Happy (Punjabi) St. Patty's Day!

UPDATE: Quick clarification from my last post. That girl is not the same as the girl who shows up with a perfect blowout, perfect makeup, in perfectly fitting lulu, who works her ass off all class and leaves looking just as perfect as when she arrived. This girl is a unicorn and what all mortals hopelessly strive to be. She also attends my barre class and I sweat too much for her to be my friend. 

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I am part Irish, but for some reason St. Patty's is not my day, so I usually just refrain from celebrating. This year I skipped the Saturday drinking binge and spent the day cooking instead. I baked these cookies for a quick homage to the holiday using Sally's Baking Addiction Sugar Cookie Recipe and substituting one of those small bottles of Bailey's Irish Cream for the milk in the icing recipe. They taste great, but trying to paint shamrocks onto those cookies was a giant pain and I ended up with green frosting all over my kitchen. Just buy a shamrock cookie cutter and dip the cookies in the frosting. Keeping treats like this in my house makes my sugar detox days that much harder, so I will be taking these to school to share until there are no more. 

While these cookies took WAY more of my time on Saturday than I intended, the real cooking I did was to prep for cooking on Sunday; and since St. Patrick's Day has never really been good to me, I don't feel bad sharing my first attempt at cooking Indian food with you today. I recently fell in love with Indian food on a trip to Jamaica. For those of you that are scratching your head - quick history recap, India and Jamaica were both British colonies. After a long day climbing waterfalls and being haggled, we decided to check out an Indian restaurant, Mystic India, recommended on Trip Advisor as the #3 restaurant in Montego Bay. It changed my life and opened my eyes to what I have been missing out on for almost 25 years. Not to mention, Indian food is crazy healthy. So, I decided that I was going to attempt to cook an Indian dinner on Sunday. After spending a lot of time googling recipes and scouring Manjula's Kitchen, I decided on Dal Makhani, Naan, Basmati Rice, and Bhindi Masala. 

Cooking unfamiliar foods always takes me a long time at first. Ethnic foods give me special anxiety, because I want to cook them true to the culture, which is often something I haven't been exposed to. Southern comfort food I can probably do blindfolded, but Indian food? No way. I didn't feel ready to even attempt it until I had done a fair amount of research about spices and preparation methods. Then, I spent Saturday prepping for Sunday. I made the naan (and froze it) and cooked my lentils and kidney beans. Doing all this the day before definitely cut down on time, but now that I've made it all once I can see that a day of prep really isn't necessary if you can devote a large chunk of time to cooking on Sunday. 

Some of you may love Indian food, but like me find the thought of cooking it well out of your comfort zone. While I am by no means now an expert in Indian cuisine, having made it once, I am a lot less intimidated to keep working on it. Hopefully my experience will encourage you to try it out. P.S. I passed a sample onto my Indian friend and am waiting for his feedback - will update accordingly. 

Naan: If nothing else, make naan. Making bread is intimidating, but I promise you can do this! It is surprisingly easy, tastes delicious, freezes well and will impress even yourself in making it. I used this recipe to base mine off of. I didn't want to make 12 pieces for 2 people, so I cut it in half. I also wrestled with whether or not to stay to true to the recipe, since I was trying to make legitimate Indian cuisine OR to cut out the sugar, making my sugar-free life easier. Then, I came across a compromise. I saw these charts earlier in the week and thought I would try subbing the sugar with vanilla extract. Now, if you want to try my sugar-free craziness, then be careful, some vanilla extracts have corn syrup in them (including McCormick). I use Simplify All-Natural. you can get it at your grocery store in a big bottle. I also added turmeric to the dough because I saw it in another recipe, know its used in a lot of Indian cuisine and it has a lot of health benefits. I need to make it once with the sugar to know how much it varied, but it tasted great. Next time I will cook it on the stove top instead of oven, which was just a recipe for burns. To freeze: After the naan cooled, I wrapped them individually in plastic wrap, put them in a freezer ziplock and stuck them in the freezer. Before eating, I microwaved them in the plastic wrap for 30 seconds and brushed butter on them. 

