It always sounds like so much but if you cook on a regular basis in cuisines that use a lot of spices you move through them quickly. I bought a large bag of bay leaves a couple years ago thinking I’d never go through it and I’m almost out.
+1. There are couple of Indian markets fairly near by, so I buy some of my spices in bulk there. Better quality and far cheaper.
yeah, I do a fair amount of Mexican, bbq and tex mex so the cumin gets used a lot there as well.
I go through paprika really fast!
Same here
She is a very author. Her recipes are solid. We eat a lot of Indian food because my daughter is a vegetarian. I make her cook most of it though.
Pete your recipes sound good and ill be making the aloo matar sabji soon. I am fortunate to live in an area with a high Indian population so I have been ordering it more than making it. Some great advice already posted. Blooming and toasting ingredients makes the meals great. I have used decent spice mix packs before and some of my Indian friends use them. Parampara and Shan off the top of my head. Youtube is a great source for techniques for cooking and I cant recommend using a pressure cooker enough. I’m so hungry now.
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I use this recipe often, and add a little extra water so it’s less pasty. Marinading a day before works best,
and when chicken breasts are cut into large strips, and pounded a little to soften up. Goes well with
basmati rice/ few peas, and naan bread. I cook basmati rice the traditional way by boiling in water, as you
would spaghetti. 1/4-1/3 cup dried rice per person.
Indian food is by far my favorite, favorite Indian dish is Dhaba-Gosht (Lamb).
i found hitting that restaurant quality level of many indian foods very difficult. a lot of specific techniques to intensify flavours like dry roasting spices, roasting spices in ghee, getting the huge variety of spices reasonably fresh, etc.
it’s challenging.
just make a barbecued chicken tikka masala. a lot of effort but turned out well.
yeah indian food is labour intensive.
I find that being able to turn out some common side dishes in my sleep like raita, Dahl, and chapati/roti without needing recipes makes Indian cooking less intensive in that way. I made butter chicken for the first time a couple weeks ago and making sides without much thinking made it pretty easy to focus on the new recipe.
yeah, i took the leftover marinade of yoghurt and spices and stuff and cooked eggs in it with extra crushed tomatoes. a decent very easy 2nd dish.
my kitchen is geared towards chinese/korean/japanese and european food though, so getting a full amount of indian items for example just isnt likely to happen. today was a one-off thing i think.
re: dahl, i dont like lentils and am sort of off beans overall for health beliefs.
i dont have a mixing machine, so while i can make any bread i dont because im too lazy to knead and clean up the sticky mess. my go-to indian flat bread is a dosa kind of thing fermented with yeast because its as easy as making simplified crepes.
I actually don’t use my mixer for chapati or roti. Just mix the water and flour in a bowl, knead just for a couple minutes, rest, form balls, and roll. I like dosas too.
I know what you mean about taking on a new cuisine, it can get out of control having all the ingredients for everything. I keep having to find more room to store stuff. I have been working on my Chinese cooking the last couple of years and I still don’t have all the ingredients I would like to keep on hand.
I have been meaning to make onion pakoras and my wife happened to buy some gram flour for something else so I made pakoras and a cauliflower curry out of what was available in the fridge.
The first time I tried onion pakoras was at an Indian wedding, and it blew my mind. Theirs were puffy, almost like a small onion clamcake or doughboy, and I realized that this was the perfect drunk food - a little sweet and a little salty. I’ve never seen them in quite that style since, but I’ve never had a bad one.
I think the puffy ones are called bajhi and have white flour and maybe egg which is why they are like clam fritters. Pakora only have the liquid that salt coaxes out of the onion and are super crispy.
In the summer I make tons of zucchini fritters when zucchini is abundant in the garden the Italian way with egg, bread crumbs, and Parmesan. I discovered that bread crumbs instead of flour makes them fluffier and less doughy. Yes, all good drunk food. Or comfort food when the world has gone to hell.
That would explain why I’ve never had a panoramic like that in a restaurant 
Although I will say that Indian food names, much like their food itself, is way more regional than you can tell from the handful of restaurants in my area. I’m pretty sure the person who told me they were called pakoras were from a different area than the caterers at that wedding.
That wedding, by the way, was one of the coolest cultural experiences I’ve ever had. The bride is Irish Catholic and the groom is Indian. The day started with a Catholic ceremony, followed by a buffet of Indian food in the church’s basement prepared by the groom’s family, followed by a traditional Hindi ceremony (they had a leaflet explaining the ceremony for each guest and repeated everything in English). Then there were Indian passed hors d’oeuvres, and a mix of Indian and typical American food at the various stations for dinner. Everything felt very inclusive, and I had some great conversations with many Indian guests who freely shared their culture and traditions.
I had some duck breast to use for supper tonight but was in the mood for something spicy so went with Indian. I made a Punjabi style sauce generally used for chicken, a black pepper and chili pepper Dahl and coconut green beanx.
Thank you very much for such cool recipes! I have also been interested in Indian cuisine lately. It was exciting to read about your experience. I especially like the Punjabi recipe because it has all the products that I adore.
I liked the Indian cuisine after I visited a local restaurant. It was as if I had discovered a new world for myself. Now I want to open my own restaurant, where I will combine Indian and European cuisine. It seems to me that something interesting will come out of this. However, before opening your own business, you need to prepare thoroughly. Therefore, I study a lot of information about the Food Services industry. Fortunately, there is a convenient website with detailed analytics and reports.
If you are in New York, be sure to write. Let’s go somewhere!