A Spicy Date Night at Mela

After checking into the Four Seasons, Bret and I spent the afternoon relaxing at the hotel pool and whirlpool.  By the time it was evening, we were both famished for dinner!  I had made reservations for dinner at Mela in the South End, which is just a short walk from the hotel.

We arrived in time for our 7 PM reservations but were asked to wait while a table became available.  While I understand that Mela is a small restaurant with limited seating, I was a little frustrated waiting twenty minutes for a table.  I mean, what is the point in making a reservation?  There were a few other groups of diners in the same predicament who seemed equally annoyed.

But, by the time we did sit down, Bret and I were ready to put our annoyances aside.  It definitely helped that we received an amuse bouche of a fried spicy cauliflower.

After indulging in complimentary bubbly at the Four Seasons, I decided to continue with a glass of prosecco at dinner.

We started out with Chicken Pakoras for an appetizer.  We cheekily called these Indian chicken nuggets as the chicken was dipped in a chickpea batter and then deep-fried.  Despite the fried preparation, these nuggets were light and not a bit greasy!

For our entrees, we decided to split two different dishes.  The first was a Lamb Coconut Curry, which had tender pieces of lamb and had some serious heat!  I should mention that the server asked us if we wanted our dishes mild or spicy and I said I wanted it really spicy.  They definitely didn't disappoint and I loved this dish.

Our second entree was the Butter Chicken and I loved the creamy tomato-based sauce.  This was definitely Bret's favorite dish and I'm going to try to do some research to make this dish at home sometime.

Our entrees came with a huge bowl of basmati rice and although we usually refrain from lots of carbs, we surprisingly ate most of the rice.

We indulged in more carbs with the garlic naan.  This was a good choice because we found relief from the spicy lamb coconut curry from the garlic naan and I couldn't get enough of the naan!

Bret and I really enjoyed our date night at Mela.  The food was all incredibly delicious but the service was a bit hit or miss.  We waited quite a bit for our table despite having reservations, it took awhile to get the attention of our servers throughout the evening and our dishes were sloppily presented (as can be seen in the photos above).  In addition, Mela also offers hot stone cooking at the table but doesn't have appropriate ventilation for it.  As a result, when a neighboring table ordered their hot stone cooking, our clothes ended up reeking of smoke at the end of the night.  We noticed that Mela's take-out business seemed really busy and perhaps ordering from their delivery service will be a better option for us.

Mela is located at 578 Tremont Street, Boston, MA.

Parsley Pesto Chicken Pizza

I have a love-hate relationship with parsley.  You see, I love everything about parsley but I get annoyed that you have to buy it in such huge bunches!  I usually only use a little bit of parsley and by the time I remember to use the remaining parsley in the fridge...it has already gone bad.  And I hate wasting food!

So, when I purchased a large bunch of parsley to use in the chickpea burgers with garlic naan and yogurt sauce, I vowed I wouldn't let this happen again.  The very next day, I took the rest of the parsley out of the fridge and decided to find a really easy and simple use for it - parsley pesto!

The ingredients were simple:

• Bunch of parsley (stems removed)
• 3/4 cup of grated Parmesan cheese
• 1/2 cup walnuts
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• Pepper, to taste

I threw all of these ingredients in the food processor and pureed it until it resulted in a delightful pesto. 

So what did I do with the parsley pesto?  I used about half of the pesto to marinade some chicken breasts that I had cut down into bite-size pieces.  I also added a splash of olive oil to the marinade to keep the chicken moist. 

After marinating the chicken for five or six hours, I baked it in the oven at 350 degrees for three minutes on each side.  I let the chicken cool and then used about 3/4 of it on a pizza using the leftover garlic naan.  I topped the garlic naan with pizza sauce, shredded mozzarella cheese, crushed red pepper flakes, parsley pesto chicken, more mozzarella cheese and some grated Parmesan cheese.  It baked in the oven at 325 for about fifteen minutes.

The pizza was so good and I definitely will be using naan again for pizza in the future!  We made two pizzas and I ate half of one naan pizza with a large side salad.  The pizza was even better the next day as leftovers.

I still have some parsley pesto leftover.  Any suggestions on how to use the rest of the parsley pesto?

Chickpea Burgers with Garlic Naan and Yogurt Sauce

About a week ago, Emily of A Cambridge Story posted an awesome recipe for Chickpea Burgers with Naan and Yogurt Sauce.  Everything about the meal looked so good to me and I immediately flagged it to make in my own kitchen.  I finally got a chance to make these on Monday night and they were fantastic!

I followed Emily's recipe pretty closely although I did make a few minor modifications.  First, I gathered my ingredients for the chickpea burgers. 

This included:

The picture only shows one egg, but I ended up using two.

