We love to cook, and to make sure we have enough time to enjoy it, we have developed the plan of cooking two or three meals on Sunday, and then reheating and spacing them out throughout the week. This week, we chose to make Indian recipes and go a little exotic.

For recipes, we turned to The Indian Spice Kitchen, by Monisha Bharadwaj. We found this book at Bookworks on State Street a while ago, and finally cracked it open. It's a neat book, organized not by type of meal, but by spice and flavor. There are so many spices that we'll be sure to use it again. One thing I liked was the spice mixtures, or "masala"s as they're called.

We made the garam masala mixture for use in our two recipes. One was Kolhapuri Rassa, a Lamb and Coconut Curry mixture. You can definately taste the coconut flakes. And our second meal was Lucknow Murgi Biryani, a Chicken Curry with similar spices, but no fennel or coconut. They were both great, and fun to cook! I like the use of yogurt in the sauce, and the roasting of the spices in oil to release the flavors. Oh, and we also made Chicken Curry Salad for snacking and luches.

Also, we thought it would be fun to learn about some Indian Trivia. Enjoy!