Mesir Wat: The Unexpected and Unexplained Glory of Ethiopian Lentils

I was first introduced to Ethiopian food at Zemam's in Tucson, a homey little place that, like many of the best Ethiopian experiences I've had, kept its kitchen literally right next to the dining room. My relationship with Zemam's was always somewhat equivocal. The food was usually adequate but occasionally amazing, and when my grandfather invited me there he always claimed to have shown it to me first, like it was some sort of state secret. I always had to point out that I had actually known about it before he showed me, and that I had actually invited him there first, and that I had also invited him to Gandhi's first, though he always denied it. He always paid, so I wasn't too obstinate. 

However, were I to pin down the best experience I've had with Ethiopian food, it was on our Dora trip, when after asking a random African person on the street where to get African food, he took us down a creepy side street and into someone's house. The two Ethiopian ladies who had been sitting and smoking argileh looked at us like we were crazy, but eventually rounded up a table and some chairs and dealt with us as their friends trickled in to listen to Bob Marley, drink giant al-Mazas and eye us suspiciously. Although the kitchen was right next to a smelly, poorly cleaned pit toilet, and although I'm pretty sure I saw at least one Lebanese pimp, the Mesir Wat that she served us was unlike anything I've ever had. I've been working to replicate it ever since, and tonight I may have come as close as I'll get. 

A fun cultural note: Mesir Wat is apparently quite popular during Lent and those times when people are forced to swear off meat. I'm pretty sure I'd eat this even if there was meat around. This is criminally inexpensive to make and goes well with rice if you can't find the spongy, sour teff flour bread, injera. 

So without further ado, here's the recipe (before I forget it). 

**** NOTE****

Before you start, you need to make your berbere paste. Berbere is technically just a delicious spice combination that gives many Ethiopian dishes their distinctive ruddy pepperiness, but it's extra awesome if you mulch it up in the blender into a paste with a bit of wine, onion and garlic. I'd post a recipe, but frankly I've not found it better than the one you can find here. I add extra fenugreek because I like smelling like maple syrup for days. 

Mesir Wat Ingredients

1 cup orange lentils - which are essentially red lentils split and without the skin

1 medium onion, minced

4 cloves garlic, crushed and minced

1 - 1.5 tsp fresh ginger root, minced

1 tomato, seeded, cored and minced (peeled too if you can)

2 tbsp berbere paste (see above)

2-3 tbsp oil or butter

1 tbsp paprika

1 tsp turmeric 

1 tsp fenugreek

1 tbsp tomato paste

1 tsp raw sugar

salt 

lots of water

Step 1: Prep

Soak your lentils in water for about an hour. Mince up your onion, garlic and ginger and throw them into a blender or food processor and spin them until they are pretty pasty. Get your tomato ready to go and set aside. 

Step 2: Onion Paste

Heat the oil in a pot on medium and add the onion paste until the water is cooked off. Then add the bebere paste and cook for about 3-5 minutes, stirring frequently  to prevent it from burning. When the onion is cooked, add the tomato and the spices and continue cooking until the tomato has begun to cook. Add the sugar and tomato paste. 

Step 3: The Lentils

Drain the lentils and toss them into the pot. Immediately cover them with water, bring to a boil, and then reduce the heat to low and simmer covered for about 30-40 minutes. Towards the end, you'll have to stir to keep the lentils from sticking to the bottom. The consistency should be very soft. If the water cooks off too fast, add a bit more and recover. Salt to taste. 

In Praise of Pigflesh: Stepped Italian Pork Shoulder Roast with Mushroom Red Wine Reduction over Creamy Polenta

I've been reading Piero Camporesi's The Magic Harvest, which is essentially a history of food and food culture in Italy. It's alternately appalling and alluring, but it's gotten me hooked on Italian foods that one normally does not encounter in American or Lebanese restaurants.

