Rajma (OMG Indian food!)

Alright, so I promised Preeyanka I would share my attempted forays into Indian food, so this was my trial at Rajma, based on two recipes:

Rajma - Red Kidney Bean Curry: I literally found this by typing "kidney beans indian food"

Smitten Kitchen: Red kidney bean curry: I loveeeee this website. It all looks so fancy with beautiful photography, but she did some shots to show what her kitchen actually looks like, and its tiny! I love the non-pretentiousness of this website.

Okay, so my prep came in three parts: my bases, my spices, and my wine.

My bases of course were onion, garlic, kidney beans, and tomatoes.

Spices were turmeric, cumin, cayenne, black pepper, and I threw in some anise extract into the food mix at a certain point bc I've heard anise seeds can replace cumin seeds and I didn't have either but I had anise extract bc I love licorice (nom nom).

As I'm sure you can tell, I have developed a bit of a wino habit this summer, and this has become a prime focus of any meal or gathering. Hmmm so delicious!

A little background on this wine: I had heard of riojas a few times before (mind you, anything I say 'before' just means sometime along this summer, when I started paying attention to wines) and had been under the impression that this was a type of red wine. Quite the contrary! Its actually a region in Spain, and it does indeed make mostly reds, so that's what it is known for, but it makes a few whites too! So when I stopped by my favorite wine shop The Wine Thief (perfect name, no?) and saw this baby, I had to try it. The people who work at this place are excellent, and I've rarely tried one of their recommendations without liking it. This guy had the employee's approval, and after trying it, it definitely had mine also. So good! (and yes, I agree that Indian food is probably better with reds, but its been waaaaayyy too humid in CT to touch reds, looking forward to the winter though)

Okay okay, so back to the food.

Basically I sauted the onions, then added the garlic, and a minute later all the other spices. I didn't have the tomato sauce that the smitten kitchen recipe mentioned, and I had already accidently drained the kidney beans, so I just used both the tomatoes and tomato juice from the canned tomatoes. It worked out pretty well. After everything's together, let it sit for 10 min boiling, and then I smashed some kidney beans onto the sides of the pot, which really helped thicken things for me. I also made a side of simple white rice to serve over. In the future I'll have to learn how to make naan, and then I'll be set for life! The end products:

and of course

Ladies and gentlemen, another success in the single kitchen of moi.

frittata experiment

So after a long hiatus, I am returning to the food-blogginess. I have a few lined up to eventually be added here, but for now I'll start with tonight's dinner. Let me lay out my day:

In the AM I was motivated about work, but then lost that motivation. On my way out the door, my landlady was moving out and had several boxes of old LPs and offered to let me search through them and take any I wanted. SCORE! She had amazing stuff, and I even made her keep the original MJ Thriller and Beatles records, you can't toss that stuff. Definitely a mood booster. ...Then I got to lab. BOOORRING plus stupid people. My friend mentioned wanting to go shopping, which I've had in my mind for a while now but I don't like shopping by myself. So post boring crappy stupid-people labness on a saturday, this was the rest of my day: shopping. home. dinner. wine. old movie. AWESOMENESS.

So lets talk about dinner. First of all, the important stuff:

Wine accompaniment: Chardonnay Steel American Table Wine by Gouveia Vineyards
local winery in Wallingford, CT, SUPER CUTE, had a lovely picnic there a few weeks back.


Movie accompaniment: Noble House, starring Pierce Brosnan
Based on the book by James Clavell anything by him is AMAZZZZINGGG. I've read everything except Whirlwind. Best book: Shogun, first-book recommendation: Taipan.

Okay, so now for dinner: my experiment at spinach frittata, a la the following basic recipe: Spinach Frittata Simply Recipes

I love both this website (simply recipes) and Smitten Kitchen for most of my starter recipes.

Basically I approached this as "what veggies do I have?" + eggs/cheese.
#1: veggies
I had spinach (obviously), mushrooms, and tomatoes (you choose if its a veggie/fruit), also the requisite onion and garlic. I love both onion and garlic, by the way. This has been a total discovery in this past year,but they are SO DELICIOUS. o.m.g.
The rest was eggs, milk, I used gouda cheese and since i didn't have a grater, I cut it into small pieces and melted it for 30 seconds in the microwave.

So I think the three-way prep that the recipe mentions is important. Separetly, prep:
#1: cook spinach in 1/4 cup water until its

wilted, take it off the heat and drain, set aside.
#2: (for me melt the cheese cubes and then..) mix cheese, eggs, and milk, and add salt and pepper to taste. set aside.
#3: In a baking pan (I don't have a skillet that is oven-safe) I sauted the onions, then added the garlic for one minute, then the mushrooms and wilted spinach for a few more minutes, and lastly the tomatoes for a

bit.
After your veggies are patially cooked (depending on how well done yo

u want them in the end), then add the cheese mixture and smoothen everything out. Let this cook a little while on the stove until partially solidified. Then, magic!


Move it into the oven, preheated at 400. Let this go for 15 minutes, then take it out and let it cool. When done, the cheese/egg covering should have the same consistency as scr

ambled eggs.


Apologies for my crappy pictures due to crappy lighting in my kitchen. But still, a lovely ending: