Foods of the Empire

Jolly good, right ho, pip pip, and Bob's your uncle! It's time to cook some foods of the British Empire! Well, parts of the British Empire. Okay, mostly just the part that is India. Or, even more specifically, the part that is Indian restaurants in Britain.



Ever since seeing the episode of Oz & James Drink to Britain where James makes his own Gin I have been craving a gin and tonic. Luckily we have had the same bottle of Bombay Sapphire that I got Jen for Christmas in 2003.

For tonic water I picked up some Q Tonic. Q Tonic is like regular tonic water except it's made with natural flavoring and it is phenomenally expensive. If we drank more gin and tonics this may have been prohibitive. However, given that we've had the same bottle of gin for the better part of a decade it's okay to splurge every once in a while.



I made a salad of bibb lettuce, kale, chickpeas, olive oil, curry powder, red onion, grape tomato, parsley, and a dash of hot sauce. If the bibb lettuce and the plate of this salad look similar to the base of the salad we had with last night's fondue dinner that is merely a coincidence.

Jen mentioned during the salad that she doesn't think that she likes curry powder. This is news to me. Cue my father-in-law who will surely mention that my mother-in-law does things like this all the time.



Is it okay to make frozen samosas? Because that is exactly what I did.



Along with the samosas and the naan bread I served some mango chutney from The Virginia Chutney Co. It's Major Grey's chutney which is apparently a type of chutney much in the way that Earl Grey is a type of tea. Except, unlike their crummy tea, I rather like their chutney.

The Greys have their grubby 19th century mitts in everything!



For the main course I used some onion, carrot, cauliflower, broccoli, potato, red pepper, and okra to make this vegetable korma.



For beer I had the obvious choice. No, not Kingfisher, but from the same brewery,
Stawski Distributing home of Stawski beer: "The only TRUE Polish beer." Huh?

I had two drinks this evening! It's okay though because I started with gin. You know what they say, "Liquor before beer, you're in the clear." They also say, "If you only have two drinks you're probably fine with any sort of combination.

For dessert we watched Monty Python's the Life of Brian. Both of us for the first time (go figure). What could be more British than that.

Now I finally know what all those super-annoying nerds in high school and college were referencing all the time.