A man's journey into cooking

After ten years of staying out of home - After ten years of eating outside food( read crap) - After numerous take aways - After having a healthy dose of oil, butter, cheese, overcooked eggs, undercooked chicken etc etc etc and what not, I decided enough is enough. The hidden talent in me (assuming I have talent) woke up and took matters in my own hand. And lo - I plunged myself into cooking

I decided to arm myself with books which had titles such as " Simple cooking for those who hate it", "Simple cooking for smart men" etc etc - (Reality check) - The books actually are the starting
point to a journey which is more interesting than the destination.

Predicament number 1 - How to decipher strange sounding names in the cookbook? Sample this - Put two teaspoons of coriander cilantro and add it to the mixture - Now for a first time novice, this sounds like a code from NASA - So next step was to prepapre a diary mapping english names to actual usage names found in the stores

Predicament number 2 - How much salt to add? As my fav author(cookbook) says, whatever u sense is right - Brevity is what she believes in - Anyways the "right sense of salt" has made some strange dishes like Sweetish chicken vindaloo & Salty paneer masala. Planning to apply for their patent rights

But since to err is human, so I persisted with the failures ( & here I am not counting the art of making rotis which is a sordid saga altogether) and managed to find my way through mazes of spices, cereals, vegetables etc etc. So much so, that now I have the courage to make fusion dishes. So for all those to care to know- This is Coq-au-vin in Chicken Vindaloo.
Coq -au-vin is a French dish which basically is about cooking a rooster in wine - Chicken Vindaloo is a dish of Goan origin & is essentially a fiery-hot sweet & sour style curry. The marriage of both leads to a good affair-
Essentials - Marinate the chicken in wine, some curd and vindaloo masala overnight. Have onions, capsicum( optional), cauliflower, tomatoes, ginger & garlic ready along with the Vindaloo masala. Start frying the onions, and then add the capsicum and let them on medium heat for around 3 minutes( indicative) - Dry roast some cinnamon, cloves & mustard seeds alongside in a small pan. After the onions are done, add the tomatoes, cauliflower and cook for a minute till the tomatoes mix with the pulp. Cook this entire pulp in vindaloo masala. Add the marinated chicken and let it cook for some time to cook the chicken skin well. After its been cooked to an extent, cook it in some more wine to fry it a bit - The skin tastes better when u do the same
Then add some water & let it on medium heat for around 30-45 minutes. Serve it with warm rotis of steamed rice
Caveat - Have not mentioned salt, chillis in the cooking process - That does not mean they dont need to be used :)
Happy cooking and lemme know of the results