Instant Indian

You know when you're working full time hours and have other projects & activities on the go, sometimes coming home at 6:30 or 7pm and starting a dinner from scratch seems like such a daunting task. I'd rather just pick up the phone and order in, but that can become costly. So, on occasion, I turn to conveniently canned or frozen items to help with making the night-time meal.

President's Choice came out with a neat frozen product line of ethic foods. The concept is that you buy one main dish, two sides and an appetizer and there's your meal! I decided to give the Indian ones a whirl.

I got Aloo Gobi which is a favorite of mine.

Some basmati rice with onions, peas & cashews. Yum! But the mains were all meaty. Hmm....

So this can came to the rescue. Patak's cooking sauces are made with authentic Indian spices, are easy to use and so delicious! They have quite an array of products with varying heats. One of our favorites is Rogan Josh that is traditionally made as a lamb dish, but we use it for tofu, faux chick or sometimes just vegetables. This Korma curry sauce sounded interesting, so I gave that a try. I used Quorn Chik'n Tenders and it worked perfectly!

The appetizer in this line are vegetable samosas. These cook up nice and crisp and as an added bonus, it comes with it's own little tub of PC Memories of Punjab dipping sauce, which is a sweet, slightly tangy tamarind sauce.

Gotta have Naan bread! No Indian meal is complete without it. This packaged bread is quite good. All one has to do, is set it in the oven for about 2 or 3 minutes. I just put it right on the rack, flip it, then take it out. It's soft, warm and smells delicious!

Since there wasn't much in the way of vegetables really, I steamed some broccoli and added that to the plate as well. What a feast!

The Korma sauce was rich, yet mild. The samosas were lightly spiced, the cashews in the rice added a nice little crunch. I couldn't finish my plate. It was piled high and even though everything was delicious, my tummy was full. We had lots leftover for a meal the next day. This was one night when frozen food wasn't so bad.