Indian Kitchen
We spent a couple of extra days in Udaipur after Christmas to enjoy the atmosphere and to take a cooking class. We’ve grown to love Indian food, and I wasn’t convinced that I could create any of these amazing dishes by simply following a recipe. So Fabien and I signed for 4 hours of intensive cooking lessons at the Art Loft, an art and cooking school. We started with an Indian staple, masala chai. This is the famous Indian milk tea made with black tea, milk, a lot of sugar and a blend of spices including black pepper, cinnamon, dried ginger and green cardamon. You can get this at Starbucks now, but it doesn’t compare to the real thing, and here they’d never dream of charging you $4 for a cup. From chai we moved on to pakora, which is basically vegetables fried with spices (it’s similar to Japanese tempura but a bit heavier.) If done right, it’s delicious. We also had a little lesson in Indian spices and how to mix them. The staple of any Indian dish is “garam masala” or “hot spice mix.” This is not to say that you can’t enjoy Indian food without lighting your mouth on fire.
Then we learned to make one of my favorite dishes, palak paneer. Palak paneer is a spinach tomato curry with chunks of paneer (Indian cheese- like cottage cheese with the consistency of mozzarella.) This is the point we learned that while garam masala gives Indian dishes their kick, it’s vegetable oil and lot’s of it that makes them so savoury…and fattening. We learned to make several other curries, including a mixed vegetable curry with pineapple, Bhurta (eggplant curry)- this one we roasted the eggplants over gas on top of the stove giving them a smoky flavor, and paneer butter masala (which is buttery and cheesy like the name.) Each of the dishes was quite labor intensive; only fresh vegetables are used and spice is added to taste (some ground/some fresh.) Putting it all together is a bit like chemistry lab, the end result is based on getting the right amount of the right thing in at the right time. Everything we made (or more our teacher guided us to make) turned out delicious.
The last part of our cooking lesson was Indian breads: chapati, naan and tandoori roti. Indian breads are quite simple (no yeast in chapati), just wheat flour and water cooked in a hot pan then finished off over the open flame. We also learned to make naan (Fab’s favorite)…naan is made with flour and baking powder and cooked in a tandoori oven (Indian BBQ.)
That was plenty for 4 hours. We were quite happy to learn some north Indian dishes, I picked up a big Indian cookbook in Mumbai, so I can start experimenting on my own. Tandoori chicken is a must and south Indian masala dosa (a giant chickpea flour pancake stuffed with spicy potatoes and coconut chutney.) Yum.
Bon appetit.
Tags: BIG TRIP 2005-2006, In English 2005-2006, India
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