Spice up your life!

Indian food! Indian food! I love Indian food!!! 

Really though, i love it. You know what i don't love? Harvey walking all over the fucking keyboard constantly. I swear she's being the neediest fucking cat this week. "Oh you want to sleep? I'll just lie on top of your head so you can't breathe... better yet i'll somehow take up 3/4 of the bed even though i'm the size of football. 3am on your day off? Time for a head butt to the face, wet nose first! How about i roll around on the kitchen counter while you're trying to cook? Extra flavor! Feed me. waaah." Which is why i through the bitch out. Go frolic in the woods Harvey, leave the place-mats alone.

Speaking of needy, i saw Popou for 5 seconds this morning, and somehow now i have to clean the gutters, take him to lunch, pick up his prescription, buy him a dvd recorder for his vcr, show him how to record vhs off the tv, and take him to church.  All i want to do is lie by the fire and read Game of Thrones.

So anyway... I love India food, and Phil hates it. Which is why I'm making it all week while they're off having the time of their lives. I text DPL to see how they were and she was like:

DPL: Mom brought me 5 cans of Campbell's Cheddar Cheese Soup because she didn't think we had it out here.

LNP: What do you even use that for?

DPL: I don't know, casseroles? I don't think i've ever used it.

LNP: She brought you all of your favorites!

But the best part is: 5 CANS! Never mind that it's fucking cheddar cheese soup. Forget that she didn't think they had Campbell's in California, and don't even trip that that was the house warming present she picked out for her oldest daughter. Nanc went out of her way to not only buy, but smuggle 5 CANS of soup in an over stuffed suitcase, a soup that you probably won't even use 5 cans of in your life, and i just love her soooo much. 5 CANS, can you believe it?

The awesome thing about Indian food is that it's super spicey. The not awesome thing about Indian food is that spices are expensive and some of them are hard to find. But i was like, 'Whatever, a solid investment for the future.' So my mom has these cardamon seeds, but they're kind of tan and were at one time green, so i was like, "No way i'm fucking using that shit." but then i couldn't find cardamon seeds anywhere because the world was apparently sold out of them (which, okay the most random thing to be sold out of) so then i was like, "I'm so glAd mom had these aWEsome cardamon seeds, what a peach!" One day i'll go to a real spice shop (that day was supposed to be today, but apparently I was pre-booked). So i start to make Garam Masala (a spice blend) and you have to, like, shell the cardamon seeds which is such a bitch! and i am so fucking over cardamon seeds, get out of my life... for now. I'm starting to sound bitter, time to spice it up!

It's de-shelled Cardamon seeds, broken cinnamon sticks, cloves, peppercorns, cumin seeds and coriander seeds that you dry roast, cool, and then grind together.

Spices are pretty. Hey remember when i was like, 'Spices are expensive, but whatever, a solid investment for the future.' Yeah, not when you use all of them to make one spice blend. So now i have 2 1/2 bottles of Garam Masala, and not enough spices for the rest of my food. The killer is at the bottom of the recipe it says: This recipe may be cut in half. Which is why you should read the whole thing through before you start, Lor. But hey! If you need some Garam Masala hit me up! Because really, who doesn't?

So then you brown the beef, and put it to the side, and caramelize some onions with fine chopped ginger and garlic, add a diced tomato, ground cumin, ground coriander, turmeric, red pepper flakes...

And finally some yogurt, let it cool, and then blend it. And this is no joke. If you try to blend something thats hot, it just explodes and splatters the whole kitchen, and you get really pissed off, and start yelling at everyone for no reason, and then go to bed early. Ask DPL about my Mexican Hot Chocolate.

 So then you dump that in a pot with the beef, and put together a spice bag of bay leaves, ground cinnamon sticks, cardamon pods (my fav!), and cloves:

I mean beautiful. This... not so much:

It looks like two different kinds of poop with a wedding favor. Add four cups of water, and bring to a boil:

turn down the heat, and simmer the shit out of it for like 3 hours (ba-dum ching!). You can also do this in the oven. Oh, also this is called Saag Gosht: Beef in Fragrant Spinach Sauce.

So anyway, onto the Phool Gobhi Paratha: Cauliflower-Stuffed Bread. 

 Grate some Cauliflower, then stuff in in some bread:

Ha! I wish. Actually you sautee the grated Cauliflower, with ginger and tumeric (which kind of smells like dirt) red pepper, and salt. Then you make a mix of various flours, and, like, rub oil into it? and let it sit for a while, then you can stuff it and roll it out.

I think this bread is a type of round chipati, which reminds me of Bend it Like Beckham, which i used to watch, like, everyday my freshman year of college and kind of forgot about until now.  I tell that story at parties a lot.

Speaking of parties, around this point KMac called me and was like, "I'm Bored... cabin fever" because she had hand surgery and is not aloud to live for a week. So i was like, "Come over for Indian" and she did, and i wasn't paying attention, and burned the first round of bread.

But also the spatula like melted on the pan, so i was like "we are not using this pan" and i went to grab another one, and:

 The shelf totally broke! So i was like, whatever, i'll deal with that tomorrow (which reminds me, i have to deal with that). And the only pan that wasn't in there was my panini pan, which actually ended up leaving some pretty marks.

Also at some point you boil some spinach in salt water and mix that in with the beef and add the garam masala. And tada!

KMac posted a pic of this and all of her friends said it looks like poo, but whatever, it tastes like golden dreams. 

 And then she was like, "Hey it's like Indian Beef Stew." And i was like, are you fucking kidding me? because she's right. The one week i can come home and not wonder if there's gonna be a pot of beef stew on the stove, and what do i do? Put a pot of beef stew on the stove. "Good one Lor." pretty much sums up this blog, but I think P.G. Wodehouse put it best:

"Unseen, in the background, Fate was quietly slipping the lead into the boxing-glove."