I can't stop myself

I know I shouldn't post when I have no pictures and when I can't even make what I ate, but I am so continually impressed by Okinawan school lunches that I have to remember them somehow.

Today, we had a marvelous soup. It was a thick, creamy, rich pumpkin chowder made from kabocha, with lots of little pieces of kabocha and potato swimming inside. Very thick and rich. It also had yummy bits of chicken breast, parsley, onion, and other unidentified tasty things swimming in it. The jumpy yellow-orange color was also quite striking.

The other course was just as good! It was a kind of frittatta (spelling?), made with sweet onion, bacon, spinach-like veggies in small amounts, and red beans (sounds weird, i know, but it was really good!). It was covered in something like katsu/barbeque sauce. Delicious.

I ate the above in a sandwich with the seasame-covered dark-what-sweet hamburger-style bun that was already cut down the middle for me. The bread was surprisingly wholesome for Japanese bread.

Salad was marinated won bok, sweet and slightly salty, with grated carrots and some kind of sausage (peppercini-like?), cut into pieces. I love how the flavors of it all melded together beautifully. I need to learn to marinate vegetables.

And, of course, a pint of milk.


I almost forgot to mention! Some very kind friends got me a birthday cake today, made from a fruit (I don't remember the name) all the way from Peru! My goodness! It was delicious. It was a 2-layer cake, with maple whipped cream frosting, and a dark, sweet cream layer made from the fruit, which is apparently like a persimmon but with the texture of an avocado. It was quite delicious.

Really, Really Slow-Cooked Beef Stew

This beef stew cooked for almost 24 hours. I kid you not.

I decided to experiment with the "slow-cooker" temperature and "slow-cooker" mode on my convection oven (the only oven I have). So, at 6:00 p.m., I slid in the stew. At 10:30 p.m., I checked on it to see if it needed more water. Nope. The carrots weren't even getting cooked! I thought maybe "slow cook" meant 10 hours or more, so I left the oven on as I slept. The next morning, the carrots still weren't cooked! I turned up the heat to 325 degrees and put the oven on "bake" mode instead of "slow cooker." When I came home from work, I had a thick, rich, delicious, flavorful beef stew. This is what's inside:

Ingredients:
olive oil
1 pound beef, cubed
3 carrots, in 1" pieces
1 onion, roughly diced
2 tablespoons sugar
1 package mushrooms
2 small sweet potatoes, cubed
2 taro (about 1 pound), cubed
8 cloves garlic (I really love garlic), diced
1/3 cup cornstarch
6 cherry tomatoes

Spices: (I just liberally sprinkled a lot of all of them into the stew...you can use whatever spices you want, really. I might have gone overboard, but it came out tasting really good!)
2 cubes chicken bullion
1 package Japanese ramen dashi (it was all I had for stock!)
2 cups water
salt
black pepper
basil
oregano
parsley
cinnamon
coriander
cumin
nutmeg
allspice
clove
paprika
chili powder
honey
thyme (used more sparingly than the other because I don't like it)

Method:

1. Mix cornstarch with liberal amount of all spices. Dredge cubed meat in cornstarch mixture. Heat wok over a huge flame with 3 tablespoons olive oil. When oil is hot, add half of diced garlic. Add beef when garlic is golden. Brown meat, only letting each cube brown once per side. Use chopsticks to turn meat. Set meat aside in baking dish. It doesn't matter if the garlic is burned, it'll still taste good later.
   
2. Clean wok. Heat oil. Add remaining garlic. Add onion. Sprinkle sugar over onion. Carmelize. Meanwhile, cut remaining ingredients. Add all to baking dish.
   
3. Boil water in UNWASHED wok. Dissolve bullion and soup stock in boiling water. Pour over ingredients in baking dish. Liberally add more spices such as basil, honey, pepper, and salt.
   
4. Cover baking dish and cook for a REALLY, REALLY long time on 300 degrees. stirring and adding water occassionally. Turn up to 325 for last two hours. Bake uncovered for 30 minutes if the stew is too water. Add cornstarch mixed with water to stew if it's still too watery, or just bake uncovered for a longer time.

Serving Suggestions:
Eat with french bread. I totally ate half a loaf for dinner.
Because I had a lot of leftover taro (my baking dish was too small), I sliced the taro, pan fried it, and poured pan-reheated stew over it. Mmm!

