saw was imported. Most of the other products were not local either.

But, hey, we were there and had found high-gluten flour in the bulk foods area (which was hardly accessible because the lines for the checkouts extended so far back), so why not pick up that hunk of boneless leg of lamb? And that hunk of dark chocolate-covered honeycomb from the bulk bin? And those whole, raw almonds on sale?

Once I got the lamb out of the package and onto a cutting board, I set out to do as Mr. Kimball advised: trimming off visible fat and the silver skin before cubing it. Now, I'll admit that buying frozen, boneless, skinless chicken breasts has robbed me of much practice at trimming fat, and I found myself cursing my sloth for I dearly needed some experience and skill to get all the fat off this f'in piece of lamb's leg.
Good grief, the stuff was thick in places, and getting it off with my handy chef's knife was damn near impossible.

Towards the end of the trimming, I gave up, set my knife aside and just started tearing away the fat and translucent...stuff that I knew wasn't meat with my bare hands. It was oddly satisfying to do so, Gentle Reader. Gads, does that make me some sort of barbarian?

Hacked to Bits

The cooking 'o the stew was pretty basic and very similar to chicken curries I've made in the past. Once I got to the part at which I was just let the stuff simmer so the lamb could become tender, I started to worry. I'd not been entirely successful at removing all visible fat and...translucent stuff, so would that doom my stew? Would I end up with chewy, nasty-tasting chunks of meat? Would I miss the 5:30 p.m. dinnertime deadline I'd set for myself and find myself in a tizzy at 6 p.m. because even after 90 minutes of simmering, the meat was far from tender?

At 5:30, the basmati rice was ready, the stew's sauce had thickened some--but not a whole lot, which also had me worried--but poking at a few chunks of lamb didn't give me great confidence that the stuff was tender.

As I sent the boys to the table with their servings, I secreted a small chunk of meat out of Chive the Dutchie and into my mouth. The chunk practically melted in my mouth. Hazzah! Success!

Having declared this culinary misadventure a success, I have to wonder if I'd make it again. At its heart, the recipe isn't all that different from a few simple chicken curries I've made, but the lamb was, well, kind of expensive and required more prep than what I'm accustomed to doing. I can't imagine using chicken in lieu of lamb, nor can I imagine substituting beef since I prefer not to eat beef.

As for The Kitchen Detective, it's not a keeper. The bulk of the recipes are just not for me and the boys, and dear Mr. Kimball's tales of his own culinary misadventures in his pursuits to perfect the recipes do have some interesting insights into this thing called cooking. These insights you can parlay into other recipes, so the book is useful. However, unless you enjoy the types of dishes dear Mr. Kimball aims to perfect in the book, you probably wouldn't keep it on your bookshelf either.

Curious About Indian Food?

If you've kept an eye on your local PBS listings, you might have been able to catch an episode or two of Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie. The show's been on somewhat sporadically here in Austin, but I've been able to watch almost all three seasons through iTunes. (I write almost because some episodes are still waiting to be viewed.)

One particular episode from the show's second season I think should be watched by anyone curious about or fostering a love for Indian food. Its focus is on South India cuisine, and watching it makes me want to hop on a plane and take a culinary tour. I dare you to watch it and not get hungry, Gentle Reader.

(The nifty picture included with this post I found on Turmeric Indian Restaurant and Bar's Web site. If you're ever in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Gentle Reader, stop in for a feast!)

Sweet, Sweet Dal

The night that I made my first real masala, I also tried a new dal dish, also found in Suneeta Vaswani's Complete Book of Indian Cooking. I'm a dal lover, and this book seems chock full of dal recipes. Now if only I could get the boys to eat them along with me, I'd be far more willing to make them more often. However, cooking for one isn't terribly economical, so I must temper my enthusiasm for all things dal.

