It never tastes right

I have tried over and over and over again to make good Indian food. And it's never right. I've tried buying the best curry and garam masala (or I guess, what I thought to be the best, which still didn't come from an Indian food store or spice store, so it probably wasn't the best). It's always ok, but not nearly as good as what you can get from a restaurant. It's very frustrating. I'm starting to get mad.

I didn't even like Indian food until probably 5 years ago. And yes, I had tried it. Although I don't think I had tried good Indian food from a good restaurant.

Part of the issue is that I was always kind of afraid of those recipes that had a ton of spices, I was convinced that I could make a good recipe just by using garam masala or the curry spice mixture that I bought from the store. Either I wasn't doing it right or didn't have the right recipe, either way, not good.

So one day I decided to buy every Indian spice that I could find from my local grocery establishment. Including cardamom, I'm sure I'll never use it, but I can't ever blame my lack of spices anymore. Then I tried another recipe with all my new spices and it was too "spicy" - not hot, but just too much stuff. I think the issue there was that the recipe called for whole spices, and it's not nice to bite into a whole clove. Maybe I should have tried toasting and grinding them. It's always something.

Another issue is that we prefer our Indian food to come in a sauce. Nothing better than mopping everything up with some Naan and rice. So that's also slightly limiting. Maybe the problem is that I'm just too picky. But everything from restaurants is good and nothing from my kitchen is good.

So last night we went over to a friend's house for Indian food, and all of my theories of good Indian food were blown out the window. We had a spinach and lamb dish that had neither a sauce nor a ton of spices, and it was delicious. So, back to square one. I got the website from which the recipe came (http://www.kabobandcurry.com/recipes.htm) so I'm definitely going to try some things out.

I have no recipes for you today. I can't make Indian food. It's never good. So if you have a good recipe, let me know. Maybe next week will be Indian food week.