Have you ever made a mistake while following a recipe only to discover something quite wonderful? Well, that's exactly what happened with this recipe.

The family was in town and we set out to make a Indian dinner. It was decided that we would make Beef Biryani and Crab Vindaloo at my house while my brother, who lives behind me, would make a vegetable dish and some sort of indian bread. They decided on a curried cauliflower and potato mix and chapti bread.

As sometimes happens we planned our time rather poorly and therefore I got recruited to make the vindaloo.

Billy recruited Cypress, my brother's girlfriend's daughter to assist him in shelling the crabl legs we'd found on sale at HEB. Four pounds of crab legs had been obtained.

It turns out that Bill is quite the expet at shelling crab.

The recipe I was to follow comes from "The Frugal Gourmet on Our Immigrant Ancestors: Recipes You Should Have Gotten from Your Grandmother" by Jeff Smith.

Vindaloo, for those of you who've never had it, is a very spicy hot dish. I fell in love with it when I lived in England.

According to Wikipedia:

"Vindaloo is a popular Indian dish. It was first brought to Goa by the Portuguese and soon became a pleasing Goan meal often served during very special occasions. Historically this was a pork dish cooked with plenty of wine vinegar and garlic, known as "Vinha d'Alho", however it soon received the Goan treatment of adding plentiful amounts of spice and chili. Restaurants often serve this dish with chicken or lamb sometimes mixed with potatoes. Traditional vindaloos do not include potatoes, the discrepancy arising because the word "aloo" means "potato" in Hindi.

The dish gained added popularity in Britain, and became a common fixture at Indian restaurants and curry houses there. In colloquial English it is often referred to as "A Vindy" and is well known for its heat, being one of the hotter curries available."

There are easy methods for making vindaloo, and there are hard ways. We were definitely doing it the hard way.

This is the recipe as found in Jeff's book:

Coconut Crab Vindaloo

1 3.5lb chicken, quartered and skinned, quartered and skinned	1 Tblsp turmeric
Salt & freshly ground pepper to taste	1.5 tsps cayenne pepper
1/4 cup ghee or butter	1 Tblsp paprika
3 cloves garlic, peeled and minced	1 Tblsp tamarind paste (2 Tblsps dried tamarind mixed with 2 Tblsps hot water, worked through a sieve, discarding seeds)
2 cups yellow onion, finely chopped	2 Tsps lemon juice
2 Tsps freshly grated ginger	2 Tblsps distilled white vinegar
2 Tsps ground cumin	1 Tsp brown sugar
2 Tsps crushed yellow mustard seeds	2 Tsps salt
1 Tsp ground cinnamon	2 cups water
1/2 Tsp ground cloves

So that's the basic recipe.  I ground the garlic, onions and ginger into a paste in the food processor then added the mixture to my large frying pan along with the butter, since I couldn't find my ghee. This mixture didn't really brown but more sweated, losing the water.

I began to make a paste out of the spices. I didn't feel like getting out my spice mill and I don't currently have a mortar and pestle so I didn't use mustard seeds and instead opted for Coleman's dried mustard powder. Of course that made the whole dish hotter as Coleman's is pretty hot mustard.  I also added a teaspoon of Auntie Arwen's Thermonuclear Vindaloo Blend of spices. Yes, we are gluttons for punishment! I tossed all the spices into a small bowl and then added in the vinegar. I opted to use rice wine vinegar instead of distilled white. Why? Because I can. Heh. The paste was a gorgeous colour.

I was out of ground cinnamon so I used 2 whole cinnamon sticks. Lastly, on the spice front, I added a few cardamom pods because I felt sure that when I used to make vindaloo it always had cardamom. Besides, I like the flavour.  

The paste was then added to the onion/garlic/ginger mixture.





The aroma was amazing.

It was also very strong and called for opening a window and turning on the vent.

It was right about this point where I got a bit confused and strayed from the recipe. I kept looking and looking at the recipe and didn't see any liquid in it. I couldn't figure out how they were going to make a curry with no liquid. As you can clearly see from the recipe, there is liquid in the form of 2 cups of water but I totally overlooked that.

I added in a dollop of butter and then deglazed the pan with about a quarter cup of chicken stock.

Then I added 2 cans of coconut milk. Yes, it's not traditionally in Vindaloo but it is often in curry and I knew it would make a nice liquid.

The curry took on a beautiful golden amber colour as I tossed in the cinnamon sticks and cardamom seeds. I let it simmer for a bit so the flavours could meld.



Kelly arrived with the veggies and bread and Chip began worrying that the biryani would not be done in time. I had naan bread rising but we abandoned it because we needed to get to the table before Kelly's dishes got cold.

I tasted the vindaloo and decided it needed something and that it was way too hot for the kidlets. It was also a tad bit too coconutty. I thought about it for a few minutes then decided to add in some plain yogurt. I put in about half a cup and let it simmer a few minutes more. That did the trick and the flavour smoothed out, the heat reduced a bit and it was quite delicious, though still packing a fair amount of heat.  Finally, I added the crab. Lots and lots of crab. 

The biryani went into the oven to bake. We sat the table and decided to go ahead and begin eating.

The vindaloo was well loved by everyone....well, all the adults. The kidlets didn't think much of the curries and mostly ate rice and bread.

The biryani was good but was even better the next day. Since we had some extra crab, Chip and I made more vindaloo the next night. Along with the leftovers from the previous night, it made a lovely dinner.



And that, my friends, is how Coconut Curry Vindaloo was born. It was a very happy accident.