Indian Food 101
 

Here, I started another thread so we won't gunk up the Thanksgiving thread anymore, and so I could find it, you know, instead if having it buried . . . oh, whatever.

SO! SG and Dana and all of our other people who know such things are gonna help us discover Indian food.

Here is the menu from the restaurant Bri and I are most likely to visit, as it's the one near our campus:
http://www.amarindiadayton.com/OurMenu.htm

Tell us what to order. I like spicy stuff.

Honestly, for your first time, I'd go with something basic:

Vegetable Samosas
Nan (or Onion Nan, or Garlic Nan)
Chicken Curry


Oooh, except now I see that they offer combination plates! Go with the #2 Dinner Specialty (Non-Vegetarian Special Thal,) that's a nice broad sampling, and you can never go wrong by including dessert!

There's a book out there, something like "Indian Food" with 5 spices -- or 5 ingredients? that I've always wanted to get. There are so many spices and ingredients you have to get and use, it's a bit intimidating. And expensive. Fortunately, I have two Indian groceries within 5 miles of my house. They are a great place to buy spices and other groceries in bulk. I'd like to know how to make a basic, not too hot, curry.

I concur with Clod.
The best way to start is the cheapest - go for the Special, and if necessary write down what you like and don't like. That way you can start ordering off the menu if/ when you go again. If your visits are infrequent it can be baffling next time.
Do look up the dishes to check their individual attributes though. If you have a problem with a specific dish (as I see they don't allow substitutions - the meanies) then it might be worth putting together your own menu.

Noteable (ie missing) exceptions: Shami Kebab, Prawn on Puri, Onion Bhaji as starters, any Bhuna or Balti or dish containing pineapple as mains and Keema Naan as a side. They're staples here.

Impressed by the level of description and prevelance of onion and tomato based dishes.
But the standard spelling mistakes/ difference in spelling of dish between one section and another are there. That is very authentic!

The breads are also more wide ranging than a typical Southern (England) Indian.

Don't be put off by the description of Gulab Jamon btw.
If you have a sweet tooth you will love it.
It's two dense, sticky, spongy balls in syrup. Very, very similar to Golden Syrup over here. My sweet-toothed ex adored it. Panir (paneer) is a cheese, technically. But not a cheesy cheese. Most like tofu, in that it treads the line between savoury and sweet.

If I were to put together a meal I would be eating with you (and therefore totally biased towards my tastes) we would have:
- A Mixed Platter to start
- Parpadumms x 2 (spellings vary)
- Side dishes of Raita, Hot Pickles and Mango Chutney (for the poppadoms - think of them as chips & dips)
- Nan and Garlic Nan (figure one nan a person, but I'll be leaving you to trough the poppadoms)

- Dal Makhani as a side, though I'll be asking for Tarka Dal (with garlic)
- Aloo Choley as a side

- Chicken Jalfrezi
- Chicken Tikka Masala (a dish specifically created for the British market)
- Plain Rice

As I said, the above reflects my personal view, but although I never order Chicken Tikka Masala if I was choosing purely for myself, it's a useful gateway dish to newbs. And poppadoms and pickles are also a good start (they are quite expensive on that menu though).

Bear in mind my suggested menu was for three people.
I usually have a starter, a main and a naan if alone.
I'm not a fan of rice or poppadoms. At least not enought to pay for them!
I love the vegetable sides, but would only order if I was able to share one.
Indians & Pakistanis are like Irish mothers - they really want to feed you.
Most people I know order far too much in British Indian restaurants.
I can only imagine how much bigger portions would be in America!

You'll just have to suck it and see.

Finally, thanks for letting us share this experince/ poke our noses in!
PLEASE take a camera. For the food even if you prefer not to show yourselves.
And I'm so seething with jealousy you could cook a chapatti on me right now - I'd love to be there with the two of you when it happens :yum:

Or, go for their lunchtime buffet. Gives you a chance to try out a few different things without costing the earth.

