Beginners Luck

A number of readers have asked for a beginners section for the book. So here it is. This section is aimed at the real beginner in Indian cuisine and tries to lead you through some simple and straightforward recipes that highlight the main techniques.

Spices

Indian cooking is not exclusively about spices but they are so widespread in the cuisine that it is almost impossible to separate them. So what do you start with? Here is a list that I think you should get to begin with. Later you can add spices to your collection as you become more confident. You should also print off the glossary or save the page to your hard drive so that you can refer to it in the future (not least of which it gives the Hindi and other language names which can be useful when hunting down spices)

White Cumin Seed
Coriander Seed
Black Peppercorn
Fennel Seed
Large Dry Red Chillies
Black/Brown Mustard Seed
Turmeric

To start off buy small packets from the supermarket. In the UK you may find the Black mustard seed a little more difficult to find in the supermarket but if you know where any Asian grocer is you'll get it there. You'll notice that all the spices are in seed form, except for the turmeric. They keep longer like this and many recipes call for the whole spice (New Potatoes with Cumin for instance.) You can buy ready ground but you will miss out. This means that the next thing on your list has to be a coffee/spice grinder or a good quality abrasive mortar and pestle to grind spices. Store your spices in dark airtight jars in a cupboard. The spice racks you can buy are frankly a waste of time as they use clear glass. OK for display but not storage. Put coloured sand in them and store your spices in a cupboard especially as unless you are cooking Indian everyday, some of these spices will be around for a while. Have a good sniff at the spice jar each time you open it and if the aroma is flat or jaded sling the contents and refresh. Nothing worse than stale spices.

Herbs

Indian dishes do call for herbs and the main one you will come across is Coriander. This green leaf, not dissimilar to some forms of parsley has a sweet aromatic flavour. The herb is used cooked and raw. I implore you to find a good Asian grocer for your coriander supply. So many supermarkets here in the UK sell little pot plants of young weedy coriander (usually marketed as 'growing herbs') that you'll never get the flavour of. The real stuff is lot more robust and invariably about a third of the price when bought from a decent supplier. If you are not going to use all of the coriander, wash it, dry it thoroughly (salad spinner works well,) chop it up and put it into a plastic box and freeze. It will be OK for cooking with but not for garnishing.

Two other herbs you will not get in a UK supermarket are Curry Leaves and Fresh Fenugreek. You'll have to go to an Asian grocer for these. Fenugreek features in some recipes and can in fact be eaten as a vegetable in its own right. It's best bought fresh as needed. Fenugreek leaf can be bought dry in packets and is a good standby if you soak in tepid water before use. Curry Leaf on the other hand will keep well in a sealed plastic box in the freezer and if you find it, buy lots. For the South Indian style of cuisine that I prefer it is, along with mustard seed the keynote of many dishes. There is only one problem with Curry Leaf.. It's too nice. A recipe will call for 6 leaves and once you've gotten used to it the temptation is to double up. I usually end up putting in 1.5 times the amount when I'm just cooking for myself. If cooking for others however, stick to the recipe quantities.

The humble Bay Leaf is another common herb. Many recipes you'll see will ask for Cinnamon Leaf (Tej Patta). Use a bay leaf instead, it's almost indistinguishable to the extent that I've even been shown Bay Leaves in Indian markets when asking for the Cinnamon Leave. The cinnamon leaf is narrower than a typical bay leaf. I'm lucky, I have a bay bush growing in a pot outside my back door which is accessible all year through. You can buy fresh bay leaves and again storing them in the freezer in a plastic box is best. However make sure that you remove any from food you intend to freeze as once cooked they will impart a bitter taste in the food if frozen.

Other basics

There are a few other things you invariably need to have to hand at when cooking Indian. Ginger Root and Garlic are two such items. At first just buy enough fresh for your needs but as you become more confident, buy them in bulk and spend an hour with a food processor and chop them up fine, pack into ice cube trays and freeze. Chop the resultant cubes in half and store in freezer in a plastic box. This is time consuming to start with but it means you always have root ginger and garlic on hand when needed. Simply allow to defrost in the room or nuke a piece in the microwave for 10 seconds or so. I do about a pound of each at a time and it lasts 2 or 3 months.

You will also need oil. Buy the vegetable ghee or ordinary sunflower oil. You can make butter ghee (clarified butter) for special dishes that really do need the butter taste. It's virtually impossible to get through an Indian meal without the need for oil somewhere so make sure you have some at all times.

Another constant in Indian cuisine is the humble onion. So prevalent is this "poor man's protein" that recent shortages in India caused rioting and serious concern at ministerial levels. It is used as a padding, a colouring agent, flavouring agent and finishing garnish. So many recipes start by frying some onions to various stages of browness that I cannot conceive of my kitchen without them. Buy the best you can and buy lots of them. Red (Spanish) onions are best for salads, white ones of a medium size for cooking. Spring onions are not often used but can be suitable substitute for such dishes as a pilau rice or fried until crisp and sprinkled over a dhal (lentil) dish.

Kitchen Weapons

The Equipment section mentions a few starting pots and pans but lets start really simple. At a bare minimum you need a good sized wok, and a variety of heavy saucepans. Try to get a steel wok (Asian and Chinese shops are good to try for these.) A suitable stirring weapon made of stainless steel for your wok is a good purchase as they are simple to keep clean, more efficient at getting stuff moving around the pan than a wooden spoon and make a great sound as you clatter about, tossing and stirring food. Please avoid plastic spoons as they are easily burnt in the sometimes intense heat of Indian cookery. Finally in this section do get at least one good quality sharp knife and something to keep it sharp with. A fairly broad bladed vegetable knife is the best starting point. I had a single Sabatiere knife of 7 inches in length and 2 inches at it broadest for the first 15 years of my cooking life before I could afford more specialised tools. As long as it was kept sharp this general purpose weapon peeled vegetables, chopped them and cut all manner of meat perfectly adequately.

