Somehow we have never cooked any Indian dishes together before, but a friend had given us some methi leaves so this was a perfect opportunity to start with methi chicken. We followed this recipe, making our own garam masala rather than buying it ready made and soon the warming aroma of roasted spice was everywhere.
To accompany this, we also cooked sag aloo, using more of our garam masala. It was really good but not quite the same as restaurant sag aloo – probably due to us using less oil.
We also tried cooking some naan bread, which was okay but a bit doughy and probably needed to be cooked a bit more. A good attempt though and something to learn from for next time.
Accodring to my mum, food cooked at home are seldom as good as in the restaurants because we use less oil, no MSG, and for chinese cooking, we just don’t have that same intensity of heat/flame in our domestic cookers compared to the industrial sized ones in commercial kitchens.
Oops, forgot to say that I have an award for you over at my blog 🙂
Mum knows best 🙂 I agree, food made at home is very different to the food that you get in a restaurant but I often prefer the food we make at home, simply because you can make it exactly the way you like it. My waistline wouldn’t cope with all that extra butter and oil either!
Thanks for the award 🙂
This is a veritable feast. I saw that recipe but my suggestion would be to heat the yogurt and milk before mixing it in. It breaks the dough down and helps it cook. Also a high grill is better than ove bake because it’s more like using a tandoor.
That’s a great tip Malika, thanks very much!
It is interesting that Nilmandra says that food cooked at home isn’t as good as the restaurants. I found that the first time I had home cooked Indian curry it suprised me for its differences to the curry houses and I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Now I very much prefer home cooked curries. I like the fact they are less oily, I like the subtlety of spices that is often overpowered by cheap curry houses’ flavour enhancers and I like my homemade caraway rice. I should try naan one day though.
Well done for pushing back your boundaries. I bet you, like me, found the smell of roasted spices intoxicating. Curry is a daunting prospect at first glance, but your methi chicken looks the business. I hope you’ll continue to experiment.
This looks superb and making me feel very hungry!
Nilmandra, good point, I think we’ll try turning up the heat a bit next time for sag aloo. We did do the methi chicken on quite a high heat for a while because the recipe explicitly said to do so and it did give it nice depth of flavour.
I’d like to see how much we can do to achieve restaurant quality dishes by using techniques such as high heat, marinating, etc, rather than by using too much extra oil or ghee 🙂
Now and again it’s good to have a restaurant curry, but I honestly prefer home made ones.
Chapatis are easy to make and I’ve only tried them so far. Your saag aloo looks delicious.
Hello Kerri,
Naan…Unless you have a tandoor oven, you can’t duplicate the wonderful flavour of the smoked restaurant naan…however… I found a recipe that is extremely easy to make and tastes so delicious, smeared with butter and sprinkled with chaat masala as soon as it comes out of the oven…truly fabulous!
If you or any of your readers would like to try it, I urge you to go to http://www.vahrehvah.com and watch the Vah chef, Sanjay Thumma prepare it on the video clip…just click on the ‘video section’ and type in ‘Naan’ …he is an excellent teacher and even absolute beginners like I was will get perfect results every time.