All about Brad

We like food, friends, dogs, and challenges - so when our friends Brad and Jessie came by to eat dinner the other week, it was a good night. The dog part of the equation was Murray, a darling little, rescued dog that is a magnet for Jessie's affections. (Poor Murray was in the process of potentially being renamed, so Teddy, Bowie, Sully, and Buddy were all thrown at him at various points to see if anything stuck.) Brad is an avid FLD reader (who seemed keen on having a post about him), and he and his wife are fellow graduate school compatriots, so commiserating over our dubious humanities-based futures over curry with physical science-based Mark seemed like a good idea.
The "challenge" with this curry dinner was that it was to be all veggie, no seafood or meat. I put challenge in quotation marks because, for all you entertainers out there, curry is a great family-style meal that you can put out for vegetarians and know that it will taste great. Mark and I busted out our handy 660 Curries cookbook and picked some recipes we thought looked good. The winners were a grilled eggplant dip, chickpeas with spinach, cauliflower and potatoes, saffron rice, and naan.

The eggplants were grilled outdoors (why not enjoy the weather when you can?), then peeled and smashed with a chili-garlic mixture. Since this was more of a spread-like mixture, we decided to eat it with some sort of bread - and we wanted to take another stab at homemade naan. Previously, we had made naan in the stove, under the broiler I think, but this time we put a pizza stone on top of the grill to get nice and hot, and threw the pats of dough onto the stone for a few minutes. Some parts got a bit charred and the texture was cracker-like; we'll need to practice this naan-making thing more in the future.

Chickpeas came out of a can and were mixed with some spinach and mustard seeds, along with a blend of spices. The flavors were light and layered, but I would use fresh chickpeas because sometimes the canned ones are a bit too mushy. We also used baby spinach but I would use the curlier, larger spinach leaves that hold their shape more and add more flavor to the dish.
The cauliflower and potatoes were, like all the other curries in the book, easy. After cutting up a head of cauliflower, it went in a large wok with seasonings, tomato sauce, and cut up potatoes. After about 20 minutes, everything was fork tender and ready to go. It was garnished with fresh cilantro at the end, which added a nice freshness at the end. I think this dish might also go well with the addition of cashews or some other nut to add a level of crunch to it.

And, the saffron rice - rice stirred in to hot ghee (clarified butter) and then a teaspoon of saffron threads thrown in to coat. Water and salt were added in, and in about 10 minutes (while the cauliflower was cooking), the rice was done and ready to be fluffed up and served. The saffron adds a really nice, delicate flavor to the rice that, I feel, brings out the flavor in the curries a lot more. Lastly, there is nothing like the flavor of mango to add that last sweet flavorful note to your meal as a simple dessert.
The meal turned out pretty tasty, overall, and had a lot of different, fun elements to it, including sitting out by the grill, maneuvering balls of naan dough around, and smelling all of the different curries and sauces come together in the kitchen. The dog did an excellent job of hanging out, our cat did an excellent job of avoiding the dog, and no one felt the slightest bit guilty for having a curry feast on Easter Sunday (although hot cross buns were our other dessert).

There is nothing like a full belly, some bottles of wine and beer, and good company to make you forget about job markets, housing markets, and any other dwindling market that has you down!