|
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.
|
#
¿
May 1, 2016 19:14
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 30, 2024 12:28 |
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
May 2, 2016 19:15
|
|
|
Kedgeree. It's based on Kichidi from India, but has literally nothing in there that the Indian version would recognise, except it has rice, I guess? OK. I think I need to cover whole and powdered spices right now, because y'all seem to be stumbling, and you will continue to do so until someone sorts this out. The primary difference between a good and great dish is that Indian food is not meant to be homogenous; this applies to both the way of cooking as a general rule, as well as the actual food you're eating. What am I on about? The reason that most Indian meals are served with all kind of sides, raw veg, pickles, etc is because each bite of food is not meant to taste exactly the same as the previous one. If it does, you're missing out on what makes Indian food what it is. For example, think of the best samosa you've had. The crust is flaky and tender, while being golden brown and crispy. The best one I had was made with a few lightly crushed ajwain seeds in it. Then the filling is made with cubed potato, aromatics (onions, ginger, etc), ground spices (turmeric, ground red chilies), AND whole spices (crushed coriander), as well as peas, and sometimes cashews (if they can afford it). The crust has the fat, the flour, and the whole seeds in it. Each bite of crust will be a little different from the previous one. Same goes for the filling. Some bites you get a spot of chopped green chilies. Some you get the peas. Some you get the whole coriander seed. And then there's all the sides that samosa are served with. Those little chopped red onions. The green mint/coriander sauce. The sweet brown date and tamarind sauce. Pretty much every bite is different, based on how you eat it and how you garnish it. Now. You'll see it called "tampering", "tarka", or various other terms. No matter where in India you go, there is SOME version of this. And, it will show up in many many dishes. It'll be in coconut chatni that you see made in the South. You'll see it in raita. You'll find it over dhokla. You'll see it in daal (oh my god, how much you see it in daal). The point is that you make the food in the pot as homogenous as possible. The pieces of vegetables are cut in similar sizes. The aromatics are fried in stages, and ground spices are added. Tomato paste is added to the hot oil + aromatics + ground spices mixture and fried until fragrant. Then you add your ingredient and your liquid. Or, you make your salad, sauce, or whatever. You make the food. Then at the end, you get out your tarka pan. It's such a common thing that many households have a tiny little pan dedicated to just making tarka. It'll hold roughly 1 - 2 cups max. You throw in a bit of fat (preferably peanut oil, but ghee does work) and let it get screaming hot. You add mustard seed, and whatever other spices it calls for, a bit of hing, and some curry leaves. When the popping subsides, you dump that over top of whatever it is you're adding it to, and spread it around. Roasting the spices, grinding them, and adding the powder will NOT give the same texture or flavour. Adding the whole spices raw will make the whole thing taste disgusting, especially when it's things like mustard seed, because those spices need some level of processing (being made to a powder, soaking in vinegar and grinding, or cooking) to be edible. I can explain the process of popping spices in much more detail if necessary, but it's a pretty simple process that takes a long time to explain. So I won't really go into it if noone's fussed, or if y'all already know /how/ to do it.
|
|
#
¿
May 12, 2016 18:43
|
|
|
Re: samosa shape There's this book I read that suggests making them in a cylinder shape. Easier to make and way easier to eat. Also they fry up much more easily.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 24, 2016 17:29
|
|
|
Get to an Asian grocery store to find cheap coconut milk. Best brand that I've found is Chaokoh, and I can find it at the Asian store for between $1 - $1.50 a can. I like Arroy-D also, but only their coconut cream sold in a tetra pack in the 2 litre size. That one should run you about $3.50 or so. Thai Kitchen brand is lovely, but horrendously overpriced. For a solid all-purpose coconut milk, get yourself the Chaokoh. Every Thai person I know swears by that brand.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 29, 2016 20:42
|
|
|
Using almond/cashew milk from the carton in place of coconut milk is like using low fat milk in a recipe that calls for heavy cream. If you can't taste the difference, that's on you, but it's not going to be as rich, and the amounts are going to be screwy. Get the guar gum stabilised poo poo for now, because the Chaokoh is so pricey. Spring for the good stuff when you have the money for it, and you'll notice a marked difference. For now, however, using the cheaper stuff will help you during your experimental phase. Once you've satisfied yourself with your recipe, go full sperg, and get the Chaokoh. If you want a VAGUE ersatz coconut milk substitute, you can grind a handful of peeled almonds along with unsweetened almond milk, until it makes a thick, creamy puree, and then use that in its place. Cashews work for the same situation. However, at that point, the cost of the nuts will outdo the cost of the coconut milk, and you might as well just buy the coconut milk.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 25, 2016 22:47
|
|
|
If it's a long cooking SOAKED bean, I'll generally default to 12 minutes after I reach full pressure. If it's a long-cooking unsoaked bean, I'll default to 28 minutes after full pressure. If it's a short cooking unsoaked bean, I'll default to 12 minutes after hitting pressure. If it's a short cooking soaked bean, I'll just do it on the stove, and skip the pressure cooker. I ignore the whistles, and set a timer, regardless.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 27, 2016 13:44
|
|
|
Maximum Planck posted:I bought some dried curry leaves, but read afterwards that they aren't a great substitute for fresh leaves (which I couldn't find) and that they taste very different. Any tips on using these things? Deep fry them along with the rest of the tarka spices, and they'll be fine. Booyah- posted:I had a Thai fried rice the other day that had turmeric in it and was fantastic. Are there any Indian dishes similar to fried rice? Biriyani. Sort of. Maaaaybe pulao. We tend to keep rice as a main dish, and everything else as a side dish, so it's infrequent to have something like a fried rice where you have a bunch of different things with rice. Biriyani and pulao are the main exceptions.
