I love Indian food, it's full of flavour and has such a satisfying taste, very different from the typical UK food which is much more bland although we do seem to eat a lot of Indian dishes back in the UK too, but you can not beat the food out here! Down side is, I always preferred to get my Indian food as a takeaway or straight from a jar, rather than to actually make it from scratch and all those spices terrified me....what was i meant to do with them?! I confess that for the first few months I would go to the local supermarket here and steer clear of the whole spices section and make the most random concoctions of food instead....and eggs have been a life saver! However along with my determination to learn Hindi, I was also determined to learn how to cook Indian food properly, that and if I want to stay living here I need to be able to cook the local food. One day my intention is to be able to have friends over, serve them Indian food and it almost be as good as theirs! I'm a long way off from that though!
However a friend and i decided to take a couple of cooking classes to learn how to make some basic dishes which would hopefully see us on the way to becoming culinary experts! Or at least be able to make Dal....Our first week of cooking we did learn how to make Dal, Dal Fry and Garlic Dal....the Garlic Dal was delicious or at least it was at cooking class....I've since made it a few times and still haven't worked out quite where I am going wrong. Sadly, with every new skill, you have to practice in order to improve and like many things, I am not naturally good at cooking and i'm having to eat the not so great versions on my way to becoming a better cook!
We also made paranthas and roti's. Now the roti's I have done OK with keeping the shape to a certain extent and they come out tasting nice.....but then I realised I was making hard roti's/chapati's and they ideally need to be sort so you can bend them and break them and that's what a good roti is....soft! So it has now become my mission that by the end of the year I will be able to make soft and completely round roti's! This is no easy task, but I need to get this accomplished, I need my roti's to be soft and to rise when they should rise. I've tried making roti's 6 or 7 times now and they never rise and their not soft, fortunately they taste good so that's at least my saving grace.
My work friends tell me it will take only two months under their supervision and so I am going to my friend's house tomorrow to begin the soft roti process. It should be fun, my friend speaks hardly any English and my Hindi is still very much beginner's stage but somehow we always seem to manage to communicate. I'm realising the best way to learn is to go ahead and practice myself.....but with a little supervision from friends who have been making these dishes for years.
One recipe I seem to be managing fairly well is brinjal stuffed with masala. I've made this twice now and both recipes I used were different and so produce slightly different results.....but dare I say it, they were both nice! I love aubergine and so it was nice to be able to cook with them and such a tasty recipe like that.
I tried my hand at Paneer Butter Masala but over did the cream and had issues making the masala because you need a grinder/blender and at the time I didn't have one so although it was a good attempt on my part it did not quite turn out as expected. Fortunately I have a sweet tooth and love cream so it tasted fine to me! It also give me hope when I have an idea where the recipe went wrong as it gives me an opportunity to improve it next time round. Then there was Jeera Aloo that I made which is a dry recipe, that turned out good, but I overdid the salt! Slight adjustments need to be made to most of the foods that I am cooking and then I am hoping they will taste a lot better and I will be eating them because I want to to and not because I refuse to throw it away and waste food!
So cooking Indian food is a learning experience and as I found out today, the soft roti situation, well if I make roti's three times a day like my friend does, i'll have it sorted.! With a task like Indian style cooking, i'm not going to have time for much else.....gone are the days of my spinach and ricotta pizza bunged in the oven for twelve minutes and instead there is the 60 - 90 minute task in front of me, of reading the recipe and finding a way of cooking it without crying my heart out over the onions which incessantly sting my eyes or when I accidentally rub my eyes having just handled red chilli powder, to add a bit of extra sting there!
Watch this space and in the near future.....or at least at some point this year, you will experience the rising roti!
However a friend and i decided to take a couple of cooking classes to learn how to make some basic dishes which would hopefully see us on the way to becoming culinary experts! Or at least be able to make Dal....Our first week of cooking we did learn how to make Dal, Dal Fry and Garlic Dal....the Garlic Dal was delicious or at least it was at cooking class....I've since made it a few times and still haven't worked out quite where I am going wrong. Sadly, with every new skill, you have to practice in order to improve and like many things, I am not naturally good at cooking and i'm having to eat the not so great versions on my way to becoming a better cook!
We also made paranthas and roti's. Now the roti's I have done OK with keeping the shape to a certain extent and they come out tasting nice.....but then I realised I was making hard roti's/chapati's and they ideally need to be sort so you can bend them and break them and that's what a good roti is....soft! So it has now become my mission that by the end of the year I will be able to make soft and completely round roti's! This is no easy task, but I need to get this accomplished, I need my roti's to be soft and to rise when they should rise. I've tried making roti's 6 or 7 times now and they never rise and their not soft, fortunately they taste good so that's at least my saving grace.
My work friends tell me it will take only two months under their supervision and so I am going to my friend's house tomorrow to begin the soft roti process. It should be fun, my friend speaks hardly any English and my Hindi is still very much beginner's stage but somehow we always seem to manage to communicate. I'm realising the best way to learn is to go ahead and practice myself.....but with a little supervision from friends who have been making these dishes for years.
One recipe I seem to be managing fairly well is brinjal stuffed with masala. I've made this twice now and both recipes I used were different and so produce slightly different results.....but dare I say it, they were both nice! I love aubergine and so it was nice to be able to cook with them and such a tasty recipe like that.
I tried my hand at Paneer Butter Masala but over did the cream and had issues making the masala because you need a grinder/blender and at the time I didn't have one so although it was a good attempt on my part it did not quite turn out as expected. Fortunately I have a sweet tooth and love cream so it tasted fine to me! It also give me hope when I have an idea where the recipe went wrong as it gives me an opportunity to improve it next time round. Then there was Jeera Aloo that I made which is a dry recipe, that turned out good, but I overdid the salt! Slight adjustments need to be made to most of the foods that I am cooking and then I am hoping they will taste a lot better and I will be eating them because I want to to and not because I refuse to throw it away and waste food!
So cooking Indian food is a learning experience and as I found out today, the soft roti situation, well if I make roti's three times a day like my friend does, i'll have it sorted.! With a task like Indian style cooking, i'm not going to have time for much else.....gone are the days of my spinach and ricotta pizza bunged in the oven for twelve minutes and instead there is the 60 - 90 minute task in front of me, of reading the recipe and finding a way of cooking it without crying my heart out over the onions which incessantly sting my eyes or when I accidentally rub my eyes having just handled red chilli powder, to add a bit of extra sting there!
Watch this space and in the near future.....or at least at some point this year, you will experience the rising roti!
