Indian Desserts Recipes Halwa Kheer with Condensed Mild Pistachio Recipes Easy for Diwali Menu : Indian Cooking Indian Desserts Recipes Halwa Kheer With Condensed Mild Pistachio Recipes Easy For Diwali Menu Pictures

Indian Cooking Biography

Source(google.com.pk)
I love how popular Indian food is becoming. In the time that I have been using twitter, I have seen a shift from Indian food being a strange entity to the non-Indian follows that I had, to a familiarity with terms such as dosa, rasam, sambar, vada etc and much more familiarity with spices. Now Indian foodies follow non-Indian and vise versa. It wasn’t so common, say, 5 years ago. I love that growth in understanding of Indian food and the confidence to cook it at home.

I notice a small trend with the bloggers of Indian food to use non-Indian terms to describe the dishes, and I say this with sadness. I love the education process that goes on with retaining traditional names, while clarifying uncommon terms. So upma should remain as upma, vada as vada and dosa as dosa. And ghee as ghee (and not clarified butter).

Indian food is first of all very precise. By this I mean that there are very strong traditions around how food is prepared and eaten. Which spice mix goes with which lentil or vegetable, whether the dish is semi or fully liquid, what is eaten with a particular dish, even which part of the year it is cooked.

Some terms I have seen associated with Indian food…. Risotto for Kitchadi and upma, confit for stuffed brinjal baked in the oven, clarified butter for ghee (technichally correct but confusing as French clarified butter is not at all like ghee), patties and fritters for vada, and pancakes for dosa (perhaps technically correct but unlike egg based pancakes in so many ways.) Gravy is used for Kuzhambu, soup for rasam, and so forth. Just as we moved away in the 1980s from believing that all Chinese Asian food was stirfried with crispy noodles, I have my fingers crossed that we will move away from believing that Indian food is “curry”, Dal Makhani, naan bread and samosa. But it does take education on the food, and food combinations.

Secondly, Indian food is also very very regional, in a way that we are not used to in many parts of the world. What is de rigour in one part of India is unacceptable in another part. So you can understand that learning about Indian food if you do not have an Indian food tradition, can be confusing.

This page represents a humble attempt to pull together some of my learnings as I journeyed and continue to journey into the world of Indian cooking. My loves are Sth Indian food with a preference for traditional foods, and you will notice that here. However, feel free to add information, clarification, corrections and questions and I will do my best to make sure things are properly represented.

I hope this helps both readers and writers of Indian recipes.
I often see recipes for Indian food that include instructions such as “take a ladleful of ..” or “a <insert Indian fruit> sized ball of …”. When writing recipes for a wide audience, the more common measures of cup, or better still, by spoon (Tblspn or tspn), volume (ml or l) or weight (g) are more accurate and standardised. If the measure is actually meant to be an approximate measure, use phrases such as “about 1/2 cup of …”.

Even the phrase “lemon sized ball of …” is misleading as lemons can vary in size from small
Note that a cup measure is not a standard amount, varying from in the US to other UK-influenced parts of the world. But it is usually accurate enough. Recipes, such as breads, that require much more precision, will be written using volumes and weights.

Tempering: Almost every savoury dish in India is tempered – that is, spices heated in oil are added either at the beginning of the cooking but more usually at the end of cooking. A little oil or ghee is heated and then the relevant spices are added and cooked until they change colour, pop or crackle. Sometimes small amounts of lentils such as Urad Dal are added for flavouring and texture.

Although the basic concept of tempering is the same all over India, each region, indeed every family has its own distinctive set of spices used and way of tempering, and of course each claims proudly & possessively that theirs is the best way to temper foo
Different areas have different names for tempering, e.g A container with a lid that holds 6 or 7 individual pots containing spices commonly used in that household. See this post on tempering with spices.

Handi: A deep, narrow-mouthed cooking vessel used in Indian cooking.

A wok like fry pan with two handles used for stir-frying, boiling, frying and deep frying. It is different to a Chinese Wok.
Used extensively in Indian cooking to shorten the cooking times, especially of lentils.

Specialised tools exist for grinding lentils, dried beans, wheat etc into flour. A blender can be used but may not obtain the fineness that is possible with a Mixie. It can also be used to grind spices and spice mixes (masalas) and make shakes.

These are commonly used to cook dosa etc more easily. However, if your tawa is sufficiently seasoned it is possible to cook them very well on a good tawa. In addition, the taste is much better cooked on the tawa than on a non-stick pan.
Rolling pin. There are very thin, short rolling pins for rolling roti and other flat breads.A larger spoon, more like a flat Western soup ladle.

evai Presses are used to make Sevai, Sth Indian rice noodles (gluten free

fooled. When an Indian recipe says Red Gram or even Red Lentils it probably means Toor/Tuvor Dal (which is yellow). It is called Red Lentils because in its unadulterated state Toor Dal has a red skin.

For writers of Indian recipes, Red Lentils in parts of the rest of the world means Split Masoor Dal. You can see that it makes quite a difference! When writing recipes, be explicit about the lentil. For example, write Red Gram
Red Chillies in most Indian recipes means Dried Red Chillies. Fresh red chillies are seldom encountered, unlike green chillies which are always fresh. This is in contrast to other cuisines in SE Asia which will use fresh red chillies quite freely..