Week 8- North India

Menu: India
Pineapple Smoothie
Vegetable Samosas
Chicken Korma Kashmiri Style
Cucumber, Tomato, and Onion Katchumber
Garam Masala
Green Chutney
Spinach with Curd Cheese
Red Kidney Bean Dal
Khumbi Pullao/Mushroom Rice


This week was North India. Oh. My. Goodness. This food was so incredibly fantastic. The smells were delicious in and of themselves. This week was just a fabulous week.

Let’s just go through the list. The pineapple smoothie was incredibly refreshing. It wasn’t a “smoothie” that you would get from, say, Planet Smoothie. The texture was much thinner than the smoothies that we usually think of here in America. It had a little more of a juice kind of consistency but did have the pineapple pieces in it. When everyone was done tasting this, I gulped the rest down. I could have drunk a whole pitcher, I think.

I made the vegetable samosas. These were amazing, too. I wasn’t sure how I would like them because they had peas and chunks of potatoes with seasoning all wrapped in a pastry pocket and fried. Wow. I brought the rest of these home and even Marc liked them, which is surprising because he is SO picky about what he enjoys. These were a hit, though.

The samosas were served with a green (mint) chutney, also made by me. I didn’t think I would like this either, because of the jalepeno in it. I didn’t LOVE it, but it definitely was good in tiny doses on the samoses and rocketed them to a whole other level of deliciousness.


The Chicken Korma was...ok. It wasn’t my favorite, but I didn’t hate it either. Same thing with the mushroom rice. It was just kind of blasé to me. Chicken is chicken is chicken, I think to me. Don’t get me wrong, I love chicken, but we’ve been eating so much of it at home that I think I’m just a little chicken-ed out. The red kidney bean dip didn’t even leave an impression at all. It was very forgettable and it probably would have been forgotten if I didn’t have a picture and a recipe card of it.



The spinach with curd cheese was very good, too. Each teams turned out a little different. Group three used A LOT of cheese, which was extremely tasty. Team one just had bigger hunks of cheese in theirs which I enjoyed also. I think our dip was my least favorite, but our cheese was my favorite. The guy who made it kept some cheese separate and seared it off and served it on the side of the spinach. This was a nice twist to the presentation of it.



The Cucumber, Tomato, and Onion Katchumber (dip) also shocked me. This was kind of like a salsa except it had the cucumbers in it. I made the flat bread which was used to scoop this up and eat it. This was delightfully refreshing also, and I used it sort of as a palate cleanser in between bites of the other heartier food. I kept returning to it, though, and eating more, and more, and more of it. I was so full by the end of the tasting on this day I could not eat a single bite of lunch later. I cannot wait to see what amazing things we cook this next week!!




On a side note, Marc has asked me to begin disguising veggies so he will eat more of them. I am embracing this challenge and really having fun with it. So far I have been able to get him to drink a sweet potato smoothie that tastes like pumpkin pie in a glass and eggplant and spinach stuffed shells. The stuffed shells turned out so amazing, I was even surprised. The reason I am including this little side note is because I never would have even tried to experiment with the eggplant if it were not for already using it in World. I have learned a great deal about ingredients that I have never encountered before and for that I am extremely grateful. I had a preconceived notion about eggplant because I had it once before and it was NOT prepared correctly. This makes me wonder what other fabulous ingredients I am missing out on because I had them once and hated them. What a shame that I haven’t been partaking in this delightful violet veggie all along. I’m sure I will make up for it now that I know how scrumptious it is!