whole?
Medium/small dice and sweat over low heat. That’s my best guess.
Yeah, that’s pretty much it. Basically fry the chopped or sliced onions until light golden brown, squeeze out the oil, cool and puree. It is really just half of how to start a Korma but without the cashews. I just discovered that the puree keeps well and can be used wherever you need onion flavour but don’t want chunks of onion, like hamburger patties or pasta sauces.
You can use it to thicken sauces too.
I personally do rings and use a medium-high heat, stirring constantly, but it all works.
Many Indian dishes start from the same base - a “thorka”, and then go from there.
The basic thorka is chopped onions, chopped tomatoes, minced garlic and chopped green chillies. Fry in a little bit of butter, or oil, and then add the other spices, and salt. e.g. to make a potato curry, fry the above and then add some potatos and water.
You can add other stuff like chicken or other veggies depending on what you want. The “thorka” is almost the same every time.
Well, I am off to buy yogurt. There is a middle eastern style unflavored yogurt at my usual grocery story that I can try.I finished the first attempt at curry in a snack last night. I think this time I will try following a specific recipe.
I think that sort of thing is highly regional.
Well, I have the large skillet full of quartered onions cooking slowly in oil and another pot full of random vegetables cooking in vegetable broth. My plan is to puree them all after they are cooked and freeze in meal sized portions anything that I don’t plan on using this weekend.
So, I finished cooking my vegetables: red bell, carrots, asparagus (green and white), tomatoes, and hominy. and finished slow cooking the onions in oil. I put the food mill on my kitchenaid and juiced the onions and pureed the solids in a food processor and added that back to the juice and set aside about half to freeze by itself. It was sweet and not bitter at all. Next I juiced the vegetables. It is interesting how the solids come out the center of the mill in a big string. I pureed that string and mixed it back into the juice and it made a nice thick vegetable mush. It is the texture I was hoping for. The flavor was a bit sweet from the carrots and onions and not at all bitter. The color was mainly a pleasant orange with some bits to red from the pepper. I froze that in three bags, flattened for easy thawing, each enough for a large meal.
I wanted to share with you the curry sauce recipe from my husband’s favorite cook book.
1/2 can of condensed cream of celery soup, undiluted
1 1/2 teaspoon of instant minced onion
1/2 teaspoon of curry powder
6 tablespoons milk
1 egg slightly beaten
1 1/2 teaspoons butter or margarine
In a double boiler, Combine soup, onion, and curry powder. Stir in milk. Heat thoroughly.
Stir a 1/4 cup of the sauce into the beaten egg. Return mixture to double boiler. Cook over simmering water for 3 to 5 minutes. Stir in butter.
I’m a pretty serious home-Indian chef, and it is certainly something worth learning! There are a huge variety of dishes that don’t make it into our Indian restaurants and packaged foods. And it’s a lot healthier. Many Indian household dislike Indian restaurants because they rely on massive amounts of fats to get their flavor. Finally, truly learning to wield your spices is a skill that will improve all of your cooking. Indian cooking has it’s own special theories of taste and cooking techniques that are well worth mastering if you are a somewhat serious home chef.
I’m going to also say “Go get a Madhur Jaffrey cookbook.” 90% of the Indian cookbooks out there are pretty much BS written by hacks. But her books are the real deal. She knows it, she loves it, and she doesn’t hold anything back- she tells you when you can take shortcuts and substitutions, but she also tells you when you can’t. Other cookbooks teach you to make Indian flavored foods- hers tells you how to be an Indian chef.
That’s…different. What’s “instant minced onion”?
My guess is that it’s that dehydrated onion bits you can get in the spice aisle.
There are much better strategies for staying satisfied – filling up on high-fiber vegetables, pulses, skim dairy, lean meats, and whole grains. And these are the strategies that Indians actually apply in their daily diets. The interesting thing about India is that the cheapest food can often be more healthful. To some extent, poorer Indians have better diets than richer Indians. Indian restaurant food really is a different animal from “real” Indian food. And it’s something that is a lot easier to sustain on a daily basis.
even sven, “Go get a Madhur Jaffrey cookbook” is sounding like good advice. I think I will start with her first one and then go from there, although I think her food safety does need to be updated after looking at a preview. Letting a chicken sit at room temperature for two hours is not something I am ready to do.
I get to see and smell Indian cooking almost every day I go into the office. Not restaurant Indian food, but Indian food made by Indians living in America. Every time I smell those spices, I think I have to learn how to make that, and so now I am. I started by going to Bharat Foods, a tiny grocery store near where I live, buying some of the things I don’t have already and looking up recipes on the net and starting this thread.
I am really excited about the idea of a vegetable thickened sauce. I was very pleased by my first attempt and look forward to my next. We have used vegetable puree in cream soups, but not as the sauce base. I have not been so excited about a thickening since I learned how to make a proper roux to give gravy that flavor that kitchen bouquet dimly imitates.
acsenray, as far as “better strategies”, I am not interested in anything with skim dairy, nor do I particularly like feeling full. I find a well balanced meal that includes sufficient fat, salt and spices much more satisfying than “feeling full.” I eat plenty of whole grains. I don’t eat all that many pulses, because my husband is avoiding them for health reasons. I don’t pay attention to which vegetables are high in fiber, but I do eat a wide variety and am trying to increase the amount of vegetables in my diet while reducing the amount of meat. I think much of the current notion of what is healthful in diet are misguided, and very few of the dietary recommendations made by medical professionals are actually evidence based, or even based on what gives the longest, best quality life and not on what drives changes in secondary factors like cholesterol level. I do read many the studies that come out and make the news, and I am frequently appalled at the conclusions jumped to based on the actual data gathered. There is some good nutritional science out there, but if it shows a picture more complex than fat and salt are bad, it seems to get ignored by most of the medical profession.
mmm, I love Indian food and have been inspired by this thread to learn how to make some myself rather than relying on Pataks and takeaway – thanks everyone!
Does anyone have a recommendation for a specific Madhur Jaffrey cookbook? She has so many! I am most interested in making curries and similar dishes (eg. butter chicken, korma, etc), if that helps.
FWIW, my mother is Indian, and quite a good cook, and swears by Madhur Jaffrey and Patak’s.
Also, turmeric. She’ll toss some into more or less everything she makes.
My indian style cooking is similar to SomeBobyUK’s- onions, tomatos, and spices cooked down and then veggies and/or meat added. Yogurt added if on hand.
I’d like to know how to make some small bread like items I had twice at work but don’t know the name of or how to make them. They are very white, pancake like breads; maybe three inches across or so, kinda spongy, maybe made with rice flour. Anybody know what they are called?
Your description sounds like idli. Are they sour-tasting? They’re made from fermented rice.
I don’t think anyone would call idli breads.
No, but they might call them “bread-like” or “pancake-like” if they didn’t know much about them.
I can’t really think of anything else they might be anyway.
Yum! I love idli!