Genius Hour with Inaiya

The end of the year is approching and I wanted to tell you guys about my presentation! I ended up bringing only garlic naan into class because it was hard for me to pack up that much butter chicken and serve it warm to the class where as with the naan I just cut it into bite sized pieces and went around the class like that.

For the actual presentation I did my slideshow and half-way through I added a video to keep the audience engaged. Also, during the presentation I mentioned that I had food for them which seemed to excite the them even further. After the end of the presentation I started handing out the food to my classmates as well as Mrs. Englot (my teacher). A LOT of people asked for seconds and I gave away more food then I thought, so that is good because it meant people really liked the food.

Overall, I thought this second genius hour went WAY better then the previous one because my slideshow was way better, my video kept the audience hooked and the food was amazing. I also all around felt more confident presenting knowing I put in all the effort I possibly could. I had so much fun doing this genius hour compared to the last one. I am very proud of myself and I think I did a great job this time around!

I haven’t posted in a while because I have more been working on my presentation for the class but I thought I should give an update on how it’s going. This week I made rajma chole which is an easier recipe to end the project. Like I said I have only really been working on the presentation for the class because I have to present on tuesday (in 6 days) so I really have to get it done but I think it looks really good so far. If I can I will try to do another update right before the presentation.

This week I’m going to make butter chicken with my mom over the long weekend to try it and then again the next week so I can bring it to school for people to try! I also need to start working on my presentation for the class so I am going to do that right now. Plus, I need to think of ways to bring the butter chicken to school so i doesn’t become to messy, which I’m kind of fretting about. Last genius hour I got a really good mark for the presentation but she said I could make it less wordy and more aestheticly pleasing so I’m going to try that!

Update:

This week I made chicken curry and rice with my mom because I didn’t go to my grandmas house this week. I used the same base ingredients and it took around 2 hours, so not to bad. The longest part was letting the chicken sit in the broth so it would soak up all of the flavour. After letting it soak you need to pull the meat off of the bone with spoons, or by hand it you can not burn yourself. I hate doing this it takes so long and it is really boring. Overall I found the curry to be pretty good but I think the chicken could have marinated and sitin the souce longer because I beleved it could have held more flavour so the sauce wouldn’t need to carry the dish.

Progress Report:

So far in the genius hour I have been doing good. I was pretty successful in the easier recipes so since we are halfway done I would like to try harder recipes. Specifically, my butter chicken recipe because to make butter chicken from scratch is really hard especially if it is authentic. So I want to try it to see how it turns out so I can tweak it before I bring it to the class.

This week I made roti the bread part of the meal. It is basically a more practical version of naan bread. It turned out really good. It was only made out of 2 ingredients water and flour. However you can add flax or chia seeds to the dough to make it healthier. I made this one by myself because I have made it in the past several times and it is quite easy. You use this bread to dip into currys or daals and it tastes very delicous!

This week, I made daal with my grandma. Daal is basically lentil soup that has a lot of flavor, it is a more of an everyday dish, for example butter chicken (my favourite) is more for celebrations and big occasions but daal is a more common. The most simple way of explaining how to make it is to let the lentils cook in a slow cooker with water then if you take out about a cup of water it will be the perfect amount. After, you add the rest of the spices, unfortunately my grandma has a few secret ingredients that I can’t share. Although, she showed me a few spices from India and as well as lemon juice. Overall it turned out delicious but my grandma said that I was bad luck because it became to thin, I mean I thought it was good but I guess she’s the expert.

This week I talked to my expert which is my grandma. We made matar paneer which is peas and tofu is a soup basically. It took around 3 and a half hour and it turned out really delicious the picture below is hows what it looked like. I didn’t do a lot this week but I hope to get back on track!

These pictures show the diffrents stations the top one shows where I cooked them and the bottom one shows where I acctually made them. From left to right; the first container is plain flour so you dough balls dont stick to the counter, then that is the stuffing you put in between the two flattened piecs of dough, it is made of potatoes, herbs and spices. And on the far right is the dough made of flour and water. A prontha, which is what I’m making, is kind of a really flat dumpling or naan bread with stuffing in the inside and they are delicious, but cooked with a lot of butter. They turned out really good but just a little dry so I used my mom and grandma as experts so they did help me but I did most of it!

This week I made chicken curry with my mom. I learned a lot about what types of spices go in the food for example most of the currys and subji’s use the same base of spices like tumrick, garlic, ginger, masla and a few other things let that simmer and then put in tomato paste – a lot of tamato paste and the you have the base, you can make almost any indian food with that. Next week I plan to make a diffrent curry hopefully one of the ones I like, if I can convince my mom. Also, I will make roti which is the bread that you eat with it.

Since I have finished my perfume making genius hour I have to start another one. My original plan was to learn how to do an ariel (which is a cartwheel but with no hands), but after telling some of my friends that are cheerleaders they said it took them over a year to learn and was going to be really hard for me to learn in just 3 months. So instead I have decided to make some of my favourite Indian delicacies. Ella is british so she is doing british treats, Devan is chinese so she is learning so chinese dumplings and foods, and I am from India so I am doing food from there. Some of the food I plan on doing is everyones favourite; butter chicken and garlic naan aswell as lamb curry, chole, pakoras and maybe more. For my expert I will be asking my mom and grandma because they are really good and Indian cooking. Thank you for listening and I hope you enjoy my second adventure!