Improvised Indian

[JasonTrue]

I'm not an expert on Indian food, although I'm quite fond of eating Southern dosas and utthapam, and probably can make a few passable vegetable or channa masalas, some ugly chapati, and a really nice mushroom cashew curry, one rare case where I actually follow a recipe.

I feel no problem improvising with Japanese, Chinese, or vaguely Italian foods, but I'm never quite comfortable calling my Indian-influenced dishes Indian. When I'm improvising, without referring to cookbooks, I would say this is "Jason cooking with a little too much garam masala in the house." I never really follow the cookbooks precisely anyway.

But every once in a while I crave something with some mustard seeds, cumin, coriander seeds, ghee and salt, some garam masala, etc. More particularly, last night I was craving some lentils and some light soupy thing. So I made three dishes. One was a simple grilled eggplant dish with some lime juice, chilies, cilantro, and sweet onions. The other was something like a rasam, though slightly big in proportion compared to how I've usually had it served to me. Another was a kind of lentil kofta with a spiced tomato cream sauce.

I'm not sure what it would take to feel like I'm not cheating somehow by improvising. In my Chinese cooking, after my Chinese neighbors in Germany started requesting me to make something, I started to feel like I had passed a certain point of knowledge. With Japanese cooking, my favorite cookbook encouraged improvisation, and I was later better informed by frequent travel to Japan. I cook Indian-ish dishes so rarely that I think it would take a few months of obsessive experimentation, dinner parties and so on before I would feel like I know anything.

So here was last night's dinner...

Blog entry: Craving soup and lentils

[torakris]

Jason, as usual beautiful pictures!!

I have the same problems with Indian food, I love it and can cook it decently but only as long I am somewhat following a recipe.

For things that are Italian or Japanese for example I rarely even open books anymore. Even Thai food, which I have only recently discovered, I can wing pretty well....

What is is about Indian food that scares us??

[SuzySushi]

What is is about Indian food that scares us??

←

The sophisticated spicing, IMHO.

Italian food, Japanese food, Chinese food, and Thai food have clear "flavor profiles" where a handful of seasonings will produce a desired taste (eg., garlic + basil or orgeano for Italian; Japanese soy sauce + sake + sugar for Japanese; garlic + ginger & soy sauce for Chinese; fish sauce + lime juice + sugar + chiles for Thai).

With Indian food, this isn't true unless one uses a prepared curry powder (which brings authenticity into question). More typically, spices and seasonings are combined uniquely for every dish, and without the taste memories of having grown up in that culture or spending a lot of time in an Indian kitchen, that's difficult to do by winging it.

I'm also less sure of myself in Indian cooking than in almost any other cuisine.

[Milagai]

ehh... interesting.

i find myself going the other way, for obvious reasons.

i can wing anything indian,

i wing pasta sauces, but would never dare to serve them to anyone

expert in italian cuisine (the elevated spice levels alone would draw protest).

chinese or thai i am (sad to say) completely at the cookbook / recipe

level, or worse still, i buy pre-made thai curry paste or szechwan sauce

and let fly....

i don't think i would ever have the confidence to do these at parties,

except with a thousand apologies. it will taste good to other indians

(again because of the spice levels and odd combinations) but nothing like real....

so, what do *you* all think it would take to gain that extra confidence?

what would a cookbook or cooking class have to have?

(maybe the cookbook authors on this board have some hints on this?)

and jason, the mushroom-cashew recipe you speak of sounds lovely.

could you please share the recipe or tell me what book it's from?

and from a quick look at your blog, are you veggie?

milagai

[JasonTrue]

I'm vegetarian, though a bit more flexible when someone else is cooking (e.g. a restaurant, esp. in Japan).

My girlfriend pointed out that Japanese cuisine has Sa-Shi-Su-Se-So dominant flavoring techniques; it stands for sugar, salt, vinegar, shouyu, and miso. Once you're experienced with the flavor profile that matches Japanese sensibilities, everything else becomes relatively simple. Japanese try to do as little as possible to food, just waking up flavors.

