As we settled into our crisp onion bhajis, I let out a gasp. I had suddenly remembered my recent brush with international foodie fame and fortune.

I’m in Olive, I declared with a flourish.

Uncle one raised an eyebrow. Uncle two gave me a grunt. Aunt Madge just said: “Who’s Olive?”

Great. Only, like, the best food magazine published by the BBC. Read by a gazillion people, none of whom I actually know.

They asked me about my favourite cheap eat in London - the £6.95 eat as much as you want lunch buffet at Diwana Bhelpuri House in Euston. But if you’re not in London, this information is about as useful to you as your local weather to me.

So here are my top tips for spotting a really good Indian buffet instead:

1. Elderly Indians: No self respecting elderly Indian will pay money to eat poorly cooked version of the food they eat at home
2. Hot chapattis/rotis: There is little point in rotis that have languished on the buffet table, turning rock hard and stone cold
3. Wide selection: Surely, the whole point of the whole exercise is to eat until you can barely move, a huge meal that you would be nuts to cook at home?

Amidst all this, I also found time to cook fish curry, chicken curry and dal. Perfect, really.

My last lesson before I move on to recipes is all about dal. Dal is a preparation of boiled lentils with vegetable and spices. The spices are normally tempered in hot oil first, which means they are allowed to sizzle and release their strong flavours before these aromas are trapped in the lentils.

This tempering process is also known as tarka, popu, baghara to name but a few.

There are a number of different lentils used in Indian cooking and each has its very own special tarka and cooking time. Indians can be quite sniffy about staying true to authentic tarkas. So it is inadvisable to replace the lentils used in a recipe with a completely different one.

The popular Indian lentils are masoor, moong, toor, chana and urad. There are also variations within these types, for instance you can buy moong (mung) beans with a green husk or without and urad lentils whole with a black husk or split and huskless.

Dal is normally eaten with rice or Indian bread like rotis and parathas. It is not common practice to drink it as a soup in India, although lentil soup is quite fashionable on supermarket shelves.

However you choose to have it, it tastes damn good. Here is a really easy recipe for dal, if you haven’t cooked one before. There are lot of others in the lentils category in my blog archives.

Oh sorry, I don’t have any.

Tits off.

Oops not that neither.

Let’s just move on to cooking, shall we?

This is step two of the basic lessons. It’s all about powdered masalas. These are whole spices ground to a fine powder.

Normally powdered masalas are added after whole ones or after wet ingredients like onions, ginger and garlic. When you first add them they have pungent, strong aromas that burn the tip of your noses. You know when they are cooked when they blend into a wonderfully aromatic but subtle fragrance.

Ground masalas include:

• Turmeric: The ground root of a plant belonging to the ginger family. Yellow, warm and lovely
• Chilli: Red, sharp and hot hot. Use with care
• Cumin: Ground roasted whole cumin
• Coriander: Ground seeds of the coriander plant
• Garam masala: Ground bay leaf, cinammon, whole black peppercorns, cloves and cardamom

There are load of other ground masalas. But these are the very basic. And you can do some serious damage with a turmeric, chilli and cumin combo.

Like some added to chicken and then pan fried.

Or used with lemon juice on salmon fillets.

Yum!

The best way to use these is to buy in small quantities, store tight away from sunlight so they don’t lose their flavour and follow recipe instructions.

This is where I confess to never bothering to make powdered masalas from scratch. It’s too much hassle, especially when you can buy perfectly lovely ready ground masalas in the shops.

But if you’re aching to do this the proper, old fashioned way, here is a (very basic) guide:

4 cardamoms
4 cloves
1″ stick cinnamon
1 bay leaf
4 whole black peppercorns

Roast the whole lot on a medium over for 10 minutes and then grind in a blender/grinder. You can make lots of this and store in an airtight container for at least a month.

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.

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 irrestistible 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.

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.

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… 

But in this case, I’ve had to keep everything prepared for actual cooking tomorrow. Aloo for saag aloo and gobi (cauliflower) has been peeled, quartered and is soaking in cold water. Two whole cauliflowers have been washed, cut into florets and ginger and garlic pureed for the dishes.

Technically, having an “Indian” dinner party does not qualify as quick Indian cooking. The sheer volume of onions, ginger and garlic to be chopped, fried and finished requires a certain amount of time. But there are certainly some techniques I use to keep things as simple and quick as possible:

1. Cook large quantities of a few dishes rather than try your hand at many different recipes. It doesn’t take much longer to stir an extra onion, but making a whole separate dish will be more of a pain
2. Never experiment. Do a dish you have tried before. Very important if you’re new to Indian cooking
3. As mentioned earlier, cook the day before and leave the dishes covered in the fridge. Then reheat and serve on the day. This will let you enjoy your party and the food always tastes better the next day anyway
4. Use expensive or fancy ingredients to get away from cooking many dishes. For example, prawns and pulao. This will let you make more of an impact without the effort. Time is money after all…
5. Don’t bother with desert. In my experience, guests pig out on the mains and never have the stomach for deserts. Indian deserts are very sweet and when I have served them, they’ve not been the biggest hit. A block of fancy ice-cream or a platter of exotic fruit (papaya, lychee, mango) is often enough to sweeten the palate after the meal
6. And lastly, serve the food out in the pots they were served in. I invested in quality pots, pans and a wok that doubles up as a karhai. While the food pictures in this blog look pretty, guests in my house serve themselves out of pots and pan. I mean, people are still eating out of banana leaves in Calcutta so a few pots and pans won’t hurt anyone!
7. And lastly, and most importantly, don’t get drunk before the meal is cooked. This advice I can never seem to follow myself But the trick to quick Indian cooking is super concentration

Right, wish me luck for tomorrow. I’m getting quite nervous. Even though they may not notice what they’re eating after a few glasses of vino.

How will a city that can’t handle a few thousand visitors to a trade fair cope with the onslaught that is the Olympics? Time to move back to Mother India methinks…

Anyway, now to the more important issue of frying onions.

You will have noticed how a lot of my recipes start with the “heat the oil, fry the onions”. The onions in most cases have to fry until either they’re translucent or a golden brown in colour.

Golden brown is the tricky one. If they’re too dark then they might burn when you add the rest of the spices. But if they’re too light they’ll stay raw and hard.

I found the perfect post today about the art of the fried onion. Read this and never cry over an onion again (well, almost). 

P.S. = Today was going to be recipe day but my hubby’s out checking out some location for his next shoot and didn’t get around to sending me the pix today. Saag aloo and malai gobi are next on the menu…

I ain’t no geek but I do take a close interest in what I consume. (Apart from exotic cocktails, chocolate biscuits and chorizo - i am a really sucker for Spanish cured meats).

The main masalas in Indian food are the dried powdered spices, the whole spices and the “wet” ingredients like onion, garlic and ginger. Fresh herbs like coriander, curry leaves and mint are also used widely.

As a starter for ten, here’s the lowdown or shall I say upside (I am so full of PR slang today) on the beneficial properties of some every day Indian masalas from published research:

1. Turmeric: Anti-inflammatory, antioxidant that can prevent Alzheimer’s disease
2. Chillies: Release feel-good endorphins in the body as a reaction and - wait for this - boost the metabolism temporarily helping the body to burn fat
3. Cumin: Rich source of the natural painkiller salicylate
4. Curry leaf: Can lower cholestrol and help weight loss
5. Coriander: Aids digestion and helps fight against allergic reactions

Not to dwell on my favourite subject of Indian takeway food, but you’re unlikely to enjoy any of these wonderful properties given their unfettered use of colour, oil and artificial flavourings.

So, please cook Indian at home. And enjoy a curry’s natural goodness straight from the masala box into the pan!