A lot. A lot a lot. The few times I have had it prior to coming here, it has been great, granted, but oh, my gosh, it is SO much better here.
On Thursday night we went out to our first Indian dinner in London, which happens to be famous for its superlative Indian food. About three blocks from the flats there's a cute little restaurant called Café Saffron, and eight of us headed there hungry and excited. Well, an hour and a half later (!!!) we were finally eating our delicious Indian food! I had chicken khorai, which is a spicy, savory mix of onions, chilies, peppers, chicken, and herbs in a sort of creamy dark sauce. I can't even describe it, it was so good. You eat it all over naan, really good Indian flatbread that's almost like pizza crust on crack. I LOVED IT! Others in our group had chicken korma (creamy, mild, sweet-ish), vindaloo (SO SPICY), chicken madras (another spicy dish), and a few different lamb dishes I didn't taste, like biryani and balti. Of course there were the obligatory curry dishes as well! So yum. My taste buds were singing arias all night.
After we got our check, which was another half hour of waiting, we headed to Tesco in search of some ice cream to cool our burning mouths down. The Tesco guy, however, did us one better and pointed us in the direction of the Tinseltown Diner, home of the best gourmet milkshakes in London (according to him). We were instant converts the moment we heard the three magic words: "Ferrero Rocher milkshakes." They. Were. To. Die. For. Oh my gosh. Such a great discovery! Thursday night was low key for me, as was Friday during the day...full of reading and homework (which, believe it or not, we do still have!).
Inspired by the deliciousness of our Indian Thursday night, I was seriously craving some naan, so I texted Coleen and decided we should be adventurous and brave and try to make our own Indian food. Needless to say, this was one of my crazy crackpot ideas that could have gone really well or really poorly...Coleen had the good sense to look up a pretty basic recipe for peanut chicken, and we wrangled Charlie and Colin into joining us for a Waitrose shopping trip and cooking extravaganza!
The chicken, thankfully, was a success! Marinaded in a blend of ginger, chili paste, soy sauce, crushed peanuts, lemon juice, garlic, onion and brown sugar, it was a pretty easy recipe, but we still managed to have a few fiascos...Colin and I had to crush the peanuts with the boys' iron! We had a really good time cooking though, and the dinner was fantastically good...I was SO proud of us and SOOO happy we didn't end up having to order pizza!
In keeping with our Indian-themed night, we decided to watch "Bride and Prejudice," a traditional-Bollywood style film based on...duh..."Pride and Prejudice." Colin is spending today at the Jane Austen House with his Global Romanticism class (I'm kind of bummed I didn't get on that trip :( but oh well), so it was a good (and amusing) primer for him! The movie was a ridiculously fun and funny blend of crazy Indian dance numbers ("screw in a lightbulb with one hand and pet the dog with the other" is my new signature dance move!), singing, and repressed sexual tension...there's no kissing allowed in Bollywood movies which made for some pretty funny close calls. We had a ton of fun and ended up singing along to our favorite dance number after the movie ended...with a lot of hilarious attempts at Indian dancing included :)
Enough blogging for now...I'm off to Greenwich for the day to have some fun!
Saturday, February 6, 2010
i officially love indian food.
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