Ok. This week was hit and miss, which after last week is a huge success!! But in general is pretty craptacular.

First I made the fig chutney (page 30) – which I used dates in so it was a date chutney. I ended up using less onion than they called for and even so it was a disgusting amount of onion. Even for hubby who likes onion, especially red onion. The dates were over powered and it was just horrible. It was the first thing I made and after last week it was almost enough for me to stop and not make any of the other dishes. But I’m a tough cookie and powered on.

Next came the baked Samosas (page 38) – It was alright. I couldn’t get the dough the right consistency to roll out as thin as it should of. But I did make samosas that were crisp on the outside and pretty good on the inside, even if it was a little bland. This recipe ended up being a bit of a dark horse actually… because of my lack of patience and not really loving the samosas I was left with a lot of the filling because I stopped putting them together. The next night my chicken was taking too long to cook so I added some olive oil and lemon juice to the cranberry, chickpeas and rice samosa filling and made a really nice, protein side for dinner. Turns out it just needed a little moisture and zip to become pretty damn good. Too bad the writers of this cook book don’t know that.

So now we get to Paneer in Tomato sauce (page 100) and Curried Meatballs (page 152). These were pretty good. But they were the same. Or very similar at least in their flavour profiles. It was the same seasoning in different combinations so when you ate them together you just felt like you were getting one big plate of the same thing. Honestly if I were to pick this up at a buffet, I would enjoy it while I was eating it but I wouldn’t be rushing up for seconds.

All in all I was pretty disappointed and didn’t have it in me to even try the cookies.

I’m sure you can guess what I’m going to say next… I’m not finishing this book. My biggest pet peeve is wasting food and I feel like that’s all I’m doing by buying ingredients to make sub-par indian food. Thanks to everyone who offered suggestions for better Indian cookbooks – I’ll have to take a closer look at them and decide which one to use to move forward. I’m not giving up on Indian food… but I’m giving up on Bal Anreson. I don’t even think I will watch her show ‘Spice Goddess’ anymore… it’s pretty much these recipes and now that I know they taste awful I don’t think I’ll waste my time.

Ah… you win some, you lose some.