First Steps - The use of Oil

The aim of this section is to tell you about some basic techniques involving oil. Each one is described and accompanied by a link to a recipe that use it.

Bargar Frying spices in hot oil to release their aromatic flavours. Many dishes start by frying a single spice or mix of spices in hot oil for a few seconds (never more than 60) to release the flavour of the spices into the oil. The oil needs to be hot but not smoking and the easiest way to judge this is get it to smoking and then turn the heat off until it stops. This is fine for vegetable oils but for butter ghee try and judge it a bit more precisely, i.e. turn down the heat when you think it is about to start smoking.

The greatest danger with this technique is that of burning the spices. If you do, then throw the whole lot away and start again because the resultant dish will be irretrievably spoilt. With the oil at the right temperature, simply throw in your spices and stir fry for the required period. Invariably you will follow this with other ingredients and these will reduce the temperature immediately to stop the spices burning. Mix the ingredients thoroughly and continue with the recipe.

A barger with mustard seed is easier still. Put the seed into hot oil and cover with a lid. When you hear the mustard popping, count to 5 and then add the rest of your ingredients. Some dishes use dry dhal (lentils) in a barger. If so make sure that they brown lightly and do not go too dark before adding the rest of the ingredients.

For a simple recipe that uses the barger technique, try Potato Chilli Fry.

 

Bhuna This can mean one of two things. Either sizzling a spice paste in hot oil before other ingredients are added or turning over meat in a spice mix for an extended period so that the spices are cooked into the meat.

Lets take the spice paste first. This technique is aimed at gently cooking the spices to mesh the various flavours together. Pastes are made from a mix of ground spices that often include wet items such as ginger and garlic. The resultant masala is mixed with water and allowed to stand for 1/2 an hour or so to allow the spices to swell. If it becomes dry add more water. The result should be a thick wet paste just veering on the mobile.

Heat you oil, and usually the recipe will call for a reasonable amount of it, to a medium heat, definitely not smokin'. Add your spice paste and saute the mix gently, stirring frequently. The spice mix will absorb the oil at first and then according to most recipe books you continue cooking until the oil separates. In reality this is very difficult to judge especially the first few (10, 20 ?) times you try it. In practice if you gently saute the spice paste for 10 minutes and do not allow it to dry out by adding a little water as necessary, you will have achieved the purpose.

Alright, so what about the meat. Well, this is really an extension of what we have just been looking at. The essence is still about gently cooking the meat in spice paste so that it becomes thoroughly encased in the flavours without burning the spices. It is a little easier than the previous method because the meat helps to keep the ambient temperature down.

The trick is a gentle heat and time. Start your spice paste as for the bhuna method above but only for about 5 minutes, i.e. part cooked. Add your meat and reduce the heat. Stir frequently to make sure meat is thoroughly coated. The juices from the meat will ensure that nothing burns but keep cooking and turning for the time indicated in the recipe. Continue the recipe as required. The resultant meal is always distinctive because of the method of cooking, with the spice flavour deep into the meat.  See Champ Masala for a bhuna dish that uses yoghurt instead of water to make the paste.

 

Tarka. The name given to the final frying of spices that are then poured over the main dish. Make sure that you have the ingredients to hand. The oil must be very hot (smoking) before adding the spices which cook very quickly, imparting their flavour to the oil. The oil and spices are then poured over the target dish. Speed is the essence of this technique. Ordinary vegetable oil or ghee is best. Olive oil and butter ghee burn too easily.

So, gather the required spices together. These are typically the hard hot spices such as dry red chilli, mustard and pepper and often with some aromatics such as cummin, fennel or lovage. The hard hot spices go in first to the hot oil. Count to 5 and add the other spices. If using dry chillies, usually you wait until they start to blacken and then pour the resultant mix over the target dish. If not using chilli, just count five again and pour. If the spices do burn then throw it all away and start again. Put a lid on the dish as soon as you have poured on the tarka to keep in the aroma until serving.  See Tarka Dhal for a classic recipe

First Steps - Rice

You have to know how to cook rice.  So start with plain boiled rice and then move on to pilau rice.

First Steps - The Marinade

There are so many recipes that require a marinade that I've lost count of them.   However they do seem to fall into two main groups, those that require yoghurt as a marinade base and those that don't.  The ubiquitous Tandoori falls into the former camp and you'll find recipes for all sorts of ingredients including prawns, chicken, lamb and vegetables.  The point about yoghurt is that it is a tenderiser of the meat to which it is being applied and you should take care not to overdo it.  For prawns, a couple of hours would be sufficient.  Chicken seems to come out best if left for about 12 hours, whilst lamb can stand the full 24 hours.  With all yoghurt marinade recipes you are aiming to balance the flavour of the base ingredient with that of the marinade.  So try the following pages for some recipes that need a yoghurt marinade:

Tikkas
Tandoori Prawns
Chicken Nick Nick

Marinading without yoghurt is also popular.  Generally speaking the tenderising effect is reproduced by using lemon, vinegar, sugar or a combination of these ingredients.   The resultant dish will generally be drier than the yoghurt marinade varieties.   Try the following to get you started:

20 Chilli Chicken
Mirch Gosht

Next Steps

If you have had some success at the above then you should now be ready to move on and try any of the recipes in the Big Boys Curry Book.  The most important thing though is to enjoy yourself, preferably with some mates and a good bottle of whatever you fancy.   Give them a go.  Write and let me know how you get on and if there is anything I can do to make the recipes clearer.