300 posts. How did that happen? I haven’t even finished organizing all these recipes into an alphabetical, categorized database. It’s become a much bigger project than I expected, and I’m still working on it.
Three hundred. Imagine what I could have accomplished if I had dedicated a little time each night to this, regardless of how tired I was or what else was happening. I can’t think of anything else I’ve done for 300 consecutive days besides eating and breathing. Maybe changing diapers—though that hardly felt like an achievement.
Today felt like a fitting day to mark the milestone. I didn’t want to post something trivial for post number 300. It’s the week of the family birthday trilogy: my sister, Mike and me. My birthday is later in the week, but we usually gather on the nearest Sunday. This year we met at my sister’s place for a potluck. We chose Indian dishes partly to prod my other sister into going into labor (it might have worked) and mostly because I wanted an excuse to make butter chicken.
After making it, I realized butter chicken doesn’t need to be drowned in cream and butter—some recipes call for three cups of whipping cream and a cup of melted butter, which seems excessive. You can make a delicious version with far less dairy. I also discovered it works well in a slow cooker—up until the last step when you add cream. Since I was cooking for 13 people and needed something easy to transport and reheat, I simmered tomatoes, spices, and chicken for a few hours, then took it to my sister’s and stirred in plain yogurt and just a splash of cream while the cooker was on warm.
My sister contributed a curried potato and cauliflower dish that stole the show. She remembered seeing Jamie Oliver make something similar on TV years ago and improvised from memory. Here’s how she described it to me:
She melted butter—admitting later that the generous amount (about 1/2 cup) likely contributed to how good it was—then added a bit of coconut milk (around 1/4 cup, the remainder of a can) and a big spoonful of curry paste. She cooked that until the coconut reduced and became slightly oily, then added diced potatoes and cauliflower florets. Once they started to brown she covered the pan and continued cooking, finishing with about a half-pint of grape tomatoes until everything was soft and richly flavored.
She cooked the dish for quite a while in a large electric frying pan, which freed up the stove for soup, rice and naan. The result was phenomenal—I left feeling like I had just given birth to quintuplets and equally excited about the leftovers. It was ironic that the vegetable dish ended up with more butter than the butter chicken, which actually had almost none.
[cooked-recipe id=”21566″]
(recipe not found or in draft status)
We finished the meal with cupcakes from Crave, simply because we could. Years ago, when we lived in Vancouver, I told Mike we should move back to Calgary and open a cupcake shop. He wouldn’t go for it. Imagine if we had—there might have been a cupcake fortune waiting for us. Paying $47 for a dozen cupcakes and a dozen minis felt pricey, but I’ve been baking since I was a child. I even started a makeshift Kooky Cupcake Company with a $20 loan from my mom and an One Egg Cake recipe from The Joy of Cooking when I was about eight. Most of those early profits disappeared into testing and sampling, but the passion stuck with me.
Here’s to three hundred posts, family dinners, and dishes worth making again and again.