Food questions

[icepixie]

Apparently my local Kroger has turned into Import Central, particularly for European countries. This is AWESOME. McVitie's biscuits! Blackcurrant jam! Malteasers! About twenty different varieties of black and flavored black tea! Interesting herbal teas from Caribbean countries! German mustard and Swiss chocolate! Thai noodles! Indian curries!

This last one brings up a question. The only Indian food I've ever had that I can remember is korma--once at fair, and last week out of a jar.* I've liked what I've had so far, but don't really know where to go from there. Does anyone have any favorites to suggest? (I know making from scratch would probably make anything taste better, but let's be honest--I'm not even all that great with stuff where I know what the end product is supposed to taste like. I'm gonna go with the jars and cans at least until I figure out what I like.) There were lots of jars with interesting names full of interesting-looking sauces and chutneys, as well as things like naan bread mix and cannisters of poppadums (sp?). I like food with a lot of flavor--if it's bland, I will undoubtedly douse it with salt, pepper, garlic, and/or sugar. What should I try?

(I got a jar of tikka masala sauce today that I plan on trying later this month. The description sounded good, and I remember hearing the name when I was in the UK...)


* I know, I know--I lived in England for nine months and completely missed out on Indian food. I don't know how that happened. It wasn't intentional.

Comments

[tarzanic.livejournal.com]

(Am on page nine of my paper and am currently revising. Hoping to pull another half page to page out of it, but am not terribly worried at this point, since the max is ten pages.)

Ooooooooh, yum, imports! :D Naan and poppadums are very tasty. Btw, poppadums used to be on Farscape all the time, so it makes me giggle a bit to see them at the grocery store.

RasaMalaysia.com is my current fun go-to site for recipes. It has an Indian section: http://rasamalaysia.com/recipes/indian-recipes/ You can also just check out the entire recipe index http://rasamalaysia.com/rasa-malaysia-recipe-index/ which lists everything by main ingredient. The author gives some good suggestions for curry pastes and such.

I don't have favorite recipes at the moment, but I also really like chicken saag and samosas (http://www.samosa-recipe.com/).

[alto2.livejournal.com]

Honestly? Go to a restaurant. You'll get a much better idea of what's what, how it should taste, etc. The jarred stuff isn't necessarily bad, but it's probably totally overloaded with socium, and may not really be authentic thanks as much to the process of, well, being processed as anything else. Going to a restaurant (a lot of Indian places have buffets where you can try lots of stuff) is a much better guide than either a jarred sauce or your friends who may not have the same taste as you do.

That said, my personal restaurant favorites are Malai Kofta, Palak Paneer, and Navratan Korma. The only one of those you can buy in a jar is korma, and you'd need to add your own veg/meat. You couldn't pay me to buy Palak Paneer in a heat-and-serve pouch, having had it once and found the texture of the "spinach" (it really bore no resemblance to spinace, aside from the color) utterly revolting, so as I say...tread lightly with the prepared grocery stuff.

[chickwithmonkey.livejournal.com]

I like the orange and yellow stuff. I don't know what it is, but that's what I eat. I avoid brown and green. Have fun!

[rowdycamels.livejournal.com]

MALTESERS!!!! OMG SO JELLUS!!!1!

Ahem. As far as Indian goes, I am strongly anti-curry, and therefore tend to avoid, er, that whole subcontinent. But good for you for being adventurous!

[thiswaltz.livejournal.com]

yay import foods! although I probably would have been better off without an Arnots habbit.

Tikka masala is often lovely. And korma. I personally don't have mcuh of a taste for storebought indian food, although some of the sauses are good for bases of your own curries. There's some reasonably good premade naan you can get though.

mainly I like going to restaurants - good Indian food is a *lot* of work and it can be hard to get all the right ingrediants. Palak paneer is great (Paneer is a soft cheese) and aloo gobi (lightly curried cauliflower & onions) and eggplant biryani, pakora (veggie and chickpea flour batter croquettes)... it's a genre of food that's good for veggers. I highly reccomend.

[asinpterodactyl.livejournal.com]

Everyone who says "go to a restaurant" is right. It's the only way to get Indian food that tastes the way it should. But the store-bought stuff is pretty good too -- it may not be perfect, but it's worth a few bucks.

Me, I like anything with paneer in it. (It's a soft cheese, kind of like ricotta).

[babylil.livejournal.com]

They're selling jars of curry sauce, right? If it's the Sharwoods ones, get the saag masala. It's seriously the best curry sauce from a jar I've ever tasted.