Rajma and Samosas

 For decades, I would claim that I did not like Indian food and, before you say it showed my ignorance (trying to lump all Indian food into one category is surely ridiculous) I would like to add, in my defense, it wasn't for lack of trying! 

A better way to say it might have been that I didn't like the food I had tried the 1/2 dozen times, at a 1/2 dozen different Indian restaurants so,  I gave up -- for about 20 years.  Then my son made a kidney bean dish that I didn't "mind".  But the kicker was going to a Punjabi restaurant that recently opened in town and I liked everything I had. I mean, really liked it.  All those creamy dishes may not have been what I was aiming for in trying to find healthy alternatives to my meat & cheese diet but it did introduce me to the spices (again).

This dish is Rajma -- a Northern Indian red kidney bean masala "stew".   It was pretty good but I am not sure I'd make this particular recipe again -- maybe because it was intended for a pressure cooker (which I do not own) or maybe because I made the mistake in how I used the coriander seeds. This could be one of those moments where a person having experience with using coriander seeds would say, "what an idiot!".   Having zero experience with this ingredient in seed form,  I did what the recipe told me -- toasted it in the hot pan and that's it.  I like the flavor but when I was eating the meal, my first thought was "how did pieces of rice get to be crunchy like leftover, bottom of the rice-cooker, rice?"  Then I realized it was the seeds -- it was just a weird texture that I couldn't get over -- something crunchy in my "Indian chili". :)

What was not a disappointment at all were the samosas!  And I was most worried about then because, having never made them before, I didn't really know how much to roll out the dough before forming,  how I should form them, and whether or not the seal would stick when I fried them. Well, whatever I did worked perfectly -- delicious!!