Indian Recipes January 2010 Featured Program: Matrichaya
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Indian Recipes January 2010 Featured Program: Matrichaya In This Month’s Recipes: ♀ Indian Equee, Customs & Cuisine ♀ Map of Indian Cuisine ♀ Matrichaya, Women & Food ♀ Menu & Recipes India has a sophiscated and savory history of cuisine—or rather, cuisines. A long history of invasion and colonizaon, diverse geography, religion, and other factors have actually created a variety of styles of cooking across the subconnent. ✴In the far North, the influence of the Persians and Moghuls show up in lamb and rice dishes (biryani) and an aromac sauce with cream, nuts such as pistachios, and dried fruits known as korma. ✴In the far South, Keralans use coconut milk as the base for many spicy dishes and a thin rice‐flour pancake (dosa) is a specialty. Most South Indians are lactose intolerant but can eat yogurt, while most North Indians enjoy a range of dairy products. ✴Jains and Brahmin Hindus have created vegetarian cuisines in areas such as Rajasthan and Gujarat. ✴Goans, heavily influenced by Portuguese colonizaon, make a fiery pork dish called vindaloo. ✴West Bengalis take advantage of their access to fish and are known for their very sweet desserts. Map of Indian Cuisine From Taste of India As food historian Colleen Taylor Sen explains, we can speak generally of “Indian food” in that all these regional cuisines bear some important similaries: • Most Indian meals are starch‐based, centering on either rice or grain. • While only 30% of Indians are vegetarian, they consume about one‐tenth the animal products as Americans. • Rice or flatbreads (ro is the general term) are accompanied by pulses or dal (dried beans, mostly chickpeas or types of lenls; soup made from pulses is also called dal) and form the basis of most Indian meals. Vegetables and more rarely meat are added as availability and affordability dictate. 2 • While many dishes are hot, it is Indian Dining Etiquette mostly spice and not heat that • Indians traditionally do not use cutlery for eating, as enlivens meals. many foods ‐ such as Indian breads and curry ‐ are best • Masalas are spice mixtures that enjoyed when eating with the hand. help to define certain dishes. • If the food is soupy, such as many daals, spoons can be Certain ones have become used. Additionally, foods such as rice may be eaten with spoons in both North and South India, more so in case established. The best known here of formal occasions as in a restaurant or a buffet where is garam masala, which can food is not served on banana leaf. contain over 20 spices. • Spoons (usually two used in a clasping motion) and forks are commonly used to distribute foods from a Curry powder is a Brish invenon communal dish, as it is considered rude to touch the that mimics a masala; “curry” is a foods of others. general term for India’s spicy • Always use the right hand when eating or receiving gravies, probably from the Tamil food and never the left. word kari. Neither the term or the • Hindus consider the cattle to be a sacred animal; beef is powder is used in India; but the considered taboo. Therefore, restaurants in more fresh leaf of the curry plant— conservative Indian states, do not include beef dishes in their menu. unrelated to the spice mix—is. • It is not necessary to taste each and every dish prepared; but you must finish everything on the plate Condiments are also important to as it is considered a respect for served food, and food is Indian meals. Vegetable pickles, sacred. For this reason, take only as much food on the preserved fruits, chutney plate as you can finish. (tradionally, a fresh relish; also a Brish‐influenced fruit preserve), and raita (a yoghurt and vegetable salad) add nutrients as well as flavor. Most middle‐class Indians have two main meals, lunch and dinner, with a couple of snacks per day. Dessert dishes are treats, oen associated with religious fesvals or enjoyed as snacks. Rice and lenls were staples of India’s earliest inhabitants and sustain Indians today. Yet much of what we think of as Indian is actually quite new. Chai (spiced tea with milk) became popular there only in the 1950s. Even what many Indians would consider the most Indian dish today, tandoori chicken, actually came from (what is now) Pakistan with Peshawari refugees in the late 1940s. And Indian food has taken on new life elsewhere as well. Bal cooking is a new type of Indian food that developed in Birmingham, England. Matrichaya The food, health, and hygene iniaves that Matrichaya, our featured program, has undertaken are aimed at empowering women to feed themselves and their families beer and more regularly and safely. In the food processing course, women learn about nutrion, how to vary their diet, and how to take best advantage of what they have. They learn to preserve the vegetables and fruits that grow well in Dheki Tola in summer for winter use. Among the things they learn to make are vegetable pickles, tomato sauces, and gooseberry preserves. They learn to make flatbreads called missi ro and pappad from nutrious mixes of grains and pulses. 