So I was down my local convenience store and saw this packet for £1.99 and was all like this looks nice. So I bought it and went home to cook something with it for lunch.
When I got round to my professional chef friend’s kitchen I had a look at the ingredients:
Water, chickpeas, onion paste, refined sunflower oil, tomato paste, salt, ginger paste, garlic paste, corriander, salt, dry mango, pomegranate seed (WTF) red chilli, cumin, kachri (wassat?), black pepper, black salt, fenugreek, cloves, mint, nutmeg, ginger, cassia, black cardamom, mace, cumin powder, corriander powder, cinammon, coriander, green cardamom, fennel, ROSE PETAL, bay leaf, pippali (wassat?), tea leaf, red chilli powder, amla powder (?), mango powder, fenugreek leaves, cardamom small, cardamom large, clove powder.
What. The. Actual. F*CK. That is insane! WHY SO MUCH STUFF!?
Anyway, what’s all that look like?
Kind of like a poo bloodbag.
Erm,
So what journey etc am I going to take this really complex poobag on?
Well, for the first time in this blog I’m not going to mess with all those flavours in anyway cos I am super intrigued as to how all that tastes. So I figure the most responsible course of action is to serve with some boiled brown rice (srsly, my pro chef friend approves BTW “don’t mess with the flavours”).
I begin by measuring out one cup of rice:
Next, I rinse thoroughly:
(just in case you didn’t know what this looks like)
After boiling the rice for 45 mins I serve with the sauce!
It kinda looks like poo and then with the additional visual feast of maybe, um, some rabbits have come along and done the toilet all over it.
BUT HOW DOES IT TASTE!>>!>!!>>!>!!??!?!?!
Disappointingly bland. I can taste the tea and I think there is too much cumin but apart from that it tastes fairly average and not very authentic; it needs more richness and depth so I figure a wee bit of parmesan might help (it’s umami innit):
And does it?
Yes it does! The parmesan isn’t overpowering either, which is good, and I like how it’s more earthy now.
So overall and for all the ingredient hype, I’m not that impressed. Which is a shame because other products from their range are killer.
But have YOU tried any of this stuff and what did you think and more importantly, what the hell with those ingredients!? I don’t even know what half of them are. But if you do, hit me up on twitter or sub to the email list ^^^!
Another goddam foodblog 