Indian Cooking For Dummies. Monisha Bharadwaj
— many more are out there. Find what works for you, and set aside what doesn’t.
Choose more cooked foods than raw. Raw foods are harder for the body to digest. In Indian cooking, raw salads are never the main meal; instead, they’re included in a meal to add a bit of flavor, texture, and color. Also, stir-frying foods keeps them lighter than deep-frying.
Pay attention to effect that various foods have on your body. Certain foods or food combinations can give you gas or constipation or cause improper digestion. Ayurveda suggests antidotes such as adding herbs and spices or limiting your portions.
Control the quantity of food you eat. Ayurveda says that eating large meals could put pressure on the digestive system. Eat smaller meals more frequently.
Eat seasonal and local. Foods are their best when they’re in season and fresh. They also taste better.
Eat when you’re hungry. Let a meal be properly digested before you eat again. This practice helps your body do its job properly. Boredom snacking, eating just because it’s lunchtime, or nibbling on something because everyone else is eating may cause you to overeat.
Don’t be distracted while eating. No eating in front of the TV or reading while you’re eating! According to Ayurveda, being distracted from eating means that we chew less and gulp our food more.
Go with your instinct. Don’t force yourself to eat what you don’t feel like eating. Your body and its needs are unique, so there’s no rule that you have to love a certain food just because everyone else around you does. As a chef, I’m surrounded by other chefs who love garlic is all its forms, but I don’t really love whole garlic. Indian cooking uses garlic in almost all savory dishes, but I prefer it pureed so that I don’t have to bite into it — that’s why all my recipes call for garlic paste rather than chunks of garlic!
Identifying the six tastes and sensations
Ayurveda recognizes six tastes and sensations, called rasa in Sanskrit:
Sweet: Sweet taste is also called neutral taste. It includes grains, dairy, some fruits, vegetables, and lentils. Sweet is not simply the taste of sugar or desserts — it’s said to make us feel good, and you’ll probably find that your favorite comfort food falls into the sweet category.
Sour: Sour taste includes all foods that are aged, ripened, fermented, or naturally acidic, such as citrus fruit, yogurt, and wine. Sour foods are said to help stimulate the appetite (thinking of something sour often makes the mouth water) and can be digestive aids. Eating too much sour food can lead to heartburn or acidity.
Salty: Salty taste, found in salt and sea plants, stimulates the flow of saliva and, thus, helps digestion. Too much salt can lead to inflammation or fluid retention and overwhelms all the other senses. If you accidentally put too much salt in your food, you’ll most likely notice just the salt. However, it’s also what brings a rounded, solid completeness to your food, like in the saying, “salt of the earth.”
Pungent: Pungent taste includes foods and spices that are spicy, hot, and sharp, such as chilies, garlic, ginger, black pepper, and cloves. Their warming quality stimulates the digestion, but too much of this taste could lead to heartburn, acidity, and irritability. The pungent flavor is experienced as an irritation of the tissues and nerve endings rather than receptors on the tongue. Pungency can help to dry excess moisture, so these ingredients often find their way into home remedies for cold (such as ginger tea).
Bitter: You’ve heard of “bitter medicine.” Bitter is considered a healing taste and is found in spices such as turmeric, in leafy vegetables, and in eggplant. Many cuisines try to get rid of bitterness in foods by salting them, but this taste is considered valuable in Indian cooking for its ability to cleanse the body. Eating too much of this taste is thought to bring feelings of anxiety, so be careful how much you eat!
Astringent: Astringent is the dry taste left in the mouth after a sip of black tea or dry white wine, when the inside of your mouth feels like it’s contracting. Just try biting into an unripe banana or pomegranate! According to Ayurveda, the astringent taste does have benefits and helps when there is excess fluid or swelling in the body.
An Indian meal should have a balance of the tastes so that it not only tastes good but also contributes to physical and emotional well-being.
INTRODUCING CHILDREN TO INDIAN FOOD
With so many of us having access to international cuisine, it’s only natural that our children will be eating more and more world cuisines earlier in their lives. Still, you may not know how to introduce Indian food to children. In the West, babies are weaned on what’s appropriate for their age, so you wouldn’t feed a baby steak, for example. Similarly, with Indian food, think of Indian baby food and not curry. Indian babies are introduced to gentle spices quite early. Warm teas are made with fennel (it helps to keep colic away) and ajowan or carom seeds (to help the digestion).
Soft, slightly overcooked white rice is the traditional weaning food all over India. By the time babies are a year old, many are ready for a little lick of a mild curry.
Here are some tips for introducing your kids to Indian food:
Start them early. If you’re keen to get your kids to eat a variety of foods, it’s a good idea to begin early when their tastes and habits are forming. They’ll probably get used to variety if they’re introduced to it as soon as they’re ready to be weaned.
Start babies with a gently spiced drink. Even before weaning begins, you can gently teach babies to enjoy spices. Boil 1 cup of water with ¼ teaspoon of fennel seeds. Cool the drink to a safe, drinkable temperature, and offer it to your baby once every few days.
Cook a chile-free curry for toddlers. There are plenty of flavors that children can enjoy in an Indian meal, but chile is not at the top of that list! Instead, you can let them enjoy the tastes and aromas of cumin, ground coriander, cinnamon, and nutmeg, none of which is pungent.
Feed young children yogurt and rice. Lots of Indian children love this creamy combination. Add a spoonful of a mild curry or even a mild mango chutney on the side, and you may find that it becomes a much-loved dinner. If your little one accepts and appreciates yogurt and rice, try adding some vegetables to the rice — I added cooked peas and finely diced cucumber and tomatoes to my children’s meals.
Get older children to help with the cooking. Rolling out naans, pounding spice seeds in a mortar and pestle, whisking a batter, and sprinkling in spices can all be fun! If you get your kids involved in the kitchen and give them tasks that are safe and playful, they may want to eat the fruits of their labor!
Eat together and eat the same meal. With my children, I found that they accepted whatever was on the table because we were all eating the same thing, together. The meal was full of flavor, and they were encouraged to try everything. I don’t ever remember making separate meals when they were old enough to eat at the table.
Eating with the seasons
With the way food stores now work, we can buy almost any food year-round. We’ve somewhat lost the joy of looking forward to certain foods at only certain times of the year and having to wait for our favorite foods to come into season.
One food that comes to mind is the Indian mango, the Alphonso variety in particular. Considered to be one of the best in the world, it’s sweet, very fragrant, saffron colored, smooth, and very seasonal. Around the middle of April, markets in western India see the arrival of boxes