3 Pappad also has the advantage of being dried for long storage. They learn to use highly nutrional groundnuts (peanuts) in a variety of ways, even in a fudge‐ like confecon called barfi. And, they learn to do something that most Indians do everyday: to add nuts, seeds, and pulses to rice in order to get a protein‐rich dish called khichri. A number of agencies are encouraging the planng of second crops, especially groundnuts, pulses, and grains like millet (ragi), in Jharkhand. These are less suscepble to the periodic drought. Matrichaya also provides women with a means to support themselves. The preserves, sauces, and pappads are sold in Matrichaya’s store at Acqua World, an amusement park in Ranchi. And their products also stock the new village store, along with staples that Urmi once would have had to walk miles to find on her own. Our thanks to Carolyn Mayers for providing recipes and Indian cuisine informaon. Menu • Onion Bhajii—a favorite Indian street food and good starter • Curried Cashews—A sweet/spicy inspiraon • Breads: Missi Ro and Pappad—flatbreads (one so, the other crisp) • Condiments: Green Chutney and Mountain Jam (go with everything) • Khichri with Red Lenls—the main dish in Jharkhand and elsewhere • Kheema Matar—a lamb main dish, very popular and easy • Indian Ratatouille—Indian spices give a new twist to a potluck favorite • Peanut Barfi—a fudge‐like confecon • Chai‐Spiced Almond Cookies—another sweet inspiraon • To drink: Indian Tea, India Pale Ale, fruit juices such as mango or pineapple adapted from Sally Sampson and McCullough and Stevens, The Best American Recipes 2003‐2004 (Houghton Mifflin, 2003) Curried Cashews 1 large egg white 1 t frozen orange juice concentrate, thawed 4 c raw cashews 1/4 c sugar 1 t kosher salt plus more for sprinkling 1 t chili powder 1/2 t cinnamon 3/4 t curry powder 1/4‐1 t cayenne powder or other hot chile powder (opt—but a lile more spice is good) Preheat over to 225. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. Whip the egg white unl sff peaks form. Add the oj concentrate and whip again. Sr in the cashews, covering them well with the egg mixture. Add everything else and sr unl all is blended well and the cashews are coated evenly. 4 Spread nuts in a single layer on the baking sheet. Bake, srring every 10 minutes or so, unl browned, 40‐55 minutes. I like to sprinkle the nuts with more salt about halfway through and at the end—but taste one first. Remove from the oven and immediately loosen the nuts from the paper with a metal spatula. Set aside to cool at least 1 hour, but even beer, overnight, before serving. Makes 4 cups. adapted from hp://onehotstove.blogspot.com/2005/12/o‐is‐for‐onion‐bhajji.html NOTE: Matrichaya helps some women set up shops where they sell fried snacks, usually made with vegetables that are popular throughout India. This recipe comes from a wonderful food blog wrien by an Indian professor in St. Louis named Nupur. While she isn’t from Jharkhand, her recipes and descripons of Indian cooking are well worth a visit to onehotstove.blogspot.com. She says this about the dish, which is called bhajji in her nave Marathi, also known as pakora: “It is found on every street corner in India, oen eaten stuffed between slices of bread (a way to convert a cheap snack into a filling meal). It is a favorite of all home cooks, a way of serving up a hot tasty snack using ingredients that are found in every pantry.” These are great with the chutney recipes below. They are mainstays of my party repertoire—just about everybody loves them (think Indian hushpuppies). This should make a dozen or more, depending on the size of your “teaspoonful.” Onion Bhajii 3 medium onions, peeled, halved and thinly sliced 1 1/2 c chickpea flour (besan) See note on flour below in Missi Ro recipe. 1/3 c minced cilantro 2‐4 minced green chiles (oponal, substute minced bell pepper if you like) 1 1/2 t cumin seeds 3/4 t turmeric 1 t coriander powder salt to taste Oil for deep‐frying Mix salt into the onions and leave them for 10 minutes. This soens the onions and brings out their juices. Add the rest of the ingredients (except oil) to the onions, sr well, then add just enough water to get a thick baer.