|
|
#
¿
May 4, 2017 17:43
|
|
|
Those look proper, Squashy. Yeah, the South Indians love mustard seeds, as do the bengalis.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 8, 2017 15:22
|
|
|
ChickenWing posted:Oh neat ok. Calcium chloride. If you find a brand that doesn't have it, you'll be fine.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 10, 2017 11:19
|
|
|
Rocko Bonaparte posted:...and then you discover you got the kind with basil. Honestly, basil isn't going to hurt anything in Indian cooking. Basil's origin is from Indian tulsi anyway, so it's not like you're doing much of a reach there.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 16, 2017 00:24
|
|
|
If I've said it once, I'll say it a thousand times: make daal tarka. It's such a mind-numbingly simple recipe (cook lentils, fry spices in fat--usually just some cumin seed--dump atop lentils, salt to taste, eat) but it showcases the heart of Indian food. That is, humble ingredients elevated to their best form through the clever use of spices. The Northern curries are great, but I feel like they rely a bit too heavily on cream and butter to get there. You throw enough butter at anything, and it's going to be good. The central and southern Indian vegetable dishes I feel like are fairly easy to make, but really let the ingredients stand on their own. Or, why not both? Do a complex, multi step, 30 - 40 spices needed curry, but serve it with a really simple side dish or two. Seriously though, however you slice it, Indian food is endlessly fascinating and fun to learn to make. 
|
|
#
¿
Mar 13, 2018 22:04
|
|
|
Gwyrgyn Blood posted:Saffron for a Biryani, should I be looking for Kashmiri saffron? I couldn't find any at the Indian market or at Penzy's, should I just try my chances on Amazon? Unless you’ve got a very good spice purveyor, you won’t find Kashmiri saffron. It’s heart stoppingly expensive. If you can get Iranian saffron, it’s really good stuff. But whatever you do, don’t get saffron from the grocery store. Get it from either a specialty spice seller, or an ethnic market.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 11, 2018 14:25
|
|
|
British Indian food is too hot, even by Indian standards. The food should be spicy for sure, but you should have a balance of other flavours. It’s why so many recipes call for whole dried chilies or whole fresh chilies to go in. You’re meant to adjust to your needs at table. Re: adai So it’s actually contentious. I like mine blended a bit more finely than most. The amount of pulses would likely give your immersion blender a hell of a workout, but it’s been done, and was fine. Dosa is a different story. Because of how finely you have to mill it, you need a strong blender. I personally will take it down to like a coarse rice flour consistency, because I prefer mine to be thinner and more crispy. Most people will take it to somewhere between coarse rice flour, and stone ground cornmeal. Unlike dosa, adai and pesarattu need not be ground down to a fine batter. For dosa, I want to have a smooth batter like a pancake batter. Also, because of the combination., Adai doesn’t ferment. It’s like pesarattu. You let it kind of sit for like a half hour, but it’s ready to roll once it’s all ground.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 6, 2019 08:39
|
|
|
Squashy Nipples posted:Lovely, smelly, rotten pancake batter. I don't care for the store bought batter. It doesn't crisp up as nicely. Also, I have a loving vitamix. If I buy my batter, my ancestors will haunt me to my death.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2019 03:12
|
|
|
CommonShore posted:Question for you about those things Dino - The oil is just there to preserve it longer. As long as you rinse it off before using, you can treat it like regular.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2019 13:52
|
|
|
Gita's kitchen is loving legit. She's also freaking organised, and looking at her neatly arranged kitchen is so calming on so many levels. Her South Indian food is (IMO) a skosh more leaning towards Andhra/Karnataka than Tamil Nadu/Kerala. What does that mean? In random places, you'll find her using sugar/jaggery. Not a lot, like the loving gujjus, but a few pinches. Personally, I don't much care for that addition, but she generally says it's optional, which is cool by me. ... wtf when did Andhra split up. What is going on. RE: Brown rice for dosa. I was on a weird health kick at one point, and made it with brown rice, and it came out fine. Until I realised that my dosa weren't coming out proper puffy because the proper rice to use for dosa is partially parboiled medium grain rice. Once I started subbing that in, it came out perfect.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 31, 2019 12:19