With few exceptions, simplicity is key in almost every cuisine. Even for Indian or Thai food, the actual cooking techniques are relatively simple, but the seasoning base is a more complex flavor. It's this complexity that takes a lot of experience to understand well.

The "heat" isn't the hard part; the toasting or cooking of spices isn't the hard part; it's basically a question of comfort level with the flavor profiles of different types of dishes.

If you eat at a "curry house" in Japan, they don't show much respect for nuance; every dish is basically the same except what meat goes into it. Restaurants run by Indians (almost always owned by a Japanese person who is likely more cost-conscious than an owner of a traditionally Japanese restaurant) aren't much better there. Even in the U.S., where we have generally better-quality Indian restaurants, some chefs get quite lazy about distinguishing one dish from another and the waitstaff doesn't necessarily help suggest ways to balance out a meal. Accordingly, most Americans and Japanese have a poorly-trained palate for Indian food. That makes it rather hard to become skilled with improvising dishes; we don't necessarily know which flavor notes should be emphasized in a particular preparation.

I can follow basic techniques, including making a passable chaunk, toasting my fenugreek before cooking with it, popping my mustard seeds in some ghee or oil, and so on. I can choose spices based on what I like. The dish might be perfectly serviceable to an average Indian but I would expect each would taste a bit unfamiliar. Fortunately, like China, there are enough regional variations that I suppose anything could be acceptable or anathema to someone.

As for the mushroom/cashew dish...

I can try to roughly translate the mushroom-cashew recipe ingredients from the cookbook, and explain my tweaks, but I think it will take me a bit... Rather oddly, the book is written by an Indian woman, Renu Aurora (レヌ アロラ), but the text is Japanese. I believe that particular book is now out of print.

Essentially, it has mushrooms sweated and seasoned in one pan, and ground cashews, water, more seasonings, tomato paste cooked in another. The mushrooms are simmered in the sauce and, in the original recipe, yogurt is added, but I prefer to make it with an equivalent amount of coconut milk. It's quite creamy and rich, with distinguishing notes of cardamom and cloves. Ginger and garlic were both used, as I recall. (one Chinese friend of mine told me using both in the same dish was completely unacceptable, so that just shows the differences in cuisine...)

Blog with eggplant raita with forgotten cilantro, mushroom-cashew dish, and avocado gratin

Apparently I chose the same Hagi bowl for the mushroom dish when I last made it... well, the bigger version on the blog will be more revealing.

Edited August 26, 2005 by JasonTrue (log)

[sanrensho]

Rather oddly, the book is written by an Indian woman, Renu Aurora (レヌ アロラ), but the text is Japanese. I believe that particular book is now out of print.

Why is this odd? Some of my best (and possibly most authentic) recipe books are Japanese ones written by non-Japanese cooks or Japanese who have trained extensively in other countries. (EDITED to add that I am referring to cookbooks written in languages outside of the target cuisine.)

The Thai/Vietnamese books that I have picked up from Japan have been particularly good.

Edited August 27, 2005 by sanrensho (log)

[JasonTrue]

Only the cross-cultural circumstances by which I came to this recipe are odd, not the fact that the source is Japanese.

I received this book about 9 years ago when I was an exchange student in Germany. A friend of mine had gone back to Japan, and she wanted to send me a small gift... she had gone searching for a vegetarian cookbook in Japanese, but the only thing she found was a beautifully-produced Japanese-language Indian cookbook, Spicy Vegetable Cuisine, by Renu Aurora.

Actually quite often, Italian restaurants in Japan are better than much of what I can find in the U.S. or what I ate when I was a starving student in Germany, and I have had a few incredibly good Mexican, Thai, and Chinese meals that I couldn't easily find a substitute for at home. (I can't say that the typical Mexican, Indian or Thai restaurant in Japan is very memorable, though). The best Indian and Thai restaurants I've been to so far, though, were in Hong Kong. That might just be a matter of good fortune and fresh ingredients.

[torakris]

Like Suzy mentioned it is the combining of the spices for me.

I find that whenever I wing an Indian dish it turns out tasting the same as every other one "winged"...

Even though I have a large number of spices, I tend to use the same ones over and over because I am unsure of the pairings. I think this is just one of those things that needs to be learned from experience, referably growing up in an Indian household.

