After a very painful and very long hiatus I just did something that I know always bring me joy: I cooked curry.
Specifically, I whipped up a green lentil curry in the Instant Pot (adapted from this recipe by Ashley Singh Thomas) and served it alongside some pilau rice that I prepared yesterday evening. I had to crop the above picture slightly to but that was it in its full glory.
The last year has been frantic and somewhere between planning a wedding, moving apartment, setting up an apartment, and dealing with what felt like a thousand service personnel I dropped the ball on eating healthily (I also, at some point, began drinking coffee out of a cocktail shaker, so you could say that healthy living shifted to do-anything-to-stay-productive at some point).
Based on my previous interest in currying I can affirm that the only way to become a true curry-master is to cook curry every single day and improve iteratively.
Think Kaizen. Or software development.
Consistency — and seizing every potential curry-making opportunity — is the key to improvement.
Those with long memories — or storied pasts in Jerusalem’s Anglo-heavy Nachlaot neighborhood — may recall my successful production of an industrial quantity of fish curry that successfully fed 50 people at a street party.
Some Previous Currying Escapades
Replicating that experience this Purim may be setting the bar unreasonably high for myself, but I do hope to get back in the currying groove — and now I have a blog in which to document the improvement.
However, unlike in my currying hay day (or is my hay day yet to come?), I am now short a gallbladder. And am dealing with patches of bile reflux gastritis as my system tries to get back into kilter.
So, this currying series will be distinguished from preceding ones by two adaptations:
- I am carefully measuring the fat content of my experiments.
- Because of the gastritis, I’m having to cut back drastically on the chilli powder 🙁
Like any good BIR fan, an incendiary vindaloo served alongside an ice cold lager was probably my idea of a perfect meal. Which is also probably why I’m now short an organ….
My diminished digestive physiology will probably mean that I’m reluctantly going to have to shift away from British Indian Restaurant (BIR) style curries, with their generous chef spoons-ful of vegetable oil, and start moving in the direction of more wholesome and nutritious South Indian fare. But perhaps that is a good thing.
Stay tuned for more cooking!
