So BF and I are probably the last two remaining people on earth who have never eaten Indian food. I am hoping that some of you more enlightened folks can give us some good recommendations as to what we should try to get us started.
Spicy and even extremely spicy is ok. Seafood is out. So is the meat of any strange critter (so no yak spleens braised in wombat spit or anything please).
We have two Indian restaurants here in town that have gotten good reviews. One even has a buffet, I hear.
Our culinary adventure is in your hands…what should we order?
I’ve dined in a lot if Indian restaurants, and the most exotic meat on the menu was lamb. There’s always plenty of vegetarian dishes, too. Anyway, try a curry. Can’t go wrong with a curry. And for an appetizer, I recommend samosas – a kind of turnover made with potatoes and peas; delicious with tamarind sauce or spicy-hot mint sauce.
I couldn’t tell you the names of anything other than vindaloo, curry, and naan but I’ve had a nice sampling of tons of stuff I have no clue as to the name of and it was all delicious. Even the goa fish curry and I hate seafood. God, I want some Indian food.
There’s plenty of good breads, too. Naan is a flatbread, like pita bread but a bit softer. Poppadom is a kind of thin cracker. There’s various fried breads too – one, I forget the name of it, puffs out like a balloon, with a thin, crispy skin surrounding air.
Once you’ve got the “idea” of Indian food, check out some websites and cookbooks, you will find it easy to do at home if your shops stock a few things:
Tasty Bite make rather nice packaged meals (mostly vegan)
Mangal, Sundip, Foram and Maharajah’s Choice all have products I have in my fridge or pantry (mostly spices, pickles and chutneys). Patak’s and Sharwood’s are in every supermarket in Australia, the others I get from an Indian grocery.
For some reason Indian packaged stuff is in a completely different league to other ethnic prepackages. Having used Mexican mixes I wouldn’t use one to cook a meal nor Thai or Chinese but there is a huge range of different Indian tastes and for some reason people like Patak’s and Sharwood’s have managed to get the tastes in a jar.
A jar of good curry base and a crockpot and you are set.
If you like hot, and your local Indian serves it, try a Pathia or Rezalla. Both are pretty spicy (somewhere between a Madras and a Vindaloo in heat) and have a very slight sweetness to them. Absolutely gorgeous.
Only if you order off the menu. In curryhouses in London and Birmingham there’s also the horrors of the Tindaloo and the Phaal - curries only ordered by a lagered-up group of lads trying to prove how macho they are. I like hot but there’s no way I’d go near one of them.
But I agree, it’s best to start on a medium/medium-hot and build up even if you know you like spicy. You don’t want to order something you can’t eat without breathing fire afterwards.
Can’t go wrong with a nice chicken tikka masala or a lamb shahikorma, with a side of garlic naan to dip in the sauce, and shovel the meat into your mouth with. And a nice mango lassi to wash it down with!
Mutter paneer is nice too! Peas and cheese in a curry sauce is surprisingly delicious!
Paneer is actually a curd cheese. But spinach and chicken sound awfully good right now (the Indian cookbooks I have are both vegetarian and written for Hare Krishnas- no chicken in those books.)
Go for the buffet the first time. That way you get to try a little of all sorts of things and get a feel for the sort of flavor range you prefer. Most of the dishes on there will be fairly mild, and either vegetarian or made with chicken. Then on later visits you can spice it up, try lamb or goat, try different dishes with similar ingredients, that sort of thing.
Or you can just look at the menu, find something that sounds tasty, and go for it. I’ve once in a while gotten a dish I wasn’t particularly crazy about, but never anything I actively didn’t like.
Oh, and if you’ve never had Indian food before, it might help not to look at it all that much while you’re eating. It’s incredibly tasty, but some of it tends to look ahem recycled. That can take a little getting used to at first.
Seconded. Chicken Tikka Masala is the perfect introduction to Indian cuisine. (Even though I rarely eat it, I find it the most ‘easy’ on Western palates.)
Also, be sure to have some samosas as an appetizer.
Tandoori chicken is an excellent “beginner” dish. Marinaded in yogurt (really!) and spices and then grilled, it’s flavorful and not hot-spicy at all. Most any Indian place serves Tandoori.
Mmmmm, get some saag paneer (I think that’s the spelling.) Essentially, it’s gloppy green stuff (creamed spinach of some kind) with tasty bites of cheese in it. It’s pretty mild, so if you get that with something more spicy, you’ll probably have a really nice Indian food experience.
(My college is finally getting the local Indian restaurant to deliver food on my meal plan. This makes me incredibly happy! )
The way I got into Indian food was finding a place with a well-labeled lunch buffet. This way, you can try a little bit of everything and find your favorites. Do try things you think you might not like - cooked spinach used to make me practically gag, but I love it in Indian food.
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