This will impress my Indian Mother-In-Law (if I had one)

I cooked up a storm today. Made 5 dishes for an Indian dinner I promised to cook for Uncle Jimmy and his family- friends from church. I invited Vishnu to come along because everyone from our group has left to go skiing in Ruka except us 2.

Here's the menu:
Jeera Pulav (Cumin rice)
Vegetable cutlets
Yogurt potatoes
Pepper Fish Curry
Chicken Tikka

I wanted to challenge myself this time.
So last night I worked from midnight to 6am this morning to prepare all the ingredients, just so that at 11am (when i begin cooking after a nap) all the activity I had to do was limited to the stove-top and oven.
My workstation, complete with a steady stream of good music from my iTunes library.

I learnt that when you don't have a grinder, a grater is excellent to make pastes. But grating chilli and onions isn't any fun at all. In desperate times right guys?
Everything was in order and neatly stowed away. Vegetable cutlet mix, pepper curry paste, yoghurt sauce for potatoes, chicken happily marinating in masala spiked yogurt, potatoes boiled and cubed and plenty of chopped corriander.

The furious cooking began at about noon and I ended at 4pm, just in the nick of time for uncle Jimmy to come and pick us and the food up. Here's how it all turned out!
The yogurt potatoes were really yums :) I made the gravy thicker because the fish gravy was the more liquid kind.
Spiced basmati rice steaming away on top of the stove.
The Jeera rice turned out nice and fluffy. It was my favourite dish of the lot. Simple and homely.
Vegetable cutlets, potatoes, peas, corn, spices and curry paste. These were a hit, should have made more.
The pepper fish curry with a sprinkling of almonds. The gravy wouldn't thicken up even after a lot of water had evaporated away, so I just threw in a lot of breadcrumbs and voila! Perfect consistency. Hahaha! Very spicy and shiok, but I prefer attah's version more.
Chicken Tikka! Can't tell you how it was cos I don't eat chicken, hahah. But it was the only mild thing there.

I thought I was only going to feed 5 people but it turned out that there were 8 people there and still there was enough food to go around and a little bit left over too. I think God multiplied the food after Uncle Jimmy prayed for it ;) And Africans love their spices, so the food went down well with them. Yay, another cooking experiment that did not end up in disaster.