The quest for making good Indian food at home is well and certainly on. This week we made Manjula's chole palak, aka chickpeas and spinach, and it was good.

The recipe itself is fairly simple, and follows a pattern I've started to see as I learn to actually cook Indian food instead of relying on restaurants all the time. (Not that we've stopped frequenting the buffet up the street from our house. NOPE.) The secret appears to be frying the spice mixture in oil, so the flavors all leap out dramatically in the finished dish. Sounds good to me.


My only problem was that I hadn't thought ahead and made a yogurt sauce, so I just spooned some straight plain yogurt over my plate to give it some extra creamy dairy action. This worked well, but some additional cucumber and cilantro would have worked even better.

This was filling enough that John and I couldn't eat it all, even with no supplementary sides. Isn't that always how Indian food works out, though? You go to a restaurant, notice that your entree looks pretty tiny, and then can't eat more than half of it without feeling like you're going to burst. Well, that's what happened here as well. So we had leftovers! Hooray!


For my leftover breakfast, I quickly sauteed my chole palak with basmati rice and yogurt, then slid a fried egg on top. This worked amazingly well. I just broke up the egg and stirred everything together, so the yolk melded in almost invisibly and the bits of white provided a nice texture contrast. Who wouldn't want to boost the richness of a fairly austere bean-and-veg dish with a beautiful runny yolk? I ask you.

What new cuisines are you guys taking on?