Captain Kangaroo

A 2-minute walk from my house, there is the wonderful, laid back, delicious, classy burger joint called CAPTAIN KANGAROO. It's awesome. I love it. I go there about once a week. Their wedge fries and BBQ burger are superb in their own right, not to mention that you simply can't get either good fries or barbeque sauce of any sort in Nago.

Their taco burger is amazing as well. It's a sweet sesame toasted bun with a hamburger, cheese, seasoned taco meat, taco sauce, guacamole, and sour cream. All of the above ingredients are nigh impossible to find in Nago. Get the "set" with fries. Wedges are the best! They also give you a spice rack of about a dozen powdered spices to doctor your fries and burger. My favorite is the Matcha Salt, which is salt with green tea powder mixed in.

You can also get a wide variety of drinks for only 100 yen! Most of these drinks would be 400 or 500 in other restaurants, including various flavors of Italian Soda, Mango juice and Guava juice.

In the picture is my most recent favorite, the chicken rice with a ridiculously long name that I can never remember. The official name is something like Sweet Hot Crispy Fried Chicken Rice, abbreviated on the menu as SHCFCR, which is just as difficult to pronounce and remember. It's delicious, though. They fry their chicken to perfection, and the rice, like all rice in Japan, is exquisite. Top it with the sweet chili aioli sauce, lettuce, tomato, and a garnish of nori, serve it on a large square white plate and you have a winnder, people!

Mediocre food day

I should really just dedicate a blog to Japanese school lunch. It's so good. Today I went to 水安島　to teach. Their school lunch is great because it's HOT! It's made on the island, and for only 5 students and a dozen teachers. Superb.

Crispy panko-battered salmon fillet

Bacon Potato Chowder soup, thin for chowder but I don't know how else to describe it. Potato, onion, pig/bacon pieces, cabbage, corn. I want to make chowder.

molasses bread (not as good as it sounds. NO Japanese bread is as good as it sounds, I find. It's always fluffy, light, airy, slightly yeasty, and has little to no flavor nor substance.)

cooked spinach (or maybe ong choy?) and corn salad, nice and salty

milk

I have to proclaim it and resolve it here and now. After Lunar New Year and after my birthday (they just happen to be on the same day) NO MORE GLUTTONY. Meaning, my goal is to lose my excess weight by March. Proclaiming it publicly will hopefully motivate me. I need to a) cook less frequently; b) cook less (eg cook portions sized for 2 meals, not ten); c) cook healthier; d) not eat brownies for breakfast, snack. lunch, snack, dinner, and snack; e) eat in moderation. Lofty goals.

Good School Lunch

The school lunches here never cease to amaze me. They are always surprsingly good considering the mass-production and distance they travel.

Today the main course was Okinawa Yakisoba, which is udon noodles stir-fried with shiitake mushrooms, carrots, greens (spinach?), bamboo shoots, fishcake, and onion.

We also had a taro croquette, which was sweet, slightly chewy, and creamily rich in taste. And fried. Mmmm, fried.

Then there was the salad. It was the good kind of seaweed (dark green, soft, easy to bite, very mild/nonexistant taste, small rectangles...sorry I don't know what it's called), corn, white thingie that I think might be daikon, very tiny slivers of carrot, and little packets of delicious sesame seed dressing to go with it. American salad dressing never tasted so healthy or delicioius. Nor did they ever bother to give it to us in individual-sized serving packets.

Dessert was a mikan, which I cannot differentiate from a clementine, tangerine, satsuma, or other small orange with thin skin. When's the last time you had fresh fruit in your US school lunch? Please don't tell me you're counting the browned, mushy-gross banana chopped into your corn-syrupy fruit cocktail.

And milk. Although today I almost didn't want to drink it because I was cold. Now tell me that doesn't sound more appetizing than many things you've had in a cheap Japanese restaurant. I was reading about the Okinawan diet yesterday, and why the 100-year-olds have arteries with the elasticity of 60-year-olds. Their diet involves meat as a flavor more than as a main course. They add little pieces of it to noodles and vegetable dishes. Most of their protein comes from soy. They eat a lot of sea plants, soba noodles, and goya (bittermelon). But so far, eating school lunch in the quantities they feed me has only made me fat! They give A LOT!

