Indian Cooking Tips

I like to make Indian food. Okay, not as much as my friend Elias, and I'm going to have to make some of the recipes more healthy now, but I love me a curry.

Anyway, if you love eating Indian but have never made it, give it a try sometime. Elias, Jacob, and I all began making Indian from the cookbook Curries Without Worries by Sudha Koul. That and a dozen or so spices should give you a good start.

Maybe it's my own food snobbery, but I tend to avoid any recipe I find that calls for curry powder. Curry powder is a British invention to try and add Indian flavor without fresh spices. It's rubbish, don't use it. There are thousands of combinations of Indian spice mixes and using just curry powder or the step up ground Garam Masala is like putting Lawry's Seasoned Salt on everything you cook and calling it properly seasoned.

I also don't recommend premade spice mixes for specific curries sold in Indian grocery stores. It's like buying seasoning packets at a regular grocery store in that you pay two bucks for something that would cost you ten cents if you had a regular supply of spices at home. Go to the Indian grocery and spend twenty bucks on 7 oz bags of a dozen spices. You'll be good to go. You may also want to pick up some ghee(clarified butter), basmati rice, and loose-leaf tea while you're there.