venturing into indian cuisine

I am so excited that I am taking a foyer into Indian cuisines. I have always intrigued about the cuisines of the nation but find the myriad of spices intimidating.

Two days ago I made a pot of lamb stew with coconut and I was pleasantly surprised that preparing Indian dishes from scratch is not as daunting as I always thought. The key is to learn the few techniques and read up on the most common spices and ingredients.

i now have two Indian cookbooks both by Madhur Jaffrey

Today I planned my shopping trip to pick up everything I want to get in my long list of Indian ingredients. Most of them are spices. In my part of town there is a great Indian grocery store by where I used to work called India Sweets & Spices. I first went to an ethnic supermarket en route to pick up a list of ingredients also for my planned full Indian meal.

At the supermarket I picked up some collard green, gingers, nuts, raisins and a lot more. They have fresh tamarinds and I was so tempted to buy some. I have a jar of tamarinds in my refrigerator already so I passed.

Next stop is India Sweets and Spices. It is an all Indian shop and you can find just about any ingredients you want for preparing the most obscure Indian dishes - if you know how and have to will to make mostly from scratch.





The store is quite large and they also serve freshly made desserts as well as vegetarian lunch and dinner. The prices are always very reasonable there and the owners are very helpful. I love this store.

this isle is where most of the dried spices and condiments are kept; they have another half the store in the back where they have more restaurant size containers of spices, oil, ghee, sugar, special salts, frozen, and dried good such as rice, peas and beans, flours; there are also canned goods, cooking equipment and the list goes on

the front part of the store

yes, they have a big selection of British items like Marmite, blackcurrant juice, milk chocolates

OMG, I love the taste and fragrance of this Woodward's gripe water when I was a kid

teas from India - and yes, the Lipton tea is hell a lot batter than the craps sold under the same brand in the US

i grab a bite to eat for lunch

i came home with these to add to a pretty good collection i already have in the pantry; the pantry is now bursting at the seams

Once home I set out to prepare a complete Indian meal. I already have a lamb stew with coconut that I made two days ago. All I need to to make a collard green and some yellow rice to complete an all Indian dinner.

For the collard green I followed the recipe for mustard green. For the yellow rice I followed the Yellow Rice with Potato and Cumin but skip the potato.

Both dishes are great exercise as I now know the basic techniques of these two rather common dishes. The collard green is thicken with Indian corn meal to reach the viscous consistency. I didn't have the Indian corn meal so I use common corn meal after grinding it in the spice grinder.

the two dishes shares some common ingredients and it can be confusing

the yellow rice ready to be cooked in my rice cooker

the red onion is saute in ghee with some ginger and then combined with the collard green

this is the finished collard green

I use one of the stainless plates that I brought back from Bangkok to serve. It has the perfect number of compartments.

The Thai fork and spoon are also very suitable for eating most Indian dishes with.

these are the most ubiquitous folk and spoon in Thailand; they don't use knife in a meal and in the most well stocked cookware shops there forget trying to find tableware knife

I am so happy that finally I prepared a full authentic Indian meal, all made from scratch except the flat bread and yogurt.

a wholesome and satisfying dinner; it is prefer to serve this meal on a piece of banana leaf but i have to wait for the summer when my banana plants return and grow big again

Tomorrow I would try making one or two seafood dishes.