Bengali Special Dal

1 C channa dal (split yellow peas)
1/2 t turmeric
1 t salt
1 T ghee or butter, divided
1/4 C dried coconut chips
2 dried Indian red chiles
1/2 t cumin seeds
1 cinnamon stick, 1" long
3 green cardamom pods, cracked open
3 whole cloves
2 bay leaves
1 green chile (preferably serrano), cut in half
2 t minced peeled ginger or ginger paste
1 T raisins

1. Clean and pick through the dal for any small stones and grit, then rinse several times in cold water until the water is fairly clear.
   
2. Soak the dal in a saucepan with 3 cups of water for 30 min.
   
3. Bring the dal to a boil over medium-high heat, skimming off any froth.
   
4. Reduce heat to medium, stir in turmeric and boil gently, partially covered, until dal is tender and about half a cup water remains in the pan (35-40 min.).
   
5. Mash a little dal with the back of a spoon.
   
6. Add 1 and a half cups of water to the pan, along with the salt.
   
7. Return the dal to a boil, reduce heat to low, cover and simmer until the dal is very soft (6-8 min.).
   
8. Meanwhile, heat 1 teaspoon of ghee in a skillet over medium heat.
   
9. Add the coconut chips to the skillet, saute until golden (2-3 min.), transfer to a bowl and set aside.
   
10. Heat the remaining ghee in the same skillet over medium heat.
    
11. Add the dried red chiles, cumin seeds, cardamom pods, cinnamon stick, cloves, bay leaves and green chile halves, saute until fragrant (1 min.), then pour into the dal.
    
12. Stir in the ginger, raisins and coconut chips into the dal, then cover and simmer until the dal thickens to the consistency of oatmeal (6-8 min.). (If the dal gets too thick, add a little hot water to return it to the desired consistency.)

Nutritional Info
None to provide! This dish is sweet without being teeth-rotting sugary, so just enjoy it and not worry for once about the nutritional content.

The Faudie's Futzings
When it comes to dal dishes, my experience is largely limited to those recipes I've made. Because of that relative lack of experience, I'm often hesitant to go radically changing things up. But I wouldn't be The Faudie if I didn't futz a little!

• I used perhaps a total of two teaspoons of ghee, or maybe just 1 and a half teaspoons total. I find a little ghee goes a long way and don't like the sometimes cloyingly heavy result of using a lot of the stuff.
  
• The serrano chile I used had matured enough on the vine to be red. It was a lovely contrast to the yellow dal.
  
• While I had ginger I could have peeled and minced, I opted to use ginger paste.

One ingredient you might be surprised to learn that I didn't futz with, Gentle Reader, was the coconut chips. I'd never heard of coconut chips until recently, when I encountered a recipe in Gourmet, I believe, that used them and included convoluted instructions for roasting coconut halves in your oven and then chipping away at the insides to make the chips with a particular tool. Umm, no, I'll pass. Or, rather, I'll just stop by Central Market and pick some up from the bulk foods playland.

But let me tell you something about those coconut chips, Gentle Reader: They smelled heavenly toasting in a wee bit of ghee! And the flavor they added to the dal--enlightening!

And that's the wonderful thing about this dal dish, you see. It's sweet without being, well, that kind of sugary sweet so many people in the U.S. are accustomed to. The combination of the cardamom and cinnamon--and the cloves, really--with the coconut imparted that dessert-like flavor many of us are used to, while the cumin and the hint of heat given by the chiles prevented the finished dal from rendering this dish something you'd relegate to the dessert table.

I think Ms. Vaswani's direction to let the dal simmer until it's the consistency of oatmeal is very appropriate because this dish would be a great breakfast item. Warm and filling but still sweet--because let's face it, a good many of us here in the U.S. want some sweetness at breakfast because we grew up on sugary cereals or sweetened pancakes doused in sugary sweet maple (or maple-flavored) syrup or sugary, fatty donuts or sugary sweet pastries or sweetened cornbread or coffeecake or sugary chocolate milk or sugary fruit-flavored yogurt. Gah! It's frightening and sad how sugary breakfast can be, especially for a meal dubbed the most important of the day.

