Indian Food

If you haven't noticed already, we have given lavish attention to food on this blog. Sampling new cuisine is probably our favorite part of travel. Indian food has not disappointed. It is a mighty cuisine, and exploring it has been incredibly pleasurable. Unfortunately, Indian food is very fattening, but hey, we're on vacation!

Reflective of the nature of India, food varies considerably regionally. Each region of India is vastly different in culture, language, ethnicity and food. In the States we are most familiar with curries from the Punjab, probably because that is where most immigrants (at least in Washington/Vancouver) come from. We are also familiar with Northern Indian Nans and Tandoori cooking. As we have been in Northern India, we have been encountering a lot of the familiar, except of course it is a million times better and more complex, and we have also discovered many new wonderful treats. We've been spending the last couple of weeks in Tibetan country. Tibetan food is not nearly as exciting, but still we've had some decent noodles and momos (Tibetan dumplings). But we've eaten Indian food every chance we have gotten. Today we participated in an Indian cooking class, hoping that we will be able to replicate some of the delicious flavors at home. It turned out to be more of a demonstration than a class, but it was still interesting and of course we got to eat everything at the end.

Typical Indian meals usually are made up of curries or dals (lentil based soup-like food) and rice or bread. We learned how to make a basic dal first, which seems to be one of the easiest, and cheapest things to make. This is what we have had in basic cafeterias and road side eateries. It consists of a basic combination of onions and tomatoes, cooked with lentils and a typical Indian spice combination, chili, cumin, garam masala, and tumeric. Indian food is actually not very spicy; we are used to Chinese food which is way spicier.

Next, we learned how to make a vegetable dish in a nice tomato sauce. Vegetarian food in India is amazing. We have eaten hardly any meat since we have been here and Dan, who is usually quite the carnivore, hasn't minded. I believe this is why neither one of us has gotten sick. I got sick in Singapore, which sets world records for cleanliness, but have been fine in India. The kitchen that we were in for the class wasn't exactly clean, no soap in sight, and there were only two pots, so nothing is ever washed. But it is hard to get a parasite from veggies boiled and fried. The vegetable dishes are made extra tasty, we found out, by generous additions of butter, which explains why they are so delicious.

We then learned how to make Malai Kofta, which is one of our favorite dishes. It is a curry containing deep fat fried balls of cheese and potatoes. Yum! The curry sauce is sweet, we found out this is because it is made with watermelon seeds, and contains a lot of milk. Dairy is used generously in Indian cooking. Paneer, the Indian cheese, is my new favorite food. That, and the breads, makes it much more approachable for the Westerner than Chinese cuisine, and I think it will be very manageable, and fun, to keep learning Indian cooking at home. I've never used watermelon seeds as an ingredient in any Western dishes though...

Spice tray

The kitchen equipment

Finished product