Indian Dinner

My friend Kavya has come home with me a few times this semester to just get out of Richmond and have a little space to breathe from all of the academics and crew (we joined the team together back in the fall). She is from Canada, so she doesn't have the luxury of going home basically whenever she wants like I do. She only has an older sister, so I think the first time she came home with me it was a little crazy, but she joined right in with everything and I love how comfortable she feels at our house! Not everyone can just jump right into such a large family!

This past weekend Kavya wanted to make an Indian dinner for the family. None of the kids had ever tried Indian food, and Mom and Dad had only had it a few times. I was pretty excited to learn something new, and man was it fun watching Kavya just throw random things together and have it all taste so delicious. We went to Wegmans and got all of the spices we needed, because we sure didn't have them in our spice cabinet! Kavya is vegetarian, and has been her entire life, so she didn't know what meat dishes to make, so I just used the internet and figured out two different ones to try: butter chicken and chicken tikka masala. Kavya made the rice, chickpeas, roti (flatbread), lemon lentils, and potatoes. It was fun to get such a wide variety of Indian dishes, and usually she said you just have one or two.

Making the flatbread earlier in the morning

This was a blend of spices that Kavya used in almost every dish. She used it to season the oil she cooked with, and they smelled so good. I don't remember what the spices are... I think there are cumin seeds, black mustard seeds, and maybe sesame?

I loved the rice! She cooked it with cumin seeds and it gave it such a good flavor.

Dinner on the table. In the flag bowl are the potatoes, with were so good. There were no leftovers of them, so I think they were definitely a favorite. The closest black pot was the Chicken Tikka Masala, which was my favorite of the two chicken dishes. It had fresh chunky tomatoes in it and also the perfect amount of spiciness! The chicken dish behind it was the Butter Chicken, which was pretty good too. The smaller dish in front of the rice were the chickpeas, which were so yummy! Then you can dip the flatbread in the lentils, which were good, too. Everything was!