Food Escapades & Curry Fridays ! Chana Masala
I hadn't realized that every single recipe I had made so far has included some sort of meat in it, which, coming from indian cuisine, I didn't really expect at all...
Anyhow, this week I decided on making a Chana Masala! A recipe I've been eyeing out for some time, it doesn't actually come from the curry cookbook I had been using so far ! It came from a Binging With Babish video, which he uploaded not long ago. Honestly, I've always been such a big fan of chickpeas, which makes me wonder why I didn't make this recipe any sooner :P. The recipe is real simple; crushed tomatoes, spices, onion, and chickpeas! A very simple dish to make, it resembles a lot of the other 'weeknight curries' I've made, which might be a big reason why I love it so much ahahhaha. It feels so rewarding to make a really nice dish out of practically entirely canned ingredients, it's incredible really ! In times where it seems like everyone is stockpiling food, it's nice to have something relatively shelf stable and reliable to have in one's pantry, and something like garbanzo beans really are something of a hearty meal that I'd love to enjoy more of :)
Side note, this is the first time I try making Basmati rice with the starches sifted, which ended up making for some real tasty rice :P definitely recommend, it makes for a better side dish !!!
Picture of the Dish: https://imgur.com/a/2ZrPQea
Recipe: https://youtu.be/LfzKfD_WuDM
Question of the day: What is your favourite Vegan meal?
Have a great day <3
Tomi, your friendly neighbourhood marshmallow~
As promised, the best green curry ever:
Recipe
My SO's mom was supposed to visit us this week if you can believe it. Thankfully for everyone, they decided to back out (hours before our city closed down bars and restaurants). The net result was I made a trip to the Asian grocery store last weekend to stock up on ingredients for this curry.
Tildaswansons, let me tell ya. This one right here is the real deal. Easily the best curry I've ever made, and surpasses most of the restaurants around (and we live in a bit of a food Mecca, though not as much for Thai).
Key thoughts:
-I've never seen coriander root or chilli pepper leaves on sale... anywhere? I compensated with more coriander seed in the toasting step and some red pepper flakes in the paste.
I'll try to get a picture of the leftovers for lunch today :)
oh my god the picture from the website looks amazing! I think you've showed this website to me in the past before but I haven't gotten around to actually making anything from it :P though I do believe that I'm enjoying Thai food a lot more recently... there's this Thai place 'round the corner I wanna check out, my dad loves it hahaahha. If I ever feel like making another thai recipe I'll give this website a look again, looks so scrumptious !
Green curry is one of my all time favorite dishes. I'm definitely going to attempt this recipe when I get the ingredients.
Looks lovely and tasty as always, @TinmanJones. I think you may have even put Babish to shame, as yours actually looks even better than his! :P
Oooh, that's actually a tough one since most of my favorite vegetarian dishes include eggs (pastas), dairy (cream based soups, things smothered in butter/ghee, etc.), or both (Eggplant Parm, Black Bean Burgers, etc.).
The only dishes I can think of that are actually vegan that I regularly eat is stir fried bok choy (usually in black bean sauce with garlic, almonds, and water chestnuts), or oven roasted vegetables (yams, Brussels sprouts, butternut squash, etc)... but those are all side dishes which I usually eat alongside something definitely not vegan, so I don't know if they really count either. LOL
I really should give more vegan foods a try... so I can't wait to see what other people respond here.
Edit: Oh, I do love pan fried tempeh with brown rice and veg stir-fry though. That's counts as 100% vegan, is super simple to make, and tasty AF.
I do believe that I should also put in some more vegan foods into my diet... they end up being super tasty and pretty nutritious too ! :>
Yeah, ditto... I am making a pretty concerted effort to seriously cut down on my meat consumption these days, but I should really give more vegan recipes a try too, since even dairy production is pretty bad for the environment. I am doing a pretty bad job of that though, LOL. E.g. I had a Beyond Burger last night, which is 100% vegan, but then I put a bunch of cheddar cheese on it. ;)
Though surprisingly, my father, who is a typical "meat & potatoes man" that has eaten a 12oz ribeye steak pretty much every Friday night for almost his entire adult life, and has never eaten anything vegan before besides the occasional salad as a side, actually decided to join me in eating a Beyond Burger instead of going for his usual beef burger. He was actually really impressed by it, and said that with all the toppings on it he honestly couldn't even tell the difference between it and his normal beef burger... so I still consider last night a win (even though I cheated by adding cheese)! :P
I believe the best kinds of vegan recipes r usually the ones that aren’t vegan because they want to be vegan.... something like an avocado toast is amazing but not BECAUSE it’s vegan, you get me? That’s my biggest problem I have with those veggie meats.. they always try to mimic something instead of giving a new experience that frankly could be a lot better. I remember I ate some vegan sausages once and they tasted so amazing but they were just dumb as sausages hahahah. I have heard the impossible/beyond meats are pretty good though, never had one but I’ve been wanting to for a while. I’ll definitely have to keep that on my list :P
And good on your dad for trying something new! After all, variety is the spice (ha ha) of life ;)
Yeah, I hear ya. I absolutely love J. Kenji Lopez-Alt's black bean burgers (which I linked to in my first comment), and they are not attempting to mimic beef burgers at all... but sometimes I still get a serious craving for red meat, and the Beyond Burger patties satisfy that urge for me, whereas the black bean burgers do not. And strangely, the only non-imitation thing I have found so far that comes close to satisfying that red meat urge is grilled Portobello mushrooms. Something about the similar texture and level of umami in them does it for me, I guess.
One day my girlfriend and I are going to write a book called, "There's no wrong way to Chana" :p
It's the first dish I ever made her and remains one of our favorites. I think I first made at after seeing on r/recipes back in the day, the only thing from there that's really stuck with me. We've made it a good 50 times or so. So when you ask
you've already found it (well that or a daal curry :).
A couple of tips I've picked up:
I made a really good green curry this week too, will post on that later!
I didn't really follow the spices from the recipe that thoroughly hahahah... I kinda put whatever was in my spice rack :P Though I would like to try out more whole spices in the future, they sound like such a nice flavour boost !
Frying whole cumin in Ghee is my favorite aromatic experiences in the world, absolutely recommended :).
I love a good curry, but by the gods, how do you avoid gut pain and the dreaded ring of fire? I think the mildest curries like a Thai green are the only ones that don't give me any problems.
There are plenty of curries that end up being quite mild honestly... butter chicken, korma, Kerala lamb curry, and many others. And, honestly, it’s not that hard to just remove the spicy ingredients of curries or going for less spicy alternatives. It might not taste EXACTLY the same, but at least you’d be personally enjoy it more :p and yeah, curries are a pretty heavy dish usually... although I’ve found that those that resemble an hogao type sauce end up being really nice dishes you can eat a few servings of hahahah. As soon as any dairy ingredients get added it becomes insanely rich, though.... try looking for some that don’t have any if it hurts your gut too much :)
Yellow curries and massamaan as well tend to be quite mild. Green is typically the hottest for Thai curry. Making your own is definitely the way to go if you want to control the spice level, you have exact control over the peppers you put in there.