Indian food is not just curries

I sometimes grow tired of hearing wannabe world citizens that are not of South Asian origin, say that all Indian food is a variation on curry. And by curry they mean meat and/or vegetables in a red/orange/yellow thick liquid. As recently a Chinese colleague of mine put it: Indian food does not have much variety. It's all the same. Now I know better than to engage such people in an argument, but it annoyed me.

Three Stages of Cooking an Indian Dish
An art in Indian cooking is braising. Braising is a cornerstone of Chinese cuisine as well, and basically means cooking meat or vegetables with small and variable amount of liquid. A lot of Indian dishes are prepared this way. There are three stages of cooking. The typical Indian pot for cooking this kind of food is called a Karahi or Kadai which unsurprisingly is very similar to the Chinese Wok.

1. First one sears the vegetables or meat at very high heat (presumably locking the flavor in, but I don't completely agree) to give them a firmer texture.
2. After the initial searing, you cover and cook on medium heat for another ten minutes. As you cook your dish covered, the steam does not escape and water or other juices materialize at the bottom of the pan.
   
3. Finally the heat is reduced to low until the dish is finished. One reason behind reducing the heat is to retain the moisture and liquid. The end result is more flavorful than steamed vegetables -- a unique blend of crisp outside and succulent inside.

Anyone can make a liquid curry
Anyone can make a dish with a lot of liquid. Since heat is passed by convection in a liquid, which results in slower transfer of heat, it is very forgiving. Braising is not always forgiving. You can burn the food in the first step, or make the food mushy if you're not careful. I find that many Indians living abroad do not make braised foods, because they cannot be bothered to make food that takes some effort. On the other hand, you can dump everything at once in a fair bit of liquid and voila!

Summary
Good food takes effort, no matter which culture you consider. French food takes a lot of effort because it is often prepared from scratch. Same about Persian Food. And it is the same about Indian food.

Chicken Fricassée

There is great joy in preparing food from scratch, without any artificial flavors and have it taste marvelous. One thing I cook reasonably frequently is Chicken Fricassée broadly based on the recipe by Julia Child in her seminal book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I tend to make my own tweaks, so I use black pepper because it tastes better, I use breast meat only because the thigh meat has a strong flavor that does not go well with the delicate sauce. Sometimes I add paprika for a pink dish, which is cute. I typically skip the mushroom garnish because it takes too much effort to fry mushrooms, and my kitchen is small, which means I have to fry them in batches in my largest pan, which cause a lot of spattering.

I have found it tastes best with somewhat sticky rice, like what is used for making Sushi. Even Jasmine rice is not suitable with this dish; Basmati is just too nutty. I have found that pasta does not go well with it. It is a favorite in our household, and I find it easy to make. It takes about 10 minutes to cut the vegetables and get everything ready, but from that point on, cooking continues in one pot. You have to be careful with the final egg yolk-heavy cream enrichment. If the egg yolks are heated suddenly, they curdle. That ruins the appearance of the sauce, though the taste is not affected.

For an Indian flavor, you can add clove powder, chopped almonds, raisins, cumin powder, fenugreek leaves, green cardamom and coriander in addition. Saffron strands are also something to consider, but they make the dish earthy. Please do not use curry powder, I hate recipes asking for curry powder.

The joy of deep frying!

Deep frying in an ancient method of preparing food. It is all around us, like French fries. Whole franchises have been built on the art of deep-frying (KFC anyone?) Yet time and again we are presented with deep fried food that is soggy, dank and makes your esophagus revolt. Why? I think people have lost the art of deep frying.

For a long time, I had an electric deep fryer. It did an OK job frying French fries, but it bombed with other things such as Pooris. I decided I had had enough and tossed the deep fryer and started frying in a huge cast iron wok. It made a world of difference. The food came out crisp, light, bright and refreshing. That is because one of the major purposes of cooking, no matter how it is done, is to get rid of the water in the food. When the oil is as hot as it should be, the water in the food is transformed to steam and gushes outward at such speed that oil can't get inside your food. Oil can only penetrate the outermost layer of your food. Deep fried food is not necessarily more unhealthy. I fry only in peanut oil, which has no trans fats and does not decompose into gunk when it's heated. If you have the money, you can use clarified butter for deep frying, which is the best. However, deep frying can be expensive.

