Christmas Eve at the Leech House
I love Wisconsin, don’t get me wrong, but some days I just crave certain types of food. The Wednesday before Christmas was one of those days— I was dying for some indian food. I even got the whole family on board and the game plan was Taste of India in Brookfield around 7pm.
Too bad the weather didn’t cooperate with our plans. Mah! Snow turning to icy rain turning to snow again. So when Paco got home from work he immediately declared that the roads were too bad to drive the 20 minutes to Brookfield and that we’d have to choose something closer.
So I got the great idea of cooking Indian food for my family for Christmas Eve dinner.
I love our Christmas Eve tradition— church in the afternoon, a home cooked family dinner at home (rare in our house, ha ha) and then board games (and a little Wii bowling) until bed. All over a lot of wine. :o)
The only problem was, we live in Waukesha. Here in Chicago, the Jewel has (prepackaged) naan in the bakery. And the spice section contains garam masala, leading me to believe that every chain grocery superstore would carry it. Wrong! I hit up the Pick ‘N Save, the Sentry, our organic grocery store (I know? Organic in Waukesha?)… but not one had the spice blend.
Heading home nann and garam masala-less, I wasn’t as worried about lacking the spice blend as I was nervous over the daunting task of making bread that was now in front of me.
Pictures are below. My family liked it so much that they ate it all— there weren’t any left overs. And, the best part, it was so spicy that my mom and dad were drinking water at their meal— something that I rarely see. :o)
My naan. The dough didn’t rise nearly enough as it should have (okay, really, at all) but we went ahead and baked it anyway. It was okay. A little dense. Actually, so dense that I had to slice it ahead of time. Oops.
This was the first time I’ve ever attempted Saag Murgh. I knew this was a risk, since my saag tofus have never all turned out the same (the first was delicious and the second was watery). But with channa masala on the menu as well, I couldn’t cook my tested chicken tikka masala recipe.
It turned out perfectly and ended up being my family’s favorite dish. I saved the recipe somewhere, hopefully I’ll get that up.
My channa masala. Like I said, I felt comfortable trying something new with this dish under my belt.
This is what I’m calling my sad rice. The ironic thing is, I don’t know how to make rice without a rice cooker. I left my mom in charge of getting the rice started (as I was running around with the other dishes) and since she doesn’t make rice that often either, it came out a little wet and well, sad. Eric would be embarassed.
Drew, Paco and Mom make faces. But they ate it all.
It was a great night. Paco won Trivial Persuit, I won Masterpiece and Ben schooled us all in Wii bowling.
And I’ll leave you with this: the Christmas tree.
