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CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


The thread the admins didn't want you to see
:eng99:

Hey GWS/Something Offal.

I like Indian food. I want to talk about Indian Food. So I’m starting a thread. This thread will be for any cuisine originating in or inspired by the Indian subcontinent: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and the list goes on. They also have curries in Japan, China, Thailand, (really all of SE Asia). I’ve had Mauritian chicken heart curry. I’m happy to eat it all. Really, if it’s curried or vaguely Indian we can talk about it here. This thread can be for food porn, recipes, or q&a. It’s all good, right?

But here’s the problem: I don’t really know that much about Indian food. Sure, I know more than 99% of the other white people who live in central Canada, and sure, I do lots of stuff from scratch, but I’ve crossed that threshold where I’m starting to see little I actually know.

So what I’m hoping to do with this thread is share what little I know and get smart goons talking. Please don’t call me out on being ignorant or giving bad advice – instead, share links and tips so that we can have great food times.

About Indian Food
Indian food is extremely diverse, with vast regional differences in style and ingredients. India’s population is greater than North America’s and Europe’s combined, and its cultural diversity is beyond comparison. It deserves note that India is also religiously diverse: it has large populations of Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Jains, and Zoroastrians, among many other religious minorities, many of whom have some kind of dietary restriction. Hindus avoid beef, Muslims avoid pork, and Jains... well let’s say that Jain Vegetarianism makes your coworker’s vegan lunch look like an EpicMealTime gingerbread house.

As a consequence Indian cuisines have a rich vegetarian or lacto-vegetarian tradition, because no matter what animals a person avoids, there’s usually going to be some common ground in the vegetarian. In fact a Punjabi friend of mine says that his home city has many restaurants and non-vegetarian restaurants. Let that sink in for a second. In Western traditions we have “food” and “vegetarian food,” but at least in this part of India to add meat products is what’s the deviation from the normal. Now, I’m not vegetarian, but I like to eat as healthy as I can. I’m in the “gently caress tofu” and “your seitan burgers can kiss my rear end” camp, in fact. But I’m happy to eat any kind of Indian vegetarian dish in front of me. Even otherwise obstinate carnivores like Gordon Ramsay and Anthony Bourdain have remarked that if vegetarian food in London and New York was like what they encountered on their Indian expeditions that they wouldn’t poo poo talk vegetarians so much.

What makes Indian vegetarian cooking so different? It’s the cuisine’s great command of spice.

Spice
The first thing to do if you want to cook Indian is to consider throwing out that jar of curry powder that you got at WalMart. Head to a specialty grocer, or at least a specialty aisle (at my local grocery store the Indian spices are in the “Mexican” asile), and stock up:

(note: I consider any list here to be a living document which I’m just putting down for the sake of getting a discussion started. Please politely correct me or comment and I’ll edit accordingly)

Core spices: turmeric, cumin, coriander, ginger, mustard seed, cardamom, anise, cloves, nutmeg, paprika, cinnamon, fenugreek, fennel, peppercorns, chili powder.

Note on chili powder: this is not “mexican chili powder,” which is actually a spice blend. This is more like a stupidly hot paprika or cayenne pepper:


Other spices: asafoetida,

Try to find whole spices wherever you can. You’ll end up using a spice grinder or a mortar and pestle to grind them up. A micro-plane zester is quite nice.



Most curries will begin by creating a tarka aka chaunk and build the flavour from there. A very common spice blend that forms the basis of many curries is Garam Masala. You can buy premade garam masala or you can make your own. A basic yellow curry will combine garam masala with turmeric, ginger, fenugreek, paprika, and as much chili powder as you want.

Cool and Good Indian Foods
I don’t have any recipes to supply right now so I’m just going to list a bunch and talk about each briefly:

Chana Masala

This is chick peas (chana) in a slightly sweet tomato curry sauce. The best chana masala I’ve ever had was from a Pakistani restaurant in Montreal. It was insanely good and on a completely other level from any other time that I’ve experienced the dish. I’m not sure if there’s something regional happening with that dish, but I'll add that I've never had any half-decent restauarant serve me bad chana masala.