Indian is probably my favorite cuisine that I actually cook the least because I really hate to rely on cookbooks. I did pick up a new huge Indian cookbook on my trip to the US and can't wait to experiment more.

[Grub]

I'm with SuzySushi on this one. Indian food uses a much more complex mixture of spices than any other food I've cooked. Wtih Thai food, you can make out the individual spices and flavorings that went into the dish (and that's perfectly wonderful, of course), whereas with Indian food, there tends to be a lot more spices, and they work together to create a unique flavor that doesn't make any single ingredient stand out...

Indian food is like a complicated balancing act, and I think you need to be very good to be able to wing it. I certainly can't handle it.

[JasonTrue]

"Damu ki komu" (no idea what this would be in roman characters)

I am not going to attempt to translate the actual instructions, but I will translate the ingredients. Any instructions are just what I've done. I've found the recipe relatively forgiving, but it is possible for the cashew sauce to stick to the pan and brown, which should be avoided; be judicious in heat.

Sweat the following in one pan:

Mushrooms, raw 200g, roughly 15 pieces

Butter, 20g

Garlic, minced, 5g

Ginger, minced, 5g

Salt, 1/4 teaspoon

Red pepper powder, 1/4 teaspoon

For the sauce, combine in a bowl:

80g ground cashews;

yogurt, 100cc (I use coconut milk instead for a more mild flavor)

cinnamon, 1/2 stick (since sticks vary in size in the US, I take this as about 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon), ground

clove, 3 pieces, ground

bay leaf, 3 leaves, ground

cardamom, one pod, ground

2 red peppers

I grind the dry spices, and even the cashews, in a coffee grinder or spice mill, and add the other ingredients. Mine doesn't like sticks of cinnamon, but you could simmer the cinnamon with the sauce that you'll use or use ground.

In a second pan, cook separately:

2 tablespoons ghee

5g garlic, minced

5g ginger, minced

red pepper powder, 1/2 teaspoon

garam masala, 1 teaspoon

Salt, 3/4 teaspoon

To which, add

Tomato puree, 80 cc (I usually use concentrated tomato paste in a tube and therefore far less).

Water, 400 cc

Add the contents of the bowl of the ground cashews/spices and simmer until thick and creamy.

Transfer the mushrooms into the simmer sauce. You needn't simmer terribly long, but keep the heat moderate if you plan on keeping it for a while. It's fairly flexible and doesn't need to be served the instant it's done.

The serving suggestion points out that it's quite acceptable to add other things besides mushrooms. I have sometimes put other sweatable vegetables in this sauce, such as zucchini or patty pan squash.

I think the ingredients list is correctly translated, but I'm sure I've mistreated the original instructions.

[liv4fud]

yo jasontrue,

one of the thing about Indian food and cooking is that the food is very very forgiving. unlike baking, indian food is mainly all based on eye-balling, a pinch here and heavy pinch there....

for example the recipe you made is 'dumb ki khumb' basically mushrooms cooked in tomato based gravy. if you get 5 recipes, you will get 5 different ways to handle the mushrooms. also the cooking steps would be different.

india has over 104 dialects (some anthropologist can correct me here). a lot of food is what is available locally

but that changes as you move even a 100 miles away. chicken curry is famous in north-west, central and south, etc. all of them will taste like a different dish.

so improvising is a very very important part of Indian cooking. do it because you are economically / physically / geographically strapped. or do it because its some thing that you are doing while experimentation.

don't know if I am helping or speeding up the swirl of thoughts that you are having.

[JasonTrue]

I think my challenge is not whether improvisation is acceptable, but whether my knowledge of Indian food is sufficient that my improvisation would be convincing to or at least comfortable for a native.

I am not embarrassed at all to serve something I consider Japanese to someone who actually is Japanese. I've got a fairly good sense of what parameters are within the range of Japanese taste, and what is wacky. Even my "fusion" dishes are fairly comfortable for average Japanese folks, although the specific combinations or choices may sound suprising.

