Indian cooking is easy, trust me it is. Baking is tough, you have to find ingredients, measure them right, preheat on right temperature, too much technical issues that always fail for impatient people like me. Indian is fairly easy to follow. I was a lousy cook, started off with bitter spicy vegetables, chapatis with holes. Well when I think of it, those days still come when in my head I am cooking tasting a 5 star hotel buffet and it comes out like a leftover meal all of which was left :P
Still there are a few ways to go about it which might help people. In this post, lets make 4 courses of indian meal. Obviously time will be more if we have to indian store and find ingredients. For every section there will be options you can add to dish to make it more tasty.
Lets start the clock.
1) INDIAN CURRY :
There are two phases of curry making.
WHAT TO COOK
First one is getting vegetables ready to cook. Now some vegetables need boiling, some lentils need to be soaked overnight, some of them can be made in cooker, some of them taste better if you fry them after making masala which is second phase of curry making. Here is the chart to do what with which vegetable/lentil/beans.
2) GETTING MASALA READY
Now you can start off with two types of masala making-
a) MASALA1 : This one is mainly used for dry gravies where you want less water and more spices surrounding veggies.
http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1014830-baingan-bharta
Sometimes you don't add tomatoes to make it more dry and spicy.
http://www.cookingandme.com/2014/07/aloo-gobi-recipe-dry-aloo-gobi-recipe.html
So you can add any vegetable to be cooked after masala1 preparation and after about 10 minutes you are done. Just see that you don't overcook vegetables.
Examples what you can add after masala1- Cooked lentils, French beans cooked, Potato cabbage, potato cauliflower peas etc etc whatever you got in refrigerator.
b) MASALA2 : In this masala, we are looking to make gravy based recipe.
Grind onion, tomato, ginger, garlic, and chile pepper together in a food processor into a paste.Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Fry bay leaves in hot oil until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Pour the paste into the skillet and cook until the oil begins to separate from the mixture and is golden brown in color, 2 to 3 minutes. Season the mixture with chili powder, coriander, powder, gram masala, turmeric, and salt; cook and stir until very hot, 2 to 3 minutes.
Classic example of this masala
http://www.khanakhazana.com/recipes/view.aspx?id=2291
(Step 10 before step7)
Always add spices after onion tomato mixture begins to cook a bit. If you add it before, spices will burn.
That is it, yeah you just learned all indian curry cooking you need to learn. Rest comes from mistakes you make while preparing dishes :P
Now all the beans vegetables lentils in charts are cooked either of these ways. A few tips in end:
1) If you want your curry to be a little sour without tomato, add mango powder or anardana powder or tamarind paste.
2) For a bit of flair, add cilantro in the end for extra flavor.
3) You can mix and match vegetables with lentils and cook together. Opposquash or bottlegourd tastes better with chana dal in it.
4) Salt tomato sour ingredients inhibit veggie cooking. For some vegetables like bottlegourd, potato add sour ingredients and salt after its cooked. If you already cooked them, its cool.
5) For gravy based recipes, you can add mashed potato or portion of mashed boiled chickpea for chickpea masala recipe, kidneybean paste for kidneybean masala.
6) While making lentils, add spinach or kasuri methi after tomatoes. Cook for 5 minutes and add lentil. It tastes better.
7) My favorite masala1 options- cooked french bean, raw or boiled opposquash, raw or boiled chinese okra, raw potato cauliflower peas, Cooked raw jackfruit, Roasted eggplant, Tofu capsicum, boiled black eyed bean
8) For cooking hard vegetables like potato, bottlegourd add these after onions. When they look cooked, then add tomatoes spices.
9) My Masala2 options- boiled chickpea, boiled kidneybeans, boiled opposquash with lentil.
Simple aint it, just prepare masala, add cooked or raw veggies or beans or lentils, and then when it is done add cilantro.
Still there are a few ways to go about it which might help people. In this post, lets make 4 courses of indian meal. Obviously time will be more if we have to indian store and find ingredients. For every section there will be options you can add to dish to make it more tasty.
Lets start the clock.
1) INDIAN CURRY :
There are two phases of curry making.
WHAT TO COOK
First one is getting vegetables ready to cook. Now some vegetables need boiling, some lentils need to be soaked overnight, some of them can be made in cooker, some of them taste better if you fry them after making masala which is second phase of curry making. Here is the chart to do what with which vegetable/lentil/beans.
2) GETTING MASALA READY
Now you can start off with two types of masala making-
a) MASALA1 : This one is mainly used for dry gravies where you want less water and more spices surrounding veggies.
- Heat the oil in a skillet over medium-high heat; add the onion. Cook, stirring often, until the onion is golden brown, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and chiles and cook for another minute. Add the tomato, turmeric and salt. Cook until the tomato is soft, 5 minutes or so.
http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1014830-baingan-bharta
Sometimes you don't add tomatoes to make it more dry and spicy.
http://www.cookingandme.com/2014/07/aloo-gobi-recipe-dry-aloo-gobi-recipe.html
So you can add any vegetable to be cooked after masala1 preparation and after about 10 minutes you are done. Just see that you don't overcook vegetables.
Examples what you can add after masala1- Cooked lentils, French beans cooked, Potato cabbage, potato cauliflower peas etc etc whatever you got in refrigerator.
b) MASALA2 : In this masala, we are looking to make gravy based recipe.
Grind onion, tomato, ginger, garlic, and chile pepper together in a food processor into a paste.Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Fry bay leaves in hot oil until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Pour the paste into the skillet and cook until the oil begins to separate from the mixture and is golden brown in color, 2 to 3 minutes. Season the mixture with chili powder, coriander, powder, gram masala, turmeric, and salt; cook and stir until very hot, 2 to 3 minutes.
Classic example of this masala
http://www.khanakhazana.com/recipes/view.aspx?id=2291
(Step 10 before step7)
Always add spices after onion tomato mixture begins to cook a bit. If you add it before, spices will burn.
That is it, yeah you just learned all indian curry cooking you need to learn. Rest comes from mistakes you make while preparing dishes :P
Now all the beans vegetables lentils in charts are cooked either of these ways. A few tips in end:
1) If you want your curry to be a little sour without tomato, add mango powder or anardana powder or tamarind paste.
2) For a bit of flair, add cilantro in the end for extra flavor.
3) You can mix and match vegetables with lentils and cook together. Opposquash or bottlegourd tastes better with chana dal in it.
4) Salt tomato sour ingredients inhibit veggie cooking. For some vegetables like bottlegourd, potato add sour ingredients and salt after its cooked. If you already cooked them, its cool.
5) For gravy based recipes, you can add mashed potato or portion of mashed boiled chickpea for chickpea masala recipe, kidneybean paste for kidneybean masala.
6) While making lentils, add spinach or kasuri methi after tomatoes. Cook for 5 minutes and add lentil. It tastes better.
7) My favorite masala1 options- cooked french bean, raw or boiled opposquash, raw or boiled chinese okra, raw potato cauliflower peas, Cooked raw jackfruit, Roasted eggplant, Tofu capsicum, boiled black eyed bean
8) For cooking hard vegetables like potato, bottlegourd add these after onions. When they look cooked, then add tomatoes spices.
9) My Masala2 options- boiled chickpea, boiled kidneybeans, boiled opposquash with lentil.
Simple aint it, just prepare masala, add cooked or raw veggies or beans or lentils, and then when it is done add cilantro.
