Masala Cook:: Indian Food, Indian Cooking, Indian Recipes & More

What is Bhel Puri?

A street food that’s virtually synonymous with Mumbai city, bhel-puri is a nutrient rich snack with a mind boggling variety of flavors. Puffed rice, a fried savory mix, and sev (tiny, crisp, gram flour noodles) form the base. To this are added boiled potato pieces, finely chopped onions, tomatoes and green chilies A dash of  date-and-tamarind chutney,  coriander-and chili chutney and  you’re ready to spoon it down with a couple of small puris!

Bhel puri is best eaten in a newspaper cone, on Chowpatty Beach, Mumbai, with a salty breeze blowing through your hair. If that’s not possible, try it out at home. You can’t really go wrong with bhel puri!

What is Pao Bhaji?

Finger-lickin’ good stuff, sold off the streets of Mumbai and Pune. It’s nourishing, too! Pao means bun in Marathi, the local language, and Bhaji is a generic term for a vegetable dish. Urban legend has it that the dish was dreamed up by a vendor decades ago to cater to the workers of Mumbai’s textile mills.

Assorted vegetables added to a mashed potato, onion and tomato base, form the thick gravy, cooked on an enormous griddle. The 12-spice mix added to it imparts a unique flavor that sends one’s taste buds into a tizzy. The pao is sliced in half, pan-fried with a dollop of butter and served with bhaji.

What is Rasmalai in Indian Cuisine?

This sinfully scrumptious creation originates from eastern India, the home of many, popular milk-based sweets.

Flattened cottage cheese (paneer) dumplings are cooked in sugar syrup and then dunked into thickened, mildly sweet milk. The sugar never overwhelms the palate, thanks to the cardamom powder added to the milk. When serving, slivers of dried pistachio are added as a garnish. Rasmalai served chilled makes for a fabulous dessert. A perfect rasmalai is soft and spongy, never excessively sweet and will have you going back for more!

What is Idli in South Indian Cooking?

This is the dosa’s less glamorous sibling; it’s easier on the waistline, since it’s steamed, not fried. The rice-and-lentil batter is spooned into an idli stand consisting of plates with built in shallow cavities. The stand goes into a steamer and is allowed to cook for about 10-12 minutes. Once done, the perfect idli is soft and a little springy. The fermentation process makes it nutrient-rich, while steaming makes it easy to digest. An ideal breakfast if you’re recuperating from indigestion or as a solid food for toddlers. Like the dosa, it’s accompanied by sambar and chutney; some favor it with nothing but a little ‘gunpowder’ (roasted and ground red chilies, lentils and salt) and sesame oil or ghee.

What does Dosa mean in Indian Cuisine?

Dosa is a South Indian staple that’s travelled worldwide. Neither pancake nor flatbread, the dosa could be best described as a golden brown crepe, crisp and very melt-in-the-mouth! Its ingredients are simple: a 1:4 ratio of split lentils and parboiled rice, soaked, ground into a batter and left to ferment. 

Dosas are prepared by thinning the batter with water and spreading spoonfuls onto a greased, heated griddle. When both sides are cooked, the dosa is folded into a half-moon and served with small bowls of freshly ground coconut chutney and sambar, a sour-and-spicy lentil curry. A heavier version, the Masala Dosa, has a small portion of spicy, cooked potato placed inside the half-moon.

Dosas are traditionally eaten for breakfast or ‘tiffin’ in the early evening, but restaurants serve them as all day food. Variations on restaurant menu are Paper Dosa, (extra crisp, cone-shaped), Rava Dosa (made of semolina) and Uthappam (made thicker, pancake-style, with chopped onion, green chilies and tomatoes). Some restaurants publicize their expertise by making extra long, rolled dosas which can be shared by several people sitting in a row!

What is Gulab Jamun in Indian Cuisine?

Gulab means ‘rose’ and Jamun is a fruit; together though, they refer to the hugely popular Indian sweet that’s a regular at festivals, weddings and on desi restaurant menus.

From dough consisting of milk solids (khoya) and flour, small balls (golf-ball size) are rolled and gently deep-fried in ghee until golden brown. These are soaked in warm sugar syrup to which rosewater, cardamom seeds and perhaps saffron have been added. Sometimes, you’ll find gulab jamuns with a few slivers of pistachio embedded in the centre – taking indulgence to new levels! When sugar is added to the dough, the jamun caramelizes and turns near black, a variation called Kala Jamun. A modern take on this traditional sweet is hot gulab jamuns served with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream melting over!

What is Tandoori in Indian Cooking?

‘Tandoori’ comes from tandoor, a clay oven used from ancient times in Punjab, (northern India), Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkey, Iran and the Middle East. The cylindrical oven is heated with coal or firewood burning within it. Meats and flatbreads cooked in this have acquired the name of ‘tandoori’ cuisine.

It is thought that the Mughals, India’s epicurean rulers, first brought tandoori cuisine to the country. The genre went democratic when restaurateur Kundan Lal Gujral, from Peshawar, Pakistan, set up shop in Delhi after the two countries were partitioned.  He innovated with the tandoor (which until then had been used to cook only bread) and came up with the now iconic tandoori chicken. His restaurant, Moti Mahal in Old Delhi, is a pilgrimage center of sorts for anyone who loves North Indian food.

Tandoori food is relished for its crisp exterior and soft, succulent inner portions. It’s pretty awe-inspiring, watching a bare-handed chef slide off super hot kebabs from long skewers or peeling breads from the inside wall of a tandoor!

What is Biryani in Indian Cuisine?

Biryani, the royal meat-and-rice casserole, travelled to India with the Mughals (who acquired the recipe from Persia).Over time it absorbed local culinary practices; the cities of Lucknow in the north and Hyderabad in the south are particularly famed for their respective biryani traditions.

The best way to make a great biryani is the dum method. Partially cooked rice and spiced chicken are sealed in an earthen pot, and slow-cooked. When opened, the fragrance of the biryani guarantees a good tuck-in!

The test of a perfect biryani is to drop a handful on the floor; if the rice grains remain separate, you’ve mastered the art!

Recipe for Chicken Makhani

Recipe for Besan (Gram Flour) Laddoo

Makes 12 Laddoos

Ingredients

1-1/2 cup gram flour (besan)
1/2 cup semolina (sooji)
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup unsalted clarified butter (ghee)
1/4 cup milk
10 finely sliced almonds
10 cashews, cut in small pieces
2 tbs pistachios finely chopped
1 tsp green cardamom powder