Makin' Masala

Believe it or not, Gentle Reader, for all my misadventures in Indian cookery, I've yet to make a true masala. Sure, I've made a chicken tikka masala dish, but I've not made a real masala.

"So what is an authentic masala?" you ask, Gentle Reader?

A masala is simply a blend of spices, often toasted and ground together or sometimes combined with some form of moisture and ground into a paste. In traditional Indian cookery, the making 'o the masala was the first step for curries and many other dishes, and a mortar and pestle or some kind of grinding apparatus was, in a way, the heart of an Indian kitchen.

While I have a mortar and pestle, I've never employed it for the purpose of making a masala. Until now--and not even for a chicken tikka masala dish, which the husband and boy love mightily. However, I did employ my mortar and pestle for a dish that the husband selected (solely for its off-beat name) from Suneeta Vaswani's Complete Book of Indian Cooking, a fun find at Half-Price Books I'd intended for my mother but so far haven't given her and probably won't (Sorry, Mum!) because Ms. Vaswani's arranged the contents first by primary ingredient, (e.g., poultry, vegetables, fish) and then by the region of Indian from which each dish originated. It's a very informative book in addition to being chocked full of tasty-sounding recipes.

Preeti's Chicken FrankiesMasala
5 to 6 dried Indian red chiles, broken into pieces, some seeds removed
1/4 C white vinegar
2 T cumin seeds
4 black peppercorns
8 to 10 garlic cloves

1. Soak chiles in vinegar in a small bowl for 15 min.
2. In a dry skillet over medium-high heat, toast the cumin seeds until fragrant (2-3 min.).
   
3. Combine the cumin seeds and peppercorns in a blender, then blend until a powder.
   
4. Add the garlic and chile mixture to the spice powder, then blend into a smooth paste.

Topping
3/4 C chopped red onion
1/2 C white vinegar
1/4 C cilantro leaves, chopped
1 T minced green chiles (preferably serranos)

1. Combine the onions, vinegar, cilantro and chiles in a small bowl.
   
2. Cover and marinate in the refrigerator from 1 hour or up 2 days.

Chicken
2 lb. chicken breast tenders or filets
3 T oil, divided
1 1/2 medium onions, pureed
1/3 C tomato paste
2 T white vinegar
1 t salt
1/4 t cayenne pepper (optional)
1/2 C cilantro leaves
16 10" flour tortillas
3 eggs, beaten

1. Marinate the chicken in 1 tablespoon of masala for 15 min.
2. Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a large skillet over medium heat.
3. Add the pureed onion, saute until the onion puree is well-browned (6-8 min.), then set aside.
   
4. Reheat the skillet with the remaining oil, add the chicken mixture and saute 2 min.
   
5. Add the browned onion puree back to the skillet along with 1 tablespoon of masala, then saute 2-3 min.
   
6. Add the tomato paste, vinegar, salt and cayenne, mix well, then simmer until the chicken is no longer pink inside (about 5 min.).
   
7. Spray a clean skillet with vegetable spray, then heat over medium or low heat.
   
8. Add a tortilla, brushing the top with beaten egg, and allow to heat for 30 sec.
   
9. Flip the tortilla and allow to heat 30 more sec.
   
10. Repeat steps 8 and 9 for remaining tortillas.
    
11. On each heated tortilla, place some chicken, top with some onion-vinegar topping, then fold over, burrito-style.

Nutritional Info
As with her other book I own, Easy Indian Cooking, Ms. Vaswani does not include nutritional info. I can't imagine that this dish is all that bad for you, so long as you're careful with the amount of oil you use and the nutritional content of the flour tortillas you select. If you're keeping an eye on all things healthful, you certainly don't want to be using tortillas made with any kind of lard involvement.

