Ghee Whizz

Should I Buy a Motel 6, Or A Seven-Eleven?


Anybody out there know what “Ghee” is? I’m proud to say that I do now…

“Ghee” is the Indian word for a batch of carefully clarified unsalted butter, and I had no idea until last night what the heck it was myself.

You use it in cooking Indian cuisine, and I used some of my Ghee to make a variation on this version of Chicken & Vegetable Curries.

I lightly steamed some broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, and celery, then cubed up some boneless chicken breasts, and cooked up a nice batch of Basmati rice to serve everything with for dinner.

The other fun thing was that I did everything from scratch, including making my own batch of Garam Masala--the spice blend that puts the “Curry flavor” in your Indian Curry.

Garam Masala includes things like coriander seeds, cumin seeds, black peppercorns, black cumin seeds (shahjeera), dry ginger, black cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, and crushed bay leaves.

Turmeric powder and coconut milk finishes off the sauce and gives it it’s characteristic yellow/green color.

The house still smells fabulous right now.

The only things I didn’t have on hand was the black cardamon and black cumin seeds, but the resulting flavors of my mixture--even without these two items--roasted and pounded by hand to a fine powder in my mortar/pestle, were quite acceptable.

I'm gonna try to find those two additional spices and then I’m going to repeat my efforts again next week while trying my hand at making some Indian parantha flat bread to go with it all.

In the mean time, I have some other meals planned featuring Turkish delicacies and possibly some Egyptian dishes, thereby completing my tour of cooking my way around the Mediterranean --having already completed my French, Italian, Greek, and Moroccan studies earlier this year.

Don't you wish that you were eating dinner at my house these days?