Speaking of which, I ate a lot of chicken tikka masala leftovers already! Heat it up and chop some cucumber into plain yogurt with mint to make raita--the perfect compliment for the flavors in this dish!

Yesterday, I splurged and spent 751 yen (~$8.00) on a tiny bottle of Canadian Maple Syrup. French toast or banana pancakes, here I come!

Chicken Tikka Masala & "Indian" Spiced Rice

Finally! I cooked an Indian dish that actually tastes good! Good thing it's my favorite one: Chicken Tikka Masala. I did my research on this one. I watched several videos on YouTube to learn some of the techniques, and I searched the internet for many versions of the recipe. I ended up pretty much following this one, with some changes:

Ingredients

MASALA MARINADE*

1. 1 cup plain yogurt
2. 5 garlic cloves, minced (I love garlic!)
   
3. 4 tablespoon finely grated fresh ginger (I also love ginger--my theory is the more spices, the better!)
4. 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
5. 1 1/2 teaspoons ground coriander
6. 1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
7. 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
8. 1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric
9. Salt and freshly ground pepper

*I used maybe twice as much of all the above, excluding the yogurt. I watched a few Indian chefs make this dish, and when they said "1 teaspoon," they dumped in about 2 tablespoons of spice. I think the reason all my previous Indian dishes didn't turn out is because I didn't use enough spice! THE MORE THE BETTER!

CHICKEN

1. 450 grams chicken breast, pre-cut into 1 1/2" pieces thanks to the Japanese style of grocery store
2. Salt and freshly ground pepper
3. 3 tablespoons butter
4. 2 tablespoons olive oil
   
5. 1 1/2large onion, finely chopped
6. 5 garlic cloves, minced
7. 4 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
8. 1 1/2 tablespoons garam masala
9. 1 1/2 teaspoons pure chile powder
10. 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
11. 2 dried red chilis
12. 1 tomato, diced
    
13. One 35-ounce can tomatoes, juices reserved
14. 1/4 cup of sugar
15. 3 teaspoons salt
    
16. plain yogurt and milk
    

Directions

1. MAKE THE MASALA MARINADE: Combine the yogurt, garlic, ginger, cumin, coriander, cardamom, cayenne and turmeric, ingredients together. Put into large ziploc bag with chicken pieces. Coat well. Season with salt and pepper. Marinate overnight.
   
2. PREPARE THE CHICKEN: Preheat the broiler or barbeque grill. Remove the chicken from the marinade. Season the chicken with salt and pepper and spread the pieces on the rack. Broil/Grill the chicken, turning once, until just cooked through and browned in spots, about 17 minutes.
   
3. In a large enameled cast-iron casserole, heat the remaining oil and butter until shimmering. Add the onion, garlic and ginger and cook over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until tender and golden, about 8 minutes. Add the garam masala, chile powder, red pepper, and cayenne and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Add the tomatoes with their juices and the sugar and season with salt and pepper. Cover partially and cook over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until the sauce is slightly thickened, about 20 minutes. Add the leftover yogurt marinade and cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, until thickened, about 10 minutes longer. Stir in the chicken; simmer gently for 10 minutes, stirring frequently, and serve.
4. Variation The marinade and sauce here are also delicious with shrimp, lamb and vegetables.

Make Ahead

The Chicken Tikka Masala can be refrigerated for up to 3 days. Reheat gently before serving. I also sprinkled some coriander leaf on top.

Indian guy making it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPCwH8uJawA&feature=channel. I wish I could make his version, but I don't know where to find fresh spices. I know dried ones are inferior!

It took me two hours to make this and the accompanying "Indian" spiced brown rice & grain mixture. I got this nice mix of brown rice and other grains from Jusco, and this is the first time I'm using it. Because I only have 1 burner on my stove, here's what I did:

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cup rice and grain mixture
1 1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon each of:
cinnamon
cardamom
coriander
black pepper
sugar
1 teaspoon tumeric
2 tablespoon salt
dash of clove, nutmeg, allspice
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 an onion
2 tablespoon sugar
4 cloves garlic
2" ginger, grated, plus the pieces you couldn't grate because your fingers would've been minced

Method:

