My first experience with Indian cuisine was during my first year of college. Growing up in rural Iowa didn’t offer me many opportunities to experience much outside of my farming country, Scandahoovian culture. The first day of classes I fell in with a girl named Shalini. She was from Bombay and was everything I wasn’t; vibrant, loud, dynamic, culturally sophisticated, and worldly. Shalini introduced me to a lot of new things including Indian food. The first time I tasted it was in a cheap basement apartment of a few gentleman graduate students who were more than happy to have a bunch of college girls come over to eat and socialize. They fixed us a meal, Shalini ended up kicking them out of the kitchen and taking over, and we ate it off of plates of folded tinfoil. It was wonderful. My favorite was this chicken with a hot, spicy kick in a “gravy.” This wasn’t my grandma’s gravy! The only spoil was when Shalini made me sing a song in front of everyone (cringes with the memory). After that I took every opportunity I could find to experience Indian cuisine. There weren’t many but the few that I found were very satisfying. Before I graduated I experienced paneer, Indian milk sweets, raita, Indian bread, dahl, and loads of others. I began to see the possibilities of food without a big slab of meat as the center. The biggest change in my eating habits, though, was the way I looked at herbs and spices. The little tin cans in my mother’s pantry were all at least three years old and not a single one of them was in whole form, so I grew up not knowing anything about herbs and spices. I tried to cook a few of my favorites at home. I even made paneer once! Even the clumsy attempts taught me a lot about how to use and appreciate spices which has carried over into all of my cooking. I am far from learned in Indian food, but if I had to choose a dish to introduce people to Indian food, I would probably choose some of the great snack food. I can’t get enough of the great snacks Indians cooks have come up with, especially these spicy chickpea batter wheels that I love but don’t know the name of.
