It’s grey and windy in Seattle today, a little bit of snow even. Time to stay indoors and stay warm. Are you ready for another cooking challenge? I am. This time we’re going to tackle Indian food.
I’ve been wanting to take on Indian food since last November, when my cookbook club picked Madhur Jaffrey’s first book, An Invitation to Indian Cooking, as our selection.
The day we met, people showed up with pots of curries and platters of naan bread. There was chai and mango lassis and rice and lentils and the kitchen smelled of cardamom. We sat around a big table and talked and laughed and it was the very best way to spend a lazy winter Sunday afternoon. Even since then, I’ve wanted to delve deeper into Indian food. Happily, a number of you guys want to as well.
This month I’m going to share with you some of the Indian food recipes I’ve been making and enjoying. We’re also going to talk about Indian spices and other ingredients, and where to find them. And because I’m not exactly an expert in these matters, I’m bringing in those more knowledgeable than I am. It’s going to be fun.
I’m going to intersperse the Indian posts with other content this month, so it doesn’t overwhelm the site, but you’ll get a post or two a week. And at the end of the month, I’m challenging myself to throw a little Indian food dinner party (part of my resolution towards becoming a better hostess). So stay tuned for that. I’m already scheming a menu. Maybe you want to join me?
To start, I’m going to tell you some of what I’ve learned about Indian food—not as an expert, because I certainly am not, but as a novice.
• Yes, there are a number of spices involved in Indian food, but you can make quite a lot with a basic handful, many of which you probably already have at home (more on that soon).
• Indian food doesn’t have to be that spicy. The best thing about making your own is you can decide how spicy to make a dish.
• The Indian food you make at home will probably taste miles better than anything you’ve had in a restaurant. It’s astounding sometimes.
• A lot of Indian dishes taste even better the next day. This has been a nice surprise.
But for today I’m going to leave you with a recipe for Baingan Bharta, a smoky roasted eggplant dish I love. This is one of the dishes I order in a new Indian restaurant, to test the quality. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s a greasy mess. But the basis—roasted eggplant with onion, ginger, garlic, and spices—is delicious. I had never made it myself, so this is the dish I picked to make for cookbook club.
I’ve tweaked it a bit from the Madhur Jaffrey original. This book was her first, and I found the recipe writing to be lacking a bit. I’ve tried to clarify the instruction. I hope you like it as much as I do.
Other Indian Recipes on the Site:
Saag Paneer (spinach and cheese)
Easy Orange Lentil Dal
BAINGAN BHARTA: Roasted Eggplant
Serves 4-6 as a side dish
2 medium eggplants, long and thin is best, not too round
1 medium onion, peeled and chopped (roughly 2 cups)
1 piece fresh ginger, about 1 inch square
2 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
5 tbs vegetable or canola oil
½ tsp ground turmeric
½ hot green chili, finely chopped (optional). Can use jalapeno, anaheim, or these green chilies that are traditional in Indian cooking
1 tbs chopped cilantro, reserve a little for garnish
2 medium canned tomatoes, coarsely chopped, plus 1 cup of the juice from the can OR three medium tomatoes (ideally peeled) if in season
¾ to 1 tsp salt
1 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp garam masala
Roast eggplant until charred on all sides. I do this on a glass-topped electric stove, but you can do it over a gas flame, on a barbecue grill, or in a hot oven. You want the outer skin to char and the insides to become soft, and ideally you want to avoid piercing the skin, as it becomes messy and hard to turn. This is a job for tongs used gently. You also want to make sure you have fairly long and thin eggplant, so the flesh cooks through. The chunky round eggplant on the left stayed raw on the inside.
The eggplant will become soft and charred and hard to turn. This is okay. The whole process will take 20 to 25 minutes. When the eggplant is done, you can either peel the charred skin off under cold running water, or cut the eggplant in two from top to bottom and scoop out the insides (I peel mine). Chop the eggplant flesh coarsely and put in a strainer or bowl to sit and drain. Remove as much water as possible.
Put onion, garlic, ginger in food processor or blender with 3 tbs water and blend until smooth. Heat skillet over medium heat and add oil. Pour the onion paste in and add turmeric. Fry this mixture, stirring frequently, for about ten minutes (the recipe says it turns brown after about five minutes, but I didn’t find this to be the case).
