It’s bleak out. Cold and bare, with virtually nothing growing in garden, orchard or trellis.
As I stare into the cupboards thinking of all the soup I’ve made already this season, I have a wish: To be transported to a warmer place and time, to eat food that is alive and vibrant — and will make me feel the same.
A scrap of sitar music runs through my head and I know. I want to make Indian food.
I begin my search for menus, snack seasonings, recipes, spice distributors and I discover a strange coincidence. The Roanoke Natural Foods Co-op hosted an Indian Cooking class this month. And the Grandin Village restaurant Local Roots is planning its sixth annual India Meets Southwest Virginia event for Jan. 29.
I am not alone in my desire to find heat and healing in Indian food.
“It’s when winter is deep and dark,” said Local Roots owner Diane Elliot, who has traveled to India and is passionate about Indian cooking. “We want to serve something warming and different.”
An online perusal of recently published Indian cookbooks turns up hundreds. I reach for “The New Indian Slow Cooker” by Neela Paniz.
Then I stop by the Redbox to pick up “The Hundred-Foot Journey,” last summer’s tale of India, family and food. I settle into my living room, ready to be inspired.
Mansur: “Papa, the restaurant doesn’t serve those things because the people here don’t like to eat those things.”
Papa: “Because they don’t know. They have never tried. Now they shall.”
• • •
Speaking of Indian food, of course, is referencing a continent of diverse cuisines, from Goa (intense spices; use of seafood and meat) to Punjab (tandoori cooking; naan and paneer are popular) to Kerala (vegetarian; with rice and coconuts). Northern Indian cuisine includes more potatoes and dairy, where Southern Indian cooking relies on rice and uses coconut and curry leaves more liberally.
In Roanoke, we have two Indian restaurants: Nawab Cuisine of India downtown and Taaza Indian Cuisine on Franklin Road. Both offer dishes from a variety of regions, such as samosa (fried vegetable rolls), raita (yogurt sauce), paneer (soft cheese cubes), dal (lentil, pea or bean dishes) and meals with curry sauces.
But as different as Mumbai may be from Madras, all Indian cooking shares the use of many aromatic spices and a layering of complex flavors.
I flip through the photographs and explanations in “The New Indian Slow Cooker” and eventually choose pork vindaloo. I’ve ordered vindaloo in Indian restaurants before and I have a pork shoulder in my freezer.
But when I look at the recipe’s ingredient list, I begin to feel a little panicky. Fenugreek seeds? Black cardamom pods? Cassia? Tamarind paste?
Where am I going to get all these? And what am I going to do with them once I have them?
“It’s different,” Elliot confirmed. “If you’re used to making a hamburger patty and cooking green beans, that becomes a habit over time. There is a bit of a learning curve.”
Fortunately, I find the explanation of spices and ingredients in the front of the cookbook and begin to understand. Curry — what first comes to mind when we think Indian — is a blend of spices. All the spices called for in my recipe will be ground together to make a unique gravy for this dish.
Cookbook author Paniz provides substitutions for many of the most unfamiliar spices. Cassia is a cousin to cinnamon. Indian red chile is akin to cayenne.
I’m coming around. And I’m seeing that by making just this one Indian entree, I am expanding my cooking techniques and my understanding of a different culture.
Local Roots executive chef Matthew Lintz gets it. He doesn’t have a background in Indian cooking, either, but he says preparing it has opened up new influences for all his cooking.
“Indian cooking uses a lot of garlic and ginger, turmeric and cumin,” he said. “It’s cool to explore those flavor profiles and try them other times.”
Hassan: “My school was our family restaurant in Mumbai and my mother was my instructor ... It was an education for all the senses.”
• • •
I do not find what I need at Kroger. Their Indian section mainly consists of prepared food — commercial chutneys, boil-and-serve saag paneer dinners, jars of ready-to-eat tikka masala sauce.
“Which does not even taste the same,” said Lindee Katdare, the instructor for last week’s Indian Cooking class at the Co-op. Katdare’s husband is Indian, and she learned to make Indian dishes by watching and writing down everything her mother-in-law showed her.
“There are no shortcuts in Indian cooking,” Katdare said.
I could search for my spices at one of Roanoke’s few ethnic stores that carry hard-to-find Indian ingredients. But I’m hoping to spend more time cooking and less time driving around.
So I give the Co-op’s bulk spices aisle a try — and find most of what I’m missing. Measuring out the coriander and mustard seeds, the cayenne and black peppercorns and cardamom pods, I am enveloped in the scents of a foreign land.
This is just what I was hoping for. I hurry home to begin.
My son grinds the spices using our mortar and pestle. I roast the fenugreek seeds and brown the onions.
Now, our kitchen smells like an outdoor Indian market on a sunny day.
The first thing Katdare showed me when she began to talk about Indian food was a stainless steel circle, filled with smaller stainless tins, each holding a heap of earth-toned powder. It was her masala dabba, a gift from her mother-in-law.
Ahhh. This is how Indians are not intimidated by recipes that call for a dozen different spices. They have them all in one place. A paint box for the palate.
Marguerite: “Of course they are in books. But you must find them in your heart and then bring them to your pot. That’s the secret.”
• • •
After four hours in the slow cooker, my vindaloo is done. I give the basmati rice one last stir and sprinkle chopped cilantro over it all.
The meal is decadent. The pork is tender, the spices are tasty and warming but not overly hot. (I used less cayenne than called for and left out the serrano chiles altogether.)
The hardest part of making this meal? My own insecurities. My unfamiliarity with these ingredients, this way of cooking, made me not trust my instincts as I do when I’m making one of my go-to dishes.
But that’s what I wanted, wasn’t it? To leave the cold, bare, familiar behind?
“We all want to hurry up and get it done,” Katdare said of cooking. “But Indian food takes time. The onions need time to soak up the spices. You can’t look at it as an American dish.”
Maybe that’s what I’ve learned from this experience most of all. More than expanding my knowledge of spices or delving into a different culture, I am changing my attitude about cooking as a whole.
Dinner, Katdare says her mother-in-law taught her, is “something that you make with love. It’s not just a meal.”
source: www.roanoke.com
