This was really good and surprisingly fairly quick too. However, as a main dish, it seemed like it was lacking something. It just didn’t have that extra zip to stand alone as the main event. It felt more like appetizer material, or a lunch. It was really filling, but I would pair it with something else next time to round things out a bit.
I added a smiley face on the crust which definitely increased Ellie’s level of interest for it.
RECIPES:
From what I have experienced with Indian food, I really like it. I really don’t know what anything is called because I prefer to eat the lunch buffet where I get to try a little bit of everything. So I know I like the red chicken, or the green dish, or the orange dish with peas. I’ve always been curious to try making some dishes at home, but wasn’t sure where to find a good recipe. But after surfing the internet, I came across a site called Manjula’s Kitchen. It’s a site featuring all vegetarian Indian recipes. What’s really great is that every recipe had a YouTube video showing you exactly how to cook it, which works perfectly for me since I’m not familiar with how to prepare Indian food. I just needed a good excuse to give this a try. So when Aya invited an old friend over for dinner who just happened to be vegetarian, and loved Indian food, I decided to give it a try.
I figured go big, or go home. After only buying a few exotic ingredients from the Indian grocery store, I had the menu set. I made butter paneer masala as the main dish, mushrooms with peas as a side, mong dal vada (lentil fritters) with cilantro chutney, and mango cheesecake for dessert!
It was a bit ambitious, but I kinda like the challenge in a short time frame. The YouTube videos were really helpful, but for the most part, everything was fairly simple and pretty quick. The lentil fritters took the longest and was the furthest from my comfort zone. It was the first time I’ve ever deep friend anything!
I was really surprised that everything tasted like Indian food from a restaurant. I’m definitely hooked on this website now and want to try everything. The videos are great because she doesn’t have some huge commercial kitchen that’s intimidating. She’s in a normal residential kitchen that makes everything seem very accessible and do-able. And I figured if I wanted some things non-vegetarian, I could just throw some chicken in it too.
RECIPES:
The original recipe called for groats. Groats?! What are those? They sound totally groat. I wasn’t sure what they were and my local grocery store didn’t have any. Since the original recipe described them as a barley texture, I substituted barley for groats. Not sure what groats taste like, but this tasted great with the barely. We certainly love our mushrooms!
This was nice and hearty for a vegetarian stew. We all loved it. Ellie only ate just the mushrooms though. I served this with a salad and pear and cheddar grilled cheese sandwiches. Good eatin’!
RECIPES:
We’ve been sticking with the Asian inspired foods this week. We went out for Thai on Monday, had tofu sandwiches with ginger peanut sauce and soup Tuesday, and now this tasty red curry quinoa. This definitely doesn’t replace your more traditional Thai vegetable red curry dish with rice dish, but it’s a great way to eat quinoa. I’m learning quinoa is very versatile. This recipe serves two to three and I think that’s spot on. We devoured this and Aya had to stop herself so she could have leftovers for lunch.
Super easy and super fast, both a plus today.
The soup was leftover from the other day and complimented this really well.
Rounding out the theme for this weeks meals, I found a nice Japanese recipe for tomorrow. I’m looking forward to that one.
RECIPES:
I was a little iffy on these sandwiches. I like tofu, but I don’t love it. Luckily, everything worked really well together and I actually loved this sandwich. The peanut sauce was great, and the crunch of the peppers and carrots balanced the tofu. Ellie loves tofu and gobbled it up. “Daddy made this!? Oh my goodness!”
This soup complimented the sandwich really well. I made a double batch because I plan on using the soup again tomorrow. I used 3 lbs of carrots. That was a lot of peeling and chopping, but it was totally worth it! Ellie loved this too!
RECIPES:
Crispy Tofu Sandwiches with Ginger Peanut Sauce