Add the green chili and the cilantro to the onion mixture and cook for one minute before adding the tomatoes. Lower the flame and cook for ten minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the chopped eggplant, raise the flame and cook ten to fifteen minutes, seasoning with salt, lemon juice, and garam masala.
Serve warm, sprinkled with chopped cilantro. I like this with a dollop of yogurt or raita, on top of rice or with chapati or roti of some sort.
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You had me at Baingan Bharta! That’s my test dish in an Indian restaurant too. When it’s good, it’s sublime. When it’s bad, you can taste liquid smoke. I’m definitely in for the Indian food!
Eeeeww, liquid smoke!
Sadly, I know what you mean.
Nice! I was one of the people who had mentioned Indian food as something I was intimidated to cook. I’ve actually been diving into Jaffrey’s book Indian Cooking on my blog this month, and agree with all of the points you made above. Once you have the spices, it’s really not scary at all! Everything I’ve made so far has been phenomenal. So much better than restaurants.
I love Baingan Bharta! I had no clue one could roast eggplants on a glass stovetop! Sweet! The chargrilled eggplant is definitely the key to success with this recipe.
It’s true (makes a mess on the stovetop, but that cleans up). My cookbook club was amazed at how smoky it got. Yum.
I haven’t done much Indian cooking at home, but I love eating Indian food and have been wanting to make more at home. I’m definitely looking forward to the ideas and recipes that you share.
Gotta say, my stomach started growling as soon as I saw the title….I am so so so enamored with Indian food. We’ve got a surprisingly delicious Indian restaurant/take away here in my little farming community town in the Fraser Valley, BC – but homemade, as you say, is yes, most always more tasty.
I have been trying to increase my Indian home cooking repertoire for a few years now. I can probably count on one had the number of times I have eaten Indian food in a restaurant, this is due to the fact that I have never lived anywhere with Indian restaurants, not that I wouldn’t love to eat at an Indian restaurant regularly. We have Indian food almost every Sunday. For a while I was making something different from 660 curries every week. Lately, I have been stuck in a rut making Chicken Tikka Masala almost every week. I would like to learn a few more side items as I love to cook Indian dishes when we have company. Although not authentic I was excited to find a recipe for ice cream with Indian fennel candies and anise from Jeni’s Splendid ice cream for dessert. I always struggle to find a good way to end the meal. This and homemade Masala Chai has made the meal complete.
Yum! I was so bummed I missed that meeting. Can’t wait to see the menu for your dinner party.
Love. It. I’ve made several recipes from At Home with Madhur Jaffrey and they’ve all been phenomenal. The only downside I find to Indian cooking is recipes that call for asafoetida. I store mine in it’s original plastic bottle inside of a mason jar and it still smells up my spice cabinet!
Yay Indian food! We’ve just started trying to cook it a lot more ourselves, and a book called Five Spices Fifty Dishes has actually been a big help. I had the book for a year before I ever cooked anything out of it, assuming the food would be over-simplified and the flavors not complex. Boy was I wrong. It may not be super authentic (honestly, I wouldn’t be the person to ask, but Amazon reviews seem to suggest that’s the case), but it made Indian food approachable and now I’m ready to try more complicated recipes. And it doesn’t hurt that inauthentic or not, the food is incredibly flavorful and delicious.
Great post!
It’s a source of frustration to me that the word “spicy” has two distinct meanings – it’s used to denote chilli heat and, of course, it refers to a dish made using lots of spice(s).
Often when people say they don’t like spicy, all they mean is that they don’t like chilli heat. My family are from Northern India and dishes are generally not as chilli hot there as in other regions of India. Myself, I’m a complete chilli wuss so I simply omit (or greatly reduce) the chilli, which is just one spice out of many, but use hte others in full force for plenty of delicious flavour, without the unpleasant (for me) mouth burn.
