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The thread the admins didn't want you to see 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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Apr 29, 2016 21:16
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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. 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.
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Apr 29, 2016 22:53
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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.
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Apr 29, 2016 22:54
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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.
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Apr 30, 2016 03:47
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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.
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Apr 30, 2016 03:50
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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. 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 |
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Apr 30, 2016 17:32
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Added links to OP; did some reading and adjusted that section accordingly.
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May 1, 2016 01:28
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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.
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May 1, 2016 07:15
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Nostrum posted:I've used several recipes from this site that have turned out really well. They tend to be all-day affairs, though. added to OP. Might try the chana masala tomorrow!
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May 1, 2016 07:21
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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
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May 1, 2016 16:05
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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
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May 2, 2016 20:28
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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. 
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May 3, 2016 20:04
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MrSlam posted:Chicken (and Shrimp) Tikka Masala! That does look good. Any more specific rundown to your recipe or method?
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May 9, 2016 15:39
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Please no food purity arguments 
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May 9, 2016 17:55
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Mr. Wookums posted:food genealogy is important imo Food history is interesting, and stuff like "  I went to Punjab and they did it like this and it was really good and you should try it!" is totally welcome, but playing identity politics with someone's dinner is an unwelcome derail.
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May 9, 2016 18:02
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M42 posted:I've been making a really simple red lentil dal for a couple of years. Bloom spices (cumin, turmeric, coriander, hot pepper, some cinnamon etc) in some oil, garlic and ginger and onion, then the lentils, some stock, etc. just a real basic one. It's always been missing some "depth" to the flavor and I've never been able to figure out why. Am i missing something obvious? Any suggestions? Acid. Add the juice and zest of a lemon for every ~2 cups of dried lentils.
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May 10, 2016 19:58
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I made some content 2 cups (ish) of red lentils 6 cups of water  Simmered for a while. Once I could smell the lentils cooking, I skimmed the scum and added Some ginger root Juice and zest of one lemon 2 tsp turmeric 1 small cinnamon stick 1 tsp whole cloves 1 bay leaf 1 star anise 1 tsp white pepper I let that simmer until the lentils were more or less cooked then added Some coriander leaves One diced tomato Meanwhile I blasted in a pot and topped it off with 2 tsp ghee 5 or 6 green cardamom pods 2 tsp coriander seed 2 tsp cumin seed 2 tsp fenugreek 1 tsp yellow mustard seeds 1 tsp brown mustard seeds Salt and pepper   Served with whole wheat roti because that's what the store had. I'm going to let it become dal mush for leftovers.
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May 10, 2016 23:30
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http://www.goonswithspoons.com/Adai I made Dino.'s adai. Right now I only added ginger chilli and onion to the batter. I'll add more things later, because since I'm cooking for one today I'm not going to go through the batter especially fast. Eating it with a mint chutney and enjoying the poo poo out of it.
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May 14, 2016 21:41
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Ok time for eggplant talk. I'm a big fan of the (what my googling tells me) is "Arabic-style" babaganouj - salt eggplant, fry or roast the poo poo out of it with tons of oil and turmeric, mash the snot out of it. I'm not sure if that's the right name for this dish in this context, but I'm going with it here. One time I ate at a south Indian restaurant and they had the most amazing version of babaganouj I've ever eaten - it was nearly chocolate brown and it had the most wonderful caramel taste to it. I asked the waiter what made it taste that way and he replied, in broken English, "vinegar." I was kinda puzzled, and I tried a few times, and I never got it to work. Until this week. I was making adai (as I posted earlier) and I decided to make some of this basic baba to go with it. Sliced up my eggplant, salted both sides, drizzed a bit of white wine vinegar on it, and forgot about it. Like I literally forgot about my eggplant. I ate my meal, cleaned up, and came back hours later to look for a drink and went "oops, I forgot to cook my eggplant." So I rinsed it off, smeared some turmeric on it, roasted it until the skins were cooked, and jammed it into a container, promptly forgetting about it for two more days. Today I finished it off on the stovetop, and holy poo poo, it was almost exactly like the stuff I had eaten a year ago. Holy poo poo. Now, which of the variables here could be responsible for my eggplant being so ridiculously delicious: 1) Added vinegar, 2) Let it sit in the salt/vinegar for a ridiculously long time, 3) Twice cooked. Any ideas?
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May 18, 2016 04:35
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I'm taking a road trip to a larger urban centre tomorrow and I'm going to hit up the specialty shoppes! My shopping list includes curi leaves and keffir lime leaves. What else should I get/try?
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May 26, 2016 16:44
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toplitzin posted:Tamarind paste, garam masala (or the spices to make it yourself, see also curry powder), jasmine rice, coconut milk, asafetida (hing powder). I have all of those things except the tamarind paste already. I may get some tamarind paste, then.
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May 26, 2016 17:27
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Zeratanis posted:
 I'm going to start getting my curry on again soon now that I'm settled into my new place and my BBQ season is more or less over.
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Oct 7, 2016 05:04
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Actually, here's one for the thread: Curry is often complex and involved, but does anyone have any kind of curry recipe that's relatively simple for those "oh gently caress it's 9pm and I need to eat and I'm tired and I just want to make something that takes a few minutes and will give me leftovers for lunch tomorrow" moments? Perhaps we can qualify it as any curry which has approximately the same cooking time as a pot of rice. CommonShore fucked around with this message at 14:03 on Oct 7, 2016 |
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Oct 7, 2016 13:58
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 I loves me some effortposts. I have literally everything needed to make that, so i might try slamming that together this week. I made a low-effort tiki masala-style chicken thigh curry yesterday. It didn't end up that great, so I'm not going to post too much about it - but I'm back on the curry train. I see a baked chicken and vegetable biryiani in my near future as well.
