Confessions of a Culinary Slut

It's true. I'm a total taste slut. I have no loyalty to any style of cooking. I am eating up the entire country of India, north, south, west, and now I'm exploring some recipes from that section of India that is not on the main portion, the part that pokes into China and Myanmar. I picked up a bottle of mustard oil and I'm going to cook up a few recipes from the Assam state.

Yeah, I'm all over the country. However, more often I find my taste buds tantalized more by the southern cooking. The roasted dal with chili peppers and other spices, ground to a powder or paste, cooked into the food...yeah.

I've been lazy in the kitchen, other than a delicious eggplant pilaf (which called for a roasted dal powder that coated this dry vegetable-rice dish) and a cooling cooked tomato-yogurt dish. No, this week has been a quick-fix with some meal-ready dishes in pouches that heat up in the microwave. They are authentic Indian dishes, cooked in India, so I don't feel like that much of a cheat. And now I see they could be most useful in rounding out my meals, with say, a paneer dish in a pouch, with a dal and steamed rice I prepare, and a loaf of naan bread to scoop up the gravy.

With summer coming, I need to rethink my cooking. My humble (and tiny) abode is an oven during the summer, with no AC. Cooking just adds to the sweltering heat. I'll have to think of dishes I can cook fast without adding much more heat to the room. Perhaps I'll develop a more intimate relationship with those MRE pouches. How did people in India cook their meals? My temperatures are mild here compared to how hot it gets in India. Maybe much of the cooking is outside. Maybe I'll check into setting up a campfire outside and cook out there. I bet there are city ordinances against that.

I bet a pot of dal slowly cooked over an outdoors fire would taste ever so much better.

I'm reading a book called The Calcutta Kitchen, more for the photos and insights into life in such an over-populated area. I will try a few recipes, to boot. However, my menu for today will include a few dishes from the Assam state, a tomato chutney and a cabbage kofta, both ripped from this site.