The Faudie's Futzings
The idea of what amounts to Indian burritos had me somewhat skeptical. I mean, how authentic can a recipe be if it uses flour tortillas? I also felt some trepidation at making my own masala. All that grinding and mashing...how was I to know if I was doing it right or ruining it--and, consequently, the finished dish--completely? And then there was the white vinegar.... For all these reasons, I therefore tried not to stray far from Ms. Vaswani's recipe:

• I only made about half-batch of the topping because I knew for sure the boy wouldn't touch it and doubted that the husband and I wouldn't use much of it. Sorry, but I too strongly associate white vinegar with Easter eggs and cat piss, so my desire to consume it isn't very strong.
  
• Instead of 10" tortillas, I used 6" ones, and only five or six total, if that.
  
• I didn't add the cilantro to the chicken because I had to feed it to the boy and didn't need to give him another reason (the first being this dish was foreign to him and therefore immediately objectionable) to reject it.
  
• I used a bit of canned diced green chiles from HEB for the topping, and I don't think they're serranos. The list of ingredients on the label only states that they're "green chiles." So very helpful.
• I didn't fold my up like a burrito. I think I might have just folded the tortilla in half to make a soft taco-style frankie. Perhaps using larger tortillas would allow me to execute a proper burrito fold.
  

Although it hardly looks like any Indian food I've ever eaten or seen, the end result is wonderfully delicious. My concerns about the vinegar were unfounded, for I couldn't taste it at all, not even in the topping. I honestly don't know much about the culinary wonders of vinegar, so perhaps it toned down some ingredient (such as the onions or chiles) or gave the other ingredients a nice medium in which to blend together. I dunno.

If you're curious, Gentle Reader, about the recipe's back story, here it is from Ms. Vaswani:

Frankies are a popular Bombay wrap made with boneless pieces of baby goat meat. They tend to be rather greasy, but they are nevertheless delicious! This is my daughter-in-law Preeti's cleaned-up version, one that was an instant winner with the family.

I suppose if you wanted to go more authentic, you could use roti or chapati in lieu of tortillas, but the ingredients for all those breads are very similar.

By the way, if you follow the recipe for the masala, you end up with more than you need. The author recommends using the leftover masala on fish. I recommend making another batch of the chicken filling and serving it atop some fluffy basmati rice.

What a Grind
"So how was making your first masala?" you ask, Gentle Reader? Well, quite simply, it was some fun, somewhat labor-intensive work.

You may have noticed that Ms. Vaswani does not tell readers to use a mortar and pestle to make the masala. Her direction to use a blender is, if you ask me, overkill--or, really, useless. I don't know about your blender, Gentle Reader, but the design of my blender would never have ground the cumin seeds into powder because they'd have collected below the blades. The size of my mortar and pestle was perfect for grinding the spices and then mushing into a paste that powder along with the vinegar, chiles and garlic. See for yourself:

This paste tastes better than Elmer's!

I think, Gentle Reader, you can't be afraid of having to exert a little umphf! if you're going to make this or any other masala. Let's face it--you need some muscle to crush black peppercorns or mush dried chiles into something more than sticky particles that stink of vinegar. Or maybe my black peppercorns are old. But if you're all about convenience and ease in the kitchen, then by all means whip out your blender, Gentle Reader.

My New Favorite Indian Restaurant?

With the boy off on his summer vacation adventures, the husband and I are largely free to do with our weekends as we want. Which is nice since our weeks seem already crammed full of schedulings and appointments that, when combined with the soaring heat, leave us wanting to do very little.

