I made Indian food for my husband a couple nights ago. I love indian food and so I made curry and chole, samosas and rice and I have to say, and my husband would agree it was the worst Indian I have ever made.
I don’t know what the heck happened! Everything was fine and dandy and then all of a sudden the curry and the chole were like snot. Now I don’t take kindly to my food going into the crapper when it’s something I’ve made a hundred times. I went over it and over it. Garlic, onions, ginger, chick peas, garam marsala, which I made from scratch, and turmeric. That’s it, no starch, no arrowroot that would make it look like that. I was convinced it must be the cheap turmeric I bought. Determined to get to the bottom of the lousy meal I put turmeric in a little bowl mixed it with water and stuck it in a pan on high to see if it would thicken up. Paste yes, snot no.
The only other ground spice I used was a little extra cumin because I decided it needed a little more and I admittedly took the ground short cut instead of toasting more spice and grinding it. Cumin, no go.
I had a little bit of the garam marsala left over, repeat experiment, viola!! Snot!! (*^@(*$&^@!%(*&^!@$ It’s my Homemade, From Scratch, gram marsala….. stream of expletives.
I was thinking that I was going to have to individually grind each of the spices in turn to figure out what happened, but then, AH HA, maybe the culprit was the fact that I may not have been completely diligent in cleaning out the spice grinder and there was something in it that contaminated my gram marsala. That was it, totally my fault, totally preventable. I don’t know what it was that was in that grinder but it made for one cranky me.
So clean your grinder.
Make better garam marsala.
I think every one needs to know that even the best of cooks have cooking disasters – sometimes it just happens. I think it is wonderful that you have shared this experience.
You probably already know this because you are more of an expert than I am but I read somewhere that running a little plain rice through the grinder is good for cleaning. That’s the trick that I use and it works great.
Fantastic story, and everyone can relate. I think it was one reason that Julia Child was so loved…she never pretended she was perfect. You are following in prestigious footprints. Keep it up!
Thank you for sharing something definitely to remember..
So fine, yes, okra is gross. Let’s just put that out there. It’s disgusting. I mean, if I wanted my food to look like it was covered in snot, I would have had kids.