Dal Makhani: The main recipe I referenced was http://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/dal-makhani-restaurant-style-recipe/. I tried to follow this as close as I could but altered it where I didn't have the requisite equipment or ingredients. I will limit my commentary to the places I differed. 

• I shop at the greatest grocery store on Earth - Publix, but they did not have the black lentils required by the recipe. Instead of going on a grocery store scavenger hunt, I just picked up the brown lentils that Publix had. These Publix lentils do not have to be soaked, but the kidney beans do. I soaked 1/4 c Kidney beans overnight on Friday, then started them cooking in water 45 minutes before I added the lentils. Then I added in the 3/4 c lentils and let them cook for 30 more minutes. This is less total cooking time than instructed for the Kidney Beans, but I wanted them to be slightly undercooked since they were going to be simmering in liquid for a couple of hours on Sunday. When they were done, I drained them and put them in the fridge overnight.
• I based my grocery list off of a different recipe and so I had one of the jumbo cans of crushed tomatoes instead of fresh tomatoes or tomato puree. In making this again, I will reduce the tomato base that I used or increase the lentils and kidney beans. 
• I bought Garam Masala, which is just a blend of Coriander, Black Pepper, Cumin, Cardamom, and Cinnamon and so I just added a tsp of that to the butter with a bay leaf. I ended up adding more as the dish continued to cook. If you have those spices in your pantry, make your own Garam Masala blend. 
• I used ground ginger in place of fresh ginger in making the garlic ginger paste. I doubled this paste and used it in the Bhindi Masala as well. 
• I didn't have green chiles or red chili pepper, so I actually added paprika and red pepper flakes. The result was the perfect level of heat. 
• Finally, because I had a lot of tomato base, I let it simmer for about 2 1/2 hours on low to reduce down. The crushed tomatoes also had a very fresh tomato-y taste that I wanted to deepen and marry with the spices. 

This was the most stressful part of the meal because it was the main dish and depended upon getting the spices and consistency right. I know it looks complicated, but after making it once, it really is just an Indian vegetarian stew. 

Bhindi Masala-ish: This recipe changed my entire okra world - it is actually really yummy even when not fried! Again, I based my recipe off of another (Bhindi Masala Recipe), but omitted the tomatoes because I thought it would be overkill with the Dal Makhani and just omitted any ingredients that I did not have (dried mango powder). The result may not have been true Bhindi Masala, but the Indian spices were there and it was really enjoyable. I used frozen okra, but now that okra is starting to come into season, this can be a great spin on a fresh summer vegetable. 

For 4 servings for normal people, or 3 servings when one of those people is a hungry male roommate.

Ingredients:

1-2 tbsp olive oil or butter - To reduce unnecessary calories and oiliness, start on the lesser end and add more if you need it.
1 1/4 cups cut okra
1/2 medium-large onion, diced
Ginger Garlic paste (see Dal Makhani recipe above) made from 2-3 garlic cloves crushed into a paste with some fresh or ground ginger
1/2 tsp Garam Masala (again just cinnamon, cardamom, cumin, black pepper, and coriander so don't buy it if you have those on hand)
Dash of Turmeric
Salt and Pepper

Method: If using frozen okra, thaw and pat dry. Heat 1 tbsp of oil/butter in a skillet over medium-high heat, then add okra. Okra is slimy, saute it until it starts to seem significantly less slimy and is cooked to tender 2-4 minutes. Set okra aside. Add remaining butter/olive oil to pan and allow that to melt down. Add diced onion and saute until translucent. Add your ginger garlic paste and cook that in with the onions until "the raw aroma of ginger-garlic disappears." That is not very helpful, so just go with 1-2 minutes.  Add the okra back in, add Garam Masala, Turmeric, Salt & Pepper to taste. 

Quick Note on the Basmati Rice: I cook and eat brown rice at home, I like the added texture and the fact that it is much better for you than the white stuff. However, the basmati brown rice only has .4 more grams of dietary fiber per serving than the regular basmati rice and in this case, I would have preferred the fluffy fragrant white basmati to accompany my meal. 

Everything came out delicious and my roommate and I enjoyed it for dinner and then for lunch the next day! If anyone has any other Indian recipes to share, please send them my way.