Pictures. I'm taking pictures of all my dishes now. I should have been taking photos from the beginning, but I had misplaced my digital camera. Now, hopefully, readers will be able to see the dishes I'm talking about. I'll also include some photos from the kitchen on occasion as well. The blog posts will feature a thumbnail, which will link to a much larger version of the photo, should you desire more detail. For the present, I'm going to try things with the photos at the bottom of the post.

Today we worked on basic Indian curries (yellow curry chicken and green curry chicken) and some of their traditional accompaniments (raita, chutney [recipe], and naan). Once again, because of the complexity and labor involved, we worked on the dishes in groups of four.

Well, in the case of the naan, in groups of eight. You see, our professional stand mixers won't mix a small recipe of dough for naan. We needed a double recipe (for a group of eight students) so that there was enough dough in the mixer to be kneaded. And, even then, the dough hook was barely able to grab the dough at the bottom of the mixing bowl.

The naan was something that we had to get started right away, as it would take several hours for the dough to rise. Indeed, it would essentially be the major bottleneck for plating the Yellow Curry.

Although the curry recipes were somewhat complex and would have probably severely strained a single student's capabilities, they were fairly easily broken up into separate tasks and taken on by a group of students. In our group of three, I did the naan, mango chutney [recipe], raita and cooked the yellow curry (easy after my partners had prepped all the ingredients).

After a couple of hours or so, it became clear to the chef instructors that we were moving very rapidly and would be finished with everything but the naan well before the scheduled presentation deadline. So, just as we were organizing and cleaning our stations, thinking that this was going to be a very relaxing day, the chef instructors announced that we would also be presnting two plates of Coq au Vin, the chicken for which had been marinating since the day before.

There wasn't panic or anything, but a definite sense of urgency could suddenly be felt in the classroom. I was no longer simply putting together a single dish, the Yellow Curry Chicken, but having to multitask, pulling the ingredients for the Coq au Vin, prepping them and getting it started. Coq au Vin has to braise for about thirty minutes, so there wasn't much time to waste getting the chicken into the braising state.

It was certainly a good exercise, shaking us up just when we thought we had everything well under control. Once I knew that I would have my dishes finished on time, I was also fairly happy knowing that we wouldn't have to worry about the Coq au Vin tomorrow.

In the end, all my dishes came out fairly well. The flavors were excellent. It might not have been ultra-traditional, but it was delicious.

Green Curry Chicken with Jasmine Rice

Yellow Curry Chicken with Basmati Rice, Mint/Cucumber Raita, Mango Chutney and Naan

Coq au Vin