Actually I think the prices are pretty reasonable. Definitely comparable to any of the billions of hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurants found in any strip mall. :)

If you go for buffet, it's even more important to write down what you like.
You won't remember it, and neither will the staff :)

ETA - the prices seem reasonable to me too.
I think Dana was trying to make sure you had the best options for the money.

The only thing slightly off kilter for me was the dips - here we get them free when ordering poppadoms. Or perhaps I should say they are ordered as a package (four - with chopped onions making up the square).

Wow! I can't wait!

The prices look absolutely fine, but if you are looking to try out a few different things it's surprising how quickly the bill can add up. Also, if you don't know what you are or are not going to like, a buffet means you can just try a little of something and have more if you like it. You're not left with an entire bowl of curry if you find you don't like something.

It all looks really good to me. I like lots of veggies.

If we go in the evening or on a weekend, I'd like to bring my daughter too. My son and hubby won't eat that stuff, but daughter is more adventurous. And if it has potatoes in it, she's happy.

I did try curry once; there was curry something-or-other on the buffet at one of those Disney buffets. Must have been that African place in Animal Kingdom. I don't recall being impressed at all, I expected it to be a little spicy and it wasn't, didn't have much flavor at all. But it's not as though it was a specialty dish. :)

I've got that book! It's pretty awesome, and has some fun recipes in it. We like the cashew chicken one and make it frequently.

(It's here on Amazon if you want to check it out)

I've given it as a gift to 'Indian Newbies" and they've all found one or two dishes in it to enjoy as well.

Our favorites when we go out? Butter Chicken and Tandori chicken...and the Nann ...gotta have the Nann!

Whatever you get, do try a mango lassi with it. It's the perfect beverage to go with the spice.

We like to make our own. It is very good. We get all our ingredients that are Indian specific from a local Indian Grocery.

Favorites in my family: Chicken Tikka (Masala), Chicken (Shahi) Korma, Lamb Vindallo, Chicken Biryani, Malai Kofte, Saag Paneer, Aloo Choley, Garlic Naan, Paneer Naan.

Most of the desserts are foul. Gulab Jamun (if you like donuts) and Mango Kulfi can be good.

I agree with the others that buffet is a great way to get introduced. If you go for dinner, then make sure everyone orders something and is happy to share. You'll probably get better quality that way, too. Indian food is often served in a sharing friendly dish, where everyone can pull a sample onto their own plate.

Here is another place, this one right up the road from me. Bri, it's near Dayton Mall.
http://www.kohinoorpalace.com/Menu.aspx

Ooh, this one is in Mason, and has a lunch buffet.
http://www.rajaindiarestaurant.com/

LAF I enjoy it when somebody says a thing is "foul" Perry. I agree though. It's weird how this different culture has come up with things for dessert that we in the western world find appalling. Yay, it's dessert! *taste* holy shit, that's foul!

Pistachio ice cream seems pretty safe. I don't know what rose water is, though. I don't know why you'd want to put *water* on ice cream, so I'm assuming it's sort of a syrup like rose hip jelly?

One of the things my parents did to me that I'm still bitter about is to ruin me on Indian food for years. They would occasionally go on campaigns to force new foods upon us, and at some point they took us to an Indian restaurant. Since I had no idea what to order, they ordered for me. To this day I don't know what they got me, but it was disgusting. All vegetables, in an incredibly spicy and somehow slightly bitter sauce.

So I thought I hated Indian food. I didn't find out how wrong I was until college, when I got invited on a date and was too chicken to tell the guy I hated Indian food. Of course I loved everything on my random sampler plate that I ordered, which was of course made up of basic, crowd-pleasing dishes. I don't know what in the hell my mom and stepdad were thinking--I honestly suspect they were expecting me to say I hated it no matter what, so they got me something weird to punish me.