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Oct 11, 2016 15:46
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Bollock Monkey posted:I went to an Indian cooking class last week and we made some delicious veggie dishes. We also made up our own garam masala, which was fun - we did it after tasting the whole spices and using that knowledge to build a flavour profile, which I thought was a really good way to demonstrate exactly what the individual spices bring to a dish. We also made paneer, which I had heard was easy but my god I didn't realise it was that easy!
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Oct 11, 2016 18:55
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Let's talk biryiani. Who has a good recipe? I've been working my own method lately, which I cobbled together from some research, conversations with some Punjabi guys, and my own tastes. I think I have room to improve, and I realize that my approach may provoke some "the gently caress is wrong with you" reactions. I recognize that there are "stir fry" approaches too, but I've been going with this approach because it gives me good lunchable leftovers, and it's relatively hands off. Anyway, I've been marinating meat (usually chicken, but right now I'm eating pork) in yogurt and spices (ginger, chili powder, turmeric), and then baking that with rice, broth, vegetables (usually eggplant and mushrooms, sometimes green peas too), and hing + garam masala tarka in a cast iron dutch oven until the rice and meat is cooked. Thoughts? How do you guys approach it?
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Nov 1, 2016 22:53
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I find that flash heating (in a pan or toaster) improves the bready ones quite a bit. I enjoy the suraj naan enough that I buy it regularly.
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Dec 5, 2016 21:48
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I'm making a home-brew slow cooker lamb palak tomorrow - I consulted a few recipes and I tossed chopped lamb, spinach, ginger, coriander, chili powder, garlic, browned onions, turmeric, and yogurt into the slow cooker. It's in the fridge now, and I'll put it on low for 8h tomorrow. Wish me luck !
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Dec 9, 2016 05:39
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coyo7e posted:I am probably entirely stupid however - yogurt for 8 hours? I've always been taught that you marinade in the lactic stuff, or add it at the last possible point before serving. YEah that's what I'm worried about. I waffled on it, but I made a snap decision to marinade in it becuase it needed something. I added as little as I could to get everything coated.
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Dec 9, 2016 15:02
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Just got home and checked on it. It ended up in the slow cooker for about 7h. The lamb is a bit over-stewed, but everything seems tasty. I added another 2-3 tablespoons of yogurt, and turned off the heat.
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Dec 9, 2016 22:54
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Pollyanna posted:Also, any suggestions for a dish with red lentils? I've got some red lentils I want to use up, and I was thinking of doing exactly what I detailed earlier - fry up some spices (basically make a tarka), fry up some garlic and onions, then add the spices and stew them with red lentils in some stock. Does that sound about right? Someone complimented me on this post once. CommonShore posted:I think of lentils as belonging to two broad categories of hulled and unhulled.
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Aug 8, 2017 04:38
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To make my recipe like a... recipe instead of an ingredient list... Fry spices in ghee Add onions and other vegetables Add stock Add soaked lentils. Add anything I forgot. Boil until soup.
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Aug 8, 2017 04:41
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ChickenWing posted:Trip report, part two: doubled the recipe correctly this time. Added 50% more tomatoes and an extra chili, used cayenne chili powder instead of generic chili powder. Heat level was excellent - just the right amount for me to feel the burn the whole time, but still enjoy the flavours. Didn't quite get the full amount of cream, but that ended up being fine. The other problem with diced tomatoes is that they add extra water. I've been processing garden tomatoes lately and the pot will be clear half way down once they begin to properly stew.
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Oct 3, 2017 13:25
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just made some daal. Tastes good.
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Nov 22, 2017 05:40
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My friend's mom took a trip to Malta or Cypress or somewhere and came back with a pound of "saffron" and was like "It was only $50! Those people are so stupid!" It looked as if someone had dyed hamster bedding with turmeric.
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Jul 3, 2018 05:24
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I just made the best daal I've ever made in my life. I wanted to share. It has lentils, wild rice, some garden vegetables, curry leaves, and a ton of ghee tarka. Thanks, dino! You got me thinking about it with a recent post.
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Jul 31, 2018 22:27
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Also chiming in to say the instant pot rules (apparently the off-brand knockoffs like EZ Pressure Cooker Delux or whatever are also good.) If you know enough about this cuisine (probably just from casual thread reading) to understand what I'm about to say, you don't even really need a recipe book to get started: just dump some meat or legumes into the pot, fry some spices, dump em on top, and then add whatever liquid. Press buttan and you get a reasonably good, extremely low effort curry with no further fiddling less than an hour later. poo poo if you're organized you can make chana masala in approximately an hour with approximately 5 minutes of actual effort, and I'm talking from dried peas into your belly.
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Dec 11, 2018 16:12
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ChickenWing posted:pretend I live in a tiny condo and have minimal (no) additional appliance space The instant pot is a better use of counter space than a toaster or slow cooker 
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Dec 11, 2018 16:13
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Ages ago, I think before this thread, someone posted a link to a GWS wiki recipe for some kind of Indian pancake made from fermented yellow split peas. I can't remember wtf they were called. I think it was dino.'s recipe. Any help? I want to make them again.
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Jan 23, 2019 00:43
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yessssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
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Jan 23, 2019 03:32
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