• 1 can chickpeas (drained and rinsed)
• 1 cup panko bread crumbs
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1/4 cup of parsley
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 2 eggs

I threw all of these ingredients in the food processor and I loved all of the bright colors!

I pulsed until it turned into fine crumbs.

I then put the chickpea mixture in a large bowl and mixed it by hand with one large egg.  The chickpea mixture seemed way too dry so I ended up putting in another egg to keep the burger from crumbling.  Using my hands, I shaped the chickpea mixture into four burgers and set them aside.

I then turned my attention to the yogurt sauce, which was super easy to prepare.  I picked up a seven ounce serving of Greek yogurt so I doubled the other sauce ingredients.

• 7 ounces of Greek yogurt
• 1 lemon zested and juiced
• 1/2 cup red onion, roughly chopped
• 1/2 cup parsley
• Salt and pepper, to taste

I threw all of the ingredients in the food processor and pulsed until it was a smooth creamy yogurt sauce.  I was nervous that the red onion would overpower the flavor of the yogurt sauce but it ended up being perfect.

I picked up some garlic naan at Whole Foods to use as the bread for the chickpea burgers.  I love garlic and I couldn't resist garlic naan!

I brushed some olive oil onto two pieces of naan and warmed them up in the oven at 400 degrees for a few minutes.  While I was working on the naan, Bret started grilling the chickpea burgers on our grill pan.  When they were done, I put a chickpea burger on the naan and topped it with the yogurt sauce. 

I wrapped the naan around the chickpea burger in a taco-style.  But after photographing it and actually starting to eat it, I ended up cutting the chickpea burger in half to fit in the naan as more of a wrap.  This meal was seriously packed with flavor and I felt like this was the kind of food you'd get at an ethnic street fair (in the good way) instead of making in the kitchen with really simple ingredients.

Thanks to Emily for sharing this great recipe!  I've been finding lots of great inspiration lately from food blogs.  Tell me, what food blogs inspire you and why?

Fun and Fearless Adventures with Chicken Tikka Masala

I have recently been on a huge Indian food kick.  Even though I satisfied some of my cravings at D'Guru, I really wanted to play around with some Indian flavors in my own kitchen.  During a recent trip to Trader Joe's, I picked up a jar of Masala Simmer Sauce and decided to give it a whirl.  Since Friday evening had a bit of that fall chill in the air, I thought it was a perfect night to finally give this sauce a try.

To start, I washed two cups of white rice and let the rice cooker do the rest.  I then got to work on my protein.  I took two medium-sized boneless chicken breasts and seasoned it on both sides with salt, pepper, garlic powder, cayenne and paprika.  I decided to poach the chicken breasts in a saucepan with some leftover chicken broth.  I didn't have enough chicken broth so I added a bit of leftover beef broth as well.  I figured that the beef flavor wouldn't be a big deal with all of the strong flavors of the masala sauce.

I put the chicken on the stove and while I waited for the poaching liquids to come to a boil, I got to work on the other ingredients.  I had a leftover sweet potato that I brought back from Ogunquit during our family dinner.  I sliced and then cubed half of this very large sweet potato.

I wanted to make sure that the sweet potato cooked through so I added it first to a large sauce pan with the entire masala sauce on medium heat.

I then chopped up half a large sweet onion and added that to the sauce as well.

Once the poaching liquids came to a boil, I turned the heat down as low as it could go, flipped the chicken breasts over and put a lid on the saucepan to let the chicken breasts continue cooking for about twenty minutes.  After twenty minutes, I put the chicken breasts on a cutting board and let it cool.  I roughly chopped and shredded the chicken into large chunks.

I lowered the heat on the sauce and added the chicken.  I stirred all of these ingredients together and then put a lid on the sauce to let it simmer.

While I was at Trader Joe's, I also picked up a package of frozen garlic naan.  The preparation was so simple.  I preheated the oven to 400 degrees and once the oven was at the right temperature, I put the naan straight in the oven for just a minute and a half.

While the oven was preheating, I took the time to pour myself a glass of rose.  And I enjoyed each sip until dinner was finally ready.

When I took my first bite, I was really happy with my chicken tikka masala.  There were a lot of ingredients in my masala dish and I wish there was a bit more sauce to go around to make it more like a true curry. Still, I was really happy with the dish. The chicken was moist and juicy as it sopped up all of the great masala flavors. The sweet potatoes were perfectly cooked through and added a nice sweetness to the dish.

And the garlic naan was so garlicky and delicious.  I will definitely be picking up more of this the next time I go to Trader Joe's.

Our dinner was simple but delicious.  I loved all of the great spicy Indian flavors and I definitely want to explore more Indian cuisine without the help of any simmer sauces.  But in the meantime, I thoroughly enjoyed this warm and hearty dish on Friday evening.

What great things did you cook up this weekend?