Dateline: March 4, 2021 Indian Night

On a phone call with friends I said I was making Indian food that night, Lyn asked what was on the menu.  I rattled off a list of dishes that I was jonesing for, such as dal, turkey vindaloo, palak paneer, aloo gobi or aloo jeera, and Bill stopped me in my tracks and said, "That's a lot of food for 2".  Sadly, he was right, and I pared the menu down to turkey vindaloo, palak paneer, and rice.  

I used a new vindaloo recipe that I was not too thrilled with, it lacked the depth of flavor that I usually get when I make pork vindaloo.  I attribute this to the microwave browning of the onions and garlic.  Needless to say, I will not share that particular recipe as it did not meet my incredibly high standards of practice.

My issue with the vindaloo was that it was orange....I know, I should not judge a dish by its color, but it was really jarring to me....I've only eaten vindaloos that are a deep greenish brown.  The dark color is because you brown the onions until they are a very dark brown and the spice mix is dark in color, and perhaps just the hint of some molasses darkens things up.  The vinegar sharpness was also quite pronounced.  While I like the vinegar in a vindaloo, I feel it should be amalgamated into the total and not discernible along with each other element.  Sadly, the sum of the parts did not live up to my expectation.  Next time, I will not take short cuts and use Madhur Jaffrey's recipe for pork vindaloo instead and sub in the poultry for the pork.

The palak paneer recipe was a good one, and I've made it before.  It's from Urvashi Pitre's Indian Instant Pot Cooking.  The ingredients are what you may already have around the house, frozen spinach, onions, garlic, ginger, canned tomatoes, hot peppers, etc.  The only ingredient that may be somewhat esoteric is the paneer.  You could easily substitute firm tofu and the dish would be just as tasty.  It helps to have an Instant Pot, but this can be done on the stove top without much thought, it might even be better that way!  Another important tool for this is an immersion blender.  It makes the puree-ing of the spinach much easier than loading the hot stuff into a blender and doing it that way.  

The left overs are also delicious the next day, so if you make tons, it's good eating.