The Rewards of Cooking

Okay, you know you've been waiting for it. Admit it, you've been wondering if I would toss some foodie posts out there…

So my lovelies, I shall indulge you.

I love Indian food. I was never very fond of my parent's curry growing up, but then again I didn't like anything too spicy either. But when I finally got a decent set of taste buds and discovered curries exists outside of using curry powder, I was ecstatic! Give me a good butter chicken and a korma and I'm happy. Of course, I love the naan that goes with it. Pakoras, samosas, mmmm!

I decided a little while ago that I wanted to learnt to make my favourite dishes on my own. So, I set about looking up recipes. One evening, hubby and I were watching a BBC channel and a cooking show came on. I had never heard of The Hairy Bikers before, but oh how I love them! That particular episode, they were doing a special on cauliflower and did the most wonderful looking Indian dish I had ever seen: Saag aloo with roasted gobi curry. The only thing I didn't include when I made it was the whole chilies, so that K could have some if she wanted. She actually really loves very flavourful foods as long as it's not too hot. This toddler of mine likes mild salsa…

Baby girl also loves korma. It's mild and the coconut cream based sauce is one of my favourites. So I looked over several recipes and decided to make it up as I went with the basic spices, coconut milk and chicken.

The saag aloo dish I've made twice now and I have to say that my favourite part of these kinds of dishes is when you add the dry spices to the pan and cook them a bit before adding other ingredients. The whole flat smells of these flavours and it makes me happy.

The korma dish I made was… okay. It had cinnamon in the one recipe I was basing it off of and having tried it, I would leave it out. It took away something that made korma different.

But here, for your feasting eyes, was the result of my efforts:

Speaking of spices, I decided to spice up my usual shortbread recipe. Now, there are many recipes out there, but traditional shortbread is made up of only three ingredients: butter, sugar and flour. I use brown sugar and it results in a caramelly flavour that I love. Typically I use a light brown sugar so that it remains flaky, but the darker the sugar you use the more crunchy it gets.

To change mine up, I bought green cardamom pods and went through the painstaking process of using a pairing knife to slit open the pods and dump out the dark seeds. Oh the aroma! It's like warm lemons hitting you and it's divine! I "crushed" them a little with the back of a spoon, which was my only option considering I have no motar and pestle. To that I added a pinch of dried ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg and the finely grated rind of one orange. While I have no picture (they're in the freezer for Christmas), all I can say is that it smelled like Christmas in my kitchen and tasted like it too!