Like with Mexican food, which encompasses a mind bogglingly broad range of cooking styles, the Italian food that we most associate with Italy is actually a rather limited part of the Italian food culture. No, I don't mean the Olive Garden. But also that. I'm talking about spaghetti in marinara sauce, which was essentially a product of the mid-19th century. As in the Middle East (which received its first tomatoes around 1830), Europe was rather leery of many of the foods from the New World until either government intervention or cultural catalysts pushed them to adopt the new items. Tomatoes were considered suspiciously voluptuous for some time until they were popularized in a ubiquitous cookbook that dominated the food publishing scene in the late 19th century. Potatoes were fed to pigs, in spite of the fact  they made all sorts of sense for the inhabitants of the barren central Apennine mountains of the Italian peninsula, who had barely subsisted for centuries on primarily chestnut flour.

Speaking of pigs... I always feel bad about posting pork recipes or recipes with booze in them (albeit cooked off booze) since one of the only people who actually seems to read these posts (hi Tricia) does not eat either. But if you really wanted to you could swap the pork for a fatty cut of beef and add more broth/drippings to the sauce in lieu of wine. 

Corn, also an American import to Italy, rapidly took off and supplanted millet and even wheat in some areas in the northern regions in importance. This led to a boom of pellagra in the late 19th century, but also the delicious corn polenta which we know and love. Northern Italian cooking had an interesting practice of using leftovers as parts of the next meal. Leftover polenta would either be remelted and made again, pan fried, crumbled up to use as a crust, or whatever the enterprising Italian lady in the kitchen  decided on. 

Pigs were always great peasant food since, unlike cows, they didn't require huge plots of land to feed, they didn't destroy your environment like goats and sheep, and they could sleep in the house with you if needed (his happened a lot in premodern society). Although they stank terribly, they did eat garbage, and, when fattened and slaughtered properly, had the flesh of angels. 

This recipe will take about as long to write as it took to cook, so bear with me. 

The Pig Part

1 pound of pork shoulder, as fatty as you can get it

olive oil

chunky sea salt

3 garlic cloves

pepper

allspice

thyme

rosemary 

Step 1: 

Preheat the oven to 475. Take your shoulder and slice it in 1 inch slabs that will lay flat onto each other. Lightly oil the bottom of a pan (this will be floating in oil by the end, so I'm not sure this is even necessary) and reassemble the chunks to form a roast. 

Step 2: 

Cut the garlic cloves into paper thin slivers and place them and a helping of sea salt between each of the meat slices. 

Step 3: 

Generously salt the top of the meat with sea salt, gently sprinkle on a touch of allspice and thyme and a good amount of rosemary. Crack some fresh pepper on top and put it in the oven. Make your sauce and polenta now. 

Step 4: 

After 15 minutes of high heat, turn the oven down to 350 and cook for another 45 minutes covered in tinfoil. The meat is done when it's shrunk and sitting in a puddle of pig fat. 

To Serve: 

Slice paper thin pieces against the grain of the meat at a 45 degree angle. If you don't know what that looks like... well. Keep the fat attached to the meat, it's the flavor and also should have crisped up nicely and will broadcast the flavors well. 

The Sauce: 

6 -8 crimini mushrooms or whatever

2 tbsp butter

2 shallots minced

3/4 cup red wine

1/2 cup pork drippings or broth

1/4 cup cream 

salt

1 tsp sugar

three pieces of fresh thyme  

This is a pretty standard recipe for a mushroom wine reduction. I add sugar because it makes everything taste better and cuts the sharpness of the wine. 

Step 1: Prep
Mince the shallots finely (look up how to cut them if you need to) and put aside. Slice the mushrooms in half and then in half again and chop them as thinly as possible. 

Step 2: 

Heat the butter on medium heat in the pan and throw in the shallots, cooking them until they're soft, then add the mushrooms and the thyme sprigs and cook for about 5 minutes until the mushrooms are cooked. 

Step 3: 

Add the wine and cook on medium heat until almost completely reduced, then add the drippings/broth and sugar and continue to cook down. Salt to taste at this point. 

Step 4: 

When the liquid is largely evaporated and there's a nice goo in the bottom of the pan, turn off the heat and add the cream to the pan, stir, and cover. 