I am attaching some photos of deep fried wontons I made recently. I know I used Gyoza skins instead of proper wonton skins, so they don't have long ears.

Sichuan Beef

The Sichuan a.k.a Szechuan province of China is known for its fiery cuisine. A common ingredient in Sichaun cuisine is crushed red chili pepper -- seeds and all. That is interesting because chilies are native to the Americas and reached China only in the 1600s. Before the chilies arrived to China, a native spice, the Sichuan pepper was common. The taste of the Sichuan pepper is not hot like the chili or pungent and clean like black pepper, but a little lemony and rather vague. You could not import Sichuan pepper to the US until recently.

I made a popular dish recently, called the Sichuan Beef. I used top sirloin steak and sliced it as thin as I could, but it is clear to me that I need more practice dicing things finely with a cleaver. The kitchen got a bit oily with all that frying in batches. Two pounds of top sirloin lasted of all 3 hours for 3 persons and a toddler.

Pasta is a gourmet food

Pasta has gotten an undeserved bad name in the US, where it is associated with red sauce and cheap Italian restaurants with poor service. That is just not true. Italian food has a lot of variety; just that what passes for Italian food in the US (except in the Haute Cuisine) is Sicilian food. Sicilian food uses a lot of olive oil, and very little Parmesan.

It's all because of the geography. Northern Italian cuisine is a whole lot closer to French and German cuisine than to Sicilian cuisine. Reason? Northern Italy has weather that allows raising cattle that feeds on grass (Sicily is a whole lot more arid). Cow's milk is converted to butter and cheese. What grows locally is used: such is the way of the world. Italian cuisine is refined and versatile.

The best Italian cookbook I know of (and most critics agree) is Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan. In that she talks about the right way of making pasta. A little bit of butter goes a long way.

How to make pasta sauce?
It is very simple to make pasta sauce at home. All it takes is some care and a tiny bit of effort. Homemade pasta sauces can be jarred or frozen, they keep for about 6 months.

Here's a photo of my homemade pasta sauce. This sauce has no olive oil or coloring. The heavy cream and fresh grated Parmesan give it a orange hue. Topped with chopped parsley and finely grated Parmesan cheese. Served over shell pasta, cook al dente and then tossed with butter. Everything except the cheese is organic.

Homemade Sushi

Sushi has gained in popularity in the US dramatically over the past few years. I personally think that Sushi, cheap that it now is, remains very overpriced, and few places serve good Sushi. I don't like the quality and seasoning of rice in many Sushi joints, and find it just overpriced.

Sushi is deceptively easy to make. It's all about the rice, and it doesn't necessarily have raw meat. If you're interested, you can find video instructions on VideoJug. All you need is a sharp knife and a sushi mat.

This is a picture of my homemade sushi with the following fillings:
* Organic avocado and organic cucumber
* Organic avocado and fluffy organic scrambled eggs (green and yellow)

I like throwing some toasted sesame seeds inside my rice. I also like to put some organic ranch dressing, free of vegetable oil. Another colorful idea is to throw some orange roe on top to contrast with the white of rice and green and yellow of filling.

In the middle, I have my dipping sauce, made with dark soy sauce, sugar, salt and lots of sesame seeds. My sushi pieces are not perfectly round, something I am still trying to achieve consistently.

Lamb soup with spring vegetables

A photo of another family favorite: Lamb soup with spring vegetables. A recipe that's as Turkish as it is Indian, made without any spice mixes or packaged broth. Tastes best with Jasmine rice.

I also make a French version sometimes in which the lamb cubes are coated with caramelized sugar, and cooking is continued in an oven at low heat.

This Turkish/Indian version was prepared in a Kiwi Le Creuset 5 quart Dutch Oven with organic vegetables and spices, and all-natural lamb.

