I am not sure why there is so much fuss made about colouring in food. I saw a documentary about some regular festival in India where dozens of people throw powder paints bright red bright orange and florescent colours all over each other and then chuck buckets of water at each other and the massive mess that ensues rather negates the comments about the Indians not using colouring. They use dyes all the time in clothing and cloth.
Where food is concerned nobody ever got poisoned from cochineal red colouring added to desserts to make the milk pink.
Turmeric has been used in India and everywhere else to colour rice yellow. Indian restaurants made rice more attractive by adding yellow orange and red colouring and mixing up the grains with un-coloured white rice. Birianis look more festive with colour. As for Tandoori, well an authentic recipe in a book I have makes Tandoori Murgh Masseladahr using pureed red plums or papaya fruit. This added to turmeric for the marinade causes the chicken portions to roast to a rich red colour and it's utterly delicious. It has both sweetness and spicy taste with plenty of hot chilli or mustard seeds.
Anyone who is squeamish about colouring in food is obviously thinking of bad additives in Western foods by manufacturers of processed foods who throw in some pretty awful muck to give food colour. Many still add MSG as a "flavour enhancer" and I often tell them that if the food was any good or had decent quality in the first place - the flavour shouldn't need enhancing. It was in my view a practise that was introduced to make Fish Fingers and Burgers addictive to children so they would bully their parents into buying more. The practise continues in far too many British food manufacturers and in Chinese Take-Aways and Restaurants where they chuck MSG powder into everything despite many people being allergic to it.
So I say forget worries about colouring; the Indians are well aware of steering out of the way of toxicity in foods and when you're making your own - use turmeric fresh or dried for getting a yellow colour; use beetroot juice for bright red; use a mixture of the two for orange colour. Plenty of foods will add colour if you look around - even broccoli cooking-water strained adds green if you want green!
Good Currying
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Plado
