April 2010 Experimonth

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