Indian Food Week!

Curry Curry Curry! Curry everywhere! Spilled on countertop, in the food, under the cutting board.. :-)

One of the recipes I tried was for Chicken Tikka Masala. The difficult part of this recipe was that it required grilling of the yogurt-marinated chicken. 1) I do not have a grill, and 2) the rack on my broiler pan is spaced too far apart for bite-sized chunks. Earlier this month, I bought a random cheap grill pan for kicks in case I wanted to try grilling (I've never grilled before), so I brought that out. I bought metal skewers too (too big for the pan, so I bent them) - FAIL! Ended up taking all the chicken off the skewers and just cooking them as is on the grill pan and made sure they had black stripes :) Anyways, the food turned out really well. The fresh cilantro makes a difference in the taste.

As for the basmati rice - since it was Indian week, I bought a huge 11# bag of basmati rice. Looked over the net for some recipes and called a friend, since i didn't feel like boiling it, put it into my electric rice cooker.. My friend uses more water than usual (she likes it more moist?) but I think using the same amount of water as Jasmine rice works well - because I like to soak up the curry with the rice and also have my rice in separate grains. Anyway I cooked the rice like normal, and after it was done, added some frozen carrots/peas and about 2 teaspoons of ground cumin, mixed it up, covered and let it sit for a while.

I don't have a picture of a vegetable, but I found the BEST okra recipe EVER on allrecipes.com: Indian Style Okra. So easy, and SO GOOD!

Tried a coconut curry chicken recipe a couple days ago too, as well as a Honey-Dijon Mustard-Curry chicken, but they were so-so.

Finished Indian week this morning with some Bollyrobics! :-D