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CHEF TALK |
About cooking, food, catering etc..
Why Indian Food is so perfectly confounding
I cook a lot of Indian food at home.
Indian food is probably my favourite cuisine. I spent four months travelling around India but still can't say I really know how to cook authentic Indian food.
There are far too many recipes! Most of them seem to translate to 'meat with vegetable' or 'spiced vegetable and meat'
In the hope that I will finally understand, I follow the recipes accurately.
I do not have the wealth of experience and knowledge to be able to improvise & be able to produce authentic Indian food.
We've all tried Kormas and Vindaloos, Jalfrezis & Tandooris but these names don't mean much.
I quote wikipedia:
'Jalfrezi is a type of Indian curry in which marinated pieces of meat or vegetables are fried in oil and spices to produce a dry, thick sauce. It is cooked with green chillies, with the result that a jalfrezi can range in heat from a medium dish to a very hot one. Other main ingredients include peppers, onion and tomato.'
How many curries seem to fit the above description?
'The term Vindaloo, derivative of the Portuguese "vinho de alho", refers to a popular Indian dish. It was first brought to Goa by the Portuguese. The traditional Portuguese dish was made with pork preserved in red wine or red wine vinegar and stewed with garlic, but later received the Goan treatment of adding plentiful amounts of spice and dried chillis. Restaurants often serve this dish with chicken or lamb sometimes mixed with potatoes. Traditional vindaloos do not include potatoes, the discrepancy arising because the word "aloo" means "potato" in Hindi.
The dish is universally featured on Indian restaurant menus and is known as one of the hottest curries though in some establishments phall and tindaloo may be available, which are even hotter.
However, it is not known in many parts of India and is famous only among those people who visit Goa.'
It seems that in a lot of restaurants vindaloo is just 'One ladle of red sauce base + one ladle of yellow sauce base (= orange sauce), then add the already cooked meat or chicken plus 'quite a lot more chilli than a rogan josh' and a few fried peppers to garnish'
Who's brave enough to try a Phaal?
'Phaal is an Indian curry, red to red-orange in colour. It is widely reputed to be one of the hottest forms of curry available, even hotter than the Vindaloo, with at least 10 or 12 ground chillies included in a standard portion.
The phaal has achieved a certain degree of notoriety as the hottest generally available dish from Indian restaurants, so much so that many of them do not actually list it on their menus and will only cook it if specifically requested.'
What about Madras?
Quite vague:
'Madras curry fairly hot red curry, and with heavy use of chilli powder. It originates in the south of India and gets its name from the city of Madras now known as Chennai.
It can be vegetarian or of meat. Its origins are in Hindu culture where being vegetarian is common.
There are many variations on Madras curry and cooking in India is more a domestic practice than a cuisine governed by the conventions of chefs, restaurants, or texts. Availability of locally available ingredients is central to regional Indian foods. The end result of the signatures of Madras curries can be achieved through different means; the result often being that of: red colour; toasty spices; and the smoothness of coconut (or yoghurt); the sour-sweet fruitiness of tamarind; a slight liquorice flavour of anise; ginger; a range of other spices (sweet and savoury and earthy) and the flavours of salt, sweet, and sour. The redness is achieved with chilli or a mixture of chilli and paprika, and the yellow of turmeric. A possible variation, to achieve an end result of redness, is also the addition of tomato. The sourness is from the tamarind, lemon, lime or vinegar. The spices are complimentary to the fruit and the savoury flavours. The savoury ingredients include garlic (and possibly also onion or asefoetida). The oil may be ghee or coconut oil. Garam masala may be part of the spice mixture with other spices including coriander, and black peppercorns.'
I did recently make some 'tandoori' chicken for a client of ours - no, I haven't got a tandoor (oven) so it wasn't technically 'tandoori'.
After scouring my recipe books and searching high and low on the internet I was a bit disappointed to discover that the magical red colour of tandoori chicken comes from nothing more than food colouring. Not ever having used food colouring, I deliberated for a second or two (shall I do it 'au naturel' and run the risk of making 'lemony roast chicken with tons of garlic and ginger?) the answer was 'of course not, thats half the fun you idiot, if it's not bright red its not tandoori chicken. Go get some red food colouring'
Well, the baby chickens (and they were halal too) were lovely and tender and the colour of the tandoori chicken was spectacular.
(i might add that they were perhaps a bit juicier than the average Indian restaurant's tandoori chicken as they were not hanging around in a hot kitchen for ages before they were served).
My lamb Jalfrezi turned pretty well, though I would use shoulder next time instead of leg of mutton (again, halal but cooked for a long time and still quite tough).
Shoulder has more going for it and doesn't dry out so much - more gelatinous...
I dutifully knocked up a batch of proper 'Indian restaurant curry sauce' (onion, tomatoes, garlic, paprika and turmeric) and proceeded to stew my mutton while preparing the onion-spice base for the jalfrezi (i'm confused, Everywhere I look I see jalfrezi recipes that include tomato as a base whereas my first experience of a (chicken) jalfrezi was at Khan's in Westbourne Grove - definitely no tomato there, in fact not mush else apart form green chilli and coriander by the looks of it.
I think the truth is that Indian Food is probably about as straight forward as the country itself (the only country in the world that uses the 'side to side head rolling' gesture to mean yes, no, maybe, definitely not, probably or quarter past six.
A chef looks in cookbooks for a convincing authority on a new cuisine. I've yet to find one..I have a few books by Madhur Jaffrey amongst others and I have yet to find a 'proper recipe' for a pilau rice. Though I do do a fairly convincing version myself.
The truth is that in the UK Indian restaurants we are spoon-fed what the restaurant proprieters think we want: red, yellow, orange, creamy, mild or hot etc..and as much as I love Indian food I have to say that (like wow man!) 'the more I learn, the less I understand' (I nicked that from George Harrison, except he was talking about music of course.. he did play a bit of sitar though.
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