My boyfriend and I went to Vij's Restaurant in Vancouver, B.C. for the first time several years ago and we've been dreaming of going back ever since. We remember just about everything we ate there that night including the wild boar curry and the lamb popsickles in fenugreek cream curry. Now we can do our best to recreate both at home thanks to Vij's cookbook.
We've been cooking our way through Vij's Elegant and Inspired Indian Cuisine the past several weeks (I hear that Vij's at Home is good too) cooking everything from ground beef curry and Vikram's mom's chicken curry to warm fennel salad and garam masala roasted almonds. Our house smells great and we feel so loved by this book and its recipes. If you're a fan of Indian food too I highly recommend it. (And if you need a last minute gift for someone who loves to cook, consider this book.) Here's some of what we've made so far...
This ground beef curry and warm fennel salad was the first meal we made from the book. It was so good we made it again the next week
The leftovers became this awesome breakfast the next morning.
Vikram's mom's chicken curry recipe is delicious.
The beef short ribs in a cinnamon red wine curry is one of our favorites so far.
That made an awesome leftover breakfast the next morning too.
It might be a little tricky sourcing the mango powder (aka amchur powder) for these garam masala roasted almonds but it's worth the hunt. If you're in Portland Fiji Emporium on North Interstate is a great spot for East Indian ingredients.
Other ingredients that I picked up at Fiji Emporium...
Had to get some of these because they're as pretty as they are tasty.
Fiji Emporiumwww.fijiemporium.com 7814 North Interstate Ave. Portland, Oregon
Vij's Elegant and Inspired Indian Cuisinewww.vijs.ca