Entrées I like to cook

An inchoate list of entrées I like to cook for my family. I probably have the more impressive ones listed here :) These are in no particular order. I make them all from scratch with no preservatives, hardly any canned food or spice mixes.

1. Pan-seared Lemon Pepper Halibut Fillet with Sauce Parisienne and Parsley Potatoes
2. Lamb Soup with chick peas and spring vegetables
3. Kung Pao Chicken with medium-grain semi-sticky rice (Sushi rice without any seasonings)
4. Oven-baked layered Biryani with Raita (Yogurt sauce with cucumber and tomatoes)
   
5. Pepper steak with pan-fried fingerling potatoes and deglazing sauce
6. Yogurtlu Kebap (minced-lamb kebab with yogurt-garlic and tomato sauces) with grilled pita bread
7. Buttered rigatoni noodles with homemade French-style tomato (pasta) sauce with butter and garlic
8. Chicken breasts à la Milanèse (Milan-style, with bread crumbs and Parmesan cheese), with pan-fried potatoes
9. Boeuf à la Mode (Beef pot roast with vegetables and a red Burgundy wine) with mushrooms fried in butter and sherry
10. Chicken Fricassée à l'Ancienne (A Fricassée with creamy white burgundy sauce)
    
11. Beef Burgundy (slow-simmered ragoût of beef with vegetables in a red Burgundy wine)
12. Linguini with Olive oil and basil tomato sauce
13. Fettucine or Pappardelle with fresh homemade Alfredo sauce (butter-cheese sauce)
14. Shish Kabob with garlic Raita and fried rice
15. Chicken Curry with Basmati rice and Naan. Good with Mango Lassi
16. Avocado and Cucumber Sushi
17. Teriyaki chicken, with grilled vegetables, Japanese-style fried rice and white/cream sauce
18. Murg Masallam (Pot-roast of stuffed chicken in a creamy sauce with nuts and raisins)
    
    

Kung Pao Chicken

A staple of American-Chinese restaurants and the safest bet if you're not too familiar with Chinese cuisine, and are eating in North America. It's quick and colorful with green-yellow zucchini, red bell pepper, and soy sauce-brown chicken. Taiwanese influence would have you garnish with chopped scallions. But you must have peanuts in it, or it's not Kung Pao chicken.

I like my own version, made in a cast iron wok with potato starch instead of corn starch and with scallions. Here's a photo. I don't think I want to share this recipe just yet ;)

A History of Salt

Introduction
Worth his salt! Salt of the earth! With a pinch of salt! Salt it away! What do all these phrases have in common? Salt, of course. The idea is that salt is important, and a pinch of salt makes anything palatable. The word salary comes to us from the days when Roman army was paid in salt and means literally salt money. Salad means, literally, salted. As does sauce.

Salt. Sodium Chloride. Every human consumes it on a regular basis. Too much or too little of it causes health problems. If you drink too much water, it might reduce the level of sodium in your body to cause death by hyponatremia or water intoxication. A very important mineral, salt is.

History
Not that long ago, salt was a luxury. It made and broke kingdoms and dominated world trade. Without salt no civilization would have been possible. It allowed humans to preserve the seasonal bounty, and sustain themselves on it during harsher times. Free from the vagaries of weather and able to transport such food helped form empires – dependent for their very existence, as it were, on the white powder called salt.

How does salt preserve?
If you leave vegetables to the elements (moisture, air), within days they begin to rot away. Their decay will form lactic acid, which in turn slows the rotting, but that process is slow. Salt halts the decay or proteins and carbohydrates for a while, until enough lactic acid has formed which then acts as a preservative. Without salt, yeast forms, and you’re left with alcohol, not pickled gherkins.

Salt is even more important in curing meats. The famous hams from Italy and Germany are heavily salted. Salt extracts water from the cells, and thus disallows bacteria to form and feast on the dense source of nutrition. This process also enhances the flavor of food. It is salt that gives parma ham its flavor.

