We had a whirlwind Saturday preparing an Indian meal for 15 people! It was a lot of work and involved deep frying countless pakoras and samosas and pan-frying what seemed like a million parathas.

This endeavor started a few weeks ago when I read a post seeking Indian catering for a party on one of the Ithaca newsgroups I subscribe to (ithaca.general, ithaca.marketplace & cornell.marketplace). Since Indian is my favorite cuisine and I cook it often (and well), Matt encouraged me to respond. I prepared some samples for them to try and that was successful enough to get the gig. I thought it quite hilarious that a couple of Canadians were about to cater Indian food for a party of people from India, and I think it was equally entertaining for the party people!

They wanted vegetarian dishes, so here’s the rundown of the menu we made:

Pakoras with cauliflower, carrots & onions
Samosas with potato, peas & corn

Raita
Apple Chutney
Mint Chutney

Spinach & Chaana Dal
Mutter Paneer
Aloo Gobi

Palau Rice with saffron & peas
Parathas

I spent a couple of days preparing what I could beforehand such as making paneer, the Indian cheese, and cleaning, chopping and peeling lots of veggies. By the time we should have been out the door to deliver, we were still frying last-minute parathas - it was organized mayhem but I’m still dizzy from the experience.

The good news is that all the Indian dishes were a hit, especially the samosas & pakoras.

The bad is since it was a birthday party we also made a chocolate cake and unfortunately that didn’t go over so well. It seems they tossed it out actually, which is embarrassing, but hey we got all the tough stuff right!

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