Monday, August 09, 2010

When I feel like cooking...

Now that I am lecturing and having full days at uni, Andy and I have been eating mainly simple meals -- stirfried veggies, food from the freezer, pasta, etc.  But sometimes I super-feel like cooking.  When this falls on the weekend, the result is often a multi-part meal, like this one.

Early in the afternoon we decided that we would have dhal for dinner.  That started me on a roll of Indian-inspired dishes.

First up, I made flat breads.  These are based mainly on a recipe from Vegan Planet, but I kneaded some cumin and sesame seeds into the dough.  I cooked these up and then wrapped them in a tea towel while everythign else was cooked.

After the flat breads were finished it was still too early to cook dinner but I still felt like creating.  I decided a chutney would be good.  I've never made chutney, and rarely even eaten them, but I desperately wanted chutney that night.  But with almost nothing in the house, our chutney options were limited.  I jokingly said I could make a carrot chutney, as we had a few carrots laying around.  Then I quickly realised that I *should* make a carrot chutney.  Carrots and raisins spiced with coriander and cinnamon cooked together for an hour into a beautiful, sweet chutney.

Then it was finally time to cook the main part of the meal.  At this stage I was a little tired of standing in the kitchen, so this turned out a wee bit half-assed.  But it was still good!

Red lentil dhal, and brown rice cooked with tumeric.  Although I'm no Jimmy Seervai, this was a good dinner, and all the components made a really yummy wrap for lunch the next day.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Whoa, I do not mean to be rude but does Jimmy mean something different where you are from? Because here it is a pretty offensive racial slur. Just in case you weren't aware....

Theresa said...

Oh no! I didn't realise that, I was referring to a contestant on Masterchef Australia who was the king of flat breads, Indian spices and curries generally. I will edit!

Hannah said...

Thank god you aren't the Masterchef Jimmy, because otherwise you'd never eat or make anything BUT these meals!

Whereas this way, I can be excited by your clever addition of cumin and sesame to flatbread, and be equally pleased to know you can and will cook other things next week :D

Susan said...

That looks great. :) I love it when the cooking bug strikes.

jess_fildespages said...

Wow, I'd love to try all of these!

Vaala ◪ said...

This looks like a serious feast...especially loving the chutney! Are flatbreads hard to make?

Lori said...

The chutney looks great and the ingredient list sounds very tasty. What do you eat that on? Do you put it on the flatbread?

Theresa said...

Vaala - it's really easy to make the dough, which is just flour and water basically. Rolling them out is a little tricky because sometimes they stick and they can be tough if you work them too much, but overall I would say it's pretty easy to get edible flatbreads!

Lori - I had the chutney on the side and took a little bit with every bite. I'm not sure if that's the way anyone else eats it, but it worked for me!

x said...

I'm glad you're not Jimmy from MasterChef too, your meal looks better than anything he makes :p

And yummo, I like preparing different components as well, looks like you paired together some great ideas, I want to try making the carrot chutney.