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• What Indian Cuisines Offer Americans
• Traditional Ways and what to use instead.
• Cooking Methods & Gear"
• Service and service pieces.
• Regional Cuisines
• Special Ingredients

• Flavor:: Indian cuisines make innovative use of spice combinations and natural ingredients to prepare intensely flavorful food. From the gentle but richly aromatic seasonings of Kashmir to the firey exotica of the South, all preferences are accomodated.
• Economy Cost is increasingly important to Americans in a global economy where "offshoring" to low wage countries is puting pressure on American incomes. This is amplified by a misguided program to turn corn into motor fuel, driving the cost of meat up and up. The cuisines of India provide low cost without sacrificing flavor or variety, and maximize use of local ingredients in season.
• Diversity The regional cuisines can accomodate practically any health or religious diet preference from fruitarian through South Beach. In particular India presents a pinacle of vegetarian cuisines ranging from extreme vegan to "sort of vegetarian".
• Simplicity: Even the most devout participant in the simplicty movement will have no problem here. Indian cuisines were developed on simple clay stoves with a couple of iron pans and a stone grinder. A few modern devices do make it qucker though.
• Health: With emphass on fresh natural ingredients and a minimum of animal fats (the exception, ghee, is fading in India and is not needed here) good health is promoted without hardship or deprevation.
• Pre-Prep and Reheating: A huge number of Indian recipes are naturals for pre-preparation, and a great many are as good, or even better, after rewarming. Left overs from one day's main dish often make wonderful sides for another day's meal.
• Compatibility: Many Indian recipes make excellent side dishes for American or European food and wonderful easy to make and easy to handle dishes for pot-luck, picknic and party.
• The Stuff that Doesn't Work : OK, you knew it couldn't all be perfect. The Indian approach to bread doesn't work for us and nor does the thali service. Seating arrangements and lack of table untensiles and "the servent problem" also make "authenticty" inconvenient. These issues are becoming increasingly impractical in India itself, forcing adoption of Western ways.

Learning to cook a number of Indian recipes well and with reasonable authenticity will add delightful variation to any good cooks repertory. Many Indian dishes also go well as sides to Western main dishes (and some don't). The cuisines of India are particularly valuable for those desiring a more (or completely) vegetarian diet, since large areas of India are predominantly vegetarian.

Some accuse Indian cooking of inundating everything in strong spices so everything tastes exactly the same. I haven't had this problem in my experience with Indian cooking, but I suppose there's bad Indian cooking as well as there is bad cooking everywhere else.

Indian cuisine varies significantly almost by state, and sometimes even by city, but some generalizations can be made. The cuisine of the Northwest is most familiar to Americans, with the Northeast (Bengali) next in familiarity, particularly in New York, but the cuisines of the more southern regions are gaining popularity, particularly in Southern California.

Beef, though clearly approved by the ancient Vedas, has fallen entirely out of use mainly from influence of the Krishna cult and simple economics, but is still eaten in the British enclaves. Pork is not much used in the formerly Islamic regions but is not banned except where all meat is banned. Pigs are just too expensive to raise compared to sheep and goats so pork isn't available except in a few forested regions where hunting was traditional.

• Northwest India: This region is heavily influenced by Persia from the period of its Islamic conquest. Here lamb and goat are featured (but not beef or pork), and bread, and soft aromatic spicing is used. Cooking is often done in super-hot brick and clay ovens called Tandoor, but not in the home - building and running a tandoor is a project. Nan bread may be made up in the home and taken to a commercial oven for baking. The predominant cooking oil is ghee (clarified butter).
• Northeast India (Bengal) cuisine uses much less meat than the northwest and a lot more rice than bread. Fish is a major contributor to nutrition in this region, though it is also influenced by the vegetarian regions to the south. Mustard oil oil is the definitive cooking oil here but ghee is also used.
• Southeast India adheres to a generally vegetarian diet based on rice and and lentils, but not uniformly. In the city of Hyderabad an Islamic influenced cuisine is found, seafood is eaten along teh coast and meat is popular in some areas. In the South curries are thinner and spiced a lot hotter with chilis than in other areas. A lot of coconut oil is used for cooking in this region and coconut milk is used in place of milk and yogurt.

  Milk and cheese are used sparingly, but eggs are hardly used at all. Lilies (onions, garlic, leeks, etc.) are also avoided, their place substituted by asafoetida. Mushrooms are also frobidden. Some Americans are familiar with cooking by these rules from ISKCON (the Hari Krishna cult) which has always been big on food.

