Bollyvood night / Watermelon Lassi

Didn't expect to post so early, especially considering I'm not back in Melbourne yet, but here's something for the culinary foray. On a lark, we had a bollywood-themed dinner party last night, a semi-potluck event filled with papadum, muruku, briyani rice, fish curry and tandoori chicken. There was a well-received yoghurt dip, and a not-so-well received watermelon lassi.

To be fair, i never like lassi before, but it was the only indian style beverage i could think of. Of course, not knowing what it tasted or looked like meant that i had nothing to compare it to. In the end, it became more chunky and watery than it was supposed to be.

Colin said, "eh, somebody puked in your punch bowl."

Mint yoghurt dip
This one was better. I was trying to replicate something i tasted at Chutney Mary's the other time, but ended up modifying a recipe for Greek tzatziki that I made last year.

1 cup yoghurt
2 tbsp chopped mint
1 tbsp chopped garlic
Juice of half a lemon

Mix everything together, serve chilled. Easy peasy.

Tags: yoghurt mint dip budget recipe

intro

If you ever take a trip through Terry Pratchett's Discworld, you might encounter two characters: Leonard of Quirm and BS Johnson. Better yet, you might encounter stuff they've made. Both of them are inventors, in loose senses of the word.

Leonard of Quirm is a caricature of of Leonardo da Vinci. Eg, one of his most famous works is the Mona Ogg, whose teeth follow you around the room no matter where you may go. He possesses a brilliant mind for invention and an accidental knack for creating weapons of war with only remarkable dearth in talent for naming his inventions. One has only to refer to his submarine, or as he calls it, The Going Under The Water Safely Device.

On the other end of the spectrum, Bergholy Stuttley "Bloody Stupid" Johnson has the dubious honor of being a legendarily incompetent landscaper and architect, having created without showing any signs of having the necessary basic grasp of engineering and mathematics. His most famous works are situated on the Ankh Morpork palace grounds: the garden maze so tiny that visitors get lost looking for it and the trout lake 150 yards long and 1 inch wide.

which brings me to this blog: i don't know if it's a Leonard of Quirm or a Bloody Stupid Johnson. I'm going back to Melbourne for my last year of study and i thought it would be a god way to document life as a student on a budget. Stayed tuned to read how i make ends meet. And how i stretch my dollar, especially in the culinary section. Really, i think this is just going to turn out to become a recipe blog for myself. Why? because i had the time and an idea.