I'd say the same for Chinese, Mexican, Thai, or Italian food. I wouldn't at all be embarrassed by serving most dishes in my repertoire in those cuisines to someone who grew up with the cuisine. One of my former coworkers was surprised that my vegetales en escabeche (Mexican seasoned marinated vegetables) was better than many versions he has had, and the fact that I can pull off a decent vegetarian baozi surprised a number of Chinese friends as well.

And in fact, I have served Indian dishes at dinner parties and the feedback was fairly positive, but I only serve the ones I'm most confident about. I'm far more likely to cook a dish I've never made before for a large group if it's any other cuisine except Indian

One time I actually made a dish which was little more than deep-fried long slices of Japanese eggplant mixed with a splash of Japanese soy sauce and grated raw ginger, and some Thai, Indian, Japanese and Chinese guests all claimed it was a product of their cuisine, which I thought was very funny.

[Milagai]

india has over 104 dialects (some anthropologist can correct me here). 

←

are you saying "dialect" when you mean "language"?

One does not have to be an anthropologist to use these words

accurately.

India "officially" recognizes 18 different languages.

However, surveys (e.g.

Anthropological survey of India's People of India series in mid 1990's)

suggest there are 75 different major languages in India,

with several dialect forms within each language (some estimates

total over 1600 different dialects; some suggest ~ 800).

The Indian govt recognizes over 200 different mother tongues

(language is a politicized issue, as everything else) because of the

difficulty in recognizing where "language" leaves off and "dialect" begins....

Milagai

[torakris]

I think one of the problems I have with Indian food is that spices are often added to the hot oil in the beginning of the cooking. Sometimes I find a dish is underseasoned much later in the cooking but adding spices to soupy or stew like dishes later often leaves the spices raw tasting. So I usually just season with a garam masala at the end and then all my dishes taste like this....

I also finish off some dishes, mostly bean/lentil dishes, with a tarka but this again is something I couldn't just wing as I am unsure of what spices to pair with what and in what proportions.

So how do you season a dish that is fully cooked and just underseasoned with out the raw taste that some spices can leave? What are some good things to add at the end of cooking to give it more oomph?

[liv4fud]

torakris, one imp fact, the spices need to be *cooked* to get the flavor out. usually adding in the end might give a hard to describe but unpleasant sort of flavor. a bit powdery texture too...

the tarka part is to add some flavor and some fragrance.

usually, dried whole chillies - the one you would get an indian market - either round berry like or long, are added. along with whole mustard seeds, whole cumin. cook this in oil till you actually see the skin peeling off from the flesh of the chilly - at this time, you can take the oil off the flame (it would be boiling probably), add the amount of seasoning that you think is missing (the same recipe that you already put in) along with a couple of curry-leaves. caution - too much splatter warning.

though its long written, its very very quick procedure (unless you are cooking in a huge amount) and be very careful of the splatter, experienced cooks have had accidents.

you can use this for any dishes. now for lentils, you can add some urad split to the hot oil also. this along with other spices. make sure it doesn't burn but you can go all the way till brown. gives a really nice rustic taste to the dish.

[JasonTrue]

It's a bit dangerous to attempt fusion before being truly comfortable in the domain of a particular cuisine, though I also don't think it's such a travesty to use atypical ingredients that have a compatible function.

But I took some liberties when preparing a fried paneer dish that I think are perfectly acceptable. I didn't have any chickpea flour, but since I frequently cook Japanese food, I had a plentiful stash of katakuriko on hand. This is a very useful starch and is usually the one used for agedashi-doufu, another fried food, and produces a very nice crispy texture.

I am quite fond of tamarind chutney, coconut-peanut chutney in the right hands, and maybe a mango chutney if the mangoes are deserving, but the fruit I happened to have on hand consisted of some nice peaches. So I made a moderately spicy peach chutney, emphasizing fenugreek and cloves, with a bit of ginger, some lime and chilies.

Because I had an insane amount of paneer on hand for someone who doesn't eat it on a regular basis, I also made a simmered paneer dish with a similar, but not identical sauce, to the lentil koftas I made a couple of days ago.