Except, perhaps, find any excuse to be near the Dairy Queen so that we can score this month's Blizzard 'o the Month, brownie batter. (Say that when you're drunk, tired or giddy, and it comes out somewhere along the lines of brownie bladder, which hardly sounds appealing. Wouldn't you agree, Gentle Reader?) After a busy Saturday of going to the gym early--and waiting an hour for it to open since the numbskull who was supposed to open didn't show up and the guy who is usually there on Saturday who happened to be off that day had to come and do it--and then selling some more plasma (I tells ya, Gentle Reader, when a skilled phlebotomist gets the needle in right, I'm done in less than 30 minutes) before zipping off to far South Austin to get my CPR/AED certification so I can once again teach at Gold's before hitting the veloway for four laps around the 3.1-mile course, we were not looking to do much this Sunday except score a brownie batter Blizzard--and maybe try a new restaurant.

Sarovar Is Not Hindu for Located Near Dairy Queen
For some five years or so, the husband or I drove past Sarovar practically daily as one of us ferried the boy to daycare. We knew it was an Indian restaurant, but in all that time, we never were curious enough to try it out. Even more recently, as we discussed places we might like to try out while the boy's away, Sarovar was not one that earned a "Ooh! Ooh! Gotta try that! Jonesin' to try that!" Let's face it: Far too many Indian restaurants--particularly ones that offer a buffet--feature the same array of dishes, and while the flavors might differ slightly, chicken tikka masala is chicken tikka masala.

Add the possibility of getting a brownie batter Blizzard on a lazy Sunday when the temperature's expected to reach 105 degrees with a heat index around 110 degrees, and suddenly Sarovar seemed like a very intriguing place for the husband and I to luncheon.

Fond Memories of the Late Rangoli
Sarovar's buffet features a nice combination of North and South Indian fare--which means you get both meat-focused dishes and vegetarian ones and both creamier ones with hot and spicy ones. If you love Indian food as much as I do, then you too, Gentle Reader, might be excited about getting chicken biryani and a bowl of sambar along with some idlis at one place. That's why I was so bummed when Rangoli went under: It combined the carnivore delights of Indian Palace and Taj Palace (granted, we haven't been there in...three years now, I think) with the herbivore delights of Madras Pavilion.

On the first visit to the buffet, I scored some sambar (not too spicy and not too runny, but the veggies were a little lacking) and an idli (just right!), a dosa (these don't work well on a buffet unless they're kept under the right conditions, and these weren't--but that doesn't mean my dosa wasn't tasty) that I stuffed with the spicy turmeric potatoes and peas filling (kept in a separate pan, thankfully), both vegetable and chicken biryani (both excellent and not too greasy, as the chicken biryani is wont to be at Taj Palace), a wedge of naan (good, but not in any way standoutish--which isn't a bad thing) and some pepper fish, which was a dish of fish pieces (couldn't tell what type of fish) that, I think, was lightly breaded with besan flavored with chili pepper. That fish was fabulous and sinus-openingly spicy!

The husband stuck with his usuals: A piece of tandoori chicken, some basmati rice pilaf, some chicken curry (just labeled as such, which was kind of unhelpful), some of the spicy turmeric potatoes and peas (he ate around the peas) and what looked like a large and slightly misshaped hushpuppy that turned out to be medu vada holes. Now understand, Gentle Reader, that medu vada, as I've heretofore had them, look just like donuts. Since these medu vada were round balls, just like donut holes, we called these at Sarovar medu vada holes. Plus these medu vada were not as spicy as the ones we've had previously. In fact, there was even a sweetness to them.

Just a note on that chicken curry: It was a bit of a disappointment. The flavor was muddled--kind of gingery, but not necessarily so. The sauce was a little too soupy for my tastes, and the chicken appeared to be bone-in hunks of chicken legs and other parts not used for tandoori that had been cut up. Because the meat was still attached to the bone, you could not use a piece of naan and your fork to scoop up some rice mixed with the curry and chew contented away. No, you had to politely use your fingers and fork (or just your fingers) to remove the small chunks of bone. And those bone pieces are cut small enough as to go relatively unseen and become a choking hazard.