What role has salt played in civilization?
In Roman times, the condiment of choice was garum, a heavily salted fish sauce, quite similar to the fish sauces common in South East Asia. Over time, this condiment was forgotten, but the importance of fish and salt did not diminish. Salted cod, for example, changed the course of Western Civilization. Brought in from the cooler seas, cod could be preserved very well by just laying them in salt. Salt desiccated and preserved cod. Salted cod, upon soaking in water for a day, was found tastier than other alternatives. This was revolutionary as a perishable source of food could be preserved for long times, thus enabling exploration of the world.

Salt is also used to make soy sauce, which is a descendant of early Chinese fish sauce. Salt is also essential to making cheese, to making olives edible. These were the major foods of world civilization and continue to be so to this day.

Conclusions
So that’s the story of the humble white powder we eat in copious amounts every day. It’s everywhere: in pizza, in burgers, in cheese and lots of it in commercially produced foods. It provides us with a basic taste, and prevents us from getting muscle cramps. The best salt is said to come from French coasts, hand-picked just after dawn breaks. It’s called fleur de sel, literally flower of salt. Fleur de sel from Camargue, in Provence, France is a superstar of humble salt. And you can buy it from Amazon.com now.

Afterword
This is a rough transcript of a speech I gave a couple of years ago. A lot of it is based on the book Salt by Mark Kurlansky (ISBN 0802713734).

Recipe: Aloo Gobhi

Based on my experience with Indian restaurants in the US, a popular entrée is Aloo Gobi, or combinations of Alu/Aloo (potato) and Gobi/Gobhi (cauliflower). I don't like the way it's made in most Indian restaurants. The preparation commonly found is easier to assemble and more difficult to mess up than the authentic Punjabi version I make at home.

I like my recipes simple, and in Aloo Gobi, I intend for the taste of cauliflower and ginger to stand out. My version has no sauce, garlic, cumin seeds, mustard seeds, onions and tomatoes. I consider the addition of those ingredients as a subterfuge to disguise the poor quality of ingredients.

Utensils
Ideally, you need a seasoned cast iron wok-shaped utensil with a lid. A non-stick pot would work as well. In the preparation of this dish, please avoid corn oil, butter or other cooking fats that have a low smoking point. Canola oil is satisfactory, but not vegetable oil. It's not good for you anyway.

Ingredients
1 medium-sized cauliflower
3 white/boiling potatoes diced into 3/4-in cubes
2 tbsp chopped ginger
2 tbsp sunflower/safflower oil OR clarified butter/ghee.
A pinch of turmeric (for color)
1/2 tsp red chili powder
1 tbsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper (freshly ground)
1 tbsp chopped cilantro [optional]

Preparation
1. Wash the cauliflower, pat it dry, and break it into small florets about half the size of a golf ball. Discard the stems, or if you want to use them, peel the skin off of them.
2. Peel and dice the potatoes into 3/4-inch cubes
3. Heat the oil in the wok at medium-high heat for about a minute, and then drop the cauliflower florets in. Add a pinch of turmeric and toss for 3-4 minutes to coat the florets evenly with oil.
4. Drop in the potatoes, ginger and spices, and toss for 3-4 minutes to coat the potatoes with oil as well. The goal is to evenly coat the vegetables with a thin layer of oil, so they would not burn, and get dry-braised.
5. Reduce the heat to medium, and cook covered for 10 minutes. Note that depending on your utensil and heat source, cauliflower may brown in 10 minutes. In general, use medium-low heat when using a utensil that retains heat (such as a cast iron pot) and medium heat when cooking in a utensil that loses heat fast (such as Aluminum).
6. Stir once. There should be no burning of the cauliflower at this stage. Reduce the heat to low, and cook covered for 15 minutes.
7. If the cauliflower does not yield readily to bite, cook covered on low heat for another 5 minutes.
8. When the cauliflower yields to a bite (you don't want it to be mushy), turn off the heat, sprinkle chopped cilantro, replace the lid, and leave the utensil covered for another 5 minutes. If using a heavy cast iron utensil, leave the lid slightly ajar.

As you can see, the recipe is not as simple as dropping vegetables and spices in water and boiling the heck out of them with curry powder. Making good Aloo Gobi where cauliflower florets and potatoes hold their shape and are cooked perfectly takes practice, and a lot of it. But the taste is worth it.

