Fish with Kokum

I have been eyeing this recipe for a year or more and I swear I had made it once, but that's impossible since I didn't have kokum until recently, right? It was the simplicity of the recipe that attracted me because, no offense to Indian cuisine - I love you! - but at times it can be time consuming. Plus my cookbook includes a pretty picture of the finished deal and I am a sucker for pretty pictures. The kokum is has thrown me off, though, because it was hard to find even here and damn, I hate buying ingredients for only one recipe. Plus, what would it taste like? The recipe gives tamarind puree as a reasonable substitute; I hate the taste of tamarind. Nevertheless, I couldn't refuse how easy this dinner would be, so once I found kokum it was on.

Samak Mishwi (Oven-Barbecued Fish)

We didn't eat fish often when I was growing up. Chesapeake blue crabs and oysters, of course - I am a Maryland girl - but scaly finned fish, not so much. I love fish, as did my parents; it just was never part of the dinner repertoire. I think I remember my mom stating that she hated to clean fish; I understand how she feels. When I purchased the fish you see above I asked for the it to be cleaned but not de-scaled, for some reason thinking it necessary to keep the scales on. At home I looked at the recipe and saw that the scales needed to be removed. How hard can it be? I thought. Seth told me I should go outside. I told him that was completely unnecessary. Note: when someone has been fishing their entire life, listen to their advice. Apart from the indignity of being struck in my eyes about thirty times, I am still finding scales in the kitchen a month later. Those things fly everywhere.

Chapatis

The glorious, ubiquitous chapati. I don't think there is a food more loved by visitors to Uganda, except for maybe the rolex. My first time in Uganda I ate these at least every other day; they were amazing and cheap and, how did street vendors manage to roll out such deliciousness? While in Mukono and Kabale I had my favorite chapati vendors to visit, a chapati is a chapati anywhere you go (in Uganda, anyway). Sometimes you'd arrive when a stack was already finished, waiting for customers, but the best times were when the vendors were just setting up, rolling out balls of dough, rolling them flat, then cooking them with an obnoxious amount of oil on a flat frying pan heated to scorching hot over a blazing charcoal brazier. I imagined they must be difficult to make, but luckily my friend's host mother, Doreen, showed us one night that they are the easiest breads to make, dispelling the chapati mystery forever. This was confirmed when, a year later, I was in Uganda again and my coworker, Clement, showed me and a fellow volunteer how he makes chapatis - exactly the same way as Doreen, albeit with a bit more oil. Suffice it to say I am presently a chapati-making fool.

Chicken Lababdar

The one that started it all, in terms of this blog, anyway. Chicken Lababdar is Seth's favorite dish at our favorite Indian restaurant here: Dawat. One night, after tasting his dish at the restaurant, I declared confidently that I could easily recreate that at home. However, an internet search for the recipe brought me three sites with the exact same recipe, including typos, causing my confidence to slightly falter. I am not one to give up, though (at least not with cooking) and the internet did provide a decent starting point, so that each time I make this I change something and get a little bit closer to what Dawat has to offer.