Tuesday, January 4, 2011

I fail at the metric system (with cauliflower)

I decided to curry a cauliflower. Mainly because I own more boxes of curry mixes than anyone should rightly own, and because, well, it was going bad. The cauliflower, not the curry.

I made Pav Bhaji Masala, because, according to the package, you fry onion, tomatoes, potatoes or cauliflower, green peas, etc and along with the spice mix, mash, add butter and serve with hot buttered Pav, which looks from the package like a giant yeast roll.

What's not to love? Potatoes, cauliflower, spicy seasoning, mashed & and served with gobs of butter on a giant fluffy roll? It's super spicy mashed potatoes & bread. Yum! And best of all, on the bottom of the package are the words "Delicious, Aromatic, Hygenic". No, I am not making that up. I was a little worried there, that it wouldn't be... you know, sanitary, but no, it's right there on the box "Hygienic". Huge relief!

But I digress. I had a cauliflower & not potatoes, so I used that. Fried up on anion, 2 tomatoes and the cauliflower. Now the box called for 500 grams of vegetables, and I don't really know that metric system. Hey, I was a kid in the 70's. There was a war going on, cars were giant solid steel bodied behemoths made in Detroit, everyone spoke English and was white (Seriously, look at news footage from the late 60's & early 70's, you'd think you were in Ikea.) And we laughed, laughed at the idea of converting to the system the entire rest of the world used!

So, anyhoo, back to the cooking. I smooshed my fried veg around with a little olive oil and carefully measured out the 2 Tbsp of spice mix and added it, let it all cook down and tried it. It was hot. Really really hot. Now, for those of you that don't know me, I like hot. Really like hot. I eat salsa with a spoon (chips are so inefficient). Thai, Indian, Mexican, sure, bring it on. But this was hot!

I called my son to see if adding coconut milk would be a good idea. He actually vetoed that, but I did it anyway. I let him taste before I added the coconut milk and after he stopped crying, he looked at the package.

"Momma, how much cauliflower is in here?" Well, the whole head, of course. "How much did it weight?" About half a pound, regular cauliflower size. And I added 2 Tablespoons of spices. and he started laughing. "500 grams is a little over a pound." Ok, so I added twice as much spices as I needed.

"How much spice did you add again?" 2 Tablespoons, just like it says on the package. I measured very carefully! Indian spices do not like to be trifled with!

"That's great, but it called for 2 teaspoons, not 2 Tablespoons". Oh, crap, no wonder it was hot!

So I failed, failed at cauliflower. Failed at the metric system and apparently at basic cooking abbreviations. Luckily, the coconut milk made it tolerable. Even pretty tasty. Still about 4 times as hot as it should be, but pretty good. Hey, I'm not wasting a good cauliflower & two fresh tomatoes! Those things are expensive! The last cauliflower I bought was $2.29 last week at the Aldi, and they're about the cheapest place around. It will probably get curried as well, but with a drastic reduction in the amount of spices!

But it was indeed Delicious, Aromatic and mercifully Hygienic! And, even better, a Quality Award Winner!

So, I'll let you know how the next cauliflower turns out. It had better be good, I'm out of coconut milk.