All Spiced Up!

I've been so busy today! I spent practically my entire day in the kitchen!

Remember I said I was looking for recipes that uses my new packet of spice, garam marsala? Well, I was browsing online, and every recipe that had garam marsala in it were Indian dishes, and every of those freaking dishes asked for tons more spices that I had never even heard of. And I wasn't going to go out of my way to procure all those extra ingredients just to use this one ingredient.

After hours of browsing (I was bored), I finally found a recipe that asked for minimal spices: curry powder, cumin, cinnamon. So with a flash of "brilliance" I decided to substitute garam marsala for the curry and cumin, since I assumed they all tasted quite similar anyway.

The original recipe called for sweet potatoes (the more well-known orange kind that I dislike), but I couldn't find individual sweet potatoes on sale at my local supermarket, and I didn't want to buy a big bag of sweet potatoes that I don't like so much
(you just can't go back to those kind of sweet potatoes after discovering the better-tasting japanese sweet potatoes!) So I used pumpkin instead.

So here's Sophia's take on sweet potato-chickpea curry pumpkin-chickpea curry~!


First I heated up some onions until soft...


Coated the onions with garam marsala and cinnamon...


Added the chickpeas, diced tomatoes, and tomato puree...


Pour in water, then let it simmer...

A whole bunch of spinach...


Waited for spinach to wilt then stirred in the diced pumpkin...


And.................................................................Ta-da~!


Does that look appetizing to you? It was brownish-orangish, with flecks of green and red from the tomatoes and spinach. I thought it looked pretty good. But did it taste good?

The tasting was a strange experience. The first bite made me recoil. The spice just hit my tongue like a jolt of electricity, and not in a good way at all! I had overloaded on the garam marsala; that was all I tasted and it was just way too much! I almost threw the whole thing out! But then I really did not want to waste food, and it was already 2 pm at that time and I was quite hungry. So I looked for ways to improve it instead: I put in a dash of tabasco sauce to counteract the overwhelming garam marsala taste, and also a dollop of plain yogurt to cool down the spice level.


Ah, much better! In fact, I actually quite enjoyed it afterwards. I'm not sure I'll make this again though. And I think I'm going to steer away from any Indian recipes from now on, at least for the time being. I'll just leave all the fancy spices to the experts and buy the food from them instead. Have any of you tried making an Indian dish? How did it turn out?


Oh, here's a random piece of cucumber I had with the curry. Crunchy and cool, the perfect complement to the spicy curry!

And then I got really really busy. I'm preparing dinner for my church small group tomorrow, so I spent the entire afternoon doing some early preparations so I would not be too rushed tomorrow. What's the menu for tomorrow? Hee, hee, hee. You'll just have to wait till tomorrow to find out. But I'm really quite excited about it.

So for afternoon snack I had my usual favorite: sweet potatoes! I did not take a picture of them because I'm sure you're quite sick of sweet potato pictures by now (>_________<). I also had random bites here and there as I taste-tested the ____ and the ____ and the _______ for tomorrow. Oh, and answer to the person who asked (but did not have an acessible blogger profile?): I bake these sweet potatoes in a 400 degree Farenheit oven for about an hour. Just follow your nose! By dinnertime I was quite burned out! I didn't want to spend too much time racking up ideas on what to have for dinner, so I just revisited my old favorite creation...
And this time, it has A NAME! It is now called: Eggplasta pudding (eggplant + pasta). As much as I would like to take credit for this creative fun name, it was Jiaying from Brownbread girl who gave this dish its name. Thanks, Jiaying, for the awesome suggestion!


Heh heh...Today is sort of like it's christening...


Don't those two yolks look like eyes? Now I need a mouth! Just for fun, any suggestions and ideas as to what I can use to make edible mouth?


Again...Runny egg yolks = *Moan*~

Alright everyone, I'm off to make myself some oatmeal again...Tune in tomorrow for my special dinner for church small group! God I sound like a freaking commercial, but here's another ad: Free photography book giveaway at Zestycook.com!!