Amy’s Indian Food for Her Family {Naptime Tales from the Trenches}

This is the latest installment of my Tales from the Trenches Series. An ongoing series where friends and readers share their stories and recipes about the great food they fit into family life. We all have tips and tricks to share with each other: when we cook, what we cook and how we cook the delicious food we love to eat. If you are interested in contributing a story and recipe please feel free to contact me. Today’s Tales from the Trenches is from Amy Roche.  Amy and her husband are originally from Minnesota, and now live in Pasadena, California.  After graduating from college in 1997, Amy went to California with Teach For America.  She still teaches in inner-city Los Angeles.  She is currently working half-time as a reading intervention specialist at an elementary school in East L.A.  They have one daughter, Camilla who is two years old and usually naps!

I hit the mother-in-law jackpot when I married my husband.  Grandma Coco as she’s now called, has all the qualities a daughter-in-law could hope for.  She’s outgoing, interesting to talk with, generous and she is by far the best home cook I’ve ever met.  She is the reason I now consider myself to be a “foodie.”

I married into an Indian family, and I didn’t know it at the time, but Indian culture revolves around two things: food and family.  I remember thinking it odd at first that my husband’s family talked so much about food.  At every family get-together his parents and sisters would go into incredible detail about the delicious meals they had eaten since they last saw each other.  My eyes would glaze over, but it was their way of catching up.  I puzzled at the way they would get menus ahead of time and then discuss them for hours before ever heading out to the restaurant.  Food is not a spur-of-the-moment thing for them, it’s the main event.

My husband and I met in high school, so Grandma Coco had years to introduce me to a wide variety of dishes and accustom my palate to a whole host of South Indian delights.  When things looked to be getting serious between Pat and me, she started instructing me in the basics: daals, chicken tikka masala, rice, chapattis.  As the years went on, she exposed me to a greater variety regional dishes and gave me many helpful kitchen tips.  The best advice she gave me for efficiently organizing my weekly menu was to plan each week thematically.  If you want Indian, plan out an Indian menu for the whole week.  Or if you’re thinking Italian or Mexican, plan out a whole week menu for that cuisine.  That way, leftovers combine nicely and any extra ingredients are more likely to be used up.

Before Grandma Coco, I was a girl who didn’t know the difference between an onion and a head of garlic.  Now I am a mother who can make my family biriyani, pork vindaloo, exotic chutneys and a wide variety of vegetable dishes-I can even make my own Indian cheese!

I’m so proud to be able to pass on a rich food culture to my daughter Camilla.  She loves eating Indian food, and in fact prefers it to almost anything else.  It is a cuisine that does require a lot of work, but it’s well worth it.  There are however quite a few simple, quick dishes that I can prepare during naptime or in a pinch when I get home from work.  The recipe I included here is really quite simple, and it’s one of my daughter’s favorites.  You can get all of the ingredients in the grocery store, except sambar masala, which can be found in any Indian grocery store.  It’s a worthwhile spice to have on hand, especially if you’re interested in preparing other Indian vegetable dishes.