Healthy Indian Vegetarian Cooking. Shubhra Ramineni
inspired techniques and flavors. Why Indian style? Because Indian food is traditionally vegetarian food, cooked with a variety of exotic spices, so it’s the natural cuisine for delicious and healthy vegetarian food, including vegan and gluten-free dishes. Indian spices really give unique and wonderful tastes to dishes. Some spices enhance the natural flavors of fruits and vegetables, while others jazz them up to make it an extravagant meal. Best of all, the spices incorporated in my recipes are easily accessible in most local grocery stores.
In addition to transforming a fruit or vegetable into an exotic delight, Indian spices have many healing properties and health benefits such as the anti-inflammatory property of turmeric to calm arthritis pain, heartburn relief from cardamom, tummy ache soothing from carom seeds, and much, much more.
If you are new to cooking with Indian spices, I would suggest starting off simply with five spices: salt, black pepper, ground red pepper (cayenne), cumin seeds, and ground turmeric. Find recipes in this book that just use those spices, and then you can build your spice collection with cloves, mustard seeds, cardamom, coriander seeds, saffron, and more. I cook with spices and ingredients that can be easily found at a local grocery store, without having to make special trips to ethnic markets.
With a few easy to find spices, you just might be surprised at how easy it is to make healthy and delicious Indian inspired dishes that are quick and easy but taste and look like you went to some trouble! I myself am amazed at how one can take simple vegetables like green beans or okra and quickly turn them into wonderful and tasteful dishes using a few Indian spices. Even dishes made from vegetables not typically used in Indian cuisine, such as parsnips, butternut squash, jicama, and collard greens, are enhanced when using Indian spices and cooking techniques.
A Well-Balanced Meal and Life
A complete, healthy, and well balanced vegetarian meal can be served with the recipes in this book. You may start with a simple appetizer, continue with rice and/or bread, a vegetable dish, a lentil, legume, tofu, or cheese dish for the protein, a side of a spiced yogurt (raita), and finish with a beverage or dessert made with fresh fruits. Quick and easy one-pot meals such as my Vegetable Rice Pilaf (page 65) can be offered with a side of plain yogurt for a well rounded meal. A simple meal of Plain Basmati Rice (page 63), a vegetable dish, and a lentil or legume dish served with a side of plain yogurt is an example of another quick and healthy weeknight meal. When pairing dishes to serve, I like to keep in mind the colors and consistencies for variety in taste and texture, and for beautiful presentation. A sautéed dish such as Cut Bell Peppers and Potatoes (page 82) goes well with a curry dish, which is a dish that has a saucy or liquid base such as Black-Eyed Pea Curry (page 72) or a soupy lentil dish such as Stewed Split Red Lentils (page 77).
With portion control, daily exercise, seven to eight hours of sleep per night, and good eating habits consisting of a diet full of delicious and nutritious vegetarian dishes, one can lead a healthy and active lifestyle. I hope to pass these healthy habits on to my daughter as my mom did to me. So go ahead and start having fun cooking delicious vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free dishes and nourishing your body with fresh wholesome foods!
Kitchen Tools
If you come to my kitchen, you will see I have very basic cookware and tools that are sufficient for my no-fuss cooking style. Other than the basics of a good everyday paring knife, a chef's knife, and a set of stainless steel pots, pans, and skillets, including a good quality, safe nonstick skillet, here are some other tools I frequently use. Stainless steel is durable, dishwasher safe, and nonreactive to acidic ingredients such as tomatoes. I prefer to use heavy bottomed cookware since it gives me more control than thin pans do because the food does not heat up too quickly and possibly burn if you don't not keep a sharp eye on it, which I find hard to do with the distractions I get from my young child!
Blender/Immersion Blender
I like to have two types of blenders in my kitchen. The first is a traditional blender in which I make refreshing fruit smoothies and various chutneys. If you are using a blender to purée hot foods, let the food cool slightly before pouring it into the blender to avoid the lid popping open from the steam and creating a big mess.
The second type of blender I use is the immersion blender, also called a “hand blender.” The immersion blender has a stick handle and a small metal blade at the bottom. You hold it in your hand and immerse it directly into the pot of food to be blended. This works great for puréeing spinach when I make Spinach and Potatoes (page 87) because I do not have to wait for the hot spinach to cool and then transfer it to a traditional blender. Instead, I simply immerse the hand blender directly into the hot pot and blend the spinach until smooth. To avoid splattering, try to keep the blender fully immersed in the food while you're using it.
Box Grater This tool is used to grate (shred) food. A typical box grater has 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 small grooves to grate ginger and carrots. You might see some other prickly holes that look like small pointed rasps, which I use to grate whole nutmeg. You can even zest lemons, limes, and oranges on this side. Some box graters 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 grater in place by firmly grabbing the handle with one hand, and grate the food by holding it in the other hand and move it up and down across the surface. Be careful not to scrape your knuckles!
Cast-Iron Skillet When making flat-breads, a cast-iron skillet works best. You need a surface that you can get quite hot and retains heat well. A cast-iron skillet can be seasoned over time (to create a smooth and safe nonstick surface) by repeatedly heating up the skillet and coating it with cooking oil. A cast-iron skillet should be gently scrubbed with water only and immediately dried to prevent rusting. An Indian rimless cast-iron skillet is a tawa, also spelled tava or tawah. Tawa are commonly either 10 or 12 inches (25 to 30.5 cm) in diameter. It is slightly curved and used to make various types of Indian flatbread. I find that using my low-rimmed American cast-iron skillet works just as well.
Cheesecloth Cheesecloth is a lightweight, 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 called 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. Cheesecloth is found in various departments of grocery stores. If you do not have cheese cloth, you may use a thin muslin cloth instead. The size of your cheesecloth does not matter—as long as you can fold it at least four times so you do not lose the curds. Do not cut the cheesecloth if it seems too large, since a big piece is easy for lining a colander and has enough excess cloth to hang over the edge. 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 the soap off 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.
Citrus Squeezer Small-sized citrus squeezers are used to squeeze lemons and limes, and sometimes they are big enough to handle oranges too. You can find sturdy metal ones at household stores, kitchenware stores, and sometimes even in grocery stores. If you do not have a citrus squeezer, you can squeeze citrus fruits by hand over a small strainer to catch the seeds. When using the citrus squeezer, place half of the lemon or lime face down in the squeezer towards the holes so the juice will come out and press the handles. A common mistake when using a squeezer is to place the cut fruit the wrong way, which will cause the juice to splash out the sides of the squeezer.
Cutting Board It is best to get a cutting