Eating leftover Indian cuisine for lunch right now. Last night was the first time I had ever tried it.
My god. I loved every single bite of everything I had. It’s complex. It’s spicy. It’s full of flavors that I’m not used to, and some that I know but used differently.
Best birthday dinner ever.
I have posted probably a half dozen times on here that Indian food is my favourite.
What took you so long?
Indian food has an incredible range of seasonings and uses them in just about every way there is. It’s a style where I could never name a favorite dish because I’ll never have time to even try all of them, and I keep encountering new dishes that are better than all the rest I’ve had.
Weird coincidence. I was just about to fix some lunch/breakfast and it’s definitely going to be chicken, garlic, garam masala, peas, and chickpeas over rice.
You aren’t kidding – I can’t think of anything less than delicious from the entire subcontinent, at least that I have seen pictures of or eaten. Never been, but it’s a bitching thing, the way it can all come together.
Nice!
Next culinary adventure: Ethiopian. If you like Indian food, chances are very good that you’ll like Ethiopian. Not because they’re the same (they’re not), but because they share that complexity of flavor profile.
Nice timing. I’m eating a dosa right now, heh.
What did you try?
Know what, I’m kinds of a liar…
Every year here, there is an ‘ethnic enrichment festival.’ As part of the festival, there are a couple dozen booths where you can try different ethnic foods.
I always go to India first for chicken curry, because it’s so good. But that’s all I’ve ever gotten, and I have no idea why it hasn’t occurred to me to go out for Indian.
I think that will be in the near future…in fact, said ethnic fest is this weekend, so perhaps I’ll hit Ethiopia first 
Oh boy…lemme try to find the menu…
I think I identified most of what I had…yeah, I ate a lot.
I’ve lived off Indian food for years (now just a few times a week.) As a vegetarian it has the most options bar none. French is considered the best food by most, but really Indian is where it’s at.
My favorite cuisine! I’ve introduced it to my wife and at least a couple of friends who’d never had it before, all of whom now love it.
I’d have to agree, though one should never underestimate the cuisine of Spain 
You hit some good ones. I like butter paneer (or really anytype of paneer) and my favorite dessert is is Ras Malai.
Good stuff.
Galun jamun, when it’s warmed up, is absolutely awesome.
Mattar paneer is one of my very favorite foods.
When I was growing up my friends all hated their veggies. I couldn’t understand why until I started eating over their houses. Without fail their moms would serve these limp unappetizing boiled veggies with absolutely no flavor and then insist the kid eat them. I’m convinced this is why so many people don’t like veggies, because of their early exposures.
They’d come to my house, and be afraid of the heat, but we never had much heat - “spicy” just means “full of flavor” - and be thrilled at how good the food was.
Welcome to the club.
Indian food is by far my favorite. It’s very expensive here in the FL panhandle. There’s this website, Show Me The Curry, that has instructional videos. I was delighted to discover that paneer is actually pretty easy to make yourself!
I’m just…so…happy tear-sniff
I’m really looking forward to trying to make some of these dishes! Probably takes a bit of trail and error, but eating the attempts is great as long as they’re not disastrously failed attempts.
I’ve done a lot of Indian cooking at home because it’s quite expensive (and also I want to eat massive amounts of it). I’ve had good luck with butter chicken (and anything else in the same sauce), but my dal never tastes quite right. Who has a good dal recipe?
lunch buffets are definitely the way to go to satiate your indian mass-eating needs. much better than chinese buffets.
Definitely agree here - you can sample a ton of different dishes and find out what you like. Also, when you bring friends who have never had any Indian food, they can branch out. Generally, I’ve found, there’s the ‘safe’ dishes of rice, naan, and Tandoori Chicken, which even some of my extremely picky family members ate and enjoyed.
OK, I’m no slouch with a skillet, a grill, a pot…how hard is some of this stuff to make? I’ve tried Indian food several times and always liked it.
Also, give me a rundown on essential herbs/spices in Indian foods that are available at normal grocery stores so I can stock up. Is there a way to emulate tandoor without the tandoori oven (is that the correct term?)?
The big spice is cardomom. Used in lots of dishes, and difficult to find at the regular grocery (well mine anyway).
I made my own oven. There are plans online. It can be done with a terra cotta pot. There are a lot of recipes for using an oven to make tandoor. Not quite as good as the real thing, but still pretty good usually. There are a few other exotic spices, but plenty of common ones are used also, and plenty of substitutions can be made. Read lots of recipes, even for the same dish. You’ll start to get the idea of how things work and what you can do with the seasonings.