Anybody hungry??

I love to cook. I can thank my mom for that. It's hard not to cook, or at least try it when you're surrounded by freshly grown ingredients, and a mother who's obssesed. When I do get the chance to kick my mom out of the kitchen, I try to do new things and eat new foods. This last time, I decided to go with an Indian recipe for Matar Paneer from a cookbook that I was able to borrow from a wonderful person! In case, you decide you want to try something new as well, I highly recommend looking at the cookbook Indian-ish by Priya Krishna.

Matar Paneer is a cheese and tomato curry with flavor beyond imagination. I paired it with a homemade naan, even though traditionally served with roti. Be warned however, because this is not a supposed to be a success story. While it is one in a way, the parts I want to focus on are the mistakes I made along the way and how even with my monumental mistakes, the dish still turned out fantastic.

Cardamom pods are impossible to find and I mean this quite literally as I couldn't find this vital ingrediant for my recipe. So, I compromised. I found all my ingredients and those that I couldn't, I found replacements that would work just as well! Pro-tip: you should read all the way through a recipe before you start it just in case its complicated. This, I learned throughout the recipe!!

After having put together all of my ingredients (this is known as mice en place), I began work on the dish itself. I put together the base tomato mixture by sautéing

some olive oil or ghee, cardamom, corriander, onion, ginger, serrano chiles, and roma tomatoes. I blended the mixture after it had cooled to room temperature. The funny part is that the blender that my family noramally used is broken, so we found a replacement blender, but turns out its travel size! I did several blending batches in case it wasn't obvious. For the next step of the process, I heated up oil, cumin, bay leaves, tumeric, and salt. After, I combined my tomato sauce, peas, and a little water into the pan. Once heated through, I added in my homemade paneer (a type of indian cheese which is very similar to ricotta). It is very easy to make and there are great recipes everywhere.

I wanted to serve the dish with some roti or bread of some sort, so I went with a recipe for naan. I was suprised at how easy this was to follow, and about how delicious it turned out. I'll skip the tedious work of sharing every single step I took and take you to the part where we can laugh at me. So, I have made the naan dough, let it rise for an hour or so, and everything has gone smoothly, at least on this end. I prepare a cast iron skillet to cook my naan on and lay down my rolled out dough. Forgetting to turn down the heat on the skillet, I walk away to let the dough cook for a minute. By the time I return less then 20 seconds later, the entire kitchen was filled with smoke so I'm running around like a crazy person opening doors and windows, turning off the stove, and cleaning the pan when my little sister sierra walks in and asks if I know there's smoke in the house. (Good queston, Cici!) So, after everything is all in order again, I lay down the second dough, prepared to pull it off immediately... it takes 3 minutes to cook. Recapping, I walked away from my first piece to burn it in less than 20 seconds, and spend 3 minutes just staring at my second piece. I promise they really aren't that hard to make, I just seem to burn easily. The third times the charm, they say. I guess that's true... and the fourth and fifth and sixth and seventh and eighth. All the naan turned out amazing... except that first black shingle of a bread.

My parents and older brother had returned home at this point so I could share this fun recipe with them. Even though Sierra refused to try any, I was glad about how it had turned out, and more for me! I was promptly commended for my master chef skills, the complementer unawares of my master mistake skills. They won't be so unawares soon, so we will see if I can still qualify as a master chef. If I am being honest, however, I think that the process of cooking is all about mistakes, and compromising, and changing the recipe. If I had followed each step perfectly, I honestly and truly think that the dish wouldn't have turned out nearly as good as it had. And adding my own little flare to the dish made it that much better, personally.

I hope you get the chance to mess up a recipe, enjoy it still, and enjoy the process even more. I really think it will change you for the better. Cooking for yourself is relaxing, cooking for others is just fun to share. So, either way, you can't go wrong. It's always a good experience to have.