Adventures in the Kitchen

Dear World,  I can cook! In yo' face! 

This is the awesome apron my roommate Debra made for me one year.  

I was once a mageirocophobe.  Don't worry, it's just means I was afraid of cooking.  If there is a green thumb for cooking, I had the opposite of it.  Without a doubt, every time I stepped foot in a kitchen with the intent to create....disaster would strike.  I once burnt an entire pot of macaroni cheese---pretty much the easiest dish to make.  Yikes.  Slowly, over the years, however, I have made progress.  Exhibit A:

Take a good long look, this could be the face of the next Chef Ramsay....minus the swearing. 

Tonight I decided to be adventurous and do some more exotic cooking, since I'm heading back to school in a few days, and won't have the budget or supplies to make anything more complex than spaghetti for a while.  The style: Indian food.  The meal: Chicken Makhani and Naan bread.  First, I gathered the supplies. 

So many spices! I was inspired to make this when I saw my mom had garam marsala! 

Next, I cooked the sauce.  Being the novice that I am, the evening didn't go without a few mistakes.  For instance, when I turned my back from the burner for two seconds to open a can of tomato paste, I turned back to find that half of my sauce was stuck to the bottom of the pan and I had to start over.  Eventually, I got it right and the sauce turned out quite nice.  

स्वादिष्ट! That's Hindi for "delicious!"  

Then, I prepared the rice and fried up the naan dough that I prepared earlier.  The entire process of preparing the dough, making the sauce, cooking the chicken, cooking the rice, and putting everything together took around 2 hours, but it was totally worth it.  

Nom, nom, naan! 

Finally, I set the table, finished up some last minute things, and called my family over to enjoy a delicious, home-cooked, Indian dinner.  

It was hard work, but so worth it. The only regret: not using more cayenne pepper! Also, this meal is great because with all the spices I used to make it, we'll be enjoying the smell of this dinner for days! Now that I've successfully cooked one of my favorite types of food, I'll definitely be doing it more often.  While I was going to school in Provo, I loved to eat at the India Palace, where I would pay $15 a plate.  Once you make the investment in a bottle of garam marsala, a spice you can purchase at your local grocery store, the rest of the ingredients are really cheap to make this kind of food yourself.  I'd guess it's around $15 dollars total to make enough Chicken Makhani for at least 5 people to be full to the brim.  Add rice, and some flour for the naan, and badda bing....an exquisite dinner for 5 for under $30, and if you get everyone to pitch in making the food, it'll be ready in less than an hour! Not bad.  

The final product.

It looks better in real life than in the pictures, and tastes great! Tonight was a huge success and I'm really proud of myself. If you'd like to try the recipe yourself, just hit me up, I'd be happy to share it!