|
|
|
ProSlayer posted:I've gotten to the point where I have most of the spices and can make recipes that I find online. What I'm struggling with now is understanding how each spice contributes to a dish, and why some recipes of the same food have more of one spice or different spices versus another. This is the way to learn spices. Make dry roasted potatoes with one spice. Do it one potato at a time. First stop? Mustard seed. Pop mustard seed in hot oil. Add diced potato. Stir fry till cooked. Eat. Next, do just cumin. Next, do just coriander. Then, do mustard plus turmeric. Then do mustard plus cumin. Then do cumin plus coriander. Then do mustard, cumin, and turmeric. You see where I’m going? These spices are second nature to me, because I’ve been cooking for well over 25 years now. I’ve done every combination I can think of. Potatoes are neutral enough that you can basically do any combo and it’ll prolly be tasty.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 1, 2019 07:08
|
|
|
Sex Hobbit posted:I love cumin rice so I am extremely willing to admit that I may have hosed up the potatoes. It was a super simple recipe though, basically just tatoes + cumin -> crockpot. That sounds like an abortion. Ew.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 23, 2019 05:50
|
|
|
virinvictus posted:I have a large influx of Punjabi staff that recently started. Work in a professional kitchen. I want to surprise them with a home cooked meal. Any suggestions on what would be a big hit? Punjabi people are known for a couple of things. They’re the most fun to have at a party, because they genuinely care about hospitality. They love it when you come over, and they can show you a good time. Keeping with that theme, their food has an obscene amount of fat. Don’t make anything Indian. They’ll eat it, but secretly judge you. Instead, try something Thai or Burmese. Also, even if /one/ of the Punjabi folk are vegetarian, make sure you only make something vegetarian. It goes back to hospitality. If one person can’t enjoy the thing, everyone else feels bad and doesn’t enjoy it either. All in all, if you have a mass influx of what amounts to the cool kids of India, consider yourself lucky and enjoy the ride.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 17, 2019 12:16
|
|
|
Quaint Quail Quilt posted:Anyone have a recipe or quick write-up for rice? Rinse rice in plenty of changes of water until the water runs clear. Soak in plenty of water for about 15 minutes. Easy mode is pasta method. Hard mode is pilaf method. Both are valid. Pasta method: bring a large pot of water to a full rushing boil. Salt generously. Dump in rinsed and drained rice. Allow to boil for like 8 minutes, and begin testing the rice. You want it soft on the outside and still firm on the inside. Drain off the water in a colander, but not until bone dry. Add a bit of oil to the pot, and drop down the heat to as low as it’ll go. Add the drained (but still wet) rice back to the pot, and slam on the lid. Let it sit over the lowest heat for 10 minutes. Remove from stove and let sit an additional 5 minutes. Done. Pilaf method: generously oil a pot and heat over medium heat. When the oil is shimmering, add the rice (don’t bother rinsing or soaking), and toast over medium heat. Stir gently, and cook until the translucent grains turn opaque and white. Add a generous bit of salt. For however much rice you started with, add an equal amount of water. The water should immediately come to a boil. If it doesn’t, crank the heat to high. When the water boils, drop down the heat to a bare bare simmer. Lay a towel over top of the pot. Slam on the lid. Let it cook for 9 minutes, and then turn off the heat. Let it sit for 12 minutes. If you have an electric stove, let it sit for 8.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 25, 2019 19:39
|
|
|
Go to Mambalam and get dosa. He will be fine.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 1, 2019 03:48
|
|
|
