newlywed chronicles: chapter 1
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| All photo credits to Mike Lewin and his new camera! |
Dear friends,
It's Sunday. Mike's watching the 'Skins and I'm flipping through Dorie Greenspan's epic tome, Baking, hunting for recipes to test out for Thanksgiving. Do you know what we're not doing? Seating charts, booking hairstylists for my bridesmaids and figuring out how many gift bags we need to stuff. Do you know why we're not doing any of those things? OUR WEDDING IS OVER.
Now, don't get me wrong: when I got our wedding video a few days back, I was still pretty verklempt that all of the pomp and circumstance is over. But, we have found ourselves with hours and hours of more free time every week and that is an absolute blessing. At this point, I have a masters in bookshelf curating and pot rack organizing.
Not planning a wedding also gives us more time for DATE NIGHT (which I think should always be capitalized). I'm also eating solid foods again and not exercising five hours a day, so that has really expanded our options for after-work activities. Enter HowAboutWe for Couples: a spinoff of the dating site, HowAboutWe that's designed specifically for people that are already dating (or married!) to find out of the box ideas for dinner, theater and the like. The team there was kind enough to give Mike and me a certificate towards a DATE NIGHT of our choice and OBVIOUSLY both of said simultaneously: "At-home Indian cooking class!"
Okay, maybe we didn't do that exactly. But after both of us independently looked at the site, we knew we wanted to do something food-related (shocker) and Madame Curry's class was by far the most intriguing. The site is very user friendly and within five minutes we had booked a three and a half hour cooking class Chez Izon-Lewin for the next week.
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| Soaking lentils |
Mahima, aka Madame Curry, arrived at our apartment at 6:30 sharp armed with all of the ingredients we needed to make hors-d'oeuvres, appetizers, mains, sides and dessert.
We started with pakoras, which are made with a simple batter and veggies and then flash fried.
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| Frying |
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| Finished product with chutney |
Then we moved into our main courses, which included spinach with cheese, chickpeas, and lentils. We also made our own pappadums and naan on our grill pan. Here are a few more pictures from the night:
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| Adding in fried paneer cheese to our spinach |
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| Safety first: these are my onion goggles. |
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| Mahima's spice tin. |
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| Finished dishes! Check out the grill marks on our naan. |
Not only did we end up with enough food for about six people, it was wonderful to have such a fun and fancy meal without needing to get out of my jammies. Thank you so much, Mahima! We loved having you.