None of which applies to you, Juniper, because I'm sure you're not into subconsciously torturing your daughter. I just thought I'd share. :)

I love Indian desserts. I love the festival and celebration sweets and I love the after dinner desserts. Ras malai is wonderful, gulab jamons are a taste of childhood and my Grandfather used to make the best kulfi I have ever tasted.

Rose water was something Gran used a lot in cooking. She used to make all sorts of Indian sweets. It's also a feature of some English dishes.

Oh, no no no. If I were into torturing my kids, I'd bring my son along. He is very picky. I do like him to try new foods, but it's a very slow process and I won't force him to do more than taste things.

My daughter is pretty adventurous. I took her to this one restaurant a while back - Cena, I think it was called - and it was really weird. Buffet style sides, and then these people came around to tables with meat and carved you a little bit - different kinds in rotation. We enjoyed it but I'm not sure we'll go back. Still, she took it like a real trouper.

I also need to take her to the German restaurant in Newport. She's taking German this year (and also had classes half of last year) and is really fascinated with the culture.

I love to open their horizons. But you have to tailor the experiences to the kid's interests. For my daughter, food is the path to her heart. My son is more interested in art and music. Fortunately, I love it all.

Juni - that place by the mall looks like they've got an extensive menu....

I don't know about you all.

That isn't Indian food. :headshake

I know. It makes me sad, but I've never had authentic Indian food. None of my Indian friends in school were interested in cooking and I've never been to India.

I want to live in India. I just don't see how I can make that happen in the foreseeable future... An old boss of mine joined an Ashram in the 60s and lived in India for years (she married an Indian, too). She loved it there, except for all of the weight she gained.

Rose Water is the main flavour ingredient in 'turkish delight' aside from sugar. It's used in triffle sometimes instead of sherry if you're catering for a younger audience.

I have it in my pantry and use it to flavour chantilly cream sometimes if I'm serving something like sponge cake with strawberries as an example.

Juniper, you may have hit a Brazilian BBQ type restaurant -- I've seen that kind of presentation done.

It is really easy to miss the boat on a curry dish if you're really not sure what you're doing with it. Main thing is don't be timid, spoon it in there! There's a red curry powder recipe without turmeric (add it in if desired) in the Recipe Thread, p.6, post 86. A secret to making curry people say "wow" over is to grind it up that afternoon, from the seeds the stuff is mostly made of. Right down to the fenugreek, if you can. The perfume of fresh-bashed coriander and cardamom goes all through the house. Curry powder should be used in some quantity, or you don't get the proper effect. Toss the powder in the pan just before you add whatever it is you are currying, as the heat of course releases some flavor from the mixture and puts it right into the dish. It's about the same amount of time as it takes to bless some minced garlic -- about 30 seconds, then get the rest of the stuff in that pan and stir.

these restaurants aren't Indian????

There are many different types of Indian food, in the same way there are many different types of Chinese food.

In Britain, Northern Indian cuisine cooked by Bangladeshi's predominates. It has been tweaked for a Western market, but the origins and ingredients are still Indian.

My co-workers would cook dishes very similar to these (butter chicken for example) every Eid/ Diwali. And although the recipes my friend would bring in nearly every day (she worried I wasn't eating properly) were not on this menu, they were along the same lines in terms of ingredients. She used to make fried chicken especially for me - a milder version than the one her and her husband were eating, giving the lie to the "leftovers" idea - and it would be hot enough to make my nose run.

I've eaten in restaurants where mine is the only white face, and the food is not dissimilar. The curries I ate in Sri Lanka were different for sure, and when the vegetarian Southern Indian restaurant opened around the corner from work I found the dishes has a similar style.

What would you consider Indian, Pie?
I'd love to have some recipes from a part of India I'm unfamiliar with.

The food my gran cooked was very similar to the stuff you talk about Sundae. Though that was a combination of Indian and anglo-Indian.

Having thought again - many of the dishes named were not referred to as such by my friends. Perhaps it is simply an issue of names? They tended to simply say a chicken dish, a lamb dish, baked fish with lentils, or onions, or ginger or cream etc.

