pomme purée + omelette [France]

Today's dishes were French. They were very indulgent, and by that I mean I probably consumed a half stick of butter at lunch alone. 

***Pomme purée ***

The recipe is here. I used my new potato masher / ricer. It's a pretty self-explanatory recipe.

Verdict: Tasty, especially when hot. But I ate lunch after it sat while I cooked the eggs, so they were somewhat lukewarm. They were just too rich in my opinion, or maybe the combination of these two dishes was bad. I think that's probably it...

*** Omelette ***

This is a very simple omelette. It's supposed to look a lot prettier than my photo (recipe) because I think you really, really have to wait until it's very thin and firm to roll it up. Well, I'll try again tomorrow when I make it again!

I accidentally bought cilantro instead of parsley, and I'm not about to put that on my eggs. So I just left the greens out. This was, yes, a very beige meal.

Verdict: Tasty! Unfortunately, too rich with the mashed potatoes. And, I think they were too salty. But I'll try again later this week and see if I can get it right next time.

"beef" croquette [Rio de Janeiro]

Today I tried out another fried recipe, this time from Rio de Janeiro / Southeast Brazil. Here's the recipe link.

I used Beyond Meat instead of beef (I actually wanted to use Impossible Beef, but it appears my local grocery doesn't stock it). I completely forgot to buy parsley or green onion, so I left those out. For the breadcrumbs, I used panko.

 

During frying. I used oil leftover from the pakoras.

 

Finished product.

They don't look anything like the photo in the recipe, and the chunks of onion reminded me a lot more of the mystery croquettes from Kill la Kill.

Verdict: Very tasty! Hard to go wrong with fried food. I might should have chopped the onions smaller. I do wish I had some kind of sauce to go with them.

kadhi pakora, patta gobi, and masala chai [Pakistan]

Right off the bat, this is the best meal I've cooked, and maybe one of the best home-cooked meals I've ever had. It's definitely convincing me that, as a vegetarian, I should just cook from that region of the world. 

*** kadhi pakora ***

These are pakora in a yogurt-based sauce. The recipe itself is somewhat complex, since it requires first making pakora, then cooking them in the sauce. They were really fun to make, though.

The dish right after tadka. I served it with plain steamed basmati.

Verdict: Sooo good! It wasn't too spicy, but wasn't that mild. Honestly, the recipe is a bit more than 4 servings. I had so much food for each of my meals.

*** patta gobi ***

This is basically just sautéed cabbage. Still, it was pretty good. I used plain cabbage (not napa) and left it in larger chunks than the recipe shows. In the end, it was pretty tasty, if a bit more oily than I expected.

Verdict: Very tasty! Good as a side dish but slightly too oily for my taste (perhaps I just added too much oil).

*** masala chai ***

I had some good masala chai from a Tibetan food truck a few weeks ago, and was excited to try making it myself. 

Verdict: Really good, though next time I might try to make it a bit spicier. Also, though it was very relaxing to drink in the evening, it takes quite a long time to make, and requires keeping milk which I don't regularly do. But, it was delicious.

The full meal, served with rice and chai.