Indian Food

The joke in our house is always the Thanksgiving one.  “This is a bigger mess than Thanksgiving or you have used every pot in the house. “ We had a crazy Saturday that started with an early, dry land ski training; ended with a swim meet at the pool; and included a long walk in the woods with Samantha.  We were exhausted from the week, but as we finally had a chance to sit down after all the scheduled activities were over, the discussion turned to dinner.  I always try to get a sense of what everyone has a taste for and then I try and think of what we have in the house and what needs to be cooked.  While the kids were in the water, I mentioned to Virginia that I had a taste for Indian.  When they finished swimming we polled them and Noah’s first thought was Indian.  With two out of four for Indian, we had our theme, although Virginia said she didn’t want to spend the whole night cooking.  I promised her she wouldn’t have to do a thing and then I roped everyone into prepping vegetables.

One of my favorite activities is to recreate what we’ve had when we go to dinner.  Sometimes it isn’t even what we’ve eaten, but rather a vegan interpretation of a non- vegan dish that one of our friends ordered that look good and adaptable.  One of our favorite places to go out in DC is Rasika.  It is a contemporary Indian place that has a very lively bar scene.  It was a go to place to grab a bite after a work function or lame work dinner that didn’t satisfy us.  We would go and sit at the bar and jockey for a space and dine either at the bar or at one of the little tables.  Getting a reservation is always hard and we are very last minute folks so it is even more difficult.  The kids love the atmosphere in the restaurant, but we found it pretty challenging to eat there as vegan. I started recreating some of their best, and my favorite dishes.

We love to dine out, but I feel for the most part that we can make what we like better than anyone else. I also feel that most people, when they get comfortable with cooking, can do the same.  Food is so personal and once you figure out the basics, you can cook anything you want. Indian cooking, depending on the region, can have ghee (or clarified butter) in many of the dishes.  It is easy to find great vegetarian Indian food, but it is pretty difficult to find Indian food that is vegan. We have also found that much of the cooking is very heavy.  Our main protein source when eating Indian comes from the lentils and chickpeas combined with rice. The lentil dish Dahl doesn’t need any fat, but cooking the onions with olive oil or vegetable oil is a much better and healthier option. And it is simple to make all of these dishes Gluten-Free, minus the Naan of course.

So what did we pull together for our meal? We made five dishes and brown rice.  The first dish was the red lentil Dahl, which consisted of onions, scapes, lentils, olive oil, and water.  Spiced with salt, pepper, turmeric, and curry powder.  Because it was pretty hot outside, I tried to use the grill as much as possible so not to heat up the house too much. For the net dish, I put some new red potatoes on the grill and while cooking those put on a cast iron casserole dish with chickpeas, garlic, oil and spices.  In the kitchen, Virginia and the kids picked English peas and wax beans.  I cleaned chard and started to make a simple tomato sauce with onions and scapes, which would be the base for the wax beans.  Rough chopped chard with green onions and garlic and oil was sautéed and then I added chunks of soy cheese.  I Cut the wax beans in thirds and added to the tomato mix and then took the potatoes off the grill and added them to the English peas that were cooking with scapes and onions.  I roughly mashed the potatoes and peas.  Each dish had some spices added.  I used curry, cumin, paprika, turmeric and salt and pepper to taste.  The rice maker finished and we were ready to plate.  To add real heat we put our own hot sauce made from fresh habaneras.  With everyone working the whole meal only took about 45 minutes. We opened a bottle of a Pinot based Rose’ from the Loire Valley which had enough flavor not to be crushed by the food, yet still crisp and refreshing.