From what I have experienced with Indian food, I really like it. I really don’t know what anything is called because I prefer to eat the lunch buffet where I get to try a little bit of everything. So I know I like the red chicken, or the green dish, or the orange dish with peas. I’ve always been curious to try making some dishes at home, but wasn’t sure where to find a good recipe. But after surfing the internet, I came across a site called Manjula’s Kitchen. It’s a site featuring all vegetarian Indian recipes. What’s really great is that every recipe had a YouTube video showing you exactly how to cook it, which works perfectly for me since I’m not familiar with how to prepare Indian food. I just needed a good excuse to give this a try. So when Aya invited an old friend over for dinner who just happened to be vegetarian, and loved Indian food, I decided to give it a try.
I figured go big, or go home. After only buying a few exotic ingredients from the Indian grocery store, I had the menu set. I made butter paneer masala as the main dish, mushrooms with peas as a side, mong dal vada (lentil fritters) with cilantro chutney, and mango cheesecake for dessert!
It was a bit ambitious, but I kinda like the challenge in a short time frame. The YouTube videos were really helpful, but for the most part, everything was fairly simple and pretty quick. The lentil fritters took the longest and was the furthest from my comfort zone. It was the first time I’ve ever deep friend anything!
I was really surprised that everything tasted like Indian food from a restaurant. I’m definitely hooked on this website now and want to try everything. The videos are great because she doesn’t have some huge commercial kitchen that’s intimidating. She’s in a normal residential kitchen that makes everything seem very accessible and do-able. And I figured if I wanted some things non-vegetarian, I could just throw some chicken in it too.
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