The Polenta

1 cup polenta/corn meal

4 cups water

1 tbsp butter

1/4 cup milk

1/4 cup cream

1/4 cup Parmesan cheese

1/8 cup honey

salt, lots of salt

Polenta is a pain in the ass. 

Step 1: 

Boil the water. Whisk in the polenta slowly to keep it from clumping. Add the milk, then turn down to very low and cover. 

Step 2: 

Continue stirring every 5  minutes to so to keep it from burning to the bottom of the pan or creating horrid clumps. 

Step 3: 

After about 30 minutes, uncover and stir until the consistency is what you'd like. Mix in the cream, cheese, honey, butter, and salt until it tastes good. Remember, this is not a standalone, but will be the starch to help carry the other flavors. 

Step 4: SERVE IT. 

It will harden quickly, so make sure it's dished out IMMEDIATELY or you'll have polenta clods on plates. 

To Plate: 

Dish out Polenta on small plates, Remove one slice of the pork and shave thin slices of it and artistically arrange on the plate (see above). Spread the sauce over the top and you're done. 

Beef Stroganoff: Not the Stuff You'd Find at the Bottom of an Outhouse, Though It Looks Like It

Beef Stroganoff is one of the most repellent looking dishes you can cook. It's chunky and brownish and roughly the consistency and color of the terrifying pat of feces that always sits immediately below the seat of all National Park pit restrooms.

However, it has all of the makings of an American classic for two reasons: 1. It contains beef and mushrooms as primary ingredients, and 2. It can be cooked from a packet. Because of this, most of us have never actually eaten decent Stroganoff. The prepackaged stuff tastes unremarkably like "brown" until you add sour cream, at which point it tastes kind of like sour cream. 

Stroganoff actually is Russian in origin, (which means it's really French in origin), though there are conflicting stories about exactly how it came to be, both involving members of the countly Stroganov family. The first guess is that it was the brainchild of an anonymous chef who worked for the toothless old Grigory Stroganov in the late 18th century, who created a dish that the old fellow could gum to his satisfaction. The latter theory attributes the dish to Pavel Stroganov's chef, Charles Briere, who won first prize with the dish in a cooking contest  in 1891. As a trained historian, I give far more credence to the first claim for two very good reasons: 

1. The dish itself is atypical of the noble food that was popular at the time, and frankly has the aura of the decrepit about it. The gumming theory  just makes sense. 

2. There is an entry in a cookbook published in in 1871 that refers to a similar, far simpler dish for middle class housewives. Whatever Beiere used was already in circulation - it's possible that he just made it more exciting. 

And Stroganoff can actually be rather exciting. America got its first published taste of it in John MacPhearson's 1934 cookbook Mystery Chef's Own Cookbook, which added Worcestershire sauce to heighten the flavor. As I mentioned elsewhere in this blog, Worcestershire is made using fermented fish sauce, much like the Roman garam. Which, coincidentally, is how they originally synthesized MSG, that magical flavor enhancer. 

I serve my Stroganoff over a plate of buttered noodles, but it occurred to me that it might be good on short grain rice if you were so inclined, or even polenta if we're going to get crazy. 

A fun modification struck me a second ago - why not try using dark, malty beer (like Moose Drool) to deglaze instead of wine? 

Ingredients for Beef Stroganoff

1 pound of beef, cut into thin strips

8 cremini (brown) or white mushrooms 

1 onion

3 cloves garlic

1 tbsp good paprika

2 tbsp tomato paste

2 cups beef broth

1/4 cup red wine for deglazing

1 tsp raw sugar

1 1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

flour for dredging 

2 tsp fresh parsley

sour cream/creme fraiche/lebneh

oil

1 tbsp butter

salt

pepper

Prep Work: 

1. Chop (I mince for the texture) your onion and put aside. 

2. Destem your mushroom caps, cut them in half and then in half again and chop thinly - add these to your onion pile. 

3. Smash the garlic cloves and mince them up - put them in a bowl to add to the onions when cooking

4. Shave off rather thin strips of beef at a 45 degree angle to the grain and dredge them in flour, salt and pepper.

Step 1: Beef

 Heat oil in a deep flat bottomed pan on medium-high and brown the meat for about a minute, then pull off and set aside

Step 2: Your "veggies"

Ha. Onions are roots and mushrooms are fungi, no veggies here (parsley is a leaf). Anyway, add the butter to the same pan on medium heat now, melt it, and then add your onion and mushrooms. Cook until the onions are soft, then add the garlic and cook for about a minute. 

