Eating the sub-continent: part 2

Raita, Rice, and Curry

With the goal of cooling the potentially warm curry, I made simple raita - inspired by this recipe from the recent issue of bon appetit magazine.

It started with about 3/4 of a 1qt container of plain yogurt. I drained it in a towel lined strainer for a couple of hours and then mixed in a peeled, chopped cucumber, 1t or so of salt, and a handful of chopped cilantro. That's it.

I cooked 2 cups of basmati rice in the rice cooker and then dumped in about a cup of frozen peas at the end of the cooking time and let the heat from the rice defrost and heat the peas.

The curry began with leftover cooked veggies - carrots, celery, onion, and broccoli stems (we ate the florets the other day and I saved the stems for this). I put about 2 cups of cooked vegetables in a saucier with a couple of tablespoons of oil and 1 T of madras curry powder and stirred in about 2 peeled, chopped potatoes over medium heat until everything was nicely coated with spices. Then I added about a cup of red lentils and 3 cups of chicken broth and let everything simmer for a while until the lentils and potatoes were cooked. That was the curry. I used the stick blender to smooth it out a bit. I followed the instructions about how much curry powder to use, but we could have had it hotter.

BTW - I made another small pot of soup without the spices but with everything else for Q. He is now 9 months old, has one partial tooth and loves soup. I blended his with the stick blender before blending the one with spice.