This ended up one of the hottest meals I’ve ever cooked at home. A wonderful burn. Similar to a typical Indian curry but adds potatoes (I subbed some green peas instead) and vinegar in the sauce (I deglaze the pan in white vinegar).
Side of awfully mushy rice that I could not bear to include in the photo-- a little too much water. However, the gluey texture helped quell the heat.
No cocktail tonight, and thank goodness since I may have actually ignited.
I had a burger for dinner via delivery a couple days ago that came with a ridiculous amount of fries. I saved about half and made some carnitas fries tonight with guac, sour cream, Kraft singles, and salsa Mexicana.
Leftovers (just a bit of each):
Ginger scallion beef
Cumin Sichuan pepper lamb
Fried rice
Chicken corn soup
Made:
Vegetarian corn soup
Green beans with crisp fried garlic and cashews
Broccoli in garlic sauce
Mushrooms with soy and chilli oil (LGM!)
Rice cakes with chives and cabbage
Scallion-ginger-cilantro condiment - love this stuff
I finally ordered Lao Gan Ma here last week - Instacart messed up and so we got the fried chilli with peanuts rather than my favorite chilli crisp, but everyone still got hooked on first taste (Even the MSG-complainers )
Indian vindaloo isn’t actually burn-your-mouth-off spicy. It’s flavorful from the spice, tangy from the vinegar, and porky-fatty. Yes, spicy. But not palate-burning.
I always wonder how these dishes evolved overseas to an impetus to burn the mouth - how could people taste any of the other flavors once that happened?
Even naga chillies / bhut jholokia / ghost peppers (which burned - blistered - my friend’s fingers when she brought some fresh from where they’re grown, and a bit of juice squirted onto them) are prized for their flavor, not just their burn. One in a pot of pork or chicken stew, simmered slowly, has the most wonderful, subtle flavor - plus a slow burn. Add much more, and it’s just burn, you can’t taste anything past that.
As an aside, I’d highly recommend potatoes in vindaloo next time - they soak up the spice and vinegar in a wonderful and complementary way, and are fabulous half-mashed into the rice with every bite!
Thanks for the input. I make my Vindaloo spicy as for personal preference, which my BF tolerates. If I was making this for a group of people, I certainly would not go as hot.
I’ve made this once in the past and used potatoes, but I didn’t have any on hand-- how did that happen?
As a side note, I know traditional Vindaloo is done with pork as you mentioned (Portuguese influence?), but any time I have have seen/ordered it on a restaurant menu, it has always been chicken and maybe shrimp. Come to think of it, I do not recall ever seeing pork on the menu of the Indian restaurants I frequent. Why is that?
Because it’s a Goan Christian dish, and most restaurants are owned by (and the cooks are) Hindus or Muslims - most of the former and all of the latter don’t eat pork.
In India, vindaloo isn’t found at generic North Indian restaurants - usually only at the rare Goan restaurant, or club kitchens that have Christian staff and multi-religious members. Or you have to track down someone who makes it at home and sells it. And then, it’s only pork.
This is a favorite cuisine of my father’s: he loves nothing more than finding an excellent rendition of anything Goan (I’m the one kid who developed an anti-Goan palate perhaps as a result of his quest )
First friend invited in for dinner in well over a year. Similar vax elapse as ours, and from a pretty well defined and maintained bubble. Spur of the moment, and sourced mostly from pantry, fridge and yard.
With drinks, green grapes wrapped with strips of prosciutto.
Sorrel soup with giant scallop. This turned out to be a “Wowzer!” (I love it when guests moan!)
Last night I made an Asian zoodle soup. Homemade miso broth, zucchini and carrot zoodles, baby bok choy, Fresno chile, green onions, gochujang marinate shrimp and a 7 minute egg. Why didn’t I think to dip it in soy sauce. Great idea. Cabbage slaw with sugar snap peas, orange baby bell, and rice vinegar, oo, red chile paste dressing with a sprinkle of furikake.
I went with comfort food tonight: Baked Mac and Ham and Cheese from the long-ago Mueller’s elbow noodle box.
Cabot’s Seriously Sharp cheddar cheese is perfect for this, as is the honey ham steak I cut up to add to the elbows. Panko crumbs mixed with a bit of garlic powder, dried orange peel, and dried parsley (to replicate a McCormick’s blend I don’t think is made anymore) for the topping. The parsley was the veg. I couldn’t be bothered with anything else.
And wine to toast my brother, who would have been 66yo today. Miss you, bro.
Different dinners tonight for the kids and the adults.
Kids had GF Mac and cheese - pretty darn delicious but the breadcrumbs suffered under the overheated broiler - I blew most of the burnt top off and into the sink (and the kids didn’t seem to notice).
Roasted zucchini for them that reminded me of the delicious zucchini antipasto at an italian restaurant near me - just not soaked in olive oil
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I had some cut vegetables and aromatics leftover from yesterday’s Chinese meal, so I made rice noodles for the adults. Lots of cabbage, carrots, chives, scallions, and onions. I couldn’t find sesame paste or tahini, so I subbed cashew butter that was in plain sight. Plus the chilli part of the LGM chilli oil. Very nice.
Korean banchan-style spinach on the side.
Salmon en papillote with that delicious scallion-ginger condiment.
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I made GF donut holes (glazed) for dessert for the nephews. Made the dough over the weekend for a taste-off with aebleskivers. Surprisingly good, and it may be the first time I’ve glazed something properly
(Even the MSG-complainers 
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(I’m the one kid who developed an anti-Goan palate perhaps as a result of his quest 
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