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* Kitchen Basics |
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While it is true that Indian cuisine excites the senses and satisfies the palate with complex flavors, it is also true that with a little guidance and practice, achieving those results, especially for everyday home cooking, is simple. Generally, most Indian meals are prepared fresh, but what simplifies matters is knowing some basic techniques and having some preparations and ingredients pre-made. If you understand these basic techniques and preparations, know your way around a kitchen, and allow yourself time for chores such as chopping, grinding, roasting, and the like, you can cook Indian food. If this is all new, it's like doing anything else you do for the first time: There's a learning curve, but the experimental journey in the kitchen is stimulating and rewarding. To cook Indian recipes, you don't need to outfit your kitchen with many gadgets and tools. I offer basic equipment and pan substitutions in recipes, but for true Indian cooking, it is useful to have a concave cast-iron tava griddle to make breads, and a nonstick or cast-iron, round-bottomed wok or kadhai, as it is called in India. (You can buy both at Indian grocery stores or markets.) Also, it makes sense (and doesn't cost much) to have an additional spice or coffee grinder for the express purpose of grinding spices. (That is, unless you don't mind your spices tasting of coffee, and vice versa!) In this chapter, you'll find information on basic techniques used in Indian cooking, specific directions on important and classic techniques such as dry-roasting seasonings and grilling and roasting vegetables, and recipes for essential preparations such as clarified Indian butter (ghee), paneer cheese, and seasoning pastes such as ginger paste and tamarind paste, used in many Indian recipes in this book. Organize your recipes and simplify meal planning...Download the Cook'n Recipe Organizer for FREE!
BASIC TECHNIQUES Modern Indian cuisine is prepared both with techniques that date back centuries, such as making yogurt and grilling, and with modern adaptations such as pressure cooking and broiling. Although these days you may not crack a coconut very often or dry-roast all your spices, I offer the following preparations for when you want to follow traditional methods for the most authentic results. BASIC TECHNIQUES Dry-Roasting Spices, Nuts, and Flours Blanching Raw Nuts Slivering Blanched Nuts Roasting and Grilling Vegetables Deep-Frying, Indian-Style Preparing Mangoes Reconstituting Dried Wild Mushrooms Sprouting Beans and Seeds Shelling a Coconut BASIC INGREDIENTS The following ingredients are used in countless ways by Indian cooks and are frequently cross-referenced throughout the book. BASIC INGREDIENTS Indian Clarified Butter (Ghee) Homemade Yogurt Yogurt Cheese Paneer Cheese Coconut Milk Crispy Fried Onions Crispy Fried Fresh Ginger Crispy Chickpea Batter Drops BASIC FLAVORING PASTES Basic Ginger Paste Basic Garlic Paste Roasted Garlic Paste Basic Ginger-Garlic Paste Hyderabadi Ginger-Garlic Paste Basic Ginger and Green Chile Pepper Paste Gujarari Green Paste Basic Onion Paste Boiled Onion Paste Fried Onion Paste Kerala Fried Onion Paste Basic Curry Paste with Onion Basic Curry Paste without Onion Minty Green Curry Paste Spicy Yellow Curry Paste Almond and Poppy Seed Paste Basic Cashew Paste Chile Pepper Paste Mughlai Curry Paste with Nuts Goan Vindaloo Paste Tamarind Paste Sign up for our free monthly newsletter, with recipes, cooking tips and more! |
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