An Invitation to Indian Cooking - Madhur Jaffrey [4]
Even though the Indian styles of cooking require, in general, a fair number of spices, we do not, of course, use all of them for each dish we cook. Cauliflower, for example, may be cooked with just turmeric, fresh ginger, fresh Chinese parsley, and ground cumin. A chicken dish I make requires only whole cloves, black peppercorns, cinnamon sticks, bay leaves, and cardamom pods. One potato dish needs just a pinch of asafetida, whole cumin seeds, and turmeric.
Sometimes, as you glance at a couple of recipes, the spices used might look identical, which may lead you to the conclusion that the two dishes will taste the same. But that’s not necessarily true. It is not only what spices you use but also how you use them that gives dishes their special taste and appearance. Take cumin, for instance. If it is roasted whole and crushed, its coffee color will darken the looks of any food and its strong aroma will fill not just your kitchen but your entire house. This way it has a sharp, nutty taste. Whole cumin, when it is “popped” in very hot fat, has a mild aroma and a gentle, licoricelike taste. Ground unroasted cumin provides a third flavor and has perhaps the mildest taste of the three.
Different spices require different treatment during cooking. Turmeric burns easily and becomes bitter, so it is generally used in conjunction with some liquid. Saffron gives off its best color when lightly roasted, crushed, and then left to soak in warm milk. Too many fenugreek seeds can make a dish bitter, so while you can play around with the number of peppercorns or cardamom pods you put into a dish, you cannot do the same with fenugreek.
Spices, herbs, and other seasonings are always added to the cooking pot in a specific order, and this again changes the taste of the dish. For example, if a hot dried red pepper is browned in oil and then mixed in with cooked lentils, the lentils will not be very hot but will have gained the subtle flavor of the pepper. On the other hand, if the pepper is browned in oil first and then cooked with the lentils, you will end up with a fairly hot dish. This applies to nearly all the spices, as each has its own peculiarities. The order in which they are put into a pot is extremely important. All this may sound confusing, but it is really easier to master than, say, a French custard. If you follow the recipes carefully, you will soon begin to understand the properties and idiosyncrasies of each spice.
Not all Indian dishes are stewlike, as some people imagine. We distinguish between “wet” and “dry” dishes, and of course we have every category in between. Sometimes we start cooking a meat dish like a stew, then boil down the liquid and end up by frying the meat. At other times we fry a fresh ginger paste with turmeric, sauté a vegetable in this mixture briefly, sprinkle a little water over it, and let it cook, covered, in its own steam. Potatoes can be cooked in a variety of sauces, or they can be boiled, diced, and cooked “dry” with a little oil, fennel, and cumin seed. We deep-fry vegetables in batter and eat them with a fresh green coriander chutney, and we roast chicken and fish whole in clay ovens. Just as there is no one spice used for every single Indian dish, there is really no single technique that is common to all Indian foods.
A great many people stay away from Indian food because they assume it is hot. This “heat,” when it exists, is generally provided by the red or green pepper (or chili), spices which can easily be omitted without any loss of authenticity. In fact, in my own family, we rarely ate hot food, because it didn’t “agree” with my father. Being perverse, I naturally developed a very strong liking for it, but there is