Step 3: Wine! 

Stir in the paprika and tomato paste, then add the wine and scrape the bottom of the pan to deglaze all of the delicious crud that has accumulated. This will cook off pretty quickly, at which point you add the broth, Worcestershire sauce and meat, then turn down the heat to low and cover. Cook for about 20 minutes, stirring frequently to keep it from sticking to the bottom 

Step 4: Noodles

Make your noodles. I like fetuccini noodles for the texture, but pappardelle would work even better. Butter them up at the end. 

Step 5: Finishing

Turn off the Stroganoff as the noodles start to get soft. Let it cool for a minute and then add the pepper, check the salt and add a dollop of sour cream or creme fraiche (we use lebneh) and stir it in. Let it rest a bit, then serve it next to or on the pasta. 

Thai Panang Curry - As if There Was Another Kind of Panang Curry

Sorry about the overuse of adjectives in the headline there, but since there's a pretty significant difference in style between the South Asian curries and most of the Southeast Asian Curries, I thought I'd clarify to make things easier on everyone.

For reference: Indian, Sri Lankan and Pakistani curries are often a bit thicker with almost a gravy-like consistency and frequently have tomato or onion based sauces. They can have meat, vegetables, fish, or cheese, and are flavored with a variety of spices depending on the region. Your typical example here is tikka masala, which (fun fact) was originally made with Campbell's tomato soup as a base. Gross huh?

 I imagine that tikka masala is the big pot that all of the restaurant workers spit in out of disgust for the customers who order it. I think that every member of the food service industry hates one or two things on the menu and despise those who order them by extension. As a barrista at Borders, I would plead with people not to order the soup, which was often days old and not fit for consumption by thoughtful animals. If they insisted, I would punish them by giving them an extra large helping.

Southeastern Asian curries, on the other hand, are lighter, thinner, filled with vegetables and herbs and are usually based primarily around coconut milk. Thai, Filipino and Vietnamese curries fit into this category. The spicing for these curries is also usually a bit milder, though you can always add more interesting flavors if you feel the curry is lacking. Whereas an Indian curry powder might contain 15 ingredients, a Thai curry might only have two or three powders to augment the herbs and base ingredients. Our dear friend (and chef) Adam Shepard made us an amazing Thai curry when he was in town that we missed terribly, which led to today's batch. Although I prefer chicken and tofu in my panang curries, we had beef since I had it on hand.

Panang is a variety of red curry that uses galangal and lemongrass. Since I cannot get fresh galangal or lemongrass easily in Beirut (though the chef at the Jai kitchen swears it is occasionally sold in Dora) I substituted fresh ginger and bay leaves. It is freaking delicious though. There would have been pictures but we ate it immediately.

Curry Ingredients:
1/2 pound meat of some sort (or tofu)
2 cups coconut milk
1/2 red bell pepper
1 green onion
1 carrot, thinly sliced
2 bay leaves
a handful of basil leaves
1 tbsp peanut butter
1 heaping tsp garam masala/curry powder
1/2 tbsp chili flakes or paprika
2 tbsp fish sauce
2 tbsp raw cane sugar
salt to taste
crushed salted peanuts and basil slivers to garnish

The Paste:
1 small-medium onion
4 garlic cloves, smashed into a paste
1 inch of gingerroot, peeled and finely shredded
2+ tbsp oil

Prep:
1. Slice your meat very thinly and brown on medium high heat in a pan with some oil and salt. Remove from the pan and reserve for later.

2. Slice the green onion basil, peppers and carrot. Put the carrot with the meat and the pepper, onion and basil on another plate. I slice the peppers into very thin inch long strips, which gives them a nice taste and texture, and slice the green onion at a 45 degree angle towards the root. to make the cut bits look like a pokey straw.