Dal

Dal (dahl, or daal) is a red lentil curry. It’s sometimes served as a soup, and other times as more of a mush. There’s a vegetarian restaurant in Ottawa were a deceased cult leader’s wives serve a murderously good dal soup. The secondary flavours are mustard, lemon, and coriander leaves. Someone called this post a good lentil post, despite its author, so I'll link it.

Paneer

Paneer is a soft unaged cheese. It’s pretty simple, and allegedly easy to make. I’m planning to try in the next 30 days and I’ll report back. Paneer is a common ingredient in other dishes such as curries or samosa. Sometimes it is breaded and deep fried.

Naan and Puri/Poori


Indian cuisine has lots of delicious breads which are dipped in and/or used for scooping the various goopy deliciousnesses that are Indian food. Naan is a common baked flatbread, [url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssZsHXDFidM]made in a tandoor[/url]. Puri is a fried bread, traditionally "made from durum atta flour, a pinch of salt, a glug of oil and water - no leavening agent." They’re common sides. Strangely enough that puri image is hosted on goonswithspoons.com which makes me wonder if I’m wasting my time with this thread.

Here's a tpost on Indian bread things

Biryani
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBY61x4lIXM
This Gordon Ramsay scene is what got me obsessed with biryani, and that’s the obsession that led to me wanting an Indian food megathread. I’ve been working on perfecting my biryani lately (I have a long way to go). It’s sort of like pilaf or a rice casserole with yogurt, and it seems to me like it has stuff in common with jambalaya. It can be baked or prepared stovetop. I’ve been making mine with chicken, mushroom, and eggplant.

Tea

Yes, Indian tea rocks. Boil the poo poo out of loose black tea with some cardamom and ginger and cinnamon and cloves. Add some milk and sugar. Boil it some more. It's good with almond milk, too. It's just good.

There are tons of other things that I could cover at length: chutney (sauces); pickle (other sauces); butter chicken (it can be good, trust me); vegetables. There are tandoors, and samosa, and pakora. There is probably enough information to do a whole effortpost on rice. I’m up to 1000 words, and I have no idea if there will be any interest, so I’ll expand the OP/effortpost later if needed.

So: who else likes to get hot?

LINKS (if you have links share them and I'll add them to the OP)
http://www.sanjeevkapoor.com/ - my Punjabi student said that this is the best English-language Indian culinary site he has found. Mind you, he doesn't really read that many English-language sites about his native cuisine, right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=user?Manjulaskitchen?playlists Manjula's Kitchen, definitely.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...hreadid=3516815 South Indian Food thread from last year has like four pages of good advice for noobs from dino alone.


http://www.mamtaskitchen.com/Several recipes from this site have turned out really well. They tend to be all-day affairs, though. The chana masala is (allegedly) particularly good.

CommonShore fucked around with this message at 23:14 on May 12, 2016

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Suspect Bucket
Jan 15, 2012

SHRIMPDOR WAS A MAN
I mean, HE WAS A SHRIMP MAN
er, maybe also A DRAGON
or possibly
A MINOR LEAGUE BASEBALL TEAM
BUT HE WAS STILL
SHRIMPDOR
Yes, Paneer is easy to make. And fun and hella tasty! It's a bit fiddly once you first get into it, but the time invested is well worth it, and then you can also make other simple fresh cheeses with the same skills and formula.

MrSlam
Apr 25, 2014

And there you sat, eating hamburgers while the world cried.
I once went to an Indian restaurant and they asked me on a scale of 1-10 how spicy I'd like my dish and being a dumb idiot I said 10 and paid the price, sacrificing my tastebuds in the process. Out of curiosity, can you train yourself to enjoy spicy foods and build up a tolerance to it, or is it just a personal tolerance that's different between individuals? I don't mind spicy things but I realized after a certain point I can't concentrate on the flavor of the dish and all I taste is the heat.

