Cooking is an art and how much women may scream and shout about it, men are masters of this art. But men are modest and prefer food cooked by their mother or wife. And women think they don’t know how to cook. Enough of cribbing. I am going to open source my formula for cooking most of Indian dishes. Its easy and needs a bit of practice to master it. Let us start.
Theory
Most of the Indian gravy dishes are cooked in a very spicy combination. The catch is to know when to add which spice and in what form. Some spices are finely grounded like Turmeric powder but some are used in whole like cumin seed. Cumin seeds are added as soon as the cooking is started and garam masala is added at the end. When the gravy is cooked the target element say potatoes can be added. This adds flavour to potatoes and the target element also absorbs the spices. Replace potatoes with boiled kidney beans and you have the famous Rajmah or by Chicken and you have a Chicken dish.
Step one, requirements.
We need following items, listed in the order of importance.
- Onion or pyaz, sliced finely, paste will be better
- Tomato or tamato or tamatar, sliced finely, do away with seeds if possible, puree is good
- Turmeric powder or haldi
- Dried coriander powder or pisa dhania
- Chilli powder or laal mirch
- Salt
- Oil or ghee
- Cumins seeds or jeera
- Ginger or adrak, sliced finely and some extra as paste.
- Garlic or lehsun, slice finely or create a paste as done with ginger
- Garam masala
- Green chillies or hari mirch
- Cloves or laung or lavang
- Cinnamon or dal chini
- Bay leaves or tej patta
Step two, the practice
The process I am about to mention is not very hard and fast. One can experiment and discover new flavors. To prepare this dish we would be cooking everything on medium heat. Cooking at medium heat requires a lot of patience. Cooking time is increased and the resulting dish has better flavor and aroma. Before you start, keep everything handy. A simple trick can fill your kitchen with aroma. Heat two tablespoon ghee or cooking oil in a pan. I suggest a thick base pan. When the oil is hot enough that you can smell the aroma, add cumin seeds. As soon as cumin seed start to pop you can add onions. But wait. If you have cloves and cinnamon handy throw in cinnamon and cloves along. Break cinnamon and cloves will be much better. Do not let these spices burn. You should be able to smell the aroma.There are many variations here. You can add nutmeg and bay leaves as well. All these spices are normally added in the starting.
Tip: To prepare my type of Jeera Rice, heat not more than half a tablespoon oil/ghee and add cumin seed, nutmeg, bay leaves, cinnamon and cloves as mentioned above. Add rice and stir well and add water accordingly.
Add finely chopped onions. In case you are adding onion paste, maintain a proper distance from the pan and also make sure you are not cooking at not more than medium heat. Slowly add onion paste. DO NOT ADD WATER. Keep moving a spatula/serving spoon in the pan and fry onions till the onions start turning golden, do not let them turn brown. If you have chopped green chillies, this is the time to add them. I have also heard and tried adding granular sugar and a pinch of salt. Stir till you see the chillies are fried. Time to add chopped ginger and garlic. I mostly use ginger garlic paste. I take thick paste and add a teaspoon of water to it so that I can mix the thick paste well in the onion. Stir and make sure the paste is evenly mixed with onions. If you have been constantly stirring this mixture and cooking it on medium heat the onions wont turn brown too early. Add turmeric powder, coriander powder, red chilli powder and salt. Keep stirring. The paste should turn yellow. Keep cooking for a minute or two. Do not let it stick to the pan. If it sticks use spatula/serving spoon to stir it. I have seen people adding a spoon of hung curd at this moment.
Tip: Take fresh curd, put it in muselin cloth bag and hang this for a while. This will strain out all the water from curd. Add cardamom powder and confectioner’s sugar, stir well, refrigerate for some time and voila! You have Shree Khand. In another variation you can add saffron and mango essence to make Aamra Shree Khand.
By 4-5 minutes you should notice the oil getting separated from our fried onion paste. This mixture should loose its yellow color that turmeric powder may have rendered it. Time to add finely chopped tomatoes. Freshly created tomato puree can be used. Cook this for another 5 minutes. Keep stirring. We are about to finish our gravy. There is a very simple sign that tells that our gravy is ready. One should be able to notice a layer of oil, red in color due to tomatoes, on the edges of pan. If you dont see the oil keep cooking. Keep stirring occasionally to make sure that gravy doesn’t stick to pan.
Now the target element. For vegetarians there are many options.
- For aloo matar, use potatoes and peas.
- For matar paneer, you will need peas & cottage cheese cubes, deep fry paneer or cottage cheese cubes
- For rajmah, you need boiled kidney beans or rajmah. Boil kidney beans with a pinch of salt. Do not throw away the leftover water/soup.
- For kaale chane, use boiled kaale chane or chick peas. As with kidney beans, boil chickpeas with a pinch of salt and do not throw away the leftover soup. My mom made sure that we had at least half a bowl of this “soup” as it is very nutritious. I used to add fresh butter to it.
For carnivores
- For Chicken curry, before you add tomato puree, add pieces of chicken, you will need to use extra tablespoon of oil/ghee here. Poke chicken pieces with a fork. In fact, marinate the chicken with a mixture of thick curd, salt, red chilli powder.
- For fish curry, you will need to add fried fish. You can marinate the fish same way as mentioned for chicken.
- For egg curry, add boiled eggs instead of chicken. I am not sure how it helps but I have seen a guy even frying the boiled eggs separately before using in the gravy.
- For mutton curry, use mutton.
The last thing in our gravy is to add water or cream. If you intend to use cream, lower the heat and let the gravy cook for a minute. Slowly add cream and keep stirring. In case of water, use at least luke warm water. If you are cooking Rajmah or Kaale Chane, use the leftover water from boiling. Sprinkle garam masala and cover the pan. Let the dish simmer for a while. We are done. Some chefs add Kashmiri Mirch and Kasoori Methi to further enhance the flavor. But I guess this is more than enough. Though the recipe is not very complex, its very hard to prepare a dish using this recipe in first go. One needs to know the right time and temperature to add spices.
Happy cooking!
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