today is the two weekiversary of my move to london, and apparently two weeks is about my limit for eating easy crap while surrounded by markets laden with foods (and particularly spices) that are not usually easy for me to find. i’m actually surprised i lasted this long, though really i’m just surprised that two weeks have gone this quickly. what the hell have i been doing?!

well, part of the answer is that i’ve been looking for a job.
and i found one!
but i’m not sure i want it.
i’m hoping i get offered a different one tomorrow.
i’m somewhat stressed.

but that’s not what this post is about.

this post is about food.

see what i mean?

my new neighborhood is home to at least four curry restaurants and one market per block, and while word on the street is that the restaurants aren’t as good as in days of yore, i’m still picking out the ones i want to try once i have money coming in, and seeing as i view grocery shopping as a form of entertainment, it’s exciting to have places that sell things like bags of coriander that are bigger than my head, vegetables that look like zucchini except they have rows of tiny fingers that make them resemble sea creatures, bags of something that looks a bit like dense saffron but is actually apparently a shredded nut, and buckets of yogurt that are of a size in which small babies could bathe.

because who needs tv when you have baby-sized buckets of yogurt?!

so far, i have just been wandering and window shopping, because stocking up on spices and researching new recipes seemed like an activity that should be viewed as a reward, rather than as a distraction. but today i changed my mind.

not only is indian food, cooked in quantity, one of the cheaper things that i could be eating right now, but i’m realizing that i’m not going to be paid for a while even once my job starts, so i’m just going to have to make other plans for groceries, and since improving my indian cooking experience seems to be a major potential benefit of my living arrangement, there’s no reason not to get started.

apart from that, i need things to do to keep myself occupied and happy. so far the whole not going home for christmas thing isn’t all that bad – i know i’m going home before long, i know that i would regret leaving before i get the chance to do more of the things i want to do, and my parents are spending christmas somewhere i’ve never seen before, so it’s not like i have to be tortured by mental pictures of everyone doing things the way that they’ve done them my whole life without me. everyone is doing something new, and everyone is doing something temporary. it’s kind of like there will just be two years between christmases this time, and the people around me are acting funny and wearing santa hats for some bizarre reason that i don’t really understand…

all the same, i don’t think it would be very wise to spend this week wherein christmas will actually become a reality eating bland pasta and twiddling my thumbs. i’ve already decided that i’m buying myself a computer game so that i can have some of the new toy buzz on christmas morning. and the job thing will be figured out one way or another, which will feel good.

and hey, if i’m going to get distracted and excited about playing in the kitchen with some new recipes, then it seems like a good time to start!

so today i did some research, plotted out a rough ingredient acquisition plan that could unfold in more than one stage to keep me from spending too much at once, and went shopping. i bought ghee, cumin, dried red peppers, curry leaves, kalunji, yogurt, a packet of chana masala spice mix and some little coconut cookies. i spent just over £10.

kalunji is one of the ways of spelling the bengali word for nigella seeds, which i have already played with a little bit because erik got some last year and we used them in the sunday dinner that eventually led to attempts at making naan inside upturned soup pots. it’s fun to find them again here, and to be reminded that they are a key ingredient in bengali cuisine, which is the cuisine of eastern india and bangladesh. the population here in london is heavily bengali, so it’s a good chance to learn about some of what makes the cuisine unique. so far i have learned that one of the major things is the use of fish, since the region is on the ocean. also the use of mustard oil as a principal cooking oil, and panch phanon as a common spice blend (with the spices being cumin, anise, fenugreek, nigella, and mustard (all in seed form)).

oh! and they make a lot of desserts, which is intriguing, because my experience so far has not led me to have any deep love of indian sweet culture, but i’m always interested in changing my mind when it comes to dessert. :)

anyway, today was not really a bengali cooking day, despite these lessons. today was a “get a few key ingredients and use things you already have” day, which means that my plan was to use the chana masala mix with some chickpeas that i already had in the cupboard and some rice that i had made a couple of days ago, and then use the yogurt and spices to make a simple khadi, which is a yogurt saucy soup kind of thing, which the internet says traditionally goes with khichdi (lentils, veggies, and rice). i figured it would be fine with the chickpeas and rice, and then i could make the khichdi another day and already know how to make the khadi, which seemed like a bonus, and a good way to not freak out by trying to do 17 new things at once. seeing as the rice that i was using was fried rice, the authenticity rating on the meal wasn’t going to be that high anyway, so it seemed worth just getting the experience with the spices and using up what i had.

all in all, it worked pretty well.

i made way more chana masala than i originally intended, because i didn’t read the box. turns out it was a much better bargain than i thought because you weren’t supposed to use the whole box at once. i didn’t read this until after i had dumped it into the chickpeas, however, and the only way i could conceive of saving it was to go by more chickpeas and make more. so now i have a lot.

it’s ok, though, because it’s good. :)

i used too much ghee, so the first batch is too oily, but the spice mix and the ghee do their trick, giving the dish that distinct fullness of flavor that is simply impossible to imitate with the wrong ingredients.

the khadi was less successful. again i used too much ghee (the recipe didn’t give an exact amount and i didn’t think about it. i was like “butter tastes good! what will happen?”) and i didn’t pay enough attention to it, so it didn’t emulsify and the result did not look very appealing. it tasted ok, but the double dose of too much ghee (in both the main dish and the khadi) was a bit much. i opted for straight yogurt in the end and decided i’d try again tomorrow. now i have looked at a couple more recipes and i think i have a better idea what i’m aiming for, so it should be fun to try again.

in the not too distant future, i also hope to make roasted eggplant, bengali red dal, and aloor dum (potato curry). if i keep at it, then by the time i leave i should have a few new tricks up my sleeve!

at the very least, you can bet i’ll be packing some spices.
:)

i found a few interesting food blogs in my searches, so here they are if you want to check them out:

• Mahanandi
• One Hot Stove
• Vanesscipes

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 17th, 2006 at 6:44 pm and is filed under food, things i do. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.