I've heard that if you cook red Indian peppers in coconut milk it makes the tongue-burning sensation last longer. Can anyone verify that?

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


MrSlam posted:

I once went to an Indian restaurant and they asked me on a scale of 1-10 how spicy I'd like my dish and being a dumb idiot I said 10 and paid the price, sacrificing my tastebuds in the process. Out of curiosity, can you train yourself to enjoy spicy foods and build up a tolerance to it, or is it just a personal tolerance that's different between individuals? I don't mind spicy things but I realized after a certain point I can't concentrate on the flavor of the dish and all I taste is the heat.

I've heard that if you cook red Indian peppers in coconut milk it makes the tongue-burning sensation last longer. Can anyone verify that?

Yeah basically, to both. I've built up heat tolerance over my whole life. I remember being a real hot food wimp when I was like 18-19, but then I worked in a tex mex restaurant with practical jokers, and now here I am. I've known quite a few people who have gotten used to hot food from previously having been unable even to put black pepper on their food. I'm essentially at a point where I can eat any level of heat more or less, but I don't ask for "10." I tell them "make it tasty and I don't care how hot it is."

And coconut milk can make the heat spread around your mouth more. Capsaicin is fat-soluable, so... there you go.

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


Suspect Bucket posted:

Yes, Paneer is easy to make. And fun and hella tasty! It's a bit fiddly once you first get into it, but the time invested is well worth it, and then you can also make other simple fresh cheeses with the same skills and formula.

Have a recipe or article to share? I'm going to make some on my next free weekend.

Control Volume
Dec 31, 2008

Hello I made a vindaloo a while ago and threw tamarind into it because one of the recipes i used in my resulting frankendish called for it and i decided why not!!

But what other uses are there for tamarind?

Control Volume
Dec 31, 2008

Also the hard limit of how much heat you can handle is how much heat you can poop

MrSlam
Apr 25, 2014

And there you sat, eating hamburgers while the world cried.

CommonShore posted:

Yeah basically, to both. I've built up heat tolerance over my whole life. I remember being a real hot food wimp when I was like 18-19, but then I worked in a tex mex restaurant with practical jokers, and now here I am. I've known quite a few people who have gotten used to hot food from previously having been unable even to put black pepper on their food. I'm essentially at a point where I can eat any level of heat more or less, but I don't ask for "10." I tell them "make it tasty and I don't care how hot it is."
And coconut milk can make the heat spread around your mouth more. Capsaicin is fat-soluable, so... there you go.
Thanks. As far as paneer is concerned from what I've read the primary difference between it and cottage cheese is using lemon-juice in place of vinegar and adding it just after the milk is done heating up. Then when you're done squeezing out the whey and adding the salt you form it into a brick and press it down with weight for about an hour.

Control Volume posted:

Also the hard limit of how much heat you can handle is how much heat you can poop
Then I have been training myself well all these years.

Tamarind gets used a lot in Chinese/Korean/Thai dishes as well. I know I've heard of some specific recipes its been in but for the life of me I can't remember. My family bought some one time to make a weird Indian salsa. I've heard it's really good for barbecue sauces, and a cursory Google search mentioned Tamarind tea and candy.

MrSlam
Apr 25, 2014

And there you sat, eating hamburgers while the world cried.
I just had a thought. What if one made paneer with coconut milk and seasoned it with turmeric, paprika, and cumin?

SymmetryrtemmyS
Jul 13, 2013

I got super tired of seeing your avatar throwing those fuckin' glasses around in the astrology thread so I fixed it to a .jpg

MrSlam posted:

I just had a thought. What if one made paneer with coconut milk and seasoned it with turmeric, paprika, and cumin?

