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Fast suppers: Sweet potato, chorizo & sweetcorn tacos, Baked portobello mushrooms with Dolcelatte & walnuts
This is normally done in a dry pan over a medium heat. For perfect results, toast the spices individually, such as for garam masala, but life is short and I find that if I attend to them carefully I can get away with doing them all together. The idea is to lightly roast the spices until they smell toasted, being careful not to let them burn. After this they can be ground in a spice grinder or using a pestle and mortar. You will notice that whole spices which you toast and grind yourself have a much finer aroma than any you can buy ready-made. Note that you never toast nutmegs. On to the food now; the tamarind rice, or puliyodharai, we saw tonight was prepared in the kitchen of the Meenakshi Temple in Madurai. Once the rice is cooked, it is pressed against a stone surface by hand; as they believe it gives an additional flavour(!)Since you are here, we would like to share our vision for the future of travel - and the direction Culture Trip is moving in. That said, the recipes are eminently useable by anyone with any experience cooking their own food from scratch. (If you're a member of the microwave readymeal generation, start with any of Anjum Anand's books and work your way up.) These recipes are simple, delicious, and they work if you know which side of a saucepan to put the food in. Tonight we also saw another vegetarian treat in the shape of the thoran, a dry vegetable curry from Kerala made from whatever fresh vegetables are available and cooked with mustard seeds, green chillies, ginger and grated coconut. Anybody who has done business in India will know that the bureaucracy is present in every transaction. The number of permissions we needed to do anything, anywhere were mind boggling. In Calcutta, for example, we had permission to film in the streets but only if we didn’t film cows. Getting permission to visit the Golden Temple in Amritsar took months, but when we arrived at the gates they told us we couldn’t bring in our tripod as we had only obtained permission for the camera.
Did you discover any essential cookware or kitchen gadgets on your travels? Have you brought any home with you? Recipes are doable and tasty. His pakora recipe is inspiring; most others are heavy on veggies as Stein tries to expand the importance of vegetarianism & Indian tradition to BBC viewers. (This is a change from his previous work as he's a 'seafood and meat guy'.
Charity Lunches are back at Barnes
Thankfully, not all Brits will fall for the hype. Some British chefs do an excellent job of documenting their Indian food journey (see Gordon Ramsey's show). If you need someone to make Indian food more accessible for the Western palate, try Madhur Jaffery who does a good job. At least she knows what she is talking about!
A mini food processor makes light work of turning garlic and ginger, with a splash of water, into pastes, which are used throughout the book. However, for smaller quantities, or if you don’t own a mini processor, you can use a microplane grater to finely grate ginger or garlic. Or you can crush the garlic, either by chopping finely with a sharp knife or using a garlic crusher. Whenever I hear the word curry, I'm filled with a longing for spicy hot food with the fragrance of cumin, cloves and cinnamon. I see deep red colours from lots of Kashmiri chillis, tinged with a suggestion of yellow from turmeric. I think of the tandoor oven, and slightly scorched naan shining with ghee and garlic.When Indians talk of their food, they talk about their life. To understand this country, you need to understand curry. I saw the BBC series that launched this book. I loved the colourful photography and production of the films, even though I find Mr Stein to be a bit of a pompous, arrogant prat. This, however, is not unusual in TV chefs of a certain age, and I know from my participation on cooking forums that he appeals to a certain sector of the viewing public. However, despite my dislike of his TV persona (it's obvious in a couple of episodes that he is about to explode at his longsuffering team, and treasures a lot of idiotic memes about the India that never was), the recipes looked good enough to want the book. As a person who lives on a fixed pension, I was wise enough to wait until I could find the book secondhand for a fraction of the original price.For those with a sweet tooth, it was time for a dessert dish this week with the inclusion of payasam, a sweet milk pudding with vermicelli. This one is a typical Tamil dessert and is apparently always served at local weddings. With plenty of milk, ghee and sugar this dish, like most Indian desserts, is best enjoyed in small portions!
You can look forward to trying some of the dishes from India on our menus – including Pondicherry cod curry, breakfast bhaji, Amritsari fish, pau bhaji, vegetable makhanwala, kachumber salad and more. Choose a restaurant here. Learn to cook the recipesThese are my simple suppers. Recipes that are straightforward and informal - yet effortlessly delicious. The idea of supper appealed to me because it suggests an ordinary meal. When one is not trying too hard; maybe something you're going to cook in your jeans and Polo shirt, a glass of vinho verde on the worktop.
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