1. Wash rice & grains. Soak in water for 20 minutes (next time, I will soak it longer). Drain water off.
   
2. Mix cinnamon, cardamom, coriander, clove, nutmeg, allspice together in a little cup.
   
3. Heat butter and oil in a heavy pot.
   
4. Add dry spices mixture and stir for a few seconds.
5. Add garlic, ginger, and onion. Add sugar to onion to carmelize it. Stir until slightly golden brown. Add tumeric and pepper.
6. Add drained rice & grains. Stir about five minutes, until the color change to kind of translucent.
7. Transfer to rice cooker pot, add 1 1/2 cup water and turn on rice cooker. If you are lucky enough to have more than 1 burner on your stove, cover and cook for 15-20 minutes in the same pot on the stove.

Serve with Chicken Tikka Masala and plain yogurt with mint! (Halfway through eating, I also added some of those organic greens from Kushi Elementary, just to force myself to eat salad)

Wow, that was really involved and seriously took me over 2 hours. I listen to podcasts as I cook. Today I heard about the slave trade in young girls in Cambodia. It's TRULY HORRIFIC. I wanted to cry. They electrocute the girls, beat them, hold them in dungeons, don't pay them anything, force them to act like they're enjoying it. One girl, tricked into slavery at 13 and the victim of 2 abortions at 15, was in so much pain she asked for some time off. The brothelmaster gouged her eye out with a piece of metal. WTF. I also heard about a mariner who is certain China "discovered" the New World a thousand years ago, and the evidence for and against his theory. He made a lot of anthropologists very angry. This week is also the birthday of Darwin, so I heard from Scientific American about evolution and little-known facts, as well as some myths about Darwin. Then I heard an interview with a man who wrote a book about Martin Luther King Jr's "I have a dream speech," where the speech's influences come from, who King borrowed from, how the actual speech is different from King's written version, and why all of it is significant. Podcasts, learning, and cooking. What a good Sunday!

I have to go to work to teach a special English class for 3rd graders--I'll be back later for tikka masala leftovers!

Wokked Shiitake and Baby Bok Choy Stir-Fry with Bacon

Finally, something I cook turns out GOOD!

All this experimentation with Indian food has been rather depressing--but I haven't given up yet! I'm going to make Chicken Tikka Masala (my all-time favorite) tomorrow. Back to the dish at hand. I think it turned out well because these are the flavors I've grown up with, and I know how I want the dish to turn out at the end, and I am using cooking techniques well-known to me through watching my parents.

At JA (which I JUST discovered!), I got 6 beautiful shiitake mushrooms for 190 yen. Awesome! Today at Jusco they had the bag of 5 heads of baby bok choy for 138 yen, and the bacon was 500 yen for 6 packs of 2 slices each. Hooray for beautiful fresh vegetables!

Now, then!

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 cloves garlic, finely diced
2-inches ginger, cut into finger-joint sized pieces
1/2 onion, chopped
2 slices bacon, cut into pieces
2 slices canadian bacon, chopped
4 heads Baby Bok Choy,washed and cut into 3" pieces
6 shiitake mushrooms

Sauce:
2 tablespoons Oyster Sauce (Lee Kum Kee brand. It's the most expensive by far, but it is far, far, superior in taste and quality to the other brands)
2 tablespoons Chinese Soy Sauce ("light/less dark soy sauce")
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons sesame oil
(I mix it all together in a cup)

Method:

1. On LOW heat, fry bacon with olive oil. If your pan is too hot, the bacon does not get crispy, it just stays soft! While bacon is frying, chop garlic, onion, and ginger then add them to the pan, in that order. I always wait until the garlic is golden brown before I add the onions. Optional: add a pinch of sugar to the onions to make them extra sweet and carmelized. Wait until garlic and onion are carmelized in color.

2. Add shiitake mushrooms. Meanwhile, wash and cut baby bok choy. Add to pan. stir occassionally for a few minutes so that it doesn't burn. When the bok choy has almost all turned dark green and when the shiitake look slightly limp, pour the sauce over everything. Let cook a few more minutes.

Serve over rice. Or just eat it plain like I did, if you forgot to make rice in your excitement over the quality of your fresh vegetables! The walnut flower-bread you see in the picture was more like dessert. It was dense, sweet, pastry-like, and full of yummy nuts!