Can you even make paneer from coconut milk? Does the whey separate in the presence of coagulants like in dairy milk?

briefcasefullof
Sep 25, 2004
[This Space for Rent]
Going to follow this thread. After eating some red curry tonight, I realized I don't know how to cook much in the way of curries and I'd like to learn more.

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


MrSlam posted:

I just had a thought. What if one made paneer with coconut milk and seasoned it with turmeric, paprika, and cumin?

Can coconut milk curdle that way? I don't think it can...

For Tamarind I did some poking around and it seems to me that it gets used quite frequently wherever "sour" is needed. TBH it's not my favourite flavour. It looks like it gets used in Pad Thai sometimes, and that actually has me interested.

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


QuarkMartial posted:

Going to follow this thread. After eating some red curry tonight, I realized I don't know how to cook much in the way of curries and I'd like to learn more.

Cool! I'm hoping to more or less get the same kind of information. I'll try to take good records of everything I make for the next while and post just to provide content.

I just bought some chicken butts, brown basmati rice, and eggplant. I'm thinking that I might try making a butter chicken from scratch.

SymmetryrtemmyS
Jul 13, 2013

I got super tired of seeing your avatar throwing those fuckin' glasses around in the astrology thread so I fixed it to a .jpg

CommonShore posted:

Can coconut milk curdle that way? I don't think it can...

For Tamarind I did some poking around and it seems to me that it gets used quite frequently wherever "sour" is needed. TBH it's not my favourite flavour. It looks like it gets used in Pad Thai sometimes, and that actually has me interested.

If you want other souring agents used in Indian cuisine, try amchur or anardana. Kokum is also delicious and quite sour.

for sale
Nov 25, 2007
I AM A SHOPLIFTER

Control Volume posted:


But what other uses are there for tamarind?

I know it's not Indian but make a batch of sinigang, that poo poo is good. Or some agua de tamarindo, another really quick way to make most people fans of tamarind.

Also can somebody give a quick rundown on when or where to use certain lentils or pulses? There are like a million kinds and I can never find the one a recipe calls for and I don't even know what I should be doing with which. What applications prefer which kinds?

for sale fucked around with this message at 07:14 on Apr 30, 2016

eine dose socken
Mar 9, 2008

Tamarind is quite important as an ingredient in many Thai sauces and dips, like the Nam prik chili dips you eat with raw vegetables.
It's also commonly used in the dressing for Som Tam papaya salad.
I like to use it in curries depending on the spice mix and whether I'm adding yoghurt or coconut milk.
I also love curries and the results have vastly improved since I realized that you need to add some sort of souring agent, like tamarind, vinegar or lime juice to cut through the spices and the fat.
Every time I go out and get a curry where they forgot to add something acidic I remember that food can be both very spicy and bland at the same time.

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


for sale posted:

I know it's not Indian but make a batch of sinigang, that poo poo is good. Or some agua de tamarindo, another really quick way to make most people fans of tamarind.

Also can somebody give a quick rundown on when or where to use certain lentils or pulses? There are like a million kinds and I can never find the one a recipe calls for and I don't even know what I should be doing with which. What applications prefer which kinds?

I think of lentils as belonging to two broad categories of hulled and unhulled.

Hulled lentils have had the exterior removed. These are the standard dry red lentils that we know and love:


I use these for things like dal. They tend to become a sludge or mush when cooked. Health-wise, they lower in fibre than unhulled lentils.


Unhulled lentils are a bit less processed:



The green lentils that we get from cans are of this sort. There are plenty of different kinds. They're more useful for dishes in which you want to maintain the lentil's structural integrity rather than have the lentil become a homogeneous mush.


Try making some dal! Here's a recipe that also includes tamarind. I'm not sure what they mean by "drumsticks." In the picture it looks like okra (bindi), and okra owns, so I'm just going to imagine that it's okra:

http://www.sanjeevkapoor.com/Recipe/Dal-with-Drumsticks.html

(e. I looked it up and "drumstick" is not okra. It's its own thing.)

