Quick Indian Cooking

I just got back from the gym. It’s been a while since I bothered doing anything anything remotely healthy.

So what is it with sullen gym receptionists anyway? You think they’d make an extra special effort to be nice.

After all we’ve forgoed a deep fried meal, evening in front of the telly and rush hour travel to spend a whole hour working up a sweat, with the grand finale of getting verucca and wiping ourselves clean with a crusty complimentary towel.

Ah. And the towel. Said sullen receptionist forgets to give it to me at the door.

No worries. I change into pathetic gym clothes and request her for one.

Sullen receptionist: “What happened to the one I gave you?”

Me: “You didn’t”

SR: “[Pointed look] Really?”

Me: “[Pointed look back] No, I’ve hidden it to take it back home with me”

And they didn’t even give me the £20 they owed me for recommending a colleague!

On the way back home, I decided to start the lessons this week with one about the whole dry masalas used in Indian cooking. The way it works is that you heat the oil and then add these. They crackle, pop and release the most wonderfully aromatic flavours. This is also called tempering or tarka.

Once you get their heady smell, your pot is ready for whatever you need to add next.

There are literally hundreds of dry whole spices but I won’t bore you do death with this post. Instead, I’ll stick to the basics.

These are cloves, cardamoms, bay leaves, whole black pepper, cinnamon, whole dry red chillies, star aniseed, whole cumin and mustard seeds. The first five of these together make up garam masala, which is used in both whole and ground form.

There are enough places on the web that tell you what each of them do and what they taste like. Suffice to say, biting into one of them is not pleasant or clever.

Whole red chillies, in particular are the devil incarnated. You have been warned.

Today is a minor celebration of sorts for Quick Indian Cooking. Six months ago, I took to blogging sick to my teeth of:

seeing how little people cook Indian food even though they love eating it

the garbage widely perceived to be Indian food in the UK and beyond

misconceptions about Indian food and cooking, e.g. it’s too unhealthy/greasy to eat regularly and too time-consuming/difficult to cook

This blog is a rant about how Indian cooking is easy and totally do-able alongside working hard, partying harder and eating a wide variety of cuisine.

If you love Indian food, don’t know enough about cooking it and can’t slave over a hot cooker all day – welcome aboard.

Slowly but surely, the irresistible aromas of an Indian box will penetrate your kitchen and soon you’ll be an uber professional with frying onions and sizzling whole cumin. That’s the objective anyway, and it seems to be working!

If you’re new to this site please click on getting started and look at all the basic tips in the archives section. It covers a lot of information from useful info on spices to the downright must know of what alcohol to drink with curry.

I’ll be spending the next week on more tips and tricks. Also, check out Hooked on Heat for help with basic tips and advice.

Global domination… here we come.

PS = If you are a prolific Indian cook, I am sure you will be baffled by my various shortcuts and apalled by my apparent inabilities. Fear not, the recipes do work and they save you time. A look at the glorious recipes posted by other very talented Indian cooks is also an absolute must.

A few weeks ago, Shari who writes from Japan raised the very pertinent issue of missing ingredients when cooking Indian. No matter how close you live to an Indian spice stocked shop, there are bound to be occasions when you can’t find a certain masala or when you have run out and can’t make the trek to the shop.

If, like Shari, you live in an exotic location with no real claim to Indian cooking fame, finding the right ingredients could be that little bit too difficult.

When I am missing a crucial recipe ingredient, I tend to use a few expletives and just get on with it nonetheless. Life is too short to cry over curry leaves. In most cases, you won’t get the most authentic version of the dish, but it’ll still taste great.

There are some shortcuts you could use. For example, instead of mustard oil use normal oil and mix in a small amount of mustard to give it the flavour you need. But this is all down to creativity and not science.

I did some research and there seem to be a number of online resources available to help us buy Indian spices:

• www.theasiancookshop.co.uk:A very comprehensive range. If you place an order from a far flung part of the world, they will email you with the best options for overseas delivery
• www.simplyspice.co.uk: This delivers to the UK and Europe only but the range is good
• www.getspice.com: For organic spices only and they don’t come cheap

With all of these, there is a flat rate for a certain weightage, so best to stock up for your favourite recipes at once.

Talking about recipes, I am very conscious that I have not been the best at posting mine on my return from India. I blame the holiday season (Christmas in a week everyone, how exciting!!). Having sliced the best part of my ring finger off cooking casserole and erecting a real Nordic Christmas tree at home yesterday, I feel like I am ready to dive wholeheartedly into the pleasures of Indian cooking again.

Right. Back to the subject of what alcohol to drink with Indian food. You remember a few days ago I touched on this subject, then got drunk and vowed never to touch alcohol again?

Well, here I am again. Sipping a Californian Rose, writing about what tipple best suits a curry. The research is over, and has also been tested on my consumer PR colleagues at Monday’s dinner party.

As a rule, I would never recommend drinking anything too heavy or complex with Indian food. The food has enough different spices to keep your taste buds content for it to be necessary to complicate matters with booze.

Spirits

Let’s start with spirits, because that is what most people drink before dinner in India. Scotch and vodka are perennial favourites. Scotch for the men and vodka for the ladies.

My nutritionist actually recommends sticking to vodka when drinking because it’s so pure, it doesn’t interfere too much with the digestive system (Always good to think about the digestive system when eating Indian food).

Drinking spirits can be tricky at dinner parties though. How do you know what people prefer? And getting mixers to suit different requirements can also be a pain.

Beers

In my experience, beer is drunk during the daytime than at night in India. It’s more of a lunchtime tipple, presumably because of its low(er) alcohol content.

I am not a big beer drinker. But I believe many lighter and slightly sweet Belgian beers are excellent with Indian food, like Leffe. Indian beers like Kingfisher and Cobra are also hugely popular, sometimes because you don’t get a very exhaustive drinks list at Indian restaurants.

Wine

Ah-ha. This is where I can really show off with some new found knowledge.

Wine drinking in India is fairly recent phenomenon, with producers like Grover and Sula making inroads into international markets with their great wines.

My media and wine expert research has uncovered that aromatic and unoaked white wines, with a touch of sweetness worked best with Indian food. Rose wines also work well and with red wine, the light and fruity types with soft tannins (the dry taste you get at the back of your mouth, after a sip of the wine) are your best bet.

The Aberdeen Press and Journal was a huge help with this summary. Now, I am no expert, but this sounds to me like any wine that is described as “soft and fruity and drinkable”.

The other thing to look out for is acid. In my years of excessive wine drinking with Indian food, I have learnt that acidity and Indian food do not team well. According to wine expert Matt Skinner:

As a rule, wines produced north of the Equator will be higher in natural acidity and lower in alcohol.

At the dinner party, we tried Australian Chardonnay, Italian Pinot Grigio and Californian Rose wines and they all worked well. On the red front, we enjoyed a very drinkable Chilean Merlot. And I am happy to report that no one complained a dodgy tummy the next day, from the food or wine.

This is obviously a very simplistic view, as wines are wonderfully complex beings. But if you like me usually buy alcohol for dinner party drinking in a mad panic and are stuck for options in a restaurant, then these should help as easy-to-remember guidelines.

Just as I thought I had come to the end of my research, I found this fabulous article on how turmeric prevents alcohol-related liver disease! Glug…