Excerpts from the introduction
"I was once asked by a student why my food tasted so different than other Indian food he’d eaten in America. My first response was that there really isn’t any one such thing as “Indian food”. The food that most Indian restaurants in America serve is northern Indian cuisine, the meat cuisine of the Moguls – Muslim Turks who invaded India in the 16th century and built the great Mogul empire. But I, a Hindu and a vegetarian, also teach a lot of meatless Indian cuisine, dishes that I have adapted from the largely vegetarian communities of northern and southern India. Some of these dishes are spiced quite differently than Mogul food and are unfamiliar to many Americans.
But perhaps more importantly, my food is very definitely Indian home cooking. By that I mean first that it is the food that we Indians make in our homes; not the food that we eat in restaurants. It is also not the food that is served in most Indian restaurants here in America, which I find to be comparatively heavy and unidimensional tasting.) It is, however, the food that I, as an Indian expatriot living in New York City, working a full schedule and entertaining several times a week, cook in my own home. When I entertain, often last minute, there are often a dozen or more guests. This lifestyle has given me the knack of finding smart ways to prepare Indian cuisine without compromising its brilliance. With some exceptions it is simple, tasty, satisfying food, not fancy.
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I do not pretend to have compiled a collection of “classic” Indian recipes. There are several excellent examples of such on the market, published by writers to whom I am indebted for doing the hard work of bringing a foreign cuisine to America at a time when even French food was still exotic here. Those writers have written extensively about our Indian culture, foods, ingredients and techniques. You can read and cook out of those books to get a taste of classical northern Indian dishes such as Roghan Josh, a lamb stew thickened with ground almonds, or the northern Indian chicken dishes Murgh Mussallam (a whole chicken, marinated then stewed) and Chicken Moghlai (chicken in a rich, saffron flavored sauce). While delicious, these dishes require days of marinating and use ingredients that are exotic even to contemporary Indian pantries. This is not the kind of everyday cooking that makes sense for a busy schedule.
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My family and I belong to the Kayastha community. Our traditional cooking has powerfully influenced my own. Ours is a close knit, religiously inclined community committed to fighting social injustice and to the tolerance of all religions and faiths. Kayasthas were the first Hindus to create close relationships with the Muslim rulers (the Moguls), including intermarriage. My ancestors became the clergy, accountants, advisors and legal aid to the Mogul dynasties. This fusion of Hindu and Muslim cultures has been a rich source of cultural creativity in India. The beautifully poetic language of Urdu, the gorgeous, sensuous dance form that we call Kathak and Mogul foods (largely Kayastha with Muslim influences), all result from this successful marriage of cultures. Kayasthas live well and richly and are famous for the excellence of our food, dance, music, poetry and hospitality.
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I’ve organized this book in the same way that I teach my classes, by starting with straightforward recipes that my students can learn to embroider. Most (but not all) of the chapters begin with a simple recipe, followed by one to three variations. So while I believe that the recipes are uncomplicated enough that you can pick up the book and start cooking from anywhere, I also think that you’ll be more satisfied if you start at the beginning and cook your way through it. Soups give you a very easy first taste of Indian cuisine. Those recipes show you how to play with spices and to make a tarka, or tempering oil, a spiced oil that is added to the food just before serving to give a fresh layer of spicing. The dal chapter gives you more experience with spices and tarkas and shows how to cook onions until they are very brown and flavorful, one of the few techniques there is to learn in Indian cooking, called bhunao.
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The vegetable chapter is organized in strictly alphabetical order (using the techniques in the preceding chapters) and introducing a model for quick, stir-fried vegetables that you can use to invent your own vegetable dishes. The rice chapter gives what I think will be brand new techniques for cooking rice that you can serve as main courses or side dishes. The meat and chicken chapters begin with recipes for basic stews, or curries (with variations), followed by recipes from all over India. And so on.
I want readers to be able to cook these recipes easily, so, wherever possible, I’ve written them using common supermarket ingredients, easy to find and familiar to use. For those recipes that use more exotic ingredients, I’ve listed substitutions wherever possible and/or made ingredients optional, if I thought the dish could possibly be made without. Occasionally, as with the south Indian soups called rasams, there simply is no substitute for the south Indian spices that are critical to the taste of the dish. You can buy those ingredients at Indian or Asian grocery stores, or on the Internet. And eventually, when you find yourself cooking Indian food regularly, you may want to set up a pantry of some Indian ingredients. I hope that you will use this book to experiment as lavishly and with as little fear as possible. You will in that way fill the food, and therefore your guests, with your love and spirit of adventure.
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SIDEBAR: You really don’t need any special equipment to make the food in this book, outside of a spice grinder, a blender, and a food processor. I use an attachment on my Osterizer blender that is perfect for grinding spices as well as small amounts wet ingredients such as garlic, herbs, and coconut for the occasional spice paste. I also use a piece of Indian cookware called a kadai – a wok-shaped, two-handled pot, available in a range of sizes. A kadai is particularly useful for deep-frying because its rounded shape allows you to use less oil than needed in a pan with a flat bottom, but a wok or saucepan will work fine too."
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Chapters: with links to recipes.
Recipes with photos.
CHAPTERS
Soups
Dals
Vegetables
Rice
Meats
Poultry
Fish and Shellfish
Appetizers and Snacks
Raitas
Flatbreads and Crackers
Pickles and Chutneys
Sweets
Drinks
Glossary
Index
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