Total price: 544 yen + whatever it cost for the sauce ingredients

Banana Breakfast and Leftover Lunch

The 2-minute breakfast:

• Banana
• Crunchy Natural Peanut Butter (impossible to find in Japan--I had it shipped to me)
• Raisins
• Cinnamon for dusting
• microwave for 13 seconds, or until just barely warm

Sometimes, when I'm really in a hurry, I just grab a banana, slather peanut butter all over it, and fly out the door.


Leftover Lunch:
Toasted Ham, Cheese, and Herb Bread (180 Yen for half a crusty loaf) with cream cheese. I use the "Fish Grill" nook in my stove to make toast. It is at least three times as fast as a toaster or toaster oven. Plus, you can make open-faced sandwiches!


Mattar paneer minus the paneer, on a bed of fresh Kushi Elementary School salad greens, with yogurt garnish.
I love dairy products. They make everything better.

Sweet Roasted Kabocha (Japanese Pumpkin)

Kabocha is available year-round in all the stores here. I had half of one sitting in my fridge for 3 days, so I decided it was time to eat it.

I slathered it with olive oil, liberally sprinkled cinnamon, sugar, clove, nutmeg, and allspice on it, then I roasted it for 45 minutes on 375 degrees. I took it out, cut it into 2-inch sections, poured butter all over it, added more of the same spices, then returned it to the oven for 7 more minutes. It turned a nice, carmelized brown color. It made for a healthy dessert!

The merits of taco rice and Japanese school lunch

Next, I want to make Chicken Tikka Masala. I'll do some more poking around in recipes. It's my favorite Indian dish, and apparently it's become the national food of Englishpeople. "The" international food of India? Interesting. Kind of like how orange chicken and sweet-sour sauce have become the national foods of China, even though "No self-respecting Chinaman would touch such git hey things" (<--in the words of my mother) . . . kind of.

Today at school the lunch was far above my expectations for a $2 meal, as usual. I am daunted by the amount of food you get. I wish I could remember my camera every day, so I could document the care, presentation, and overall healthfulness of Japanese school lunch. Today was an Okinawan original, taco rice. Taco Rice is shortgrain white rice, topped by seasoned taco meat (chili, basically), chopped lettuce, tomato, and tiny 1-milimeter cubes of cheese (white, almost tasteless cheese of the variety you also find in Latin America). That could have been a meal in itself, especially considering the heaping portion they gave me. And honestly, it was at least three times better than the watery, cheap, lackluster taco rice I paid 950 yen for in "Jammin' Taco Cafe." The school lunch version had a bit of sweetness, a bit of kick (and a packet of hot sauce, if you so chose), and quality meat, spices, and veggies. It wasn't "superb" by restaurant standards, but it was damn good for school lunch.

The lunch also included a yummy rendition of egg flower soup, loaded with delicate, flavorful egg flowers, transparent sweet onion, a bit of corn for creaminess, parsley, and green onion. I approved. This soup was at least a bushel's worth of flavor and heartiness better than any I've had in a Chinese restaurant, cheap or not.

We also got a ring of sliced pineapple, milk, and a packet of slightly salted almonds in our school lunch!

...sigh. I wish the US would stop feeding the kids fake chicken patties, terrible meatloaf, limp frozen french fries, and corn syrupy fruit cocktail for lunch. Where does the Japanese school lunch system go right when the US system went so, so wrong? I mean, even if the US lunch tastes ok (dare I say sometimes good?) to the kids, it is far less healthy and takes far less time to prepare than Japanese school lunch.

Pineapple, of the store-bought variety

Pineapple from an Okinawan grocery store:
You would think that this image says it all . . .


. . . and it does. But not quite. This piece of machine-wrought (FRESH) pineapple architechture came in a vacuumed, air-sealed plastic bag. It was labeled with a date and the price of 498 JPY (~$5.50 USD). I was tempted to build an athenaeum out of it.

I know it's the middle of winter,
but this pineapple was delicious.

"Vegetable Korma"

"Vegetable Korma," in quotes because it doesn't taste quite like any vegetable korma I've had before. This is the second time I've had it. I re-heated it in a pan, and stirred in some yogurt just after I turned off the heat. I ate it on a bed of fresh organic greens from one of the elementary schools I work at, alongside some ham-cheese-pesto bread (not as tsaty as it sounds, probably because of the thyme sprinkled throughout).