Or murgh/ gosht curry.

By chance, we recently picked up a copy of Curries and Bugles: A Memoir and a Cookbook of the British Raj by Jennifer Brennan. There's some rare old stuff in there. A recipe for homebuilding your own ketchup starting with 10 pounds of tomatoes. Recipes each with their own individual curry mix. How to make your own papadams. Rendering only moderately youthful mutton more edible by parboiling before roasting. The intelligent use of ghee. Of garam masala too. A scattering of quaint little old advertisements -- anybody know what Hayward's Military Pickle was like, or could offer authoritative opinion on what made it and Hayward's Military Sauce so military? Hayward's apparently no longer make Military Pickle, though small-batch makers may apparently be found through the Net.

(I've been imagining these beret-sporting, DPM-uniformed Armoured guys eating Military Pickle with lunch on Salisbury Plain -- and enjoying an immense raise of morale thereby.)

Random thought: chileheaded Indians might really like a plate of nice zippy Buffalo wings. Properly, it needs the capitalization, having been devised in that upstate New York city.

A reference to one Mary Nowak with a Military Pickle recipe here from 2007 -- don't think it's a complete recipe, though. No vinegar? No brine? Turmeric and ginger, okay...

Rose Farms and Farmhouse Products offer it in jars.

Indian Food 101
 

Heap big roasted Buffalo and maize.;)

Pass um Di-Gel.

Military Pickle -- A Recipe
 

Woot! Dead-tree comes through where the 'Net forbore to tread! The Kenya Cookery Book and Household Guide, 1928 (twelfth ed., 1958) has this for

Military Pickle (and remarks)

1 marrow, fair sized (zucchini or other long squash)
1 lb (500g) cauliflower florets, left so you can appreciate that it's cauliflower
1 lb (500g) French beans (haricots? green beans? both?)
7 chile peppers (presumably fresh, green or ripe)
1 oz (30g) ginger, chopped fine or minced
1 1/4 C flour (the Brit-ism has it 1 breakfast cup, 1.2 C/284ml) -- scanted
1 cucumber
1 lb (500g) onions
1 lb (500g) sugar
2 quarts/up to 2.5L vinegar (conversion seems in error here, perhaps a maximum amount is intended to be given -- well, this ain't rocket surgery)
1 oz (30g) turmeric powder

salt to draw -- almost like brining
Chef knife, saucepan, jars/lids

Cut vegetables small, cover with the salt, leave for 12 hours then drain. Put veggies into saucepan, add vinegar, boil 6 min. Mix powdered ingredients to a smooth paste (in a little vinegar, I suppose) and add to veggies while they boil. Boil or simmer all together for 30 min at least, stirring frequently to prevent any burning.

Put into jars, put up as in canning: sterilization procedures and all. Apparently usable at once, no doubt some nuances come with ageing. Said to be damn fine with strong Cheddar... say, Wensleydale, a crumbly, somewhat sour cheese of the white cheddar description. (Is it true Wallace and Gromit rescued the entire English Wensleydale industry?)

Ball Blue Book would not approve of canning anything with flour in the mixture. Just sayin' :)

Wensleydale is not a variety of Cheddar.

I can see how it might look a little like a 'white cheddar' as you would call it, but it is an entirely different cheese. White cheddar is just cheddar that hasn't been coloured.

The stuff tastes cheddary to me, and the texture is not dissimilar either. The distinctive part is its sour note, along with its not inconsiderable strength and sharpness, again the sort of thing I get out of a cheddar -- about medium-sharp. It seems altogether a most English cheese -- as contrasted with the French style(s). Not so?

Juniper, I'll bet the flour is in there to thicken, and that cornstarch (likely not substituted 1:1) would do just fine for that too, if you figure flour is a bad idea. I've never canned, so I don't have an informed view.

The amount of flour seems rather a lot for that job, even with a couple quarts of vinegar and three or four pounds of assorted vegetables in the mix.

