North Indian Cuisine: Basics

The North Indian cuisine I was introduced to is Hindu in origin, and therefore heavily vegetarian. It is also noted for its use of a Tandoor (particular type of oven) for baking both chicken and Naan breads (which is essentially a festive bread as it is made from refined flour and can only be baked in a Tandoor oven). 

Hindu cuisine is essentially vegetarian in focus, relying heavily on ghee (clarified butter used in cooking), kiram (soft home-made white cheese) and milks and yoghurts for their predominant sources of protein, though chicken, fish and mutton dishes are not unknown, while beef, of course, is prohibited.

Typical of this food is the fact that most of your soft vegetables are blended into a puree, and then harder vegetables (such as corn) are added later, as a contrast of textures, lest everything become baby mush. The soft cheese squares are also added at this stage, just prior to dishing up. 

Because of the need to blend after cooking, a stick blender is definitely recommended. Although you can chop by hand, it will never be sufficiently fine a blend for the particular flavours of the dish to come out. I have tried it both ways. The more blended approach is so far superior it even tastes different and is more authentic, obviously.

Particularly distinctive of this region is their love of spinach and peas (which grow well in cool mountain climes). Hindu food is predominantly vegetarian, since they believe that you are what you eat, so they rely on ghee (clarified butter used in cooking), kiram (soft home-made white cheese) and milks and yoghurts for their predominant sources of protein, although chicken, fish and mutton dishes are not unknown. However, the consumption of beef is still very much prohibited within the Hindu culture, religion and tradition, which means that no McDonald’s in India stocks or sells beef burgers, only vegetarian burgers. However, the shoe manufacturers are mostly Hindu, so while trading in leather is acceptable, eating beef is not. 

From the Ayurvedic tradition comes the concept of ‘balance’, of ensuring particular quantities are carefully blended and a holistic manner, where no flavour or type of food should dominate the other.

Priya very usefully incorporated these for me into a series of “rules of thumb”, such as ensuring the ratio of fresh ginger to fresh garlic is 1:1 for some dishes or 1:3 for others.

Or that you should use a clove of garlic per chicken breast and that a fresh green chilli is allocated for each person who will partake of a particular dish. These are extremely useful to follow and I will utilise them greatly in the recipes that follow.

The Ayurvedic tradition also places great value on the freshness of ingredients. Apart from a few spices such as cinnamon and cloves (and even then you grind them fresh for each dish) most of these dishes use only fresh ingredients - fresh ginger, coriander leaves, green chilli, garlic and the like. It certainly leaves you feeling all healthy and tingly afterwards - promise!

A basic glossary of terms is useful, particularly if you do want to go and hunt down some of your ingredients amongst the Indian markets. 

Glossary of terms

Masala essentially means ‘mixed spices’. Garam masala is a blend of hot spices, predominantly used for lamb or beef dishes since it is stronger than white meats. 

Ghee is clarified butter, which means all the solids impurities have been taken out of it, and hence you can cook with this oil at high heat without it going brown. The butter is made from either cow or water buffalo milk. It is definitely most superior in terms of making Indian food, though you can substitute with other oils. 

Cumin is known as Jeera. It is used predominantly in vegetarian cooking.

Caraway is also called Shah Jeera or Fullajeeri. It is used in meat dishes, since it constitutes a stronger flavour than the cumin.

It is important always to add spices to hot oil. While you can add spices later if you have forgotten any, you should put them into the oil at the beginning of the cooking. 

Bay leaves, on the other hand, tend to become bitter if cooked for too long. You would add these to the hot oil after the onion has browned, and just before adding the tomatoes. 

You use bigger cloves of garlic and more for the meat dishes, while you use smaller ones and fewer cloves for the vegetable dishes. In Saudi, the majority of cloves are very large, while I found the South African garlic to be a smaller variety (apart from the new “giant” cloves you can get in Woolworths, and which are rather expensive). As a result, you must ascertain the proportions of garlic to ginger. 

Turmeric is an antiseptic, and hence used in almost every single Indian dish (well, apart from desserts, of course) for precisely that purpose. A teaspoon of turmeric added to hot milk is a traditional remedy for a sore throat.

Cardamom is called Green Elaichi.

Malvani masala is a West Coast, very hot, fish spice.