3. Make a paste from the ingredients listed above. A blender is really nice for this, (add oil to help it along, not water), but if your power is out while cooking, which is admittedly not likely outside of Lebanon, you can finely mince it and then mash it up with a mortar and pestle like I did.

4. Prepare your wet ingredients (coconut milk, fish sauce, peanut butter and the sugar) in a bowl and have it ready to dump in at a moment's notice.

5. If you're making rice, you may want to start it now.

6. Put the bay leaves and spices in a bowl and have them ready to dump in

7. Put the peanuts in a different bowl for similar purposes.

The Cooking:
1. Heat a deep flat pan on medium and add the paste, cooking for about a minute or two, at which point you add the spice bowl and continue stirring for about 30 seconds.

2. Add the wet ingredient bowl and scrape whatever sticks to it into the pan. Allow it to begin bubbling, then turn the heat to low and cover. You'll cook it like this for about 10 minutes.

3. Add the meat and carrot and cover, cooking for another 10 minutes.

4. Add the chopped vegetables, cover, and turn off the heat. I usually let it rest for a few minutes and then serve it up.

5. Serve in a bowl with a plate of rice on the side. Garnish with shreds of basil and peanuts.

6. AND VERY IMPORTANT. When you eat it, don't dump it all together for Christ's sake.  (Tam loves to do this, which dismays me to no end). Use a spoon to dip up a bit of rice, then scoop the curry onto the spoon. This way you taste all of the flavors without the starch of the rice overwhelming things.

French Roasted Chicken: For Lack of a Better Adjective

Appropriately, I'm writing this entry while taking a break from a snoozer of a book on the historical supremacy of French cuisine and the creation of a notion of cuisine that predated the Revolution but which really took off during the era of French nationalism that characterized the period of Revolution and Empire. (The irony being that this era coincided with the French people being generally starved and decrepit from constant warfare). The majority of the book is a polish job on Antonin Careme,  the Bobby Flay of the early 19th century, but it does have some interesting points on what made modern French cuisine so different in an era.

Notably, its simplicity. As Careme penned his authoritative and highly critical works, the aristocracy and high bourgeoisie was still working through its obsession with choking down rare cuts of various beasts encrusted in an inch of nutmeg, cayenne, cinnamon and Christ knows what else. The obsession with spices, which we can originally blame on the Romans, was more a tip of the cap to conspicuous consumption than to flavor. Careme, in a move which would define French cuisine, rejected overspicing in favor of the more refined flavors obtainable through herbs, essences and stocks. The ingredients became the centerpieces of the cuisine, and it was a good thing.

It is worth mentioning that Careme was also a snobby prick who couldn't resist a chance to show someone up, a trait which endeared him to me immediately in light of my ongoing hate affair with Pinterest. Although it's a great place to stumble onto good recipes, excellent blogs and great ideas, these are generally isolated islands of excellence afloat in a buttery sewer of American food culture. Here, simplicity refers not to the ingredients, but to the recipe writers themselves. Every time I see the word bake used as a noun, I get an urge to kill.

So to pay  homage to Careme and throw the finger to the boobs of Pinterest, here is a simple, relatively healthy and really cheap chicken recipe that can be prepared in minutes, baked in about an hour, and keeps well for leftovers for the next day. It's what we should be making at home, not "bakes."

French Chicken
4 bone-in skin-on chicken thighs (or a whole chicken, make sure you cook it longer...)
2 potatoes
2 carrots
10 garlic cloves (crushed and depapered)
1 small onion cut into wedges
4 shallots (or more onion)
4 sprigs of parsley
4 sprigs of fresh thyme
4 sprigs rosemary
2 tsp dried thyme powder
salt
pepper
butter
olive oil
1/4 cup white wine
1/4 cup water

Prep:
1. Take the chicken out of the oven an hour beforehand to allow it to reach room temperature, which will help it cook evenly. Preheat the oven to 475.

