Making a Meal of it
I decided to do something with the pile of cookbooks we have acquired and made a couple of new dishes.
Quesedillas
One of the great starters we had in Mexico was quesedillas. These generally had chicken, cheese and salsa in them. Cooked on a hotplate, basically a Mexican version of Cheese on toast. Having checked out cookbook and online all the recipes were talking about deep frying them! Eurgh, deep fried cheese, healthy. Looking in a charity shop I spotted 2 Mexican cookbooks, one of which had a photo which looked correct and recipe for making in frying pan. Snapped up and made as starter next time we had Mexican.
They were really nice, although first ones were a tad soggy with me being over eager with the Olive Oil. We made guacamole too, although I dislike it. Next on list in the salsa sauce, which I believe a couple of our compares know how to make.
Curry
Ok, I make curry, and quite a good one if I say so myself. We always use a bought in sauce though. A cheap Indian cookbook showed how to make a sauce from scratch. When the continental market was here, one stall had garam masala powder. Having got this we had almost everything we needed. Only cumin and turmeric missing. We also needed coriander, and we had seeds which was an ok substitute. I used a curry powder which contained cumin and gave it a bash. I think I used not enough onion and too much water. Trying it when almost done it was too thin and not sweet enough. As I was rushed we threw in some flour and half a teaspoon on sugar. I will actually check to see what we need to add to rectify these two problems but in a rush these worked. The next day I checked a local shop and picked up the missing spices and some coriander from Dronley so next time I will give it a bash with the actual ingredients.
We have the pile there and I intend to have a scan through for new recipes and ingredients before we next make our 6weekly trip to a supermarket. So far that’s three new recipes this year, proper curry from scratch. quesedillas and guacamole.
We have a recipe book of 50 great curries from india – https://www.amazon.com/Great-Curries-India-Tenth-Anniversary/dp/1904920357
If you want I can copy out some recipes we have tried? Parsee red curry was amazing as was the chicken pistachio korma.
February 22nd, 2009 at 9:26 pmCheers, I’ll need to check but I think that’s the book I got, cheap in the works?
February 22nd, 2009 at 10:03 pmyeah, definitely that book, although I think a different edition of it. What have you tried from it?
We just went through marking pages of things to make and tomorrow will decide what to make in next couple of weeks and mark ingredients for shopping list.
February 22nd, 2009 at 11:03 pmWe’ve had Parsee red curry, Pistachio Chicken Korma and tonight Lynn made the Goan vegetable curry. Not been disappointed by any of the recipes so far and we’re gonna try at least one every month. Which ones you guys gonna try? We’re thinking about trying some of the desserts too.
February 23rd, 2009 at 7:39 pmKorma, Vindaloo, I have the flour here to make naan so definitely naan, poppadoms if I can find a recipe. We also love Mexican so enchiladas and tortillas are high on list of things to make. I figure breadmaker will make the dough part of it easy enough
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:52 pm