Growing up in the UK, my mum cooked Indian once a week or so, the rest of the time we ate British, Greek, Chinese, Italian, French, whatever she fancied trying from cookery books… somehow my sister and I never learned to cook Indian food during our childhoods. So when we went off to university, we missed mum’s Indian more than the rest (which we could find more readily). That lead to mum starting to write down her recipes for us, which quickly became a family website, my husband and I did the techy side and mum provided the recipes. We never expected it to be of interest to non-family members, but to our surprise, it started getting visits from all around the world… in May we celebrated it’s 10 year anniversary and over 7 million visitors! The site is just for fun, people keep suggesting mum does a cookbook, but there are so many great ones on the market (including the Godess of Indian cooking in the UK, Madhur Jeffrey, that you mentioned) and new young cooks too, that there’s probably not space in the market. Still, if you or readers would like a free online resource for home-cooking recipes, you may like mum’s site, Mamta’s Kitchen.
On another note, can I suggest you make things like meat curries in large enough portions to freeze some, as we have found that these make great quick meals for lazy days, and like leaving overnight in the fridge, the flavours seem even better after defrosting. No idea why!
What a great resource, Kavey. I will go check out your website now. Thanks for mentioning it. How wonderful of you to share your family recipes.
I agree with you–hot and spiced are two different things. I tend to keep the heat on the lower side as well. And I think letting the dishes sit or freeze allows the spices to mingle and develop (sometimes I notice the heat develops a bit more as well).
Off to look at your recipes! Thanks.
This will be fun.
The first time I cooked an Indian meal was thirty years ago on a hot summer day in Atlanta. My friend Polly, whose kitchen was not air-conditioned, had a neighbor who had been in the Peace Corps. She came over with an Indian cookbook and a tin – a large tin – filled to the top with beautiful threads of saffron and a bag of spices. We made a delicious meal, and I have been cooking Indian – and Anglo-Indian food – ever since. i
I have never had this dish, so I plan on making it over the weekend. Just the thought of it topped with thick yogurt makes my mouth water. I do make a Turkish eggplant puree (recipe from Joyce Goldstein), and I start out by cooking the eggplants the same way so I know what you mean about the smokey taste.
Nicole above said she has used 660 Curries; Dawn said she too uses Madhur Jaffrey’s Invitation; and Angela said she uses Five Spices, Fifty Dishes. This is interesting information. Perhaps you can shout out to your readers to tell use what Indian cookbooks they use.
My husband and I were just discussing new eggplant dishes as my daughters now love that vegetable! Perfect timing! And as it is Lent, this will be a perfect Friday night meal. All I need is a Naan recipe made with my sourdough starter. Already want to cook and eat this!
So glad to have found this post!
One of my goals for the year was to become better at cooking indian food, chana saag is easily one of my favorite meals ever. I’ll definitely have to make this eggplant dish, I adore roasted eggplant.
I’m looking forward to see what else you have in store for cooking indian!
Oh, my! Right up there with Thai food in my pyramid of greatness! So excited!
I agree! (and love the pyramid of greatness, what is your third?)
Third is a tie: Mediterranean food, because there are times, particularly in the summer, when I practically live on hummus and stuffed grape leaves. Neck and neck with Italian, because, what could be more comforting! Well, now I must go make a plate of extra garlicky naan with some hummus and marinara for dipping and a side of Pad Thai… 10AM is as good a time as any, right? : )
Sounds good to me!
What fun, and what a great idea to put together an Indian-themed potluck or cooking party (you’ve planted a seed, since our neighborhood is sadly lacking in good Indian food). Will look forward, hungrily, to future installments.
Hurrah! Something outside my comfort zone and a good reason to keep nudging the preschooler beyond pasta. She’s usually pretty willing to test new waters, and this will be fun stuff to cook with her. Thanks!
Yay! Indian food for LL.
Our younger daughter and I spent all last week making Indian food. We made a dish or two every night – in big quantities at the beginning of the week and smaller as the week progressed. By Friday, when some friends showed up spontaneously for dinner, we had a beautiful buffet of tasty leftovers. She made Lamb – rogan josh – chapati, saag roti, and a spicy kidney bean dish. I made kheer, and several veggie dishes. We feasted all week. Our other daughter, who is recently vegetarian, was thrilled.