2. Soften about 1/4 cup of butter and mince up a few thyme and parsley leaves and mix in a good amount of salt and pepper and dried thyme. Set aside. This takes about 5 seconds, don't be put off by the idea of herbed butter.

3. Cube the carrots and potatoes, chop the onion and quarter the shallots, and throw the fresh and dry herbs into a large bowl. Douse them with olive oil, salt and pepper. Really, don't undersalt this. If you think you've got enough, just toss in a bit more for good measure. Mix well.

4. Place the vegetables in a glass pan and pour the wine and water over them.

5. Lube up the chicken pieces with the herbed butter and glob any of the remainder on top of the thighs. This will melt into the pan and mix with everything else beautifully.

Cooking:
1. Put the pan in the oven at 475 for 25 minutes to seal and crisp the chicken.

2. REDUCE THE TEMPERATURE to 350 and cook for about 30 minutes until the legs appear to have shrunken noticeably. With a full chicken, cook for at least 45 minutes, or until a meat thermometer says it's okay. You don't want to underdo it.

3. Baste a bit and let the pan sit for about 10 minutes to rest. 

Tylor's Cookie Guide

Cookies should always be wonderful, and it always baffles me that they so frequently are not. Their chemistry and our biology should ensure that they are always amazing. What are three of the most important things that we need to make stuff taste good? Sugar, fat and salt. That's essentially cookies right there, with a few things cut in to give them substance and flavor. You don't even need to cook the damn things and they're delicious.

How can you mess that up? Part of the problem is that I think people try to make things too complicated or too cute or healthy. To prevent this, here are my guildelines to guaranteed good cookies, followed by a set of links to failsafe recipes that I use. I've listed my own modifications if you want to be extra naughty:

The Guidelines:

1. NO healthy substitutions are permitted. Be honest with yourself. If you were really concerned about your health or getting rid of that stubborn belly fat, you wouldn't be eating cookies in the first place, so why not actually enjoy them? Applesauce is no more a substitute for butter than gravel is a substitute for chocolate chips. Many of these items are chemically necessary for your cookies to behave properly - this is why you don't cut out milk or eggs from a recipe that calls for both. Frankly you should know better. Avocados for butter? Get out of my kitchen!

2. Remember the key acronym: ATM. No, not that version. Nor the other one. Always Trust the Mormons. The Mormon church, in its cruel wisdom is always attempting to harness the white hot sexual energy surging through its adolescent children and divert it towards aprurient activities. For boys, this means sports and random violence.  For girls, they prefer activities that will ostensibly  help prepare them for marriage. Like baking. Or knitting. Or scrapbooking. Anyways, if you've ever eaten cookies made by a Mormon friend you'd know what I'm talking about. They're glorious.

3. Don't leave the kitchen. Timing and temperature are two additional keys to making your food taste good, so it does you no good if you're dicking around on your computer, not realizing that your oven is actually 20 degrees too hot and your soft oatmeal cookies are now chipboard. Our oven is so terrible that it's actually impossible to predict how hot the interior will be at any given moment, so this is doubly important for me.

4. Use baking paper. It's way easier and more effective than silicon sheets, which don't crisp the bottom properly.

5. Halve the recipes. Most of them are made for large families of doughy, inert children and you'll wind up with more cookies than you can conscionably dispose of.

Here are a few excellent recipes for your run of the mill cookies. I've tried all of these, so if they turn out poorly, it's probably your fault:

Oatmeal Raising Cookies - I added about a teaspoon and a half of cinnamon, a dash of clove, a bit more salt and twice the vanilla.

Lemon Cookies - A contest winner from among Mormon bakers. No bullshit, these are good. No mods needed.

Chocolate Chip Cookies - A good basic recipe that doesn't skimp on the vanilla.

Also Chocolate Chip Cookies - A more advanced recipe that is amazing.

Snickerdoodles - This is a heavyweight among sugar cookies. Always use the butter only recipes, half-crisco has half the flavor. Add some almond extract if you want to blow some minds.

That should do you. Peanut Butter cookies have been left off because I don't make them a lot since peanut butter is pricey and bad here. I also do a great chocolate cookie, but you may as well make brownies.

