A tale of two potatoes

Cooking is a wonderful way of achieving flow (see the eponymous book by the brilliant Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi). It has this particular quality of absorbing all your energy, thoughts and attention for any length of time you choose to devote to it. It is a great remedy against the little heartaches and great despairs of everyday life, and many of us find solace in the soothing whisper of a stew gently bubbling away on the stove ... preferably in a cast iron Le Creuset or Staub cocotte, but that is not the subject of our post today ;-)




Two-potato vindaloo with mint and cucumber raïta

 If cooking is my therapy, then cooking Indian food has to be my catharsis. I am admittedly a spice junkie, I always keep a heaping stash of chillies in the freezer (in case a craving for spicy food comes in the middle of the night when honest grocers are closed...) and my spice rack is ridiculously overcrowded (and subject to the occasional landslide). I tremendously enjoy Indian food (the spicier the better), and particularly Indian vegetarian food, because I do not know of any recipe that does not involve some dry-roasting, grinding or pounding of spices, the fragrance of which will promptly fill your kitchen (or, if, like me, you always forget to turn on the extraction hood when cooking, your whole house) and I cannot think of any more comforting soulfood than spicy veggie grub.




Dry-roasted cardamom, cumin and coriander seeds, ground with cloves, paprika, turmeric and cinnamon



A former vegetarian myself, I have never really steered clear of this way of life and even though I am eating meat again, it is mostly on social occasions, like the (not so) occasional meal out with friends, or dinner parties at home. I love my veggies, and I love my tofu, and I cannot remember the last time I cooked meat for myself at home. The hard-core carnivores among you will think this is sad, but cooking vegetarian food is actually in my opinion a lot more challenging than cooking meat - one needs to put a significant amount of extra effort in building and pairing the flavours, whereas with meat, you can get complacent and lazy, as even the most simple pan-frying will deliver a dose of umami. Veggies like to play a lot more hard to get in the umami department, and this Frog likes a challenge in the kitchen...


Two-potato vindaloo, gently bubbling on low heat

Having a bit more time on my hands than usual these days, as I am enjoying a lazy 2-week staycation, I am spending a lot more time in the kitchen, and today's spice craving caught me as I was (yet again...) flipping throught the pages of Yotam Ottolenghi's brilliant Plenty cookbook. "Two-potato vindaloo" sounded right up my alley. Potatoes and sweet potatoes, stewed in a hearty spices mix consisting of cardamom, cumin and coriander seeds, dry-roasted together and then ground in a mortar with cloves, paprika, turmeric and cinnamon, which are then added in the cocotte to a mix of shallots, brown mustard seeds, fenugreek, curry leaves, chillies and ginger, before tomatoes, cider vinegar, the cubed potatoes and some red bell pepper are added and left to gently simmer for about 40mn.



Mint and cucumber raïta, WIP...



As usual, I could not resist making some substitutions to the ingredients in the original recipe (I figured ghee would be more tasty than vegetable oil, especially in an Indian recipe, and that the caramelly fragrance of gula melaka would make the dish ever so slightly better than just plain caster sugar). I also changed the proportions in the spice mix according to my taste (less cumin, more turmeric, paprika and chillies) and made some mint and cucumber raïta on the side, should there be any need to douse the flames... I savoured a couple of bowls of the deliciously fragrant and spicy stew watching a few episodes of Anthony Bourdain's new "No reservations" DVD - what a delicious way to spend a lazy afternoon at home :-)