Food Nostalgia

This past week I made a couple of recipes that reminded me of Jon and mine time living in England and it has made me realize how much I really loved the food over there.  England is not known for having superb culinary history; their food usually a lot like the weather: bland and mushy, however, now that I'm back to living in the states I find myself missing the wholesome honesty of the food there.  It's not as over salted, fat-laden, sugared, and generic as a lot of the menu options I see at American restaurants that I used enjoy!  Even the ethnic food in England seemed more flavorful and true to origin, than what I now can see and taste as the "Americanized" versions of Japanese, Thai, Indian, and Italian.  Why we have altered ethnic cuisines to suit our American taste-buds and why we tend to drown out the unique flavors of different cultural foods is food for thought, but one thing I know is that living aboard has permanently changed the way I view food forever.  

Now, on to the recipes! One type of cuisine that I became obsessed with in England was Indian food.  England has a very large population of Indian people and I'm guessing that this is the reason why you can find an Indian restaurant on just about as many streets and corners as you can find Starbucks in Seattle.  I found a couple great Indian restaurants that I loved in Cambridge, where Jon and I lived, and I literally could not go more than a few weeks without eating there!  I haven't tried any Indian food restaurants yet here in Las Vegas, but I did become inspired when I was flipping through my latest issue of Clean Eating.  Every month they have a "Global Gourmet" feature and this month's was Lamb Vindaloo, so I thought I'd try my own hand at making an Indian dish.  Vindaloo is basically just a meat dish with lots of spices, which is typically served with rice and if you are smart you also order a delicious warm, soft naan bread.  I've never made much of my own Indian food before other than very simple curries, but this recipe seemed pretty easy.  The hardest part is actually having all the spices and I was not able to find cardamom pods at my local grocery store, but the lamb vindaloo turned really good nonetheless! Spice-wary people be warned, this is a pretty spicy recipe.

The other food that I came to know and love in England was bread pudding.  Now, I know that bread pudding is probably on the menu at tons of American restaurants, but for some reason I had no desire to order it when up against a brownie sundae or piece of cheesecake.  However, bread pudding is very popular dessert in England and I can't believe my insatiable sweet-tooth had not discovered this before!  Bread pudding is probably typically made with pieces of torn bread, soaked in sugar, eggs, and milk and baked...and I'm sure somewhere in that process a lot of butter is involved.  For our Valentine's Day dinner last week I pulled to make a bread pudding recipe from a recent issue of Cooking Light titled "Bread Pudding with Salted Caramel Sauce" and let me tell you, it was true love.  :)

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