Entice With Spice. Shubhra Ramineni

Entice With Spice - Shubhra Ramineni


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1981 India: Our family friend, Hardwari Sharma, cooking chapati with ghee in her home near my dad’s childhood village.

      Throughout the book, I suggest traditional pairings for each dish. When choosing which vegetables and meat, chicken, fish or seafood dishes to serve together, keep in mind the colors and consistencies of the dishes for variety in taste, texture and for beautiful presentation. Along with pairing complementary flavors and spicy hot dishes with cooling plain yogurt or raita, Indians enjoy pairing contrasting textures at the table. Ideally, try to have both a sautéed dish and a curried dish at the table to balance out the “dry” and “wet” dishes—for example, a sautéed vegetable and a curried meat, fish or seafood, or vice versa, or a sautéed vegetable and a “soupy” lentil dish. In general, I prefer to eat sautéed dishes with breads since they are easy to grab with a small piece of bread. I also like a side of raita to eat between bites in order to provide a fluid consistency that goes down smoothly. I enjoy curried dishes with rice since the fluid consistency mixes and absorbs well with the rice. This is not a hard-and-fast rule since I prefer to eat the “gravy-like” lentil dishes with breads such as chapati—here, a part of the bread is torn off and sort of folded to scoop up the lentils.

      Using the “blueprint” and the several serving suggestions sprinkled throughout this book, you will be able to invite friends and family over and amaze them with traditional homestyle Indian meals made quickly and easily by you. To help you along every step of the way, I share time-saving methods I’ve learned and developed over the years (See “Tips and Techniques,” page 13.) including a guide on how to best re-heat refrigerated or frozen Indian food (for the quickest possible meal!).

      Before you know it, you will be making homemade yogurt and stocking it in your refrigerator just like in a typical Indian home. And once you get a good feel for the recipes, you may even start eyeballing measurements like a real Indian cook and wean yourself off from strict measuring!

BLUEPRINT FOR A FORMAL INDIAN MEAL
Salad (Tomato, Cucumber and Onion Salad) The Basics
Pickled Condiment (Mango Pickle) (this is not an absolute necessity) The Basics
1 Yogurt (plain yogurt or salted and spiced Raita) The Basics
1 or 2 Appetizers, depending on how elaborate you want to be Chapter 1
Pappadum (omit this and still look like a master!) Chapter 1
1 Bread (Chapati or Naan) Chapter 2
1 Rice Dish (Plain Rice or Cumin and Peas Rice) Chapter 2
1 Lentil or Legume Dish Chapter 3
1 Chicken, Lamb, Fish, Seafood, Egg or Cheese Dish (sautéed or curried) Chapter 4 or 5 or 6
1 Vegetable Dish (sautéed or curried) Chapter 6
1 Dessert Chapter 7
Tea or Cappuccino Chapter 7
Mixture of half fennel seeds and half sugar to chew on as a breath freshener (no chapter)

      Cookware and Utensils

      I always enjoy strolling through kitchen-specialty stores looking for interesting new kitchen tools and cookware while my husband impatiently reminds me that I already have this or that, or that I do not have room for more things or that I simply don’t need it! I tell him to relax and that I am just looking for fun. Although sometimes, I do find an irresistible serving platter or interesting gadget that I must take home with me—much to my husband’s chagrin!

      Even though I enjoy browsing fancy kitchen gadgets, I keep to the basics at home with easy-to-use and easy-to-clean kitchen cookware and utensils. My cooking style does not require any fancy or specialized Indian cookware but just basic items that you probably already have or are easy to find. Naturally, there is specialized Indian cookware that is used in traditional Indian homes, such as the tandoor, karahi and tava, but I have developed ways to prepare delicious Indian food using common everyday cookware.

      I prefer to use heavy bottom cookware—it gives me more control than thin pans do because food does not heat up too quickly, which will cause food to burn if you do not keep an eagle eye on it. I use stainless-steel pots and pans for the majority of my cooking but I also sometimes use nonstick skillets. Stainless-steel is durable, dishwasher safe and nonreactive to acidic ingredients such as tomatoes. If you prefer to use nonstick stockpots and saucepans for easy cleanup and for healthier cooking (less fat will be required), that is perfectly fine. Lids for cookware are useful but if you do not have one, you can use a plate instead. In the entries that follow, you’ll find useful information about the cookware and utensils I use to make the recipes in this book.

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      Box Grater This tool is used to grate (shred) food. A typical box grater has at least four different sides, each with a different purpose. I use the side with the largest round grooves to grate onions and the side with the smaller grooves to grate ginger, carrots and unripe mangoes. You might see some other prickly holes that look like small pointed rasps—I use this to grate whole nutmeg. You can even zest lemons, limes and oranges on this side. Some box grates also have raised, sharp horizontal slits that are used to get shavings of food, such as cheese and vegetables. To use a box grater, stand it on a plate or cutting board, hold the handle with one hand, and grate the food by holding it in the other hand and moving it up and down across the surface. Be careful not to scrape your knuckles!

      Cast-iron Skillet When making Indian crepes (dosa), pancakes (uttapam) and flatbreads, a cast-iron skillet works best. You need a surface that gets quite hot and that retains heat well. You can also use an Indian tava (page 12) for this purpose. A cast-iron skillet can be seasoned (to create a smooth and safe nonstick surface) by repeatedly heating up the skillet and coating it with vegetable or other cooking oil. A cast-iron skillet should be gently scrubbed with water only and immediately dried to prevent rusting.

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      Cheesecloth This is a light-weight, cotton gauze that is traditionally used in cheese making. The cloth allows the whey to quickly drain out, while retaining the curds, creating the Indian cheese paneer. You can also use it to strain tamarind pulp and coconut milk if you want to extract them from whole tamarind and fresh coconuts. If you do not have cheesecloth, you may use a thin muslin cloth, a fine mesh sieve or a strainer instead. The size of your cloth does not matter—as long as you can fold it at least four times so none of the curds slip through. After using a cheesecloth, wash it by rinsing any food products off it and then use a few drops of dishwashing liquid and rub it in the cheesecloth. Rinse thoroughly and hang outside on a line to dry, or drape it over a dish rack on your counter or in an empty rack in your dishwasher. My husband did not know what a cheesecloth was until he saw mine.


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