As an honorary Indian by marriage and daughter-in-law of someone who makes a mean chicken curry, I have long felt it is a skill I should have. I quickly realized that being taught by someone who has made it thousands of times over the years is not an easy feat. The instructions tend to include phrases like, “a little bit of this” and “some of that”. Nevertheless, for a few years now I have attempted to make chicken curry again and again by trying to reproduce what I had observed and simply experimenting with small changes. It never turned out bad, per se, just not quite good. I’d rate most of my attempts somewhere in the range of “edible”.

Finally, I decided to go the route I usually do when I taste something I like and want to make it at home. I googled it. Now, there are tons of ways to make it, but luckily enough I found a spectacular recipe for chicken curry right away. I’ve modified it slightly according to my tastes and the ingredients I keep in my kitchen: Continue reading →

Ever since Al got Dave and I hooked on Hobee’s when he took us to the Cupertino location about a year ago, we’ve been there more than any other restaurant here and we’ve got half the Hobee’s breakfast menu on reviewsby.us to prove it. We now know that there are locations all over the bay area, including one within walking distance of our apartment. Because we moved into our place about a week before the moving truck arrived, we had nothing in our kitchen for cooking. Therefore, we’d walk down to Hobee’s every morning and I would usually try some variation of their hashbrowns, which are really more like American fries or just simply fried potatoes.

One morning I woke up with a craving for some Hobee’s browns and realized that not only would they be easy to prepare myself, but that I already had all the ingredients I would need. So here’s what I did: Continue reading →