Cooking inspired by literature

I had a really boring dinner planned for Thursday, just rice and soycutash. My back was hurting and that usually kills the motivation for grocery shopping and cooking alike. While I was soaking in the tub, trying to numb the back pain with excessive heat, I started reading 'The Toss of a lemon' by Padma Viswanathan. Slowly some kind of atmosphere of India grew inside me and by the time I made it to the kitchen to prepare dinner, it could no longer be boring, it had to be indian inspired. So here is what I did.

I started some brown Jasmin rice in the rice cooker. I added ground cloves and coriander, ginger, cumin, salt, golden raisins and butter to it. When the rice was getting closer to being done, I took my wok and heated up some Ghee (clarified butter), added some Panch Puran, dillseeds and diced onions. When the onions where nice and soft, I added frozen soycutash (soybeans, corn and red pepper) and unsweetened coconut and salt. When I considered it done, I added just a bit of cream to bind it a bit.

Since the kids like fresh veggies with dinner, I cut up carrots and celery and made a dip from cream cheese, milk, curry, onion, ginger and mustard powder. The rice got a sprinkling of sliced almonds and we also had European style yogurt and Tamarind chutney to perfect the taste. As a treat we had sugar coated fennel seeds, of course, because we all love them. I am lucky to have a good Indian supermarket in town.

And so, just because the book inspired me, we had wonderful - yet super easy - dinner that lasted well over an hour filled with conversation.