Gastronomic Globetrotting

Hope everyone is enjoying this heat!

Or...not.  I'd rather have heat in my mouth, not heat outside.  Thus, last night we had tacos.  Red Bell actually eats these!  Both she and Thai love to douse their meals in Taco Sauce (generally Ortega), but were appalled to realize we were out save for a drop of this favorite.  What could I possibly do about this?

Make my own!

That's right, I read the ingredients on the bottle (not overly complex) and pulled them out of my pantry with the food processor to attempt to recreate the sauce.

What an awful mess, right?  This is certainly a fun little test to try and reproduce the exact flavor.  A can of tomato paste, about 3/4 cup of water, few dribbles of light corn syrup, some distilled white vinegar, paprika, cayenne pepper, chili powder, and dash of taco seasoning later, I had both girls eating it by the chip-ful. 

Much experimenting (much, much experimenting!) later, I've approximated the flavor.  This is certainly a delightful challenge for an amateur chef (and even the pros) to hone their taste buds.  This is also a 5/5 Napkin Stains achievement for me!

Red Bell will be out of the house this evening, leaving us an opportunity to attempt a cuisine the rest of us enjoy: Indian food.  Thai picked out some recipes a while ago, and I even purchased the ingredients (odd things like garam masala, garlic paste, and ginger paste.)  However, we've been putting the endeavor off for a while.

We're going to use a package of marked-down lamb meat--I absolutely support mark-down meat.  The grocery stores are held to a high standard, and this "mark-down" stuff is close-dated, but perfectly clean, processed, and edible.  My Jalapeno and I will often buy a couple such items, and put them in the freezer to wait until we're ready.  When we stumble across something like a good deal on lamb, we get to flip through our recipe books to find a suitable preparation.

What we're going to try are samosas, which are often an appetizer of rice and peas inside a batter, lamb kebabs with a really kickin' marinade, and some saag in the crock pot (referring to a spinach concoction in which to cook the lamb to a great tender state.)  We often do tandoori chicken because it is simple enough to use tandoori paste and use the grill, but these dishes are more complex because we'll be using some unfamiliar ingredients--and I'll actually have to use measuring cups (my mortal enemy!)

Stay tuned to see how our Indian excursion shapes up!