While this Punjab curry is strongly spiced, like its chicken counterpart, the richness of the dish counteracts the heat a good bit, making it a good candidate even for those who might be timid around Indian cuisine. There’s a classically spiced backbone with notes of ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, and cloves, and yet the slowly simmered lentils combined with the generous cream/butter combo yields a final product that has an almost contradictory sumptuous, smooth, almost velvety mouthfeel. I don’t tend to call many an Indian dish

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This soup was a delicious way to start a meal. It looks deceptively simple (like any other butternut squash soup), but has a surprisingly complex flavor. The pear added an almost unnameable but distinct tangy sweetness while the peppers and assortment of spices lent an incredibly full flavored back drop to the whole experience. I didn’t want to stick with the usual assortment of “pumpkin pie spices” that seem so beaten to death at this

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In reality, this is quite simple and that’s why it’s so darn good (but such is barbecue). The chicken is slowly smoked–richly flavorful, crispy skin, and surprisingly tangy from a simple marinade. Plus, whole chicken is the best (I always love a good roast chicken).

What made this different was the sauce glazed on at the end. It’s a simple barbecue sauce, but tinged with a generous helping of Indian flavors–cinnamon, cardamom, tamarind, fenugreek, cilantro, etc. The total combination worked wonderfully and had me licking my fingers clean.

• 1 whole chicken
• Marinade
  • 1/8

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The curry had a great, smooth body with a velvetty mouthfeel and a really great blend of spices. The saffron added a nice little something on top of the other spices while the meat was very tender and rich (on account of the nice amount of ghee used. If you don’t have any ghee in your pantry–get some or make some soon!). The yogurt base to the curry gave a great tang and the lambiness was still distinct, albeit kind of subtle next to all

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So in case you never have had biryani (or good biryani, for that matter), this is a popular dish in many countries with many different styles of preparation. I only know it through Indian cuisine, so that’s the perspective I bring to this. You have long grain basmati rice, cooked like any other rice with a handful of spices infusing the grains for flavor. But this is merely a foundation–not the most

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If you’re like me, the name of this dish seems a bit confusing when combined with the photo. Creamy almond sauce evokes images of a delicate, light-tannish colored, velvetty sauce. Well, it started out that way, but the end result is a lot thicker, almost to the point of adding a tacky crust to the meat (which I was smitten with).

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Channa masala is essentially a strongly spiced curry (the “masala” part) with chickpeas for the protein (the “channa” part) rather than meat. Calling any curry “strongly spiced” is a big generalization, but this is strong even among other curries. This isn’t too say that it’s overwhelmingly hot–just really flavorful (there’s some heat, of course, but it is a bit milder). A big distinction in my mind is that this curry has both a distinct tang and a certain sourness that makes for an incredibly delicious result. Plus channa masala is fun to eat and quick to make (especially compared to many

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If you’ve never had something like this before, you’re probably skeptical about this one, and hey, I hear you–it does sound weird, but if you like Indian food, I promise you, this is a joy to eat. I didn’t want this to be some everyday pizza with just chunks of chicken tandoori on top (which sounds like it would be…crappy), so I revisited every element of the pizza.

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The cardamom-honey ice cream custard-base really stole the show–it was intense, just the right creamy texture, sweet, and just out of the ordinary. Cardamom is one of my favorite spices that really is beyond my ability to describe–it works so well in savory and sweet applications, kind of like cinnamon–and in this case, it really gave the ice cream an incredible flavor backbone.

Combined with chunks of baklava, you had a great contrast visually, texturally, and flavorally (go, made up words, go!)–crunchy, cinnamon spiced nuts, delicate, flakes of buttery pastry, pockets of honeyed, rose-scented

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Instead of the usual chicken or lamb, this curry’s protein is diced hard-boiled eggs. The gravy it tomato-based, slightly spicy, and both creamy and slightly sweet on account of the presence of coconut milk. I followed a similar technique in making this as I did when I made butter chicken. The eggs make for a different but somehow, more fun-to-eat

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