April 2010 Experimonth

an overly brief (yet still rambling) recap:

i ate more Indian food in April than I have the entire rest of my life, although that isn’t saying much.  I ate at three different restaurants and one of my goals is fulfilled - i’ve got a go-to specialty dish for when I’m at a place that seems particularly good and i want something spicy enough to make me sweat: lamb vindaloo.  I had it at Saffron, then ate the leftovers, and used the leftover sauce as host for some chicken that I cooked and ate “vindaloo style” with some brown rice.  My other foray into cooking was a curry, but it was prepackaged and my only embellishment was some chicken and a package of frozen peas that I had been looking to use - more embellishments of nutrition and necessity than taste or cuisine.  

And mulligatawny.  I love soups, and don’t know how I’ve lived so long without this one.

And breaded fried foods are delicious in every cuisine, right?  

I did learn enough about the cuisine to know that it varies regionally, but i’m still working on learning exactly how.  While I don’t have a magical box of spices yet, I’ve been promised one, possibly as soon as June. And I do want one.  I avoided Indian food for years - based primarily on one bad experience - and now I’m eager to have more. I also got to get to know several people better over some excellent meals, which is also great. And there are several restaurants that I want to check out in the months to come, and rumors of an Indian or Mexican/Indian food truck!  So while I definitely didn’t get as far as I’d hoped, I’m glad that I did this month and would recommend that other people try to spend a month exploring a new type of food. 

I didn’t really master a cuisine this month but I did make pazole. Here’s an image of pazole.

The Pazole I made had pork, chicken, hominy, tomatillos, cilantro, stock, lemon, chiles, and all kinds of yummy things in it. As you can see from the picture, there are a number of condiments, radishes, limes, onions, etc., that may be served on the side.

I also made a tomatillo sauce. I was surprised at how sticky the tomatillos were after I removed the husk!

I didn’t get around to perfecting my sushi roll but I do have a bamboo mat, sushi rice, and seaweed ready to go.

I have a really hard time making decisions. More on this later…

So, this month, I am learning more about Mexican cuisine and I’m determined to learn how to make a sushi roll. By the end of the week I’ll give more information on my choice of cuisine.

I pick French because:

1. I received two Julia Child DVDs for Christmas and they still have the cellophane on them. 
2. We just bought an enormous television.
3. I am eating lots of meat lately and there’s a big fish on one of the DVDs that looks tasty.

I’m not much of a cook.  I can follow recipes, and do a little bit of improvising, but mostly stick to a few standards.  So to take on something as potentially grand-sounding as “a new cuisine” is a bit of an overstatement.  With my cooking skill-set, the definition of “cook” may be in question because I mostly heat/reheat. 

I do, however, eat.  A wide variety of cuisines.  I love cajun, korean, mexican, japanese, thai, italian, etc. I’ve never really gotten to learn Indian food, though.  For a while, I just had no exposure to it. My first meal in an Indian restaurant came at the end of a long afternoon of “getting back together with college friends” and the meal didn’t sit well.  Since then, I’ve had and liked various curries, but really don’t know much beyond that.

I’ve got an Indian brother-in-law, though, and he made some great food.  My sister told me that he’s got a box with 3 or 4 spice jars in it, that he takes when they travel.  I really dig the idea of having a box of magical spices that I can take anywhere and macguyer up a meal.  But I’m gonna be realistic.  I’d like to spend my “eating out” budget this month on Indian food and reach out to friends who might want to help me learn. I hope that by the end of the month I’m super-comfy with a menu at any Indian restaurant, and that I can somewhat confidently make a passable version of at least 2 main dishes and 4 side dishes.

For the blogging part of experimonth, I’ll do a mix of twitter comments with the #experimonth hashtag and posting pictures and maybe some longer thoughts here.  

If you’d like to join, let me know. I’m @jeffreymstern on twitter or you can email me at jeffrey {dot} m {dot} stern {at} gmail {dot} com