An introduction to the key ingredients you need to delve into Indian cuisine.
| Channel | Publish Date | Thumbnail & View Count | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|
 Ethan Chlebowski | 2021-09-07 13:00:27 |  793,497 Views |
The Beginner's Guide to Pantry Essentials + Organization (with Shopping List)
Serious Mealtimes / Vicky Wasik
It's been forty years since Madhur Jaffrey the acclaimed actress who once had to write to her mother for instructions on how to cook rice made her debut with the groundbreaking An Invitation to Indian Cooking . She has said that she wrote the book for herself because there were so few good Indian recipes available at the time. Much has changed in the intervening years. For one thing Jaffrey has published eleven more cookbooks while Indian recipes have appeared in major culinary publications and restaurants representing different regions of India have opened across the country. And yet even as she has built her reputation as the West's foremost authority on Indian cooking Jaffrey has scoffed at the idea telling Lynne Rossetto Kasper: "People call me the great expert on India. No one can be an expert on Indian food because it's such a big country. Every time you go into a little crevice of India you find a new cuisine new dishes."
That’s no exaggeration. With 1.4 billion people India is the world’s second-most populous country (just behind China) so there’s bound to be great diversity in the things people make and eat. Roasting and blending herbs and spices is an indelible feature of the country’s cuisine but spice blends vary from region to region—garam masala in the north sambar powder in the south panch phoron in the east—and even from house to house. Dals (legume stews) are a signature staple but their common ingredients vary by location too. And there are endless varieties of bread to be found across the country: the wheat-based staple naan comes from the north; dosas or chickpea-and-rice-flour crepes come from the south; unleavened sorghum-based bhakri comes from Gujurat in the west. On the Indian table without cutlery loaves of bread serve as cutlery to scoop up stir-fries stews and dals.
