Indian Cooking in Spain

So after a weekend of a TON of reading and homework, and only a little going out at night (although I might have been out till 4am on Friday...), I finally came upon Monday.

I woke up in the morning feeling EXTREMELY nauseous for god knows what reason. Since I was pretty sick, I skipped one of my two classes of the day to rest a bit, but since I’m feeling a lot better now, I think it was a really good decision.

Anyways, after class and having a great lunch with my professor, Palmar, I came home and helped my mother prepare to cook tandoori chicken; to turn into murghi makhani (which was part of my gift to her; an Indian cookbook, some spices and teaching her how to cook some Indian food). She, my host brother, and his best friend were all invited to dinner that night.

Since she had once upon time eaten tandoori chicken and not enjoyed it, the night before when we were getting ready to marinating it overnight, my mother seemed extremely skeptical over everything I was doing. “You’re rubbing the masala into the chicken?” “You’re using lemon juice and not water to help marinate it?” ….the list goes on. Since instead of using boneless chicken breasts (to cut up into small pieces later when cooking) we were using drumsticks (which she insisted were tastier, along with insisting on keeping the “lean fat” on it), I was a bit skeptical myself. But since my real mom had reassured me that it wasn’t too big of a deal, I kept on trucking, assuring her that all the steps were correct.

So then, today was the day for baking and cooking chicken. If she had been insistant on her ways before, she was about ten times worse today. “You’re putting the casserole dish with the chicken on a tray with aluminum foil with water on it? How strange!” and “I know my oven; it is going to take WAYYY longer than 15 minutes to bake the chicken” and because of altitude, I figured she had a point and let her handle that part.

Finally, the chicken was pretty much baked and ready to be cooked. This part was more difficult for me, because my host mother a) did not want to use about half the spices on the list, saying “it’s too much, it’s too strong”, and b) we didn’t really have a blender to mix everything so I was beginning to doubt this chicken as well.

However, after using a mortar and pestle for the garlic (no ginger; it’s hard to get a hold of in Spain, as my host mother says) as soon as I started melting some garlic with the butter, I knew that I could cook at least a decent tasting sauce. I added a tomato (that she was VERY good at cutting into small pieces), some “ketchup-like-tomato-sauce”, a bit of the cumin and garam masala (that I had brought), the chicken and some of the lemon juice from the chicken’s marinade, that had been baked with it (which is partially why the recipe was a bit more acidic/tangier than usual).

However…after everything was said and done, the chicken came out marvelously! My host mother said, at least 20 times, that it was sooo good and she has never tasted something SOO tasty in her entire life. That was one of the most flattering things I have ever heard. Kudos to my mom for helping me follow through with my idea and teaching me how to make such tasty food! My host mother just couldn't stop raving about it! The texture, the taste, how well it blends with white rice and bread, how it was just the tastiest thing she had eaten, constantly saying that she didn’t even want to brush her teeth because she wanted to keep the taste in her mouth. Success! The chicken was different than what I had made in Madison, due to resources and lack of some spices, but it was definitely delicious in it's own way. After all her insisting and modifications, I was still able to help her learn how to make a chicken that she’ll never forget.