What's Cookin?

It’s only been two weeks, and I’m not missing Indian cuisine quite yet; but, in honor of an old college friend’s visit tonight, I decided to break out one of my Indian recipes and try my luck cooking it in the USA.

It’s a pretty simple recipe for chicken stew. In India they usually eat this stew with a fermented bread called appam. Appam is really nice to eat, but it’s not so nice to make; so I decided to serve my chicken stew over rice. Now, I know I’ve claimed that I’ll never eat another grain of rice as long as I live, but if I want to show off my new cooking skills, I’m just going to have to get over that. And I suppose if I don’t have to eat it twice a day, I can probably handle it.

So I put the rice on and set out my chicken (boneless!), potatoes, and onions, as well as a mixture of spices including cinnamon, cloves, and cardamom (didn’t have the pods, but the powder works too). In no time the house smelled like an Indian restaurant, and I had a good-looking dinner cooking in my skillet.

When the rice was ready, I served it up with my chicken stew and some sparkling wine (to remind myself that I was back in the US), and I was happy to see my dad and my old friend both go back for large plates of seconds.

But unlike a real Indian cook, I never even dreamed of forcing, guilt-tripping, or even asking them to take thirds.