Indian Recipes

[literati]

I just saw that one of our members (Sol) cooks Indian regularly. I hope she will post in this thread along with anyone else who has tried-and-true recipes. I love Indian and would like to add more dishes to my repertoire.

[Bloomwood]

I would love to see recipes! The extent of my ability is the simmer sauces and frozen naan at Trader Joe's. I love Indian food.

[Sol]

Heh, I'm here :) I cook South Indian (vegetarian) food pretty much every day, since my husband is Indian. I have pictures and steps (e.g. how to make ghee or paneer step-by-step) in another forum, so if there's anything in particular you'd like to see, let me know and I can post it here. I haven't been cooking for long, and I don't know much about recipes from other parts of India, but so far it's been fun.

You might want to visit www.nandyala.com/mahanandi It's the Indian cooking blog as far as I know. However, the recipes are from Andhra Pradesh, so they're usually not my (Tamilian) husband's favorites.

[literati]

Thanks, I'll check out the blog and check back with any questions.

[heather 8^)]

Sol, I'd love to see some recipes! Mmm... homemade paneer sounds divine. If I could learn to make good Indian food, I'd be in heaven (though probably very overweight)! :D

BTW, just wanted to mention that the website you referenced should be .org (the other one is a rip-off/domain-for-sale thing):

http://www.nandyala.org/mahanandi/

Thanks for the link, though... I'd never heard of it before and it looks yummy!

[Sol]

Oops, thanks a lot for the correction!

Homemade paneer is super easy, since all you need to do is hang it from a cheesecloth and wait. And, believe it or not, most of the Indian food I cook is very low in calories, since I don't fry much. Usually I prepare one lentil-based dish (sambhar, rasam, rasavangi, etc.) with basmati rice, one or two vegetable curries, some chutney and something crunchy (usually store-bought pappadums) per meal. I like to throw in some dessert, but my husband says I'm spoiling him and dessert is just for important occassions. I like making them, though. The desserts can be on the heavy side, since they're sugar and ghee-based, but the rest of the meal is really lean.

[heather 8^)]

Ooh, I meant to come back here sooner but got tied up (actually working at WORK)! ;) So how good/authentic can the food be made here? I think I only know of one specialty Indian grocery in the area, and I don't want to make the poor gal's imitation of yummy Indian food and be all disappointed. Mmm... veggie curries... if I could make that, my husband would accuse me of spoiling him, too! :D

[Sol]

Well, we do buy several ingredients at the Indian store, and we get the special spice mixes directly from my mother-in-law in India, but I've seen that many middle-Eastern stores and even big supermarkets have quite a few basics. And there's always online Indian stores in US that deliver if you're serious about getting the ideal ingredients.

At least to make South Indian dishes it'd be necessary to get mustard seeds, yellow lentils or pigeon peas, cumin seeds, curry powder, turmeric powder and tamarind or tamarind paste, and some basic spice mixes (sambhar and rasam mix). The rest of the ingredients can be omitted or changed without problems. And if you want to make sweets, you'll need ghee (I make my own from plain unsalted butter, it's very simple) and more times than not, green cardamom pods. The Indian stores usually have much better prices than the supermarket, though.

For example, our Indian store shopping list this month includes:
basmati or jasmine rice (we buy it in a 5 lb bag, much much cheaper than at the supermarket)
chana dal and toor dal (lentils)
karhi leaves (fresh green leaves)
tamarind paste
jaggery

With this, spices and some vegetables (usually red onion, potatos, tomatos, okra, green beans, and brussel sprouts), nuts, raisins and buttermilk, we have enough ingredients to cook daily for a month.

[Sol]

Bumping this up, since I took some pics. I've just spent a few hours in the kitchen after a week or so of quick curries, so hopefully today we'll have a fancier meal.

I have some dal soaking to make adai (lentil pancakes). I don't do pancakes very often because the 24 hr. fermentation process just escapes me. But these need just a 4 hour soak.

So, in the meantime I made some rasam (tangy tomato soup with lentils):

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v354/Sol_solved/rasam.jpg3

(Cooked toor dal in the pressure cooker. Once ready, put oil, popped mustard seeds, added cubed tomatos, then water, tamarind paste, the dal, salt and rasam powder. Simmered for half an hour).

some sweet potato curry:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v354/Sol_solved/sweetpotatocurry.jpg

(Boiled a sweet potato, put oil, popped mustard seeds and chana dal, added sambar powder, karhi leaves, salt, and fried the sweet potato cubes)

sundal (garbanzo beans with coriander-chili paste)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v354/Sol_solved/sundal.jpg

(Rinsed the garbanzo beans, boiled them in a bit of water, rinsed again. Added them to a pan with oil and popped mustard seeds and karhi leaves, added coriander-chilli powder and asafetida.)

and since I had enough time, I put milk to boil and after two hours added some jaggery (sugar works too) to make pala kova. I think it's not dark enough, but I was getting a bit fed up with it :D

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v354/Sol_solved/paal.jpg

We have coconut chutney and pakoras in the freezer as snack, and there's a couple vegetable curries left (I think spinach and cauliflower-yellow pepper), in case just sweet potatoes is too heavy.

[Bloomwood]

sol - I'm so impressed with your cooking. In particular because I believe you said you don't eat it, you just cook it for your husband. The food in your photos look delicious!

[jki]

Sol- That looks amazing! The blog you posted looks great as well.

We used to live in San Francisco and ate Indian food at least once per week - I love it! We now live in the suburbs and it just isn't the same, it's not convenient and it's expensive. I usually buy pastes or mixes from Sukhi's (http://retail.sukhis.com/shop.html) to satisfy my cravings. They're decent (much better than TJ's), but not amazing.

[Sol]

Thanks! Yes, unfortunately I don't have a palate for flavorful foods. It's been a bit over two months of daily cooking now and I still don't feel like trying anything. My dinner tonight will consist of two slices of whole wheat bread and a yogurt.

But I enjoy the cooking, and my husband eats whatever I cook without a complaint (the first time I made rasam I didn't remove the inedible tamarind seeds, and he didn't say a thing! :D), so that makes it a lot easier too.

My in-laws will be here next month, so I imagine I will learn quite a few secrets. Thankfully that blog I posted is awesome, even if it's not the particular cuisine DH likes, but I have to say that my pancakes right now are coming out great only because of Mahanandi's trick to rub the pan with half an onion between batches.