Get My Goat
I'd wisely taken small portions on my first go-round of the buffet because I spied plenty of dishes I wanted to try on a second trip. And here's where I have to register a complaint with Sarovar: The buffet doesn't offer nearly enough bowls to put the more soup- and stew-like dishes into. For you see, Gentle Reader, I saved the toor dal (yellow lentil) dish for my second trip, along with the chana masala and the eggplant curry and the goat curry. I didn't want any of these dishes mingling on my plate and tainting their respective flavors. Unfortunately, there weren't enough bowls available, and the plates were flat enough that I knew for sure I wouldn't be able to keep my selections separate. But I did my best.

The toor dal was tasty, with the dal being not too mushy but not too...well, solid and distinct. The chana masala was, in my opinion, unremarkable. Not that that's a bad thing, but I was hoping for some variation or some thing to make it unique, but it tasted much like the chana masala I enjoy at Indian Palace and Madras Pavilion.

As for the two new-to-me dishes, they were, I think, the highlight of the main meal. The eggplant curry had a thicker sauce that was wonderfully flavorful, and the eggplant pieces were not unidentifiable mush. The goat curry was also very flavorful, if perhaps a bit reminiscent of the beef aloo we enjoy at Indian Palace. One literal bone of contention with this dish: The meat was also bone-in pieces, so scooping up some curry and rice with a piece of naan to nosh on was not doable.

Halwa Heaven
While the eggplant curry and goat curry were wonderful finds, the dessert offerings are what allowed Sarovar to clinch the top spot on my list of favorite Indian restaurants.

Carrot halwa. And lots of it.

It's been ages since I've had carrot halwa--and I don't count the carrot halwa-like pieces of "cake" Indian Palace has recently started offering. Sarovar's carrot halwa is the consistency that I like--very thick with a nice texture, not creamy and smooth like pudding. I don't know if this was intentional or not, but some of the big mound I scooped out for the husband and I to share was warm, and some of the big mound was cold. (I'm chalking this up to an oddity with the chaffing dish, but carrot halwa can be served cold or hot, depending on where in Indian you're eating it.) Trust me, Gentle Reader, when I say that it was good both ways.

The dessert offerings included gulab jamuns, all nice and warm and soft in their cardamom and rose syrup, and a third dish I'd never tried before but found quite tasty, ras malai. Or at least I'm guessing that's what it was from looking at Sarovar's menu and using the good 'ol process of elimination. These cheese cakes floating in milk syrup looked like miniature idlis, and that's why I initially hesitated to sample the dish. You see, Gentle Reader, idlis and medu vada--although usually it's medu vada--are sometimes served floating in a pool of raita, a yogurt concoction that looks like it should be sweet but isn't. Imagine my delight, then, when I found the ras malai to be sweet. And the cheese cakes were not like, well, any sort of cheese I've ever had, which I'll grant you my experience with cheese is rather limited. The cakes had the texture and consistency of idlis, so they were more bread-like than cheese-like. But as I said, Gentle Reader, my experience with cheese is limited, so perhaps there's a cheese out there that does have the texture and consistency that's more breadlike.

(A quick search of "ras malai" on Google reveals to me that these cakes are made from ricotta or cottage cheese. Given that gulab jamuns are also made from milk solids, I'm not surprised now by the consistency and texture of these Indian cheese cakes.)

The husband, who is not as much of culinary adventurer as I am (not eating much that is red or green kind of hinders one's culinary explorations), was not as ready to sing the praises of Sarovar. He still has Indian Palace at the top of his Indian restaurant favorites list, and that's fine. It's a good place to go to satisfy your Indian carnivorous hankerings. Me, I like a combination of meat and veggie dishes--and a massive mound of carrot halwa to finish it all off!

(Yes, Gentle Reader, we did get the Blizzard, even though we were thoroughly stuffed after lunch. We nibbled on it a bit on the drive home then enjoyed it while watching Diamonds Are Forever. It was far more palatable than an aged, thick Sean Connery in an early 70s-era leisure suit.

Get that man a wax job!)