Today I was craving Indian food, so I turned to my favorite Indian cookbook author, Madhur Jaffrey. I have several of her cookbooks and I love her recipes. They are easy and very authentic tasting. Since I had a bunch of CSA carrots that I hadn’t found a use for yet, I added them in to this recipe. I was missing a babysitter today, so I had to do my prep in little bits. First, I decided to make my own Garam Masala. It’s easy enough to find at the store, but I love the taste and smell of the real deal. There are about a million recipes on the web. I use a pretty standard one with peppercorns, cumin seeds, cardamom seeds, coriander seeds, cinnamon stick, and cloves. Some recipes say to toast the spices, some don’t. I always toast them. The smell is heavenly. After the toasting, you cool the spices and then grind them up in a coffee grinder, and add some freshly grated nutmeg. I also added a little saffron.

So that was step 1. Then I checked over the recipe and did some prep work:

Left to right: aromatic spices, almonds with garlic and ginger (which is ground into a paste), CSA red onions, spice mix, and CSA carrots. After all of these are incorporated you also add some tomato paste, half and half, and garam masala.

I also stuck the ingredients for the rice pictured below in the rice cooker. After that I had to deal with snacks and naps and all things toddler, so my lovely spices and veggies rested for a while. The actual prep was pretty fast and easy, but it’s good to have everything on hand when you are cooking at high temperatures.

Spicy deliciousness. I also used Jaffrey's recipe for Tumeric Rice. Except I used brown rice and just plunked it all in the rice cooker. Works like a charm.