Month: November 2014

Old Bay Polenta Fries

Published by Swati

I’m sure my fellow foodies are insanely excited about this week!  Turkey day is almost here!!  As you can guess, thanksgiving is my FAVORITE holiday.  Our family has the traditional thanksgiving fare with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn bread, cranberry compote… the works!  It’s not always possible to have our entire family together for thanksgiving in recent years, but this year we managed to make it happen and I’m sooooo excited!  In general, this time of year from thanksgiving to New Years is my favorite time of the year.  Aside from the obvious reasons of getting time off and being with family, I think that the holidays have always been particularly memorable for me because around this time 20 years ago, my family moved to the U.S.  I didn’t fall in love with my new surroundings immediately and I was definitely NOT happy about leaving the familiar. Going from never experiencing weather below 50 degrees to brutal winters and snow was also not easy.  But  it was definitely a time of togetherness and being thankful for new opportunities, a feeling that …

Shrimp Tikka Masala

Published by Swati

It used to surprise me that the most popular dishes among my Indian and non-Indian friends were always either butter chicken and chicken tikka masala.  To be honest, my internal reaction was- WHY!?! There are soooo many other amazing dishes!  Then of course I realized this was one of many- “My taste buds are not normal” situations.   There are a lot of variations of these two popular dishes and everyone makes the sauces differently, but most restaurants I’ve been to tend to make these sweet.  Again- maybe to most taste buds this is awesome, but not really my thing.    So how did I come upon a tikka masala recipe?  Well, I knew I wanted to make something with the shrimp I had and I wanted it to be Indian 🙂  After careful research I found one that didn’t sound like the typical heavy/rich/sweet tikka masala I was used to eating at restaurants. I’m not even sure if the original recipe qualifies as tikka masala, I think it’s missing some key ingredients to support the ‘tikka masala’ aspect.  But I …