This one looks ok, too:
http://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/dal-tadka-recipe-homestyle/

When I make dal at home I just kinda slap stuff in. Usually it'll look something like this, which is totally off the top of my head and not at all planned:
1.5 cup red lentil
0.5 cup brown lentil (for texture)
sufficient water/stock to cover (add more as it cooks to get the texture you want).
1 diced onion
1 chopped tomato
1 tbsp ground ginger
1 tsp whole mustard seed
1 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp fenugreek
zest and juice of one lemon
1/2 cup coriander leaves
salt to taste.

I'm pretty sure that last time I made dal I also threw in a bunch of spinach, just to use it up. I've also been served dal with yam in it.

CommonShore fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Apr 30, 2016

get that OUT of my face
Feb 10, 2007

I'm moving to a neighborhood with a large Bangladeshi population, and there are a couple of South Asian grocers as a result, so I might as well get started on some recipes to make. Are there any good YouTube channels focused on Indian food? I'm already subscribed to Nisha Madhulika but it always helps to have more.

SymmetryrtemmyS
Jul 13, 2013

I got super tired of seeing your avatar throwing those fuckin' glasses around in the astrology thread so I fixed it to a .jpg

CommonShore posted:

I think of lentils as belonging to two broad categories of hulled and unhulled.

Hulled lentils have had the exterior removed. These are the standard dry red lentils that we know and love:


I use these for things like dal. They tend to become a sludge or mush when cooked. Health-wise, they lower in fibre than unhulled lentils.


Unhulled lentils are a bit less processed:



The green lentils that we get from cans are of this sort. There are plenty of different kinds. They're more useful for dishes in which you want to maintain the lentil's structural integrity rather than have the lentil become a homogeneous mush.


Try making some dal! Here's a recipe that also includes tamarind. I'm not sure what they mean by "drumsticks." In the picture it looks like okra (bindi), and okra owns, so I'm just going to imagine that it's okra:

http://www.sanjeevkapoor.com/Recipe/Dal-with-Drumsticks.html

(e. I looked it up and "drumstick" is not okra. It's its own thing.)

This one looks ok, too:
http://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/dal-tadka-recipe-homestyle/

When I make dal at home I just kinda slap stuff in. Usually it'll look something like this, which is totally off the top of my head and not at all planned:
1.5 cup red lentil
0.5 cup brown lentil (for texture)
sufficient water/stock to cover (add more as it cooks to get the texture you want).
1 diced onion
1 chopped tomato
1 tbsp ground ginger
1 tsp whole mustard seed
1 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp fenugreek
zest and juice of one lemon
1/2 cup coriander leaves
salt to taste.

I'm pretty sure that last time I made dal I also threw in a bunch of spinach, just to use it up. I've also been served dal with yam in it.

That is a very good, simple dal. I have a weakness for moong and urad dal, personally - I often do 1/2 moong, 1/2 toor, and a handful of urad (very strong, delicious flavor). Loads of ginger, a tarka poured in at the end, and some amchur to finish.

Oh, and I recommend sourcing fresh curry leaves if at all possible. What you're looking for is Murraya koenigii, also known as sweet neem or karipatta.

E: oh and fenugreek seeds have a wholly different flavor from leaves. I have both in my pantry, and recommend that you do as well.

SymmetryrtemmyS fucked around with this message at 19:36 on Apr 30, 2016

Illinois Smith
Nov 15, 2003

Ninety-one? There are ninety other "Tiger Drivers"? Do any involve actual tigers, or driving?

Y-Hat posted:

Are there any good YouTube channels focused on Indian food? I'm already subscribed to Nisha Madhulika but it always helps to have more.
Manjula's Kitchen, definitely.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=user?Manjulaskitchen?playlists

Also the South Indian Food thread from last year has like four pages of good advice for noobs from dino alone.
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3516815

CommonShore posted:

Most curries will begin by creating a Garam Masala and building the flavour from there.
Do you mean a tarka? Because a bunch of the Indian recipes I cook often don't use GM (and with most of the others it's more of a finishing / thickening thing that you put in towards the end) but the tarka part (where you start by frying a bunch of both whole and ground spices in oil) is pretty universal as far as I can tell.

