News You Can Bruise for 2005 February 10

(11) Thu Feb 10 2005 14:45 PST Curry Recipe: From Sumana's mother, Nagalakshmi, who wants me to come to India and says if I do she'll teach me how to cook Indian food.

• 2-3 teaspoons peanut oil
• 1 teaspoon mustard seed
• 1 teaspoon turmeric
• small amount of grated ginger

Heat the oil in a pan. When it's hot, add the mustard seed, turmeric, and ginger. Then add:

• Vegetables cut into bite-sized pieces (in my experience, 3/4 head cauliflower and 5 quartered new potatoes suffice)
• 1/4 cup water

Close the lid and leave for 5-8 minutes. Then add:

• Curry powder
• Salt
• Lemon juice
• Coconut powder (!)

Serve with rice or naan or whatever.

My problem was, I was using too much liquid and my curry always was soupy.

I revently bought a bunch of spices mail-order (more on this later) but I didn't get any turmeric. I thought the only reason people used turmeric was for color, to fool diners into thinking you'd put saffron into the food when actually you were too cheap to buy saffron. Sumana and her mother think this is a hilarious misconception of mine.