Annalena goes Indian - sort of

I've commented on this blog, before, that my comfort zone is unmistakably Italian food. If you want to extend it, Mediterranean food. I believe I do some southern French dishes very well, some from Morocco, some Spanish Mediterranean dishes, and I've done a middle eastern dish or two that I've been proud of.
Indian food, however, has always defeated me. Much more so than Mexican food. Mexican food, I "sort of" get. And I have friends, like the amazing Sue Torres to turn to and ask "what went wrong," with a bit of a pout and a frightened look. And Sue always nods wisely and says something like "I have trouble with it too" (and she's lying through her teeth), and then says something like "just cook it for another three hours and it will be fine. When it comes to Indian food, however, I don't have such a source. I COULD turn to my friend Shiv, but he would look at me with amazement and say "I should be asking YOU how to do that." So, on Indian food, I am on my own, and I fail, miserably, every single time I try an Indian dish. I burn the spices. I scorch the milk in the milk candy. The only dish I can turn out consistently, is carrot halvah, which half of my Indian friends tell me isn't Indian at all. Like I would know?

But... I get a craving occasionally to pull out all those spices that begin with a "c" (cumin, coriander, curry, cardomom), and try something. What I do can hardly be called authentically Indian. But it has sort of a "flavor" of Indian about it. And I feel like I've stretched and done something that I haven't done before.

So, this past week, with my friend Ken scheduled to come to dinner (and abandoning me for a date... Hmmmm), knowing that he is a fan of Indian food (he took me to "Bombay Talkie," where I ate curried beets. CLEARLY not an Indian dish), I found some recipes that were "borderline." The second one will follow tomorrow. This one, I really liked. I liked it because it's starch. Potatoes. I liked it because, in spite of the warning that it took nearly an hour and a half to make, it took less than an hour (well, ok, I split up the cooking time). And I like the interplay of spices . Is it Indian? I doubt it. I have to turn to the experts, like Shiv, to tell me yes or no. But I offer it to you as a "prasad" (look it up), as a dish that is worth making.

Culinary snob that I am, I did in fact have all of the spices in the house. I bet you have all of them, except maybe coriander. Borrow some from me. And yes, as the recipe says, you SHOULD start with whole spices and grind them yourself. I couldn't find my cumin seeds, so I used the ground stuff. I didn't think there was any problem with it. This is a dish I will make again. In fact, I can still smell it cooking in the kitchen. That, in and of itself, is enough to want to make it over. It smells GOOD.

Ok, here we go. You need two pounds of potatoes. The recipe calls for fingerlings, but I didn't have them. So I used the potatoes I had, and when they were cooked, I cut them into fingerling sizes. Boil the two pounds of potatoes, in their skins, in a lot of salted water, for about ten minutes. They will soften, but they will not be soft. Drain them, and when they are cool enough to handle, peel them (if you have asbestos hands, do it when they're warm). I boiled the potatoes in the morning, and cooked the dish at night. Do that if you can.

When you're ready to proceed, preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Get your spices ready. If you're grinding whole ones, put a teaspoon of coriander, and half a teaspoon of cumin, in your spice grinder and get it working. If not, use the powders. Combine them with a quarter teaspoon each of tumeric and cayenne (ok, you may not have tumeric in the house either. Get some. And be careful. This is a very powerful yellow orange dye. You can consider using it to henna your hair, but smelling it all day may be an issue for you. ).

You're just about done. Now, dump those potatoes, peeled, and cut to size onto a baking sheet. Pour a quarter cup of vegetable oil over them and mix that all up with your hands. Now, clean and dry y our hands, pour the spices over the potatoes, and mingle it all together. Now spread them all out on the sheet. There's enough oil to keep them from sticking. Sprinkle them with salt to the degree you think you'll want it. Some like it saltier than others. Get the tray into the oven, and bake for 45 minutes. Every fifteen minutes or so, if you think about it, shake the pan. It's not necessary, and probably adds nothing to the finished product, but it somehow made me feel like I was doing something fancy.

After 45 minutes, the potatoes will have dried a lot and crisped a lot too. Now, the fun part. Get something solid, and "smash" them a bit. That way when you eat them, you get some soft potato meat, and some crisp skin. And of course, a mouthful of those lovely spices.

Can you vary this? OF COURSE. One of the wonderful things about this recipe is that the creative cook can see that, there is a total of 2 teaspoons of mixed spices. You can use whatever you like. Don't do something stupid and call it Indian if you decide to use dill, rosemary, oregano and pimento, but play with the idea.

Allegedly, this is enough for 4 people. Trust me, once you make it, if you're making it for four people, you will wish you made more.

Really very tasty. I'm going to send it off to Shiv and challenge him to make it. Hey, you never kn ow....