And the whole doggoned thing sounds temptingly fun to mess up the kitchen with. Wonder if I would go for more chilis in it...?

Well, yes I can see that there are certain similarities. But to me Wensleydale tastes a little more like Cheshire cheese than Cheddar. I guess when compared to French cheese they probably all taste more similar than different. But that just means they all have an English taste, not that they all taste of Cheddar. I was just pointing out that Wensleydale is not a variety of Cheddar. They are two distinct English cheeses.

I can see how the pickle would taste good with a strong Cheddar OR Wensleydale (or both). You're right, UG, in that the distinction in Wensleydale is its slightly sour note. I think that sets it apart from Cheddar though - which to me has a sweeter flavour.

Wensleydale was never under threat, it's a supermarket staple here. You might be thinking of Wallace and Gromit's The Curse of the Were-Rabbit which brought an enormous surge in popularity for Stinking Bishop cheese. It's only made on one farm and demand oustripped supply for a long time afterwards.

I looked it up, and evidently it's OK to add flour or cornstarch to high-acid foods before canning. Pickles would seem to fit right into this, so never mind!

All I've ever canned is tomatoes, fruits, green beans and zucchini relish. Call me the voice of semi-experience. ;)

I know in England there's a strictly controlled limit, on what can be called Cheddar cheese. But to us feriners, Cheddar covers a wide array of tastes. It varies greatly due to the milk used, pasturized or not, butterfat content, etc. Also the time of year it was made, how it was aged, and a host of other things affect the taste.

Starting when my mother was a baby, the family would trek to the Crowley Cheese Factory in Healdville, Vermont (featured on Dirty Jobs), and buy 33 lb wheels of Colby Cheddar, twice a year. They've even replicated the limestone caves you have, up there.

I'm currently hooked on a "New York" Cheddar, made in Wisconsin, I get from a little store in Elmer New Jersey, for $10 a pound. It's marvelous, but probably different from what you call cheddar. :D

Sure, there's a zillion different definitions for what's 'Indian' food, just like... say, Italian, or Chinese. There are as many variations as there are grandmothers. :) However, most of what I see here is 'restaurant food', stuff no one would make or eat at home. Lots of grease and indigestion. :yelsick:

I'm south Indian (by genetics, at least!) so I'd consider 'real' Indian food to be iddlies, dosas, sambar, rasam, paruppu, dry veggie curries, yogurt or buttermilk. Lots of plain basmati rice. Uthappams, upma, fresh fruit. No sweets unless it's a festival day. (Sweets were a brit invention dontchaknow, but would include laddu, milk kova, coconut laddu.) Gonkura pickle, lemon pickle, my grandmother's hot mango pickle. Aviyal. Sweet or mooru kolambu. Thayir sadam. Khichdi. Murukkus. Coconut, coriander, onion or gonkura pachadi. Ghee in moderation.

Veggies might include potals, eggplants, green beans, potatoes, capsicum, okra, tomatoes, bittergourd, sweet potato, onions, squash of different sorts, bananaflower, jackfruit... Mostly stir-fried with chilies, ginger, mustard seed, dried chilies, curry leaves and a few dried lentils and a pinch asafoetida. Note: curry leaves have nothing to do with curry powder.


Here, read this article.

I think most of what I ate at Gran's was effectively celebration food. She used to do the full banquet type thing. But that's because we were all there to eat, so it was a family get-together. What she cooked was a kind of hybrid of Indian food and British Raj influences.

No sweets till the Brits got there??? NONE??? *faints*

Carumba, they sound dangerous.:mg:

Thanks Pie. The vegetarian restaurant we went to used to sell Southern Indian food, so I'm familiar with many of the dishes on your list. And it is a very different style. Mum & Dad were so excited when I took them for a Thali.

You're right in that Northern dishes do seem to be a lot greasier.
Add that to the Brit-Indian need to serve everything in sauce (to replace the gravy that was ubiquitous when the first restaurants opened here) and I can see why it's a bit of a difference.

