chicken tikka masala, goat cheese naan and sticky rice

If I could eat only one type of ethnic cuisine for the rest of my life, it would be Indian food – no contest. Sorry Ukrainian food, as much as I LOVE potatoes and caramelized onions, I will never crave varynyky or holubtsi as much as I will masala spices, dal, or naan.

(I really hope my mom isn’t reading this.)

Ever since moving home, I have been in a constant state of Indian food deprivation. My parents live in rural Upstate NY, one of the worst combinations for any kind of good, authentic ethnic food restaurants. So after about 7 months of complaining about that and forcing all of my friends to only eat at Indian restaurants when I’m in Albany, I finally started making my own.

I started off simple, with chicken tikka masala (which I’ve made before), homemade goat cheese naan (almost a foolproof recipe!), and sort of hacked sticky rice (but still delicious). The chicken tikka masala recipe I usually use is from Allrecipes – the only modifications I make are generally leaving things out if I don’t have it in the house, or cutting down on the marinating time if I didn’t plan ahead. Also, the chicken can totally be cooked on the stovetop if you don’t have a grill readily available or it’s winter.

The goat cheese naan recipe is pretty fool-proof and delicious. For the rice, I cooked regular white rice in a mixture of water and sweetened condensed milk (wow, this sounds so much grosser than it did when I was eating it….) and then added unsweetened flaked coconut to it after it was done cooking.

If I could I’d make all of this every night for dinner…but yeah sadly that is probably not very healthy. Or likely, since I’m prone to laziness. But either way it makes for a delicious meal when I’m craving some Indian food!