I just recently discovered that Indian food is amazing. I grew up in a small town out west, and had certain fixed ideas about food. Frankly, Mexican was as exotic as we ever got. But about a month ago, my wife made me take her to an Indian restaurant, and I absolutely loved it.
The next weekend, I made butter chicken, and actually cooked up naan on the grill, and it was fantastic.
My problem is, I don’t really know Indian food. I want to make some more (read: my wife is making me make some more) tonight, but I don’t know what to make. Any ideas or links for recipes?
And is garam marsala necessary, or will the curry powder I bought do instead? Couldn’t find garam marsala at the nearest grocery store, and the only one that I think might have it is 20 miles away.
If you want to make Indian food tonight and don’t want to drive 20 miles, then use store bought curry powder. But please do yourself a favor and buy the necessary spices to make your own in the future. It will be worth it. Note that there is really no ‘recipe’ for curry powder. It’s sort of like chili, in that every cook will have their own blend. But I’ve found Alton Brown’s curry powder to be a good place to start.
I don’t have a recipe to give you, but I do have a cookbook recommendation: Classic Indian Cooking by Julie Sahni. It’s sort of half recipe book, half textbook. Not only does it tell you **what **to cook, and **how **to cook it, it will help you understand **why **you’re doing what you’re doing.
Ah, Indian food! If I had to choose to have food from only one country for the rest of my life… It would be either Indian or Italian. Lately I’ve been leaning more towards the former.
What amazes me about Indian food is how well they make savoury vegetarian dishes. Honestly, I could eat at an Indian buffet, eat only vegetarian and not miss meat. My favourite Indian dish is actually not even the popular butter chicken, but palak paneer, which is finely shredded/pureed spinach with paneer cubes. Paneer is Indian cottage cheese.
Do yourself a favour and try any dish with paneer in it: palak paneer, mutter paneer, saag paneer, etc. I am salivating just thinking about it right now.
By the way… I’m surprised that you’d just discovered Indian food with a username like yours!
Making paneer at home is very easy. I don’t add the sugar, and squeeze out extra liquid by putting a plate with something heavy (like several soup cans) on top of it.
Texture wise paneer is a lot like firm tofu or feta cheese, rather than what we in the US think of as “cottage cheese.”
Youtube user Titli Nihaan has lots and lots of Indian and Moroccan recipes (plus some British and other stuff). Most of them are easy to make, and she’s funny too.
WRT spices: get as much as you can in whole form (not ground). Pretty much all spices keep their taste much better whole. For Indian food (especially curries), you want to have at least cumin and coriander seeds, turmeric, cinnamon and chili powder, and fresh ginger if at all possible. That should get you through most dishes wrt “exotic” seasonings. You can probably get most of that in a regular supermarket, even if just in powder form. Garam marsala is useful stuff but you can get a long way by grinding some of the aforementioned spices and maybe a clove.
As a Brit, I’ve spent a lifetime eating Indian food and LOVE it. I’m also a pretty good cook but do struggle to recreate dishes at home - they never quite hit the mark what I can get eating out. I’ve identified that one of the reasons for this is that I don’t cook with ghee, which is hugely fattening but pretty much essential to authentic indian cookery. If you can’t get hold of it, you could make it - it’s clarified butter, which you can make at home.
As for garam masala, it’s simply a blend of spices and, again, you can make your own with the right spices in your store cupboard. Hereis a recipe from the Queen of Curry Madhur Jaffray.
I find that if you stock your spice rack with the following, you’ll be set to make pretty much any type of indian food:
This may sound like a lot, but once you’ve got them, you’ll be set up for any occasion.
For rice, always always use Basmati - it’s the king of rice, and is the standard for indian food. The flavour really is different from any other variety. Easy Cook just doesn’t cut it.
Chicken Tikka Masala. Look at the reviews also - they usually come up with good modifications. For example, I follow the suggestions to use garam masala (if you can find it - I make my own, although there are local Indian grocery stores where I can buy it).
Quite likely, but it is also the type of food served in Indian restaurants in the US, so is likely the type of thing that the OP has recently experienced and decided he likes.
We’ve had good luck with all of the Indian recipes from Allrecipes.com that we’ve tried. Luckily for us, we have a Patel Brothers location about 10 minutes from us, so we can get large quantities of good spices dirt cheap. I think I spent $3 on 300g of turmeric last time I was there.