Temptations - the restaurant

I met up with my friend and her niece for dinner out at the restaurant (Temptations in Mountain View) that made the wonderful biryani that was the star of my lunch salad.

My meal started with a tomato soup with herbs:

It was good but not great. Oh, and excuse the blurry photos - I was in a hurry to take them so I could get down to eating!

My friend ordered the hot and sour soup.

I didn't try that one because it was very spicy.

And we all tried the vegetable samosas.

These were quite delicious especially when dipped in the sweet sauce (the brown one).

For the main meal we each ordered a different entree and shared.

In the foreground is the Butter Chicken and in the back left is the Chicken Tikka Masala.

We all agreed that the Butter Chicken and the Chicken Tikka Masala tasted very similar. Again, they were good but not great.

The star of the dinner tonight was the Chicken Tava:

This dish was a standout. It was spicy without being overly hot and it was bursting with flavor.

And to round out our spicy meal we walked down the street for gelato.

 I, of course, stayed away from any of the sweet flavors.

Two raspberry and lemon sorbettos and I can't quite remember what my friend's niece ordered but I know one of them was pistacio.

 

 

This was a great way to end the meal. The lemon sorbetto was a nice palatte cleanser after the spicy meal.

Temptations was a nice restaurant but the food was a bit hit and miss. I think it would be a great place to go if you figure out the standout dishes and stick with those.

Night all!

A sensitive palate

You will be happy to know that I did eat what I cooked for lunch - well, kinda.

I have had these spice packets sitting in my cupboard and I wanted to use them.

I picked the one on the left for lunch.

I followed the recipe on the back - but I cut it by 1/4 because I was using just one chicken breast. And this is why I usually just make my own food from scratch - this spice packet was for six servings.


What the heck would I do with five leftover servings of chicken tikka masala? If I was the kind of person that was perfectly happy eating the same thing day after day - sure - making big portions to have for later would make sense.


But I digress...


The start of the recipe:

Minced ginger, diced onion and minced garlic.

I cooked some basmati rice in a sauce pot while the aromatics cooked in a saute pan on medium heat.


The spice packet went in next - then the cubed chicken. I poured in about 1 cup of the Muir Glen tomato sauce and 1/4 cup of water. 


It ended up looking very pretty.

And the first few bites were delicious - spicy but not hot. But then it hit - a bloom of strong bitterness. Ugh((


For some reason, I have a palate that is very sensitive to the taste of cloves. To me, this spice doesn't have much of a taste other than a horrendously strong acrid flavor.


I took another look at the ingredients and there it was:

Oh, well. Live and learn. I should have looked more closely at the ingredients when I bought it. It also explains why I have never liked the taste of garam masala which also contains cloves.

I ended up scraping most of the sauce off the chicken and eating it with the plain rice.

I have higher hopes for the spice packet for green beans (the packet on the right) which doesn't contain cloves. 

I will be making that one for dinner.