Experienced travelers know how to enjoy Indian cuisine without dying from the spices.
Today anyone can make a correct journey to this exotic country – without accidentally ending up in America. Of course, not only for the spices – there are plenty of attractions in the wonderful land of maharajas. But the guest cannot avoid its aromatic wealth either, because gastronomic pleasures are a crucial part of a foreign trip. So it's better to prepare, advises Lenta.ru.
That Very Curry
India is the birthplace of most well-known and little-known spices, and spices are the main thing in Indian cuisine. I knew this even before visiting India, thanks to an acquaintance with the owner of an Indian restaurant in Moscow. Standing downwind, I could always predict his appearance at least a minute in advance.
It is a big mistake to try to judge the most ancient of culinary arts by the menu of non-Indian restaurants serving Indian cuisine. What they serve is significantly adapted to the delicate stomach of the white man. And chicken cooked in curry sauce bought at the nearest supermarket has nothing in common with Indian cuisine except the name of the most famous Indian spice. The name – but not the taste.
What mixtures of herbs, roots, and spices do "enlightened cooks" not prepare curry from! I have come across samples of pseudo-Indian art that contain not a gram of curry. The necessary dark orange color is easily achieved by a cunning mixture of roasted yellow pepper with stale turmeric, more rarely with precious saffron.
Real curry is unique not only because the plant grows exclusively in India. Curry is a mixture of freshly ground spices with the mandatory inclusion of leaves from the Indian plant of the same name. Since every cook has their own taste and secrets, one curry never turns out like another. Curry is not stored ready-made because mixed spices quickly lose their pungency and aroma.
Anyone who has been to an eastern market in the morning has surely observed amusing scenes at the spice stalls. Buyers scrutinize herbs and seeds, pick at roots and twigs with their nails, smell their fingers, and the most temperamental then shove those fingers under the seller's nose, accompanying the gesture with disapproving exclamations. This means the spices are stale, old, dried out, or conversely, damp, having absorbed foreign odors.
So, for making curry, self-respecting Indian cooks and housewives go to the market in the morning and choose the best spices, and grind them in a hand mill or mortar directly when preparing the dish.
In jeweler's proportions, up to several dozen components are mixed: there are familiar ones like coriander, cumin, cloves, cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, turmeric, and saffron, and exotic spices like asafoetida, known to us as ferula foetida (in old phytology reference books it was called even more uncompromisingly – "ferula most foetid"). Despite its unappealing name, this plant has not only a bright taste and aroma but also medicinal properties. The great Ibn Sina prescribed a mixture of asafoetida for nervous disorders, and modern medicine does not reject it.
Most spices have medicinal properties. Red pepper can cure rheumatism, ginger can cure colds, and in Central and Minor Asia, where turmeric is added to almost every dish, hepatitis is practically never contracted.
So, if you are not a fan of spicy food and culinary experiments, you will have a hard time in this great but hungry country. But you will have a chance to get intimately acquainted with authentic Indian cuisine. After all, you can only eat something truly Indian in India.
Safety Tips
Many tourists remain convinced that food in India comes in two varieties: very spicy and very sweet. Attracted by a pleasant smell, they are tempted by an unknown dish sold right on the street from a cart or from a tandoor. This is not advisable. Not only because such food rarely meets sanitary standards in any city in the world (and especially in India), but because you most likely won't even taste it. Stunned by the spiciness, your receptors will go into a coma, and you'll have to douse your burning insides with liters of water. That's how they eat here.
If you are starving to death and there is no other food nearby, at least say two words to the food seller: 'No spice!' Repeat until you are sure he understands you. Of course, you won't manage without spices entirely, but you'll have a chance to avoid at least some of them, and that will slightly ease your ordeal.
Gradually you will learn to distinguish "fire-hazard" food from plain flatbreads and harmless fried bananas served in banana leaves. After a few not-so-successful attempts, I managed to find my optimal sustenance option in India – thali.
This universal Indian food has no recipe or specific ingredients. It is not so much a dish as a method. On a large plate, a chapati or rice is placed, around it are several bowls with various liquid foods into which the chapati or rice is dipped. The liquid is usually a spicy chili sauce, something like fried tomatoes, sometimes yogurt. In essence, thali is infinite: if you finish the flatbread, they will bring you another, hot; if you empty one of the bowls, they will bring the next, and all for a symbolic cost. Thali is perhaps the cheapest pleasure in India. The main thing is to choose from the condiments the one that won't burn your throat immediately and kill your appetite.
In one of the cups placed around the flatbread, there will inevitably be dal soup (sometimes called dhal). This is one of the most beloved dishes among Indians, served both in high-end restaurants and street eateries. Dal is made from peas, soybeans, beans, and legumes, but most often it is lentil soup. Very spicy and very tasty.
Read the continuation of the article:
SPICY TASTE OF INDIA (part 2)