If you have any Indian population in your area, there is probably a tiny market somewhere with marvelous bags of spices for cheap. It is worth looking up! You can’t beat their price for rose water, and whole cardamom – I even got a taka (the big pan like a shallow wok for cooking breads) for about $8.00 at the one near me!
Sounds like you and your family have been up to all sorts of fun. I have been haunting my local Indian markets. Such great resources, aren’t they.
Your buffet sounds delicious!
Baingan Bharta is also my test dish in Indian restaurants, but there is an incredible okra dish that I’ve had lately that is simply incredible too.
Our latest fun has been making Aloo Paratha at home. These are Indian bread with mashed potato and spices inside. We have mastered getting them to puff up and eat it with a carrot raita and other foods.
Madhur Jaffrey seems to be the favorite source for recipes, though I also used Vegetarian Epicure Book 2 Indian recipes for years with very tasty results. She may not be as authentic as Madhur Jaffrey, but the recipes do taste yummy.
After spending years attempting to make Indian food (and ending up with Anglo stir-fries), I’m fairly convinced that the following spices really knock it into the realm of authenticity:
fresh (or frozen) curry leaves
dried fenugreek leaves
Those, and a good recipe (I’m currently partial to At Home With Madhur Jaffrey, as well as a few choice Neelam Batra recipes). And I have never met a homemade curry that wasn’t way more delicious the next day…
wow this all looks so delicious. I have mastered some thai and japanese, but haven’t ventured into indian. If you hold a Seattle cooking club I’m totally there!
Hmmm, now there’s an idea. Might have to ponder that one
This is a great idea! I went to India a couple of years ago and although I adored the food it slightly scared me how complicated all the different seasonings and spices are. Really looking forward to following this series.
ps baked my first sourdough last weekend and it was so good! Thanks for all your inspiration
Yay for sourdough!
Roasting eggplants on a glass-topped stove (!?!) I cannot imagine the mess… You are a braver woman than I am!
Every time I have a good Indian meal I resolve to conquer Indian cooking, I pull out my cookbooks (my favorite are Vij’s), then I quickly give up and fall back in my comfort zone. I am thrilled to see this new challenge and I can’t wait to see what you have in store.
Well, there’s a little mess to scub up, but the smoky flavor is worth it I think.
So glad you’re excited by the challenge. I am too!
We love Indian food, but don’t make it as often as I’d like. Your post has made me realize how much I miss the dinner parties a good group of old friends had to sample international cuisine — we always learned something new. This sounds wonderful, and I like Kavey’s suggestion about making more to freeze. It’s tough cooking for two these days.
I’m beginning to think that Indian leftovers are the best part of the deal. They’re even tastier the next day!
Today my hubby said he ate number 23 for lunch. No problem to deciffre: His favourite indian dish at the local restaurant. I love to eat indian food, too.
Well, it is some time since I last cooked indian – perhaps I try your recipes soon. They seem delicious.
Ok – so now I need to have a women’s cocktail party and a party featuring an indian feast. (hee hee) I don’t know if I am brave enough to roast an eggplant on my spiral burner electric stovetop to try this dish. Also the tomatoes are problematic as my husband cannot tolerate them – I usually leave them out and hope the dish doesn’t suffer too much. This may be the push I need to get away from using canned sauces (ahem) for my curry nights. Nice challenge, Tea.
Give it a try–though if you have a spiral burner you’ll have to roast in the oven instead. Won’t work up top. Now THAT would be a mess!
Oh, I’m so excited about this! Ali and I have talked for years about a joint project, where we’d each pick a country (or region within a country) and explore its cuisine for a year … it would be a slow, and only the briefest of introductions — we’ve imagined we each might do one dinner a week, or maybe even once every other week, based on our cuisine.
And I’ve been thinking my first should be Indian. Only I didn’t have any particular plans for beginning. I think I’m going to join you, and kick our project into gear.
Come on in, the water is warm!
I like your one year plan. That would be very cool. I can think of a number of cuisines I’d love to explore that way.
My husband and I have been cooking from 660 Curries for about 3 years now. Because there are so many recipes it is easy to find one that includes the ingredients we have on hand and we are able to try a new one each time. It was such a different way of cooking at first that it was hard to trust the instructions. But we did and we have not been disappointed once! The dishes bowl us over every time and we cannot imagine eating better if we were at a restaurant. Homemade Indian food is AWESOME!!!
