First Step to Accomplishing a Goal

I had mentioned that learning to make delicious Indian food was one of my goals for the year. I have made Indian dishes before and they were very tasty, but I would love to learn how to make Matt and I's favorite dishes. I would like to make them so well so that we do not always have to go out in order to eat them. My favorite is Aloo Gobi. It is a potato and cauliflower dish. I always intend to try new dishes when we go to Indian restaurants, but I always fall back on this one. Matt's dish is Malai Kofta, a fried vegetable dumpling served with a thick tomato based gravy. On Thursday I attempted to make both dishes and destroyed my kitchen with dirty dishes in the process. Matt was kind enough to do the dirty work for me and do the dishes while I finished preparing the meal. Next time I think I will just attempt one dish.

First up, the Aloo Gobi. I didn't love the recipe I chose to try. It seemed to be missing some of the flavor that I really love about dish. Perhaps I just added to much ginger, as it was a bit over powering. Oh well. The search continues for the perfect recipe. Here are some pictures I took while preparing the dish.

The last picture was the finished product. I ended up adding a bit of the sauce that I made for the Malai Kofta, which added more of a flavor punch to the cauliflower and potatoes.

Moving on to the Malai Kofta. I'm not sure if this is our perfect replication of the dish. It is not technically a vegan dish, so we tried a vegan version. It was delicious! Next time I make this, Matt would like the sauce to be sweeter tasting. I used a can of tomatoes instead of fresh, and it was a bit overly tomato tasting, but I still thought this dish was superb.

So many colorful and delicious spices went into the sauce. I'm sorry I missed taking a picture of the finished sauce, but you will see it plated up at the end.

The vegetable dumplings were made out of mashed potatoes, bread, and spices. Not very pretty, but really yummy. I tried pan frying them, but I have yet to have much luck in that department. Whenever I try this in my stainless steel pan, it just doesn't work out that well. Instead of the dumplings browning, the pan just does. So I resorted to plan b and baked them in the oven instead.

Ta-da! Here is the finished product.

And here is my messy kitchen, and proof that I am cooking by the computer. Sorry Matt.

Hope you are all having a great weekend!