An Indian Summer Night

For a while now I've been jonesing to have an Indian-themed dinner, and last night I finally did.  A friend and I scoured for recipes a day early and when we settled on our dishes we began shopping and planning.  Last night we finally brought the plans to fruition - yay! Preparation took a while longer than was ideal, but it turned out so amazing it was worth it.

Our entree was a Florida version of a popular British dish with Indian roots: Flounder Tikka Masala. And ohh boy it was good.  I adapted the recipe from Avocado & Bravado's recipe for Chicken Tikka Masala.  The change to fish was so nice. I'm getting pretty tired of chicken these days, and the flounder filets were so sweet and tender, they went with the sauce perfectly.

Variations:
-Light on the ginger
-Omitted cilantro
-Reduced fat instead of heavy cream (and only 1/4 - 1/2 cup)
-When the sauce was nearly done cooking I pureed it with a Cuisinart Smart Stick (which worked beautifully, and a snap to clean too!) to transform the chunky sauce into a nice even consistency. Perfection.

We had a side of yummy Cumin-Scented Samosas served with Mint Raita.  The samosas had a really complex flavor that you could just sit and savor, and the mint raita added more depth and great zing to each bite.  We found the recipe in Cooking Light magazine and adapted it to our tastes.

Variations on samosas:

-Light on the ginger
-Light on the cilantro
-Made phyllo cups in muffin pans instead of folding them into triangles

Variations on mint raita:

-Used greek yogurt instead of regular

-Added a few teaspoons of fresh lemon juice

-Added lemon zesp

We served the above dishes with jasmine rice, which went together perfectly, especially with the spicy tomato sauce. 

With the dinner we served a Starling Castle Riesling, which was sweet and complemented the meal very well.

For dessert we made Maangai Pal Paysam, which basically is an Indian rice pudding topped with mango.  It was a suiting end to our meal.  Not too sweet, with a really nice, mild flavor.  It was also adapted from Cooking Light's May 2008 issue.  There was a ton of great Indian recipes in that one! It was a lucky find.

Variations:

-Used jasmine rice instead of basmati

-Didn't have any cardamom, so we substituted mostly nutmeg and a bit of cinnamon. (I'm sure this totally changed the flavor, but it was pretty expensive at the store so we pulled the old switch-a-roo. I've since found some at a different store.)

Indian night was a great success, especially on our first try. I hope you enjoyed it and maybe got a few new ideas.