Today is day one of our 20 days of delicious Indian recipes. One of the great things that I love about Indian cooking is the freedom that it gives you to experiment with the variety of spices and vegetables that result in countless sumptuous dishes.
Since I'm in Aruba right now I decided to call the first dish in our series "Aruba Aloo". It has nothing to do with Aruba besides the fact that I just made it here and Aloo means potato. This morning we were at the grocery store and we came across these baby red potatoes. Looking at it I thought some spices and these potatoes would become good friends very quickly.
After a day at the beach I was hungry for some Indian food. Cut to the house after sunset, I started to prepare for this simple dish. I cut these small potatoes in half...and boiled them for a few minutes. You don't want them soft. On a low fire and a little bit of oil I fried some mustard seeds, cumin seeds and a few pods of cardamom. Once the mustard seeds started to pop I added some garlic and ginger, then onions a little later and fried till they all turned a little brown.
Put in a little turmeric powder (third of a table spoon), some chili powder (amount depends on how hot you want it)
and salt to taste and mix this up well. Then throw in the potatoes, mix it all well on a medium fire. A teaspoon of butter rounds out the taste. Occasionally add a tich of water to help prevent it from burning or sticking to the pot and to help the potatoes cook. This is a dry dish so added water needs to be kept at a minimum. Cover the pot for a little while to help the potatoes cook. Make sure you stir it often.
Then end product should be dry, delicious and look a little like the photo below. If not you probably went wrong somewhere along the way and you can simply try again.
