Since we’ve come back from India, deciding what to eat has been pretty difficult. At work, I’m lucky to be able to get Seamless ordered from any place within the delivery radius of our office, but even that has been a (first world) struggle in deciding what I want. I think part of the reason I can’t decide is because I keep thinking about all the flavors and textures I had during our India trip, and I honestly would prefer to just continue eating different variations of that while here. But alas, that isn’t quite possible, especially in the Flatiron area where my office is.

So on Friday night, I made a masoor dal, a lentil stew, to satiate my dal cravings. Then, on Saturday, I made a version of the minced string bean dish that Chris’s grandmother’s servant made for us. It’s called green bean thoran and is a very common vegetable side dish in the state of Kerala, where Chris’s family on both sides is originally from. It was purposely different than the one the servant made, but still tasty and what I wanted. And then today, I made a version of Indian-Chinese vegetable fried rice. Unfortunately, it tasted nothing like the Indian fried rice we had at the Intercontinental in Mumbai, where we were able to enjoy a few gorgeous breakfasts. I remember asking the server and then the chef what spices were used in their fried rice that was part of their breakfast buffet, and they insisted no spices were used, just salt, pepper, chilies, and broth powder. We have no idea what spices were in the broth powder. Ugh. I even tried doing multiple variations of Google searches for “Indian Chinese fried rice recipe” that yielded zero even partially promising results. Lastly, I defrosted the organic chicken I had gotten from Costco a few months ago, spatchcocked it (removed the backbone, and for the very first time, which I was terrified of doing… It was actually harder than the videos made it look. You really need to apply some elbow grease even when you do have a pair of kitchen shears, which I specifically bought for this purpose), and rubbed home-blended garam masala spices over it, then roasted it whole for dinner. After seeing how quickly a whole chicken roasts (35 minutes!) in the oven with its backbone removed, I may never roast a whole chicken with its back bone in ever again. This was truly dinner-changing.

Now, I’m wondering what will be next: Kerala fish fry? Double-rise dosa? Cabbage poriyal? The list of things I want to make has only grown exponentially since this trip has concluded.