An Invitation to Indian Cooking - Madhur Jaffrey [56]
Tandoori cooking
The most popular school of outdoor cooking in India is the one from the former northwest frontier. (This was the northwest frontier of India until 1947, and is now the northwest frontier of Pakistan.) In Delhi, this style of cooking was totally unknown before the partition of the Indian subcontinent. Shortly after 1947, as waves of refugees crossed the border from both sides, a tiny restaurant opened in a lower-middle-class section of town. A family of refugees, with little more than a determination to start again, owned it. Called Moti Mahal (Pearl Palace), it was right on the main thoroughfare; it didn’t look exactly hygienic; and it specialized in chicken, meats, fish, and bread cooked in a tandoor (a clay oven with a live coal or wood fire). Within a few months, the cars of the rich began rolling up to its rather humble front doors to buy the very red-looking tandoori chicken and the long, flat bread, naan. Now, almost two decades later, it is considered a Delhi landmark which no tourist is allowed to miss, frequented by ambassadors, princes, and movie stars (as well as the lower middle class for whom it was intended!). It now offers a choice of air-conditioned indoor seating or canopied outdoor seating accompanied by recitals of qavvallis, poems set to a specific style of music. The tables, chairs, cutlery, plates, and waiters all have a very rough and ready look, but that is part of the attraction. Tandoori chicken (chicken being a great delicacy in India) is now famous throughout the country and is served in all major restaurants. The chicken (or meat, fish, or bread) is placed in a clay oven, open at the top, with a blazing fire inside. The foods get deliciously roasted and are served with small onions pickled in vinegar. All the meats are marinated in yogurt and spices before being cooked. In India, they are also tenderized with crushed green papaya and given a bright orange appearance with a vegetable coloring, rather like the Spanish bijol.
Muslim cooking
Another style of outdoor cooking which, for want of a better word, I’ll call the “Muslim” school, includes the seekh kabab and boti kabab. It consists of putting ground or cubed meat (kidney, liver, and udders can be used as well) on skewers and grilling them over live coals. The meats are either marinated first or, as in the case of chopped meat, ground to a paste with yogurt and then patted around a thick skewer. As they are turned and roasted, they are basted with ghee.
In Delhi, the best sampling of this Muslim school can be had around Jama Masjid, one of the largest and most beautiful mosques in Asia, built in the seventeenth century by the emperor who built the Taj Mahal, Shah Jahan. Under the shadows of its massive walls, surrounding it on all sides, are hundreds of tiny stalls. They sell everything—pots, pans, bedcovers, saris, lungis (a kind of male “sarong”), and of course all the different kababs. On hot days, huge buckets of thandai—a cool drink made with milk, almonds, and cardamom—are prepared and sold to thirsty passersby.
The recipes in this chapter are not Moti Mahal’s, nor are they acquired directly from a Jama Masjid cook. They are mine—and are adaptations of the tandoori and Muslim styles to the kinds of meat available here. When marinating meats, I tend to use olive or peanut oil in the marinade. Indians never use olive oil, but I like its taste and use it frequently.
Vegetables for outdoor meals
In the introduction to the chapter on vegetables I discuss corn on the cob, grilled outdoors and served with lemon juice, salt, and pepper. In India this kind of corn usually is not served with a meal, but only as a snack or with tea; still, you may like to try it with some of the meat dishes in this chapter. Traditionally, the vegetables, rice, and potatoes are cooked indoors and then served with the barbecued foods, but when