Mike and Adrianne's Indian Cookbook

I've been negligent...and my bad example seems to have rubbed off on everyone else. It has been quite a while since Adrianne and I made our Indian food, but I haven't posted anything about it yet. Well, here goes.

I gave Adrianne and myself the book, The Everything Indian Cookbook, by Monica Bhide. Overall, I think it's a good book. There are no pictures (excpet for on the front cover), but I don't really mind that. The introductory material (chapter 1, Basics of Indian Cooking) was good--though I, personally would have prefered more depth. The chapter covers topics like essential techniques, essential ingredients, cooking with spices, and provides a list of basic items to stock in your pantry as well as the kitchen equipment needed for the recipes.

The second chapter covers the basic recipes needed. These recipes are used through out the rest of the book and can, largely, be made and stored for later use. A good suggestion that she gives is to make the pastes, scoop 1 tablespoon into each cube of an ice tray and freeze them. Then, once their frozen, transfer them to freezer bag.

The remaining chapters cover different categories of food--snacks, starters, drinks, chicken, meat, fish, veggies, etc. Adrianne and I tried "Fiery Pork" and "Dry-Spiced Carrot and Peas". Both were delicious the first time we ate them. Unfortunately, a day after eating them is when we all started feeling sick (not a result of this food). I longed to eat the left-overs, but everytime I tried, I wanted hurl. In fact, thinking about the peas and carrots still make me a little uneasy.



Fiery Pork (Pork Balchao)

1/2 t peppercorns
5 cloves
1/2 t cumin seeds
6 dried red chilies (we pulled the seeds our and ours was not very hot at all)
1 T garlic-ginger paste
1/2 cup malt vinegar
4 T oil
1 lb lean pork, cut into chunks (we didn't use lean pork and I wish we would have)
1 large red onion, chopped
1 T sugar
Salt, to taste

1. Grind the spices and blend with garlic-ginger paste and vinegar.

2. Brown pork in a large skillet with the oil. Remove the pork.

3. Saute the onions in the same skillet, add the tomatoes and spice mixture. Fry until the oil starts to separate (I don't know that this ever happened for us...)

4. Add the pork. Cook until the pork is done all the way through.

5. Add the sugar and salt.

She also recommends leaving this in the fridge for a few days and reheating later to get more flavor. We let it sit for a couple days. Too bad I couldn't eat more after even more days.