I am on the cusp of swearing off all recipes for curries and related spice blends in Indian or Thai cooking, throwing out all my cardamom pods and cinnamon sticks and dried tamarind, and switching entirely over to pre-blended spice packets.
It started with the innocent suggestion (from Cooks' Illustrated if I recall correctly) that one could fake tom yum gai pretty well with a spoonful of green curry paste and maybe a piece of lemon grass. I tried it. They are right.
Yes, the best Thai restaurants in town make better tom yum gai. But I don't.
I just made my third rice cooker cheater's biriyani, consisting of (1) rice (2) water (3) coconut oil (4) packet of spice paste manufactured by "Kitchens of India" (5) bag frozen mixed vegetables (6) handful of raisins.
It's better than any biriyani I ever made, and I got to basically ignore it while the rice cooker simmered.
I am trying to decide if this means I lose my foodie street cred, or if it enhances it, now that I'm admitting that I would rather eat biriyani blended by someone in Kolkata than by a transplanted Ohioan in Minneapolis.
Possibly I will soon stop trying to make my own pie crust. It's a slippery slope.
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