Mistress of Spices. Not

I made the rash promise to cook an Indian dinner tonight for the Mermaid and her better half, Coco and another friend. See, when I got the Bollywood cookbook for Christmas I said I'd let the generous donator (= the Mermaid) and the person whose Amazon account she used to order it (= Coco) plus their entourage be guinea pigs.

Little did I know upon a first perusal of said book which had me focus on the old-fashioned film posters and photos of stars than the endless list of ingredients.

What can I say, even though I picked what looked like the easiest options those dishes contain ingredients I'd never heard of before and the preparation turned out to be somewhat time-consuming to say the least. Ever dry-roasted things like cinnamon bark and bay leaves and then "finely ground" them in a pestle and mortar? Ever, like me, filled the kitchen with a whiff of baby puke in the (futile!twice!) attempt to produce more than a matchbox-sized piece of paneer cheese out of gallons of milk and cream?

Everything's been prepared now and apart from the sad bonsai version of the paneer I daresay nothing can go wrong any more and I can let the three course meal and mango lassi loose on my hapless invitees.

Whether they survived the experience or not I'll tell you on Monday. Stay tuned.

***
FCN just asked me how many guests were coming tonight. Four, I replied, then wrinkling my brow. Ooops- can anybody tell me why I laid the table for 6 people then and prepared 6 bowls of dessert? It's been a while since I last entertained and back then "me" still was "we", i.e. two hosts. Ah, well.