I'm doing Indian week. Sort of.

[Flamingoose]

I am feeling a bit fed up with the usual meals. Decided to have a 'themed' week. Approximately Indian, though not at all authentic I know.
I work full time and the kids all have very busy schedules so nothing too time consuming. Did a bit of prep over the weekend.

Monday: Chana dal (v quick in the pressure cooker) and baingan bharta (eggplant curry) with rice and roti. I already flame roasted the eggplants, so just 20 mins prep time and 35ish cooking.
Tuesday: Moong dal (pressure cooker again) and a made-up Sri-Lankan (ish) potato and green bean curry. Rice and roti again.
Weds: Quite a busy day for us, so just a kidney bean dish with rice (rajma chawal).
Thurs: Besan Chilla (gram flour pancakes) with mixed veg.
Friday: Leftovers!

We're vegetarian, so no meat recipes. It has been quite a cheap week to shop for, which is nice.

Sounds bloody lovely.

Sounds delicious. I often chain my Indian cooking, making a dish each day and finishing off the dish from the day before so leftovers don't sit in the fridge for too long.

Indian food is good for batch cooking, because I find a lot of it quite time consuming, but also too 'fiddly' for after work, lots of chopping and stirring.

So I might make 2/3 dishes on Sunday then have them on Sunday/Monday/Tuesday with little more effort, just adding rice, salad. You can also serve all the leftover bits and call it Indian tapas and they'll just have to make do.

What about adding paneer tikka? I like mine with flat bread, grated carrot, lettuce, red onion soaked in vinegar, mango chutney and mint sauce mixed into yogurt.

I make no apologies for inauthenticity, I like it.

Home made onion bhajis and samosas are amazing.. We got a tiny fryer just for these!

I am Indian and mostly cook only Indian food for dinner because we all love it. We are also mostly veggie. I cook in bulk and freeze half to make it easier.

I am quite impressed that you are making besan chillas. Most people don't know they exist:) You could also try dosas? Paneer is also a good source of protein and very easy to cook.

I think authenticity does not matter as long as it is tasty. ( I make very inauthentic Mexican food!).

It is very cheap. Most people do not believe my grocery bill.

I'd believe your grocery bill @JanisMoplin

Indian food is probably as cheap as you can make, especially if you're vegetarian, and also if you buy your spices, pulses, rice, flours in bulk. Plus most of the veg used is inexpensive. Even if you use eggs, chicken, dairy etc, it doesn't cost a lot, often because the amount of the more expensive ingredient is small within the whole dish.

I'll make a pan of dhal that does my lunches all week and it probably costs under £1, even with rice, all the spices, coriander and butter

You can make absolutely delicious sabzis from dirt cheap veg like potatoes, carrots and swede.

Ha yes! Daal is very cheap, though that is not why we eat it, just culturally used to it. DH occasionally makes himself a chicken curry but even that uses very little meat.

Yesterday's quick dinner was paneer bhurji ( scramble) with rotis and a tomato cucumber raita on the side.

It's going well so far! Everything very happily received, and a couple of us have taken leftovers for lunch. I feel it's quite a healthy week too. I need to get better at knowing how much of spices to add. Too much turmeric in last night's Sri Lankan potato and green bean.
Bit of an error today - got home to make the kidney beans and realised they should have been soaking for at least 12 hours. Oops. So have swapped kidney beans with gram flour pancakes. Kidney beans now soaking for tomorrow.

Am getting cheerful requests for Mexican week next! Or Italian week!

If I might make a suggestion, a pinch of turmeric is usually plenty. I am always appalled by certain recipes- Jamie Oliver and Allison Roman for one- which suggest a whole tablespoon of turmeric. And it needs to be roasted well to avoid that horrible raw turmeric flavour.

As for kidney beans, I happily use Tesco tinned ones. It's fine. But if you cook Indian food often, I suggest a pressure cooker or an instapot to cook pulses easily.

I really don't feel like cooking over Jubilee weekend so will probably not cook Indian and fall back on pasta or quesadillas instead.

That's interesting. Yes, raw turmeric is not good. How do you roast it well?

Quick aside:

Not sure what an instapot is, but it's important not to use a slow cooker alone to cook kidney beans, as the temperature isn't high enough to destroy the toxins that will make you as sick as a dog. Obviously you know this since you're using whatever your technique is and not vomiting copiously, but people might come across this who, like me, don't know what an instapot is, and might think it's okay to cook dried kidney beans in a slow cooker.

I exist to spread the gospel of the thoroughly boiled kidney bean 👍

I'm using a pressure cooker. Is that okay?

Must admit, have only ever used canned kidney beans before but got carried away with pressure cooking other dried pulses. Going to google now before potentially poisoning the family :/

Kidney beans need a hard boil for 10 mins and then into the pressure cooker.

But I guess that as pressure cookers get hotter than saucepans, it should be fine.

The dried kidney beans have been soaking overnight and will be pressure cooked for 18-20 mins. I'm googling and that seems to be okay?

I love this. I loved cooking once upon a time til Lockdown (s) knocked it out of me. This idea could be thee inspiration I need.

I absolutely love Indian food and think it’s such an easy way to make really tasty food easily in quite an impressive way

In what I’m sure is a completely inauthentic way, I find toasting panch phoran then adding sliced onions, garlic, ginger with oil is a great base for absolutely anything - paneer, chickpeas, chicken thighs, veggies etc etc. Then add in any other seasoning you like with chopped tomatoes, crème fraiche etc and it’s done.

i life shop bought frozen parathas too. So easy.

If they've been cooked hot enough for long enough it's fine. I can't see why the pressure cooker shouldn't be hot enough and long enough — if you've googled it and all seems okay then presumably that deals with it. The real problems tend to come with just bunging them straight into a slow cooker for ages with no preboil, so they come out seemingly totally edible but still full of bean poison cause it never reached a high enough temperature It was the mention of something called an instapot that triggered my "evangelise about the importance of fully cooking kidney beans" reflex, just in case someone might interpret that as meaning a slow cooker was okay.

Apologies for the slight derail!

Veg biryani with a cucumber raita?

Planner kathi rolls

I cheat and put samosa filling in a toaster

I probably shouldn't have mentioned Instapot because I use a pressure cooker. But my friends use an Instapot? But yes please research it. I thought it functions like a pressure cooker or can be programmed to do so?
I never hear of the kidney bean poisoning thing in the Indian community though. But we do soak overnight.

Re roasting turmeric I just mean frying it thoroughly for a few minutes rather than just bunging it in.

I'm actually not sure if I made rajma chawal or rajma masala. It was delicious though! 2 thumbs up from everyone.

Rajma chawal just means beans with rice.:) Chawal means rice.