mixed with other dishes with your hands. In the northern part of India, where breads are a common part of the daily diet, a piece of bread is torn off and then used to grab or scoop up the sautéed or curried dish. Other than that, basic table manners apply. If your guests can’t help but exhibit a burp after the meal, consider that the ultimate compliment … at least that is what they do in India!
What’s for dinner?
The easy-to-make yet elegant dishes in this cookbook are perfect for both casual meals or for special occasions. You can make just one or two recipes of your choice for a quick snack or simple weekday meal. You can also go all out and serve a formal Indian meal, beginning with appetizers and ending with dessert and an after-dinner Indian Cappuccino or tea. If you’re new to Indian cooking, the myriad of recipes and possible combinations may seem daunting. Don’t worry—there was rhyme and reason to the way I organized the chapters in this book. If you follow the simple blueprint (page 9) and select your favorite dishes from the relevant chapters, you can feel confident about serving a delicious Indian meal when you want to impress family and friends.
In daily home cooking in India, appetizers, soups and salads are not separate courses. Traditional Indian cuisine does not feature soups as they are thought of in the West—rather, we have soupy dishes, such as lentils, that are served with the main meal. A simple salad of sliced cucumbers, tomatoes and raw onions is typically eaten along with dinner to provide a refreshing crunch during the meal. You do not have to stick to this … if you enjoy lentils as a soup course or if you’d like to have a salad course—go for it! Though appetizers are not part of a typical everyday home-style meal in India, I enjoy serving an appetizer or two when entertaining guests, which are always a big hit.
If a formal Indian meal, complete with appetizer and dessert, seems too elaborate for a hectic weeknight, you can still enjoy a quick but well-balanced and satisfying Indian meal by serving just plain yogurt, rice or bread, a vegetable dish and a meat, chicken, fish or seafood dish (or a lentil or legume dish for a vegetarian meal), which is how my mom puts together a weeknight Indian meal for us. I will indicate when dishes, such as Dosa and Uttapam, do not neatly fit into the blueprint and will provide other suggestions instead. I understand that making traditional Indian breads can get a bit messy so you can save that for weekend meals or special occasions. Or you can use the shortcut that I use and that my mother also uses now—simply buy Mexican wheat tortillas and heat them up on a gas stove or skillet. You can use this in place of homemade Indian bread or even rice. The whole idea is to make it easy to prepare and serve delicious and nutritious meals.
1981 India: Our family friend, Hardwari Sharma, cooking chapati with ghee in her home near my dad’s childhood village.
Throughout the book, I suggest traditional pairings for each dish. When choosing which vegetables and meat, chicken, fish or seafood dishes to serve together, keep in mind the colors and consistencies of the dishes for variety in taste, texture and for beautiful presentation. Along with pairing complementary flavors and spicy hot dishes with cooling plain yogurt or raita, Indians enjoy pairing contrasting textures at the table. Ideally, try to have both a sautéed dish and a curried dish at the table to balance out the “dry” and “wet” dishes—for example, a sautéed vegetable and a curried meat, fish or seafood, or vice versa, or a sautéed vegetable and a “soupy” lentil dish. In general, I prefer to eat sautéed dishes with breads since they are easy to grab with a small piece of bread. I also like a side of raita to eat between bites in order to provide a fluid consistency that goes down smoothly. I enjoy curried dishes with rice since the fluid consistency mixes and absorbs well with the rice. This is not a hard-and-fast rule since I prefer to eat the “gravy-like” lentil dishes with breads such as chapati—here, a part of the bread is torn off and sort of folded to scoop up the lentils.
Using the “blueprint” and the several serving suggestions sprinkled throughout this book, you will be able to invite friends and family over and amaze them with traditional homestyle Indian meals made quickly and easily by you. To help you along every step of the way, I share time-saving methods I’ve learned and developed over the years (See “Tips and Techniques,” page 13.) including a guide on how to best re-heat refrigerated or frozen Indian food (for the quickest possible meal!).
Before you know it, you will be making homemade yogurt and stocking it in your refrigerator just like in a typical Indian home. And once you get a good feel for the recipes, you may even start eyeballing measurements like a real Indian cook and wean yourself off from strict measuring!
| BLUEPRINT FOR A FORMAL INDIAN MEAL | |
|---|---|
| Salad (Tomato, Cucumber and Onion Salad) | The Basics |
| Pickled Condiment (Mango Pickle) (this is not an absolute necessity) | The Basics |
| 1 Yogurt (plain yogurt or salted and spiced Raita) | The Basics |
| 1 or 2 Appetizers, depending on how elaborate you want to be | Chapter 1 |
| Pappadum (omit this and still look like a master!) | Chapter 1 |
| 1 Bread (Chapati or Naan) | Chapter 2 |
| 1 Rice Dish (Plain Rice or Cumin and Peas Rice) | Chapter 2 |
| 1 Lentil or Legume Dish | Chapter 3 |
| 1 Chicken, Lamb, Fish, Seafood, Egg or Cheese Dish (sautéed or curried) | Chapter 4 or 5 or 6 |
| 1 Vegetable Dish (sautéed or curried) | Chapter 6 |
| 1 Dessert | Chapter 7 |
| Tea or Cappuccino | Chapter 7 |
| Mixture of half fennel seeds and half sugar to chew on as a breath freshener | (no chapter) |
Cookware and Utensils
I always enjoy strolling through kitchen-specialty stores looking for interesting new kitchen tools and cookware while my husband impatiently reminds me that I already have this or that, or that I do not have room for more things or that I simply don’t need it! I tell him to relax and that I am just looking for fun. Although sometimes, I do find an irresistible serving platter or interesting gadget that I must take home with me—much to my husband’s chagrin!
Even though I enjoy browsing fancy kitchen gadgets, I keep to the basics at home with easy-to-use and easy-to-clean kitchen cookware and utensils. My cooking style does not require any fancy or specialized Indian cookware but just basic items that you probably already have or are easy to find. Naturally, there is specialized Indian cookware that is used in traditional Indian homes, such as the tandoor, karahi and tava, but I have developed ways to prepare delicious Indian food using common everyday cookware.
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