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Introduction

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.

About This Book

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.

This book is a reference, which means you don’t have to read it from beginning to end and you don’t have to commit it to memory. Instead, you can dip into these pages over and over again to find the information you need.

Here are a few suggestions for getting the most out of the recipes in this book:

 Read each recipe from top to bottom before you make your grocery list to ensure you have all the ingredients you need.

 Keep a well-stocked pantry so you don’t need to buy every ingredient every time you cook. You don’t need a long list of spices — my recipes call for some key ones that you’ve probably heard of and just a few that you may not have.

 Prepare all the ingredients in the recipe before you begin cooking. You may find that you need tamarind pulp or chopped herbs and you’ll be more efficient and feel more confident if you have got it all ready before you turn on the heat.

 Don’t be afraid to personalize the recipes and make them your own. Standardization of recipes is not considered essential in India. There is a good measure of andaz (chef’s intuition). This intuition comes with confidence, and the more you cook the recipes, the easier you’ll find it to tweak them to your taste. I eat and write recipes with a medium level of heat, but if you prefer more or less heat, feel free to increase or decrease the amount of chile in a recipe.

 Remember that Indian meals have three to four dishes. I’ve written most of the recipes for three to four people, but you may think there isn’t enough to make a meal. Even if the quantities in each recipe look like they may not be enough, trust me — after you’ve combined a few items in a menu, you’ll have plenty of food to fill the number of people the recipe indicates.

 Scale a recipe up if you’re cooking for more people than the recipe feeds. As a guide, if you’re doubling a recipe, go double with the spices, too. Anywhere beyond doubling, I recommend adding half the quantity of spices for each double up. So, for example, if I were tripling a recipe, I would add 2½ times the amounts of all the spices instead of 3 times. You may need to adjust the levels a bit to suit your own taste (a pinch more chile powder or aromatic garam masala perhaps).

 Don’t be afraid to substitute ingredients with what’s available in your area. Some ingredients found in the West are different from those found in India, so in writing the recipes, I adapted them to achieve the flavor I was after. For example, the tomatoes I can get hold of for most of the year where I live, in England, are pale and watery — nothing like the red, juicy ones grown in tropical India. So, I use tomato paste or canned tomatoes for their intense color and flavor. If you can’t find an ingredient I mention, you can substitute it — just choose like for like. If the recipe calls for small mung lentils, for example, you could swap them for small red lentils, which are roughly the same size, but don’t use large beans because they’ll give a different taste and texture. Don’t worry, substituting ingredients will become easier with experience.

 Make sure you have the right equipment. Heavy frying pans and saucepans (see Chapter 3) will distribute heat evenly and won’t burn the food on the bottom.

 Pay special attention to your spices. Spices are pillars of Indian cooking.

 Remember that all temperatures are Fahrenheit. Refer to the Appendix for information about converting temperatures to Celsius.

 If you’re looking for a vegetarian recipe, look for the tomato icon (). All vegetarian recipes are marked with the tomato icon in the Recipes in This Chapter lists, as well as in the Recipes in This Book section, after the Table of Contents.

I provide the names of the recipes in the language of the region they come from. I also include rough English translations of the recipe titles, but just keep in mind that it’s difficult for these translations to completely reflect the subtle nuances of geography and social practice.

I hope that you’ll try some of the unfamiliar recipes and see how it easy it is to prepare them and how delicious they are!

One last thing to note: Within this book, you may note that some web addresses break across two lines of text. If you’re reading this book in print and want to visit one of these web pages, simply key in the web address exactly as it’s noted in the text, pretending as though the line break doesn’t exist. If you’re reading this as an e-book, you’ve got it easy — just click the web address to be taken directly to the web page.

Foolish Assumptions

In writing this book, I made a few assumptions about you, the reader:

 You’ve tasted Indian food, and you want to make it yourself.

 You have basic knowledge of preparing ingredients and cooking.

 You’re adventurous — you’re excited to learn some new skills, work with new ingredients, and get to know a cuisine like you’ve never known it before!

Icons Used in This Book

Throughout the book, you see icons in the margin. Here’s what each icon means:

The Tip icon marks information that can save you time, effort, and money, as well as give you alternative ways of preparing the same recipe.

I want you to become a confident Indian cook, which means I need you to pay special attention to some techniques that may be new to you. This information is so important that I want you to remember it. When that happens, I flag it with the Remember icon.

Think of the Warning icon as a big flashing sign telling you be careful. I use it when I think there’s a potential threat of getting something wrong.

So much about Indian food is context. I use the Cultural Wisdom icon when I want to point you to an interesting historical or cultural fact.

Beyond the Book

In addition to what you’re reading right now, this product comes with a free access-anywhere Cheat Sheet that includes tips on how to buy key Indian ingredients such as basmati rice, tamarind, and lentils; Indian cooking tools and techniques; and how to build a curry. To get this Cheat Sheet, go to www.dummies.com and type Indian Cooking For Dummies Cheat Sheet in the Search box.

Where to Go from Here

If this is your first attempt at cooking Indian food, start simply and read Part 2, which is all about common techniques, how to use Indian ingredients (including spices), how to build a curry, and how to bring a meal together. If you’re a bit of a pro at Indian cooking already, head straight for the recipes in Parts 3 and 4. Here, you find everything you need to plan your menu — from curries to rice, breads, sides, and desserts. Regardless of your experience, I suggest you read the bit about how to use spices in Chapter 8 for ideas on how to add more depth and flavor to your cooking.

I hope that this book will be your guide to exploring the many nuances of Indian cooking and will give the confidence to bring all those fabulously aromatic, spicy flavors to your own kitchen. Have fun!