Monisha Bharadwaj - Indian Cooking For Dummies

14 Supplemental Images

15 Connect with Dummies

16 End User License Agreement

1 Chapter 4 TABLE 4-1 Buying Spices TABLE 4-2 Buying Grains TABLE 4-3 Buying Flavorings TABLE 4-4 Buying Lentils, Beans, and Legumes TABLE 4-5 Buying Cooking Oils TABLE 4-6 Buying Eggplant

2 Chapter 5TABLE 5-1 How Marinating Works

3 Chapter 6TABLE 6-1 Spice Measurements

1 Chapter 3FIGURE 3-1: An Indian rolling pin. FIGURE 3-2: Karahis. FIGURE 3-3: A tava. FIGURE 3-4: A dosa pan. FIGURE 3-5: A spice tin.

2 Chapter 6FIGURE 6-1: How to grate a tomato. FIGURE 6-2: How to dice an onion. FIGURE 6-3: How to slice and dice a chile.

3 Chapter 18FIGURE 18-1: How to fold a samosa.

4 Chapter 19FIGURE 19-1: How to roll and fold a stuffed paratha.

5 Chapter 20FIGURE 20-1: How to peel and chop a mango.

1 Cover

2 Title Page

3 Copyright

4 Table of Contents

5 Begin Reading

6 Appendix: Metric Conversion Guide

7 Index

8 About the Author

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If you’ve eaten some amazing Indian food and you now want to re-create it in your own kitchen, this is the book for you! You’ve probably done some research and maybe you don’t know where to begin — everything looks so complicated!

Indian cooking is complex. After all, the country is not just vast but also very diverse, with numerous languages, religious beliefs, geographical differences, and social and cultural practices. The key to understanding where to begin is to respect this diversity — and to begin slowly and simply.

You don’t need to create a feast the first time you try to cook an Indian meal. You don’t need to pound your own spices every time you cook — store-bought spices, when stored properly, are fine to use. The availability of common ingredients makes Indian cooking easier than ever before!

Cooking Indian food is both a science and an art. You use your senses to smell the spices, your ears to hear them pop, and your eyes to see the colors change. You need the confidence to throw in the ginger and garlic at the right time and to get the consistency of curry pastes just right. In this book, I help you build that confidence so that you’ll be up to cooking your Indian dinner, home style, in no time at all.

Think of this book as my voice in your kitchen as we create the perfect Indian meal together. I show you how to master the basic techniques, use spices for balance and flavor, and stock your pantry with key ingredients that you may never have cooked with before. I take you on a culinary tour of India, which will help you understand why I talk about regional differences throughout this book.

In this book, you learn to cook rice perfectly and to make Indian breads, even one that takes just 20 minutes from start to finish! With this book by your side, you’ll feel confident about how to put the building blocks of a curry together to make one that’s full of depth of flavor and not just heat. I also show you how to cook a range of Indian vegetarian dishes that can be served as main meals. I’ve included recipes that I cook at home — family favorites that will hopefully become favorites of yours, too. These 125 recipes will help you put together various menus — from a weeknight dinner to an extravagant thali meal for your friends, where lots of little dishes make up a feast. I include recipes for breakfasts, chutneys, snacks, and desserts, giving you lots of inspiration to embrace Indian food beyond what you’d expect to see in a restaurant.