Blog entry

[Geetha]

Jason there are a lot of things Indians don't know about the food they eat, westerners may be kind to intoduce some elements of food perception to Indians I see of ten people here in US overwhelmend by the notion of cooking Indian food.

I think there is a lot of things to be mutually deciphered about cooking itself and food flavours by eastern and western people.

Many of the Indians are also figuring out ways to communicate their needs in food now, so there is a gap in terms of understanding of food in itself by both the groups.

I would find it hard translating the perception of food to you but on the other hand you may be able to describe the flavours more easily as I can see from your discription above.

In answer to your question on how your cooking may be palatable to other Indians you may want to know the exact specifics of their methods or rather closest you can get to it.

Indian food seen in restaurants are more of popular items and any dishes yuo like to introduce should be also in those lines or it would take time and several attempts to reach their satisfaction, Indian foodies are not adventurous when it comes to their own cuisine it takes a miracle to create a popular dish

I do hope it will be an exciting and successful attempt for you, if you keep it simple I think you'll get there sooner than you know.

Geetha

[sazji]

Jason, the comment on fusion was right on I think. It's just as true of music. There are interesting parallels really, between cooking and music. Each has its vocabulary, its approach - its soul. A lot of bad fusion in music is made because someone decides they are going to play an african tune on irish instruments and call it fusion; without actually learning how that tune came about, how those people hear and create music. It's no different than throwing a handful of garam masala into chicken a la king (okay, that was perhaps more vile an imagery than necessary...) and calling it....something (won't even go there).

Being partly of Greek background, I hardly even look any more when I see recipes for things like "Greek-style [omelette/trout/bagels/humbow]" meaning usually that someone has thrown a handful of feta cheese and some oregano into it. When I try these things they don't taste/feel Greek at all, because they have mistaken this feeling/soul of the food for a couple of stereotyped ingredients. On the other hand, it would be really interesting to see what sort of cuisine would eventually emerge if a Greek island, through some freak event in plate tectonics, smashed into the coast of India. (Desperate attempt here to keep this from drifting any further off-topic...)

When we learn a language or music, a big part is listening; in a cuisine, eating it from a variety of sources. We understand all the different accents of English but immediately recognize them as distinct. This is the most difficult thing for me with Indian food; my experience of it has been limited usually to one or two restaurants in cities I have lived in. It's not the same as being able to eat it in homes, see it prepared, get a feel for what is a personal variation and what's regional. To me it all just "tastes good."

[tejon]

I think it depends a lot on familiarity. I would actually be more comfortable winging an Indian dish than a Japanese one, since I have cooked and eaten far more Indian cuisine than Japanese. It takes a while to get to the point of knowing a particular cuisine well enough to start feeling comfortable banging around and changing things, and that usually comes with time and experience. Indian foods seem more intimidating due to both the number of seasonings and the amount of interplay between them, but honestly I find most of the dishes so forgiving that this cancels out any intimidation factor. There is something wonderful about the way everything comes together in a subtle dance that invites me to experiment more and more.

[Jasmine]

Hi JasonTrue

I agree with Geetha about trying things several times, tweaking the spicing to your taste...like dialects and language, there are many versions of any particular dish.

My family comes from Kerala and my mum is an excellent Indian cook, so I guess I'm lucky that I learned by observation as to how to work with spices. Asking her how to make this or that is always frustrating -- most of the time she remembers to explain the main ingredients, but when it comes to spicing, she'll "forget" to mention things or will turn her back when adding things, so I have to be on her to explain everything...she can be quite territorial

I hope you keep at it! Your piccies look so very very yummy.

[JasonTrue]

I think a lot of "fusion" dishes are just so contrived and based on such a superficial understanding of a cuisine that it never makes any music... it's just noise.

On the other hand, frequently one cuisine provides vocabulary (or musical notes) that enable fairly harmonious fusions.

Last week I managed to pull off a fusion that worked fairly well... I would not call this dish Greek, either, but it used filo dough, shredded very finely, to turn a humble Indian dish into unmessy finger food. One of these days I'll have to get the press to make string hoppers, so I can stay on the same continent.

Nests of channa gobi masala

Edited November 2, 2005 by JasonTrue (log)