Recipe: Guacamole

There are plenty of guacamole enthusiasts in the US. The authentic Mexican variety is more like a sauce, but in the US the predominant version is thick and chunky. I have seen many weird recipes for guacamole, with all sorts of bells and whistles, but I like my version best. Most good things in life are simple. Guacamole should bring the flavor of avocado to the front, and nothing else should be allowed to mask it. You want to choose an avocado that yields to your fingers, is not brown inside, and can be spread with a butter knife without too much effort.

Ingredients
2 Haas Avocados, peeled and pitted
2 tablespoons lime juice (or lemon juice), OR
Juice of 1 medium lime
A pinch of salt
1 tbsp finely chopped shallot OR red onion [Optional]

Preparation
Put all ingredients in a food processor, or use mortar and pestle. Mix.

Variations
There are many variations. My favorite is to add 1 deseeded chili pepper (Arbol or Thai). I don't like tomatoes in my guacamole. There is something called salsa and it utilizes tomatoes quite well.

The Curry Craze

Curry is rampant in the US now. It conquered the UK decades ago, and is now invading the country across the pond. Therefore everyone wants to cook Indian food now. Even Julia Child's old and seminal French cookbook Mastering the art of French Cooking had many dishes with curry powder. I have seen many Indian restaurants in Paris, in Amsterdam and even all over Germany. That means everyone is telling everyone else how to make Indian food. Including many first-generation Indians who are very proud at having found something they're better than the Westerners at. Indians have major complexes about Europeans and European-Americans and European-Australians.

Funny recipes
I find the recipes quite funny. Almost all recipes ask you to fry onion, garlic, ginger and chili peppers. And then they ask for adding tomatoes. And then they ask you to add turmeric, red chili powder, garam masala and cumin seeds. To everything you cook. They also stipulate you garnish with cilantro. Even spinach and other greens are garnished by cilantro. It makes no sense gastronomically or visually. This is also a bit of a joke because at least 50 percent of Indians do not eat garlic, and many don't like ginger. Very few Indian dishes have cumin seeds in them, and even when cumin seeds are present, they're the last addition. Well, maybe the second after the garam masala which is added just before serving.
Such recipes give the impression that the base of all Indian food is the same. I have read that in many places. All curries have the same base. Why do we have different curries then, I wonder. It's just a comforting thought that you have distilled the Indian cuisine with one base -- like summarizing French cuisine by béchamel sauce.

Please don't fry spices in oil
My pet peeve is with people recommending frying spices in oil. It is not at all canon, and very few home cooks in India other than the aspirational ones do it. You are not supposed to fry all the spices in oil. Roast some spices on a very hot plate, yes, occasionally, but fry in oil, never. It paints your walls with a yellow patina and, of course, smells awful. Sadly it makes the taste worse, as the aromatic compounds in spices are borne away with oil vapor before they get a chance to bond with the food. Frying a little too long can mar a dish.

Bad recipes
Some recipes are just plain bad. They have you use ricotta cheese to make Kulfi. Others ask you to use heavy cream and whip the hell out of it. That's ice cream, and not good ice cream, with far more volume taken up by air than by milk solids. To make kulfi, you have to slowly simmer milk, till it thickens enough to lightly coat a spoon. I feel sorry for those who ate ricotta cheese kulfi. I associate ricotta cheese with body-builders who want to eat a lot of protein. I can't imagine them eating kulfi.

Rachael Ray version of Indian food is alive and well
The Indian recipes floating around are like Rachael Ray's Turdy Minute Meals (Get it? Thir-ty Minute Meals) where a lot of ingredients are thrown in and massive busywork is shown to produce something that does not look pretty. And probably tastes even worse.

My recommendation
My approach to cooking Indian food or any kind of food really is simple. Use fresh ingredients. Do not overcook meat or vegetables. Remove the scum when you make a broth. Add spices at the end, after you are satisfied with the saltiness. Cilantro loses its flavor when it's boiled for even one minute. Don't overdo cilantro. And seek balance.