Thursday, April 05, 2007

Check your list, check your cupboards

Note to self: When you plan to make a recipe and you say you have all the ingredients, it's a good idea to really double check. Just because you had a certain spice blend, doesn't mean you may not have thrown it away during a cleaning purge! Oops.

That said, I made Indian Butter Chicken and was missing two major ingredients. I substituted and moved on. The final dinner was pretty close to the real deal. I was missing fresh ginger. I used a teaspoon of dried, ground ginger. It was ok, but I really like the fresh ginger and pop it brings to the party. I was also missing the specific spice blend. I had it. But I got it over a year ago and probably just a month ago tossed it, as it was getting stale. Oh well. I substituted with another Indian spice blend and then just started adding shakes of this and that; cumin, cinnamon, fenugreek(sp?), some tandoori spice, some curry...and there were one or two others...oh, ground celery root...I was just playing. The final dish was pretty good!

BUT DOUBLE CHECK YOUR RECIPE AND YOUR PANTRY!

1 comment:

Barbara said...

I hate it when that happens. When we first moved to DC our appt building had a mini-mart on the first floor. That was sooooo handy when I found I was missing an ingredient. Since we moved, I really miss that convenience.