Here is a link to one of the most popular venues in Leicester for celebrations, The Jungle Club. Turn the music down!) Trust me, this is in the centre of an Asian area and most of the clientele are Asian. But then many of the Indian/ Pakistani people I know are Punjabi, Kashmiri or Gujarti.

I'm still not sure about your statement that it's not Indian though :P

It's a long-standing joke with one of my friends; he calls me 'poor southern trash' and I accuse him of eating north-Indian garbage. But neither of us is 'really' Indian anymore. As I say, I just play one on tv.

Pickle, in the Indian context, does not involve cucumbers. Just a crap-ton of chilies, salt, oil and spices. They are dangerous.:flamer:

I figured that restaurant Indian food was much the same as restaurant Chinese food. Or Mexican. Yummy, with funny names that make you feel all sophisticated and stuff if you can pronounce them, but not terribly authentic. Or healthy. But yummy.

I bought Mum some mango chutney for poppadoms.
I far prefer raita, or even onion salad. Dad likes brinjal pickle, but that is simply too dangerous to have in the house.

Anyway, turns out I bought "medium" chutney.
Which means it has a few limp-wristed spices in it.
Mum thinks it's too spicy :(
I can't even offer to eat it myself, too sweet for me. So I've suggested she has one piece with mango chutney & one piece with yoghurt. Seems to be working so far.

Finishing off another dhaal for tea tonight.
Is it wrong that I miss the layer of ghee floating on top?

Yes.

Yeah, that's what I figured... dangerous.:eek:

We know that, you're as American as pizza pie. :D

Dangerous? Now I'm imagining repeated dull, thudding explosions, bad language about the furnishings igniting filtering out through blast-broken windows, sooty rolling fireballs hovering above the row housing -- or above SundaeDad's recliner, and Simon Pegg rushing in in one of those small police cars from Hot Fuzz to find out what all the fuss is.

Yeah, I caught "Hot Fuzz" on cable last night, and laughed my acidophilus off.

You can just imagine Police Sergeant Nicholas Angel channeling Hoodwinked: 'They're evil!! I'll prove it!"

One of my favourite films!

Have you seen Shaun of the Dead yet Urbane?

Brinjal pickle (and lime pickle too) are not explosive on contact with air - silly. The bacteria in the human gut does prime them, but the explosion occurs at a porcelain level... if you get my drift. That and it feels like a red hot poker has been shoved up your jaxie.

Yay, glad you liked Hot Fuzz too.
It's in my Top Ten.

Pieces of SotD, yeah. Plenty of fun. Next time I'll actually try to see it from the beginning instead of surfing into it halfway through.

Chileheads say things like "If it burns going in and burns coming out, it was good!" Others make the bath echo with shouts of "Come on, ice creammmm!!!"

US patrol cars run to large sedans for their combination of stability at speed and luggage capacity to haul police gear around, including more batteries to run the lights off of when the engine is off. The latest new feature is LED light bars, very compact and low drag. Might pay for themselves in fuel consumption. I don't know if World's Wildest Police Videos plays in the UK, but it shows a lot of US police cruisers when they aren't showing a foreign segment. The famous shot with the road engineer giving an interview about safety improvements on a dual carriageway that hadn't previously been up to snuff -- and right in the middle of his remarks, a light-blue hatchback climbs the bank behind him and gets all crosswise -- that one gets regular play, I think because we like his "stiff upper lip under pressure" glance at the end of the segment.

Wrenching the topic back to food, it is now true US policemen are eating more bagels and fewer doughnuts. Quite in the police tradition -- round food, hole in the middle. Less fat and sugar.

This thread was so much fun, I'm resurrecting it for any further remarks, further adventures in Indian eating, etc.

Frozen Naan from Whole Foods (I think the manufacturer is Tandoori Kitchen, but I'm not sure) is surprisingly good.