Illinois Smith fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Apr 30, 2016

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man



Added links to OP; did some reading and adjusted that section accordingly.

Discendo Vox
Mar 21, 2013

We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.
CommonShore, you may want to give the OP another pass- you have some bugged link tags.

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


Discendo Vox posted:

CommonShore, you may want to give the OP another pass- you have some bugged link tags.

Thanks. Stupid editing artifacts. typing {/urk} doesn't end the tag I guess.

forbidden dialectics
Jul 26, 2005





I've used several recipes from this site that have turned out really well. They tend to be all-day affairs, though.

http://www.mamtaskitchen.com/

The chana masala is particularly good:

http://www.mamtaskitchen.com/recipe_display.php?id=10016

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


Nostrum posted:

I've used several recipes from this site that have turned out really well. They tend to be all-day affairs, though.

http://www.mamtaskitchen.com/

The chana masala is particularly good:

http://www.mamtaskitchen.com/recipe_display.php?id=10016

added to OP. Might try the chana masala tomorrow!

Humboldt Squid
Jan 21, 2006

Poori isn't fried naan. Poori is made from durum atta flour, a pinch of salt, a glug of oil and water - no leavening agent.

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


Humboldt Squid posted:

Poori isn't fried naan. Poori is made from durum atta flour, a pinch of salt, a glug of oil and water - no leavening agent.

Thanks. I knew that too as I've made it, but this is the process I'm using of creating an OP from scratch - keep loving up and getting corrected until it's useful. Added it to the OP with a sweet video of people making naan on the street in Old Delhi.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssZsHXDFidM

dino.
Mar 28, 2010

Yip Yip, bitch.
For the person who asked about making paneer out of coconut milk: it won't work. In fact, coconut milk doesn't coagulate that way, so we use it in the South when we make dishes that call for a fair bit of acid, and a creamy consistency. It's that non-curdling that makes it so ideal in Thai curries that contain tomato, lime juice, and/or vinegar, and then vigorous cooking.

MrSlam
Apr 25, 2014

And there you sat, eating hamburgers while the world cried.
In regards to making paneer, this goon made a pretty good post about it complete with pictures in a cheesemaking thread. I think a proper cheesemaking thread would be great for any knowledgeable goon willing to write an OP for it, but here's a good blog post about it by ColdPie.

dino. posted:

For the person who asked about making paneer out of coconut milk: it won't work. In fact, coconut milk doesn't coagulate that way, so we use it in the South when we make dishes that call for a fair bit of acid, and a creamy consistency. It's that non-curdling that makes it so ideal in Thai curries that contain tomato, lime juice, and/or vinegar, and then vigorous cooking.

Thanks, you saved me from a disappointed afternoon of crappy coconut curd-milk. I did a quick google search and it looks like the paneer that is made from coconut milk goes through a different process with different ingredients, like gelatin. So really it's a mock-paneer for vegans/health-nuts. I'll stick with the ridiculously simple/delicious method.

MrSlam fucked around with this message at 18:41 on May 2, 2016

dino.
Mar 28, 2010

Yip Yip, bitch.
RE: Heat.

If you're not a fan of screaming hot food, but still want the flavour of the chilies to permeate your food, you have a couple of options:

- Cut your hot ground red chilies with sweet paprika (about a 1:1 ratio works). Then, use much less than the recipe calls for, and slowly build up your tolerance. If you add much more sweet paprika than that, you're looking at overpowering the flavour of the ground red chilies.

