Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Lamb Rogan Josh: After


While the adults in the house enjoyed the lamb rogan josh, the under-ten set gives it a mixed review. This is the way Oscar and Ike evaluate everything - with the "Gladiator"-style thumbs-up, -down, or the milquetoast non-review, thumbs-sideways. Here, Oscar is trying not to piss me off by giving my Indian curry a fully negative review, but the fact that he barely ate two bites of it is what I consider a thumbs way down. Ike thought that "the meat warms [his] throat up," and later augmented his review to "too spicy." You can see that I served it over basmati rice and garnished the whole shebang with cilantro. This kind of dish tends to be better the second day. More interesting posts will surely follow, not all limited to the subject of food. In unrelated news, I sang "Okie From Muskogee" to my co-workers today and discovered that despite the fact that I spent hour upon hour painting my toenails with Malia Gagliano in high school listening to the "Platoon" soundtrack on cassette on her back deck, I could not remember that many of the lyrics. How perplexing is memory.

Lamb Rogan Josh: Before

Long time no post. I have just gotten my hands on my very own digital camera, so as soon as I grok how to use it there will be pictures galore and more posts. Tonight I'm making lamb rogan josh. What's not to like about Indian food? Seriously. Naan is delicious. Tikka masala is delicious. A tandoori is capable of alchemically transmogrifying even the most uninspiring raw materials into pure red-tinted deliciousness. I was originally planning on making this dish on Christmas day. I had all of my ingredients assembled ahead of time, or so I thought. On the day, I realized that I had NO fresh ginger (an ingredient I usually have around), thus triggering an hours-long trek all over Madison looking for a grocery store that was both open and stocked with fresh ginger. No such thing. So we all ended up going to Taste of India for dinner. My understanding that Chinese restaurants were the customary destination for a Christmas meal out was incorrect; Indian restaurants, at least in Madison, are the go-to destination. The rogan josh dish was pushed up to tonight and is currently simmering away on the stove. I could eat lamb for every meal. Not only is it delicious, but there is something delightfully perverse in consuming an animal that is so cute and fuzzy while it is living and doesn't have a euphemistic name once it's transformed into meat, like "veal" or "squab". If I can figure out this newfangled photo-graph machine, I will post a picture of the finished product and you can all wish you were in my cozy turmeric-scented kitchen this evening, listening to me whinge endlessly about rude library patrons.