Indian Cooking

Indian cuisine comprises of different varieties of regional cuisines native to India. Food from one region is very different from that of another. The common theme among all these different food is the use of numerous spices to create tantalizing tastes. Cooking is a part of usual and important routine in an Indian family. Mealtimes are very important for a family get-together. Most of the recipes have been handed down over many generations.

A normal Indian meal includes rice, bread, lentils, legumes, vegetables, fruits and sometimes eggs or meat. Most of the meals are made from scratch with fresh ingredients.

Indian Ingredients

India is an abode to a huge culinary diversity with a common ground, which is their spices. These spices are full of flavour. They even have medicinal and preserving properties. While there are numerous spices to choose from, one can focus on a few basic ingredients. One should understand how a flavour of one spice could effect the dish when added to it. It is like an art, if you know the main brush strokes, you can create a masterpiece. There are so many various flavours from sweet fragrance to chilli and pungent which add character to the dish. These spices are used in numerous different forms, fresh, powdered, raw, broken,etc. Spices can be in any form like roots, flower, fruit, leaves, seeds or bark. The basic spices we need for any Indian curry are cumin, coriander, mustard, turmeric, cinammon, cardamom, cloves and red chilli (all seeds or powdered). While these are the basic spices for daily Indian cooking there are many others like carum, asofetida, black onion seeds, fenugreek seeds, kokam, mace, poppy seeds, sesame seeds, aniseeds,etc.
The food staple to India include rice, whole wheat flour, and various lentils like red lentils, black gram, green gram and pigeon peas. Some pulses like kidney beans and chickpeas are native to the northern part of India. Most of the Indian cooking is done in vegetable or sunflower oil.

Cooking authentic food abroad

Cooking authentic Indian food abroad is not a challenge at all. The basic ingredients and spices are available in all the major grocery stores. If there are any ingredients which are not available, one can always try in any Indian grocery store.There are a few specific utensils for certain kind of food like idli. These utensils can be bought in any Indian store. To get that authentic flavour in Indian food, the major factor is to use fresh spices and ingredients. In the olden days, Indian cooking was done in an earthen pot on a fire made from coal and wood. The food was cooked on a very slow flame giving it a very authentic mouth-watering taste to the dish. All the major ingredients were freshly grown in the backyard which added to the taste. Even today I try to get this authentic taste of Indian cooking into my kitchen trying to use fresh ingredients and earthen pots.