- Use whole dried chilies in your tarka to get the taste in the oil, and then either fish it out (if you're a major wimp), or let it continue to cook with the rest of the food whole (being careful not to break it open). Once you get more heat tolerant, you can break the whole dried chilie in half, drop out the seeds, and then use the halves (in as large a piece as you can keep it) in the tarka. As you build your tolerance, you can decrease the size of the whole dried chilies into smaller and smaller pieces (with the intention of leaving them in the food itself), and graduate to the ground red chilies.

In Indian households, where you want to have fiery heat for the adult, and something milder for the kids, you're going to see the various sizes of dried chilies in the tarka, depending on the dish. You leave them in very large pieces initially, so you can make sure that the young kids don't get the fire bombs in their food.

- A note on spices in general-

As much as cooking is about using what you have, and improvising with the things you enjoy, try and go easy on the spices. Some of the most delicious foods I've eaten have only one or two spices, used judiciously. There was a dish for aloo gobi, where the only spice they used in the tarka was crushed coriander seed. The rest was garlic, onion, ginger, a bit of turmeric, potatoes, cauliflower, tomato, and cilantro. The flavour of the coriander was pronounced, as were the aromatics.

I've had South Indian stews made with fenugreek, vegetables, onions, and coconut, all boiled together. It's freaking divine. Again, the vegetables stand out, and the spices are a delicious backdrop to the whole thing.

If you find that the food is ending up bland, due to the very few spices involved, ask yourself if you're getting vegetables that have enough flavour. If the thing doesn't taste good on its own, then you're going to need to drown it in all kind of spices and taste those instead of the thing itself.

Meanwhile, seek out those recipes that only call for a couple of basic spices, and see how they are. In the North, you'll frequently find this with coriander, cumin, and turmeric, along with various forms of chilies. In the South, you'll see this with mustard seed + urad daal + hing, or cumin seed + hing + curry leaves and turmeric in both.

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


dino. posted:

Meanwhile, seek out those recipes that only call for a couple of basic spices, and see how they are. In the North, you'll frequently find this with coriander, cumin, and turmeric, along with various forms of chilies. In the South, you'll see this with mustard seed + urad daal + hing, or cumin seed + hing + curry leaves and turmeric in both.

I'm going to make some chicken today along these lines

toplitzin
Jun 13, 2003


CommonShore posted:

I'm going to make some chicken today along these lines

I'll throw down a write up of each of the regions tonight once i get home. I'll gladly contribute some recipes and knowledge of the land too.

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


toplitzin posted:

I'll throw down a write up of each of the regions tonight once i get home. I'll gladly contribute some recipes and knowledge of the land too.

:woop:

Invisible Ted
Aug 24, 2011

hhhehehe
Was recently browsing the GWS wiki Indian section for inspiration and came across Adai. Made it tonight and I was really blown away by how tasty and filling it was for so little effort. My stick blender felt a little underpowered, but that's probably because I blended it all at once instead of in batches. Could have used more water to soak, I think, but that's also because I was a little heavy in my dry measures. Can't wait to have it for breakfast tomorrow after it's fermented overnight.

Captain Bravo
Feb 16, 2011

An Emergency Shitpost
has been deployed...

...but experts warn it is
just a drop in the ocean.

Invisible Ted posted:

Was recently browsing the GWS wiki

:aaa:

Invisible Ted posted:

Indian section

:aaaaa:

Invisible Ted posted:

and came across Adai.

:hawaaaafap:

paraquat
Nov 25, 2006

Burp
This thread got me googling and thinking about curry,
haven't had a lot of luck with that: loads of recipes around that make a great spice blend and paste...and then dump in 400 mL of coconut milk so the curry tastes bland.

Anyway, I had a lazy afternoon yesterday and came accross this recipe that uses a jar (blasphemy, right? oh well...)
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/775646/vegetable-curry-for-a-crowd

I skipped the coconut milk, used chicken broth instead, half the tomato passata and instead of courgette, I added red lentils to thicken the sauce.
Oh, and I swapped the tikka masala paste for vindaloo paste, as the jars said that was spicier.

