What happened?
We made coriander chutney and dal fry following recipes I learned in India. The rest were from the following recipes:
- curry leaf chicken: http://www.foodvedam.com/curry-leaf-chicken-curry/
- yogurt rice: https://werecipes.com/curd-rice-recipe-thayir-sadam/
- lemon rice: https://www.padhuskitchen.com/2009/09/lemon-rice.html
Dal fry I got several different kinds of lentils to compare and contrast, but due to time constraints we couldn’t execute the test fully and ended up cooking them all together in one pot.
Coriander chutney was very easy and delicious!
Spices mixed with water makes a good flavorful gravy - is that what was intended though?
We blended the spices because there wasn’t enough flavor from them. Yogurt rice and lemon rice both really tasty but yogurt rice was too yogurty (1:1 rice yogurt ratio, actually less than what was in the recipe) and both were too crunchy from the spices. Shoul dnot have blended. Lemon rice not as yellow - not enough lemon? Not enough turmeric?
Didn’t use right the chili’s. Didn’t have hing. Were these what made it not taste quite Indian? Spices were quite strong and delicious tasting though.
What learned?
Coriander is cilantro!!
Different lentils cook at different times. Taste slightly different too, but didn’t have enough time to thoroughly explore.
Spices should not be blended. Left intact and either leave in as garnish that’s easy to pick out, or take out when serve.
Can’t temper spices as too high of temperature or else browns them too fast.
To learn
Explore lentils more thoroughly. What time to cook which ones, what tastes different about them.
How do we extract more of the flavors from the spices without blending?
Experiment with hing.
Experiment with different countries’ chilis