Trillian posted:This post is from a while back but I just wanted to say thanks. This never would've occurred to me and my big stumbling block with Indian food in particular but also cooking in general is that I don't have a concept of how the flavours work together. It tastes right to me or it doesn't and I don't know how to adjust it, so I don't try. I just did a bit of this and it was really educational. To be honest, most people try to dive into restaurant food, which is a bad idea. If I wanted to learn (for example) Italian food, I wouldn’t jump directly into a ragú bolognese. It’s not that the dish is hard to make. It’s pretty simple if you break it down. But I’m not doing myself any favours by doing something that calls for multiple ingredients to be simmered for hours. I’d first take a crack at something simple: pasta aglio, olio, y pepperoncino. It’d teach me about cooking garlic over low enough heat that I don’t burn it. It’d let me learn to make pasta that perfect chew and bounce while still being cooked. It teaches me to toss the pasta with the oil and garlic and pepper flakes, and the pasta water, so that the whole thing clings to the pasta beautifully. I’m now not angry that I wasted 5 hours of chopping and simmering and all kind of faff to end up with a mess. Walk before you run. Similarly, restaurant food, especially northern Indian restaurant food, will be incredibly involved, because it’s based on festival dishes that work fine in a restaurant. At the restaurant, the cook has the ginger, garlic, and green chilies minced finely in bulk. His assistant chops mountains of onions. In the morning he grinds his spices to throw in, and he knows how much to add. So he can knock up dish after dish with seeming ease, because all that tedious prep is done. Hell, even South Indians at home do this sort of thing. The housewife will have in her freezer grated coconut and curry leaves. She’ll have made these specific dishes so many times that she has a masala dabba just for those spices, so she’s not unscrewing jar after jar of spices. For me, a simple dish is oil, mustard seed, cumin seed, urad daal, asafoetida, curry leaves, ginger, the ingredient I’m cooking, turmeric, salt, and black or red pepper to taste. The first three spices happen rapid fire from my masala dabba. The ginger I keep in my freezer already julienned. Curry leaves are in the freezer. Coconut is in the freezer, already grated. If you haven’t done it before though, starting small not only acquaints you to the different flavours and textures that spices bring to the dish, but also gets you comfortable with cooking with spices in general. By the time you’ve made a circuit with the savoury spices in your kitchen, you know how they behave, and can start combining.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 2, 2019 02:33
|
|
|
Curry leaves need a buttload of light, and plenty of warm weather. We had huge trees in south Florida. To be honest, bring them in before it drops below South Florida autumn weather. No, srsly. Especially if you haven’t had them through a winter yet. If you’re growing them in pots, get a way bigger pot than you think you’ll need. Like, ludicrously big. Their roots go really deep, and wide. You don’t want them to feel hemmed in. Give them space, and the plants will grow big and strong. Keep them in small pots, and they’ll stay puny and sad. Curry leaves make babies themselves. If you’re growing in a pot, do an abortion because you want the main plant to thrive without sharing nutrients with the little wretches. Or, transplant them to a different pot and grow some to give away. Aside from that, they’re pretty low drama.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 3, 2019 18:56
|
|
|
Infinite Karma posted:By curry leaves you mean...? I can think of a dozen different plants that you put in curry, none of which are called "curry", and Fenugreek is just about the only one that uses the leaves as an ingredient. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry_tree See those giant plants they picture there? Those are the trees from my parents’ house. My ex husband uploaded the photos when he was down there with me. It’s a specific plant.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 3, 2019 19:17
|
|
|
Force de Fappe posted:Curry leaves. That's what they're called. Kari patta. They are rounded leaves with a slight point to them. They're essential in Southern Indian cuisines. They show up a lot in central Indian food too. The northerners don’t use it /as/ much, but if they have easy/cheap access to it, they’ll use it for sure.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 3, 2019 19:34
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 30, 2024 12:28 |
|
|
Yah go and make it. The really spicy food is more an Andhra/Telangana thing, and even they tend to err on the side of painfully spicy for their pickles and leave the rest of the food to be more balanced. The ugly spicy thing is more a British thing, because white dudes like to overdo things to show how “manly” they are. Actual Indians find it unpleasant, because you’ve now lost the rest of the spices that you dropped all this cash on. Also, considering that there’s everything from Thai to Japanese to English curry, I’d say curry is a totally different mega thread.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 4, 2019 12:23
|
|