Anyway, even though I probably broke every curry rule, I got to say I never made a curry this tasty...the house still smells great.
So I'm going to share it without shame! :-D

The original recipe asked for a big potato, a small butternut squash and an eggplant, cubed and tossed with 2 tablespoons of oil and two tablespoons of curry paste,
and that went into the oven:



In the pan, two big sliced onions, 4 tablespoons of vindaloo curry paste, half a cup of red lentils, 2 sliced red cayenne peppers, 400 mL tomato passata and 500 mL chicken broth.
The vegetables from the oven where added after half an hour and I cooked it until everything was done to my liking.

Served it with a mango pickle (yup, from a jar, sorry) and naan bread.



It ended up being a fragrant curry with a nice warm heat. And even though I like it a lot, I do like it hotter...not so much more of this paste, but I need something else in addition to this....a faster heat (and a real heat).

any suggestions on how to accomplish this are welcome!

Illinois Smith
Nov 15, 2003

Ninety-one? There are ninety other "Tiger Drivers"? Do any involve actual tigers, or driving?
Stop buying pastes and stuff for your next three curries, use the money you would've spent on them to go to an Indian grocer and pick up a spice starter kit (cumin seed, black pepper seed, coriander powder and seeds, turmeric powder, Indian chili powder that is just peppers, maybe some asafoetida, fresh ginger) then make a simple curry by frying these in oil and adding either water or coconut and some vegetables. If it's not spicy enough with the amount of liquid you added, use more spices next time or cook it down more.

Seriously, try it the next three times you want curry, it'll not take more than that to get it right. Once you have a feel for these, start experimenting with other spices or blends of them.

Illinois Smith fucked around with this message at 20:15 on May 4, 2016

paraquat
Nov 25, 2006

Burp

Illinois Smith posted:

Stop buying pastes and stuff for your next three curries, use the money you would've spent on them to go to an Indian grocer and pick up a spice starter kit (cumin seed, black pepper seed, coriander powder and seeds, turmeric powder, Indian chili powder that is just peppers, maybe some asafoetida, fresh ginger) then make a simple curry by frying these in oil and adding either water or coconut and some vegetables. If it's not spicy enough with the amount of liquid you added, use more spices next time or cook it down more.

Seriously, try it the next three times you want curry, it'll not take more than that to get it right. Once you have a feel for these, start experimenting with other spices or blends of them.

Oke, will do

I did try this before and i have all this stuff around all the time, except for the Indian chili powder, I guess....(I used cayenne peppers for this)
It's just that it always ends up tasting bland. perhaps I shouldn't add coconut oil or liquid at all, ha!

But yeah, I'll give it another go, thanks!

Illinois Smith
Nov 15, 2003

Ninety-one? There are ninety other "Tiger Drivers"? Do any involve actual tigers, or driving?
Maybe try something like this that doesn't use a lot of liquid first, that way you'll get a baseline spice-wise. Also, depending on what brand of cayenne you have, the stuff they sell at the Indian grocery (lal mirch) might be significantly hotter.
http://www.manjulaskitchen.com/aloo-gobi/

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Suspect Bucket
Jan 15, 2012

SHRIMPDOR WAS A MAN
I mean, HE WAS A SHRIMP MAN
er, maybe also A DRAGON
or possibly
A MINOR LEAGUE BASEBALL TEAM
BUT HE WAS STILL
SHRIMPDOR

CommonShore posted:

Have a recipe or article to share? I'm going to make some on my next free weekend.

http://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-paneer-cheese-in-30-minutes-cooking-lessons-from-the-kitchn-57008

Make sure you read and familiarize yourself with the directions before starting! Oh, and there is one part of it that's BS, the temperature. You do NOT need to heat the milk to 200f. 165 is my target temperature. 200f gets you scalded milk and a mess.

DO NOT USE UHT MILK. UHT is nearly impossible to curdle. This means you cant use some of the widely available organic milks like Horizon and Organic Valley. Check your labels.

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