L u k e  &  M e e t a ' s

First Indian Dinner Cooked in Bangalore

When we first got a kitchen up and running in our flat in Bangalore, bless our
western hearts, we made pasta and homemade tomato sauce. But that's not
too interesting, so this page chronicles our first attempt at an Indian dinner:
mixed vegetable sabzi and roti with a cucumber salad.

All these groceries, we bought at Food World. We hadn't yet explored the City Market, a much
better place to buy veggies! We didn't use all this stuff in dinner, but it's an example of a shopping
trip. Above, you can spot brown rice (called "unrefined rice"), onions, string beans, coconut,
chickpeas ("chana"), chili powder, sabzi masala, mustard seeds, cucumbers and more.

First the chopping. First garlic and onions (avoided by some Hindus as aphrodisiacs!).
Then string beans, spinach, carrots & sweet potatoes. We blanched and precooked
some of this while we started the onions and garlic in oil and mustard seeds. Eventually, it all went
into that pot with sabzi masala, garam masala, chili powder, and asoefitida powder.

Meanwhile, Meeta was making roti. Roti is a type of indian flatbread. Yummy!
And good for scooping up other food with. There's an endless variety of
Indian breads, but roti are pretty standard. Whole wheat flour, water, and a little oil, kneaded
together then rolled into little flying saucers like you can see. These are rolled out
into very thin discs with a small rolling pin called a velan. Then each one is cooked
on a skillet called a tava and finished over an open flame.

The sabzi wasn't much to look at, but it was tasty and the whole dinner
was satisfying and healthy! If this were a real Indian dinner, it wouldn't be
complete without rice and dal, but for us it was fine.

I was very satisfied...

...and cleaned my stainless steel plate!

That's the story of our first dinner.

I was also raving about our new Bisleri dispenser,
so I thought I'd include that photo, too...