• On the West Coast of India are found regions of strictest vegitarianism, in Gujarat and Maharashtra. Farther south the cuisine is similar to the East Coast but more aromatic and with less chili. Again, there are areas where meat is favored and also strong foreign enclaves with their own cuisines. Pre-Islamic Persian cuisine of the Parsees and beef eating British enclaves are found around Mumbai (Bombay). Farther south Portuguese Goa is known for pork dishes, and there's a pork eating hill tribe of uncertain origin in soutwestern Karnataka.
• Pakistan is that part of western India that is still Islamic. It was broken off as a separate country in hopes of reducing the bombings and mass murder characteristic of Islamic regions. This has not been successful because there are border disputes and there are still many Muslims on the Indian side of the border.
• Bangla Desh: formerly East Pakistan, is another Islamic region formerly part of India. It is very poor and continuously plagued with severe weather problems - but worse is to come, global warming will submurge much of the country.

Traditional Ways

Even 30 year old cookbooks I have admit that India is becoming westernized (meaning families are smaller, people have a lot less time and space, lack servents and need two incomes to support a family). Increasingly Western ways of of cooking and service are being adopted. Women often now buy spice mixes preground and mixed - unheard of in earlier times.

Cooking Gear

These items are unlikely to be found in a Western household, but a Chinese wok can stand in for the karahi (the karahi is much rounder with steeper sides), a shallow frying pan about 12 inches in diameter can stand in for the tava, and a standard oven preheated to 500°F will sub for the tandoori. For the stone grinder, you'll have to improvise among the various mortars, pestels, coffee grinders, food processors, and other items you have around.

We are often told that Indian recipes must be followed in exact detail and great accuracy (even though they're quite different in the next town). This is probably a result of what Westerners call the "caste system" (I1). Even modest households had cooks of lower social status who weren't allowed to taste food prepared for those of higher status, so cooking by strict formula was a necessity.

Westerners are not bound by this system and are likely cooking for themselves anyway, so feel free to taste the food and adjust it ot your liking - unless, of course you are a "purist", in which case you will make life as difficult for yourself as possible and are probably reading this document as you would a horror story.

Serving

Polished and decorated brass (or other metal) plates are used, rekabi (about 9" diameter) for breakfast and thali (about 14" diameter) for lunch (the largest meal) and dinner. A number of small metal bowls are arranged around plates and a tumbler of water (alcoholic beverages are not served with meals). Tea or coffee may follow the meal (mostly tea with sugar and milk).

For banquets which are likely to exceed the number of plates available, banana leaves are used for plates and small unglazed pottery bowls. These are discarded after use because the unglazed pottery can't be reliably cleaned in the less than ideal conditions that prevail.

Rice or bread is served on the plate and other items in the bowls so each person can eat what s/he wants. Salt, chilis, pickles, and melted ghee are placed where all can reach. Forks are not used - finger tips and torn pieces of bread are used to pick up and scoop up food.

Western households are unlikely to have a set of metal plates and bowls, will likely prefer their plates on a table rather than on mats on the floor, and most will prefer to use a fork. For many, a meal without wine or beer is unthinkable (beer and white wine go best, but red will do fine). All this will give the purist plenty to fret about.

Special Ingredients and Substitutions

• Coconut Oil - The oil used in India is generally unrefined and is very smelly, which persons not from there find offensive. While this unrefined oil can be found in Indian groceries most coconut oil sold in the U.S. is refined and deodorized and will be found quite agreeable. Subst: vegetable oil (grapeseed).
• Curry Leaves - (Kari) These must be used fresh. If you are sufficiently determined and willing to battle traffic you can get these in Los Angeles, but elsewhere you're probably going to do without or grow your own tree (requires warm climate). Do not try to used dried ones, it's better to skip them entirely.
• Dal - This word appears in a great many Indian recipe names and as recipe ingredients. A dal is (in most cases) a lentil or bean that has been peeled and split. Dals cook much faster than the whole unpeeled, unsplit bean or lentil and have a milder flavor. Occasionaly dal is used for a whole lentil.
• Ghee - clarified butter. Subst: vegetable oil (grapeseed), but Ghee is easy to make yourself.
• Lentils, Beans, & Peas & - Indian cooking makes extensive use of many pulses (peas, beans and lentils), a few of which are familiar to westerners and many of which are not. Many are called "Dal", which means they are beans or lentils that have been split and peeled. Subst: Yellow Split Peas can be used in place of several dals - not quite the same, but tastes good anyway.
• Mustard Oil - Much used in Northeast India and Nepal, and is fairly easy to find in Los Angeles (Indian and specialty stores). Subst: Almond Oil, Vegetable Oil.
• Paneer - a fresh cheese similar to Queso Fresco but with less tang. It differs substantially in that it does not melt at all, so you can fry slices brown in a pan and they hold their shape. While made commercially in California it is not widely available elsewhere, With a little practice and some cheesecloth you can make it yourself. Subst: If you can stand some melting, Queso Fresco is a good substitute, or if crumbled, Ricotta (stronger tang). If holding shape in frying is important, Queso Panela works reasonably well.
• Tamarind - A pod containing a sweet but very tart paste. Whole pods can be found in Mexican groceries and specialty stores and in Indian groceries blocks (pod and seeds removed) and concentrate (fibers removed). Subst: Lemon Juice.

Links

• I1 - Caste system - Pezarkar.com