Cheers. 

Murgh Makhani: Butter Chicken: Pretty Much What it Sounds Like PLUS garam masala recipe

Curry is really not a summer food. It takes a lot of time to get your mise en place in order, which you should be doing anyways, but more importantly, it's terribly hot here in Beirut in the summer. Miserably hot. I'm from Arizona, and I think I'd prefer hell to Beirut in August since I hear it's a dry heat.

But since our friend Dylan made it into town this week, we thought we'd have him over to celebrate his arrival and to obviate the need to go out, which is expensive and terrible and usually not plausible with a 2 year old. The butter chicken, in contrast, was delicious and pretty cheap. Someone calculated the cost of the naan as $.16 a serving, which is reasonable even for a cheapskate such as myself.

For those of you who don't have Dora (a part of town where the domestic workers congregate on Sundays with great Filipino and Sri Lankan food) a mere 10 minute bus ride away, spices may be problematic. Fenugreek leaves are amazing, but good luck finding them. I make my own garam masala because I have a spice grinder and lots of weird whole spices, but you can use generic "curry powder" if you really want. It'll taste different, but that's not always bad. Mine is a Punjabi inspired sort.

Try making the naan, it's well worth it. Otherwise, serve this with basmati and you'll be very happy with the results. It's less "authentic" than some recipes, more authentic than most, but it tastes really freaking good.

Garam Masala Ingredients

5 green cardamoms
6 black cardamoms
4" of cinnamon stick
1/8 cup whole cumin
1/4 cup whole coriander seeds
2 bay leaves (I stem and vein them)
1 tbsp peppercorns
1 tbsp turmeric
1 tbsp paprika
1 tsp fenugreek
1 1/2 tsp dry ginger
1/8 tsp nutmeg

Step 1: Put in a spice grinder and blend. Make sure it's a grinder you'll never use for coffee, these tastes will not be coming out of it anytime soon.

Murgh Makhani Ingredients
8 boneless skinless chicken thighs
1 1/2 large onions
5 ripe red tomatoes, skinned, cored and seeded
1/2 cup crushed tomatoes
1/3 cup red bell pepper
2 inch piece of ginger minced finely or turned to paste
6 garlic cloves, minced finely
2 tbsp fresh cilantro/coriander leaves chopped
juice of 1 lemon
5 cashews powdered
2 cups water
1/3 cup cream
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp cooking oil
salt

Spices and herbs:
1 tsp turmeric
1/2 tbsp garam masala
2 bay leaves
1/2 tbsp dried fenugreek leaves
1 tsp fenugreek
1/2 tbsp ground coriander
1 tbsp muscovado or other poorly processed sugar

Step 1:
Marinate the chicken in the juice of 1 lemon and some salt for about 30 minutes. While this is going on, prep your vegetables and skin, seed and blend your tomatoes with the crushed tomato.

Step 2:
Heat the oil in a deep pan on medium high until very hot, then put in your chicken thighs. Let them brown violently on both sides, then remove and put on a plate.

Step 3:
Turn down the heat to medium and melt the butter, then add your onions and red peppers. If you're using sriracha, you don't need the peppers, but they add a nice flavor. Sweat the onions until they're clear.

Step 4:
Add the garlic and ginger pastes, stirring frequently

Step 5:
Add your sugar/spice mixture and stir to combine.

Step 6:
Add the tomato mixture and stir to combine, then add salt. Your kitchen should smell glorious by now.

Step 7:
Add the water, then cover and cook on low heat for about 15 minutes. Now might be a good time to get going on your naan and rice.

Step 8:
Remove the bay leaves and blend your chunky curry into a fine paste using a stick blender or a blender/food processor. Add the cashews, return the bay leaves  and the chicken, cover and let simmer on low for another 20 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent burning on the bottom of the pan.

Step 9:
when everything is the proper consistency (gravy-like), turn off the heat and add your cilantro and cream, stirring to combine. Cover and let rest for about 5 minutes, then serve next to rice and naan with a cilantro garnish.