Speaking of the salad greens--there are so many!
Each grade in the school has a plot in a little garden. These salada na (サァダナー "salad leaves") are a little spicy, very fresh, and totally organic. Nice!

Plain Yogurt: Discovery of the Week

The discovery of the week is . . . *drumroll please* . . . PLAIN YOGURT (138 yen for about 2 cups)! I never thought something so plain and frankly unedible on its own could be so good as a condiment for savory foods. Just about everything I've eaten as a meal this week has benefitted from a dollop of plain yogurt. I've always wondered why it comes in giant (for Japan) containers at ALL the grocery stores!

This morning, I mixed some of it into my omlette. It made the eggs much fluffier than usual. The omlette also contained tomatoes and carmelized onion. I added some basil and garnished with another dollop of plain yogurt. The creamy tang of the yogurt really compliments most foods.

From Oki Eats - 大きい　イーツ！

Yesterday, I spread the yogurt on buttered French bread toast and topped it all with honey. Delectable! Sweet things really benefit from a little sour.

It also went well with lasagna, as well as my Vietnamese chicken vegetable rice.

From Oki Eats - 大きい　イーツ！

And this doesn't really count, but I will admit to a longstanding love affair with "sour" frozen yogurt such as Fiore, Pinkberry, and Red Mango. It's funny that there is a complete dearth of anything remotely resembling this supposedly "Asian" phenomenon in Okinawa. Walking through Westwood last May, I couldn't help but notice that there was a "healthy/sour/plain" frozen yogurt shop on at least every block!

By the way, Fiore and Red Mango are far superior in taste to any of the other sour froyo places I've tried. Believe you me, I've tried plenty. There was a kiwiberri a few blocks away from my dorm in college, and I went there an average of twice a week for two years. Despite such loyal patronship, I will say that the somewhat icy flavor of kiwiberri is inferior to most others. On the heirarchy of sour frozen yogurts, as far as creaminess and depth of flavor, this is the heirarchy:

Fiore >Red Mango > Pinkberry > Kiwiberri > Yogurtland

Someone should really open a franchise in Okinawa.

From Marrow to Pore: Ripe is the Flavor of Life

From marrow to pore:
ripe is the flavor of life,
and sweet it will be forever.

That's been my motto for a few years now, and my time in Okinawa has given me ample opportunity to explore one of my passions: food! I've been living here for a few months now, and while I've always been big on food tourism, food photography, food blogging, and gluttony in general, I've never gone food-nerd in the way of chefdom before.

Today I attempted to make Vegetable Korma, one of my favorite dishes when I eat Indian food. Why did I attempt to make an unfamiliar dish from a cuisine I had no experience with? Well, let me tell you something about food in Japan: It's Japanese food. No, really, it's all Japanese food.

I never knew there were so many different varieties of Japanese dishes! Japanese was always my favorite cuisine, so I'm happy to have access to the myriad dishes that Japanese people eat, instead of the Westernized and overpopularized versions of the boring things we're all too familiar with: chicken teriyaki, california rolls, sashimi limited in variety to maguro, tamago, and ebi, lackluster miso soup, ramen, shrimp & vegetable tempura . . . before I walk into almost any given Japanese restaurant on the US mainland, I can already tell you what will be on the menu. As a teacher in Okinawa, I can tell you that the school lunch (you heard me--school lunch!) in Japan beats the food at many a Japanese restaurant in Los Angeles County.

One thing I miss about Hawaii (and the US in general) is my ability to go out for Indian, Thai, Mexican, Italian, Korean, and Chinese food. You would think that as a former tributary of China, The Kingdom of the Ryukyus (aka Okinawa) would have a few Chinese restaurants. Instead, they have taken some aspects of Chinese culture and simmered them down into the larger Okinawan stew. Basically, if you want anything other than Japanese food, you have to learn to cook it yourself.

I got my Vegetable Korma recipe from Manjula's Kitchen, but modified it for the vegetables I had on hand (carrots, cabbage, and peas). However, even with the instructional video on YouTube, I managed to screw it up and curdle the milk, resulting in a decidedly non-creamy korma. The photographic evidence is too unappetizing to post here. I will be attempting similar dishes again, hopefully with better results. Here is Manjula making Vegetable Korma in her kitchen: