A Growing Repertoire of Indian Recipes

Verne and I had an opportunity this past weekend to show off our skills at preparing Indian food and, if you can believe Jana and her friend, Bashir, our dinner was delicious and quite authentic! Our first attempt to make naan last month was less than successful. Since then, our friend, Sally Simms, forwarded an article on making naan that was published in Cook's Illustrated. Few home cooks own a Tandoor oven and we're no exception. To cook properly, naan needs both direct radiant heat and convection cooking. Before reading the Cook's article, I'd worked my way through each of the failed alternatives discussed in the article...oven, outdoor grill, stovetop griddle. The winning approach, which I tried this past weekend with great success, is to butter both sides of the naan (using ghee, which is a clarified butter), and cook the flatbread in a very hot, cast-iron pan (I used my new Thermolon non-stick pan) about 1-2 minutes per side with the lid on the pan. Perfection!

Now naan alone is very good, but it is made even better by eating it with the traditional green and red chutneys. That brings me to our second success...Sweet and Hot Tomato Chutney from my new favorite (and only) book on Indian cuisine ("India Food & Cooking"). It took a trip to an Indian market for nigella (wild onion) seeds, but other than that our pantry was well stocked to make it...fresh tomatoes, vinegar, sugar, garlic, bay leaves, and chili powder. After cooking for more than an hour, it reduces to a thick, tasty chutney that pairs well with the more savory coriander/mint/chile chutney (I cheated and bought one that was very good...next time I'll experiment with making my own).

Indian cooking reminds me of our attempts to make Chinese food at home...literally hours of preparation, half-hour of eating, and hours of clean-up! Authentic Indian recipes are even more complex and labor intensive. Preparing a meal with multiple dishes/courses requires hours (in some cases, days) of preparation. But then, it's time well spent when the eaters respond enthusiastically, "Good Eats"!

Curry...An About Face

My early childhood memories of curry are simply: "I'd rather go to bed hungry than eat it!!!" My mother never ventured far from a couple of dozen recipes passed down from her mother or the occasional casserole or jello recipes that were the rage of  the 50's and 60's. She had very few spices and rarely used fresh herbs in her cooking. She did, however, have a jar of curry powder that she used in a hamburger gravy served over rice. There was nothing I liked about it...most of all the color, which was a yellowish-green similar to split-pea soup. My punishment for refusing to eat was always the same...I'd have to sit at the table with the food in front of me (often, my uncle, who lived across the street, would sit next to me coaxing me to eat). His efforts must have occasionally been successful, because I do remember tasting Mom's hamburger curry gravy, and it was as bad as it smelled.

Anyway, until a few months ago I was convinced that I hated curry and all things Indian. Verne (for his own reasons) agreed with me, so we declined every offer we ever had to eat Indian food. That was until a few months ago...we hadn't been to Berkeley in months as there's little reason to go since the girls are no longer attending UCB. I do have a favorite fabric shop there, though, and Vera Allen is in her last year at UCB, so we decided to go for the day and take Vera to lunch at one of her favorite restaurants. As it turned out, she's discovered Indian food while at Berkeley and that was the cuisine of her choice. Reluctantly, we agreed (although the girls tried for their eight years at UCB to get us to try it and we always refused...go figure!). A long story short...we LOVED it!

Our next few issues of cooking magazines had recipes for a few of the dishes we'd eaten that day, including Vera's favorite: Chicken Tikka Masala. Over the past few weeks we've experimented with Indian cuisine twice. Our first effort was to make Saag Paneer, a vegetarian dish that includes fried cheese, spinach, and a curry sauce. All I can say is, WOW! It is declicious!. We had so much fun making our own cheese (whole milk, Greek yogurt, and lemon juice); 

mixing the spices of fresh ginger, garlic, jalapeno pepper, coriander, cumin, and turmeric; and finally frying the cheese, assembling the ingredients, and eating this delectable dish.

Within a week we were at it again. This time, it was a complete dinner, including Chicken Tikka Masala, Lemon-Cumin Rice, naan, and a dipping sauce. It was too good! I am in love with Indian food. The first of three books on the subject just arrived today: "India: Food & Cooking". All I can say is that my mother's recipe using curry was NOT Indian cuisine and, unfortunately, it kept me from eating anything "curry" for the past 50+ years. What a loss! One thing I've learned in our brief exposure to Indian (as well as Asian) cooking: every curry is different and must be made with the best and freshest ingredients. You can't get the variety of delicate, complex flavors that are the mainstay of Indian cooking in a single spice jar of curry powder! Don't waste your money, begin collecting the dozen+ spices that together create curries that will knock your socks off!!!