That’s a great endorsement, Dayna–and you’re right, with so many recipes in one book, I bet you can nearly always find something that fits. I will have to pick up a copy myself. Thanks for the feedback!
Just found your website, after meeting you on Thursday. Indian food on top of the screen! What a coincidence–my husband and I have just been cooking up an Indian storm–all from a cookbook from Vij’s restaurant in Vancouver, where we ate a while back and couldn’t believe how wonderful it was. The book is called VIJ’S AT HOME: RELAX HONEY. It’s terrific. We took the mushroom potato curry soup to a neighborhood potluck last week and it was a big hit.
The spices are key–we are surprised not just at the number of them, but the quantity–they’re all measured in tablespoons, not teaspoons. We buy ours at World Spice Merchants below the Pike Place Market–always fresh and available…
So glad to have found this site!
Hi, Kit. So fun to see you here!
I’ve been looking at the Vij’s cookbooks but haven’t jumped into trying any of their recipes yet (you might be the nudge I need). They look wonderful. And yes, World Spice is one of my favorite places. They spices are so fresh, and I like that you don’t have to order large quantities. That store has me very spoiled
Glad you found your way here. It was so nice to meet you.
Fantastic Recipe! Easy to follow and delicious! I made if for dinner tonight over brown rice and it tasted just like my favorite Baingan Barta from a small hole in the wall Indian restaurant in Mass. I roasted the eggplants (I had locally grown Chinese eggplant, long and very skinny so I used 3) in my oven, since I have a gas stovetop and it took about 25-30 min and was perfect. My other go to Indian dish is Molly Wizenberg’s Chana Masala. I think I’ll try the Saag Paneer next! Thank you for the challenge!
So glad you liked the recipe, Amy! Thanks for the report.
somebody has a beautiful set of matching red cookware! I’m going to suggest a cookbook challenge to my book club when we meet this week. great idea/concept. thanks for your ever interesting and inspiring posts. hiking season coming up soon after I finish skiing! will be in touch.
Jill–I would love that! And would you believe that wasn’t a set of cookware? Everyone just happened to show up with re Le Crueset. So funny. Birds of a feather flock together?
Hope you are doing well!
I am so excited to try Indian cooking! You make it sound so much less intimidating. I’m also thinking it’s time for another piece of Le Creuset.
I know, isn’t our combined LC collection impressive? Such a cozy sight.
Tried this last night and it was really good. Only change I will make next time is to wait till eggplants are in season (they didn’t have much flavor, sadly), and reduce the ginger – I liked it the way it was, but to people unused to ginger and cilantro, this can end up being overwhelmingly “soapy” in flavor.
Since I was breaking out the spices just by cooking this, I decided to make it a full Indian meal, and added a vegetable curry (meh, I think I’m just not a fan of cauliflower or celery root, no matter how I cooked them, since I didn’t like this dish but it was my boyfriend’s favorite), butter chicken (good, though I think using Spanish paprika – which is what I had – made it not taste quite right), and spicy (hot spicy) potatoes for the boys (since I don’t eat spicy food, I didn’t try them, but they said they were really good). All of these recipes are from Vij’s At Home – which I bought some time ago because he lists spices to use in each recipe individually, so I figured I could just omit whichever ones made the dishes hot.
The only downside was that since I’m trying to cut down on carbs, there was no rice to soak up of all of the sauces. Today’s lunch of leftovers should be good
I bet your leftovers are going to taste GREAT. What a feast. I really want to try the potatoes, that sounds wonderful.
I have that book here, will give it a go! I’m not much of a spice fan either, always leave out the green chilis
PS. you’re right about the eggplant. I’ve had some sad eggplant results lately as well. Too bad I don’t live in India’s warm climate and could get good eggplant throughout the year.
This was so easy, and so good — I had to stop myself from going back to the pan! I roasted the eggplant in the oven (why have I never done this?) and had leftover Basmati rice to go with. Can’t wait to have leftovers tomorrow. Looking forward to trying the rajma next.
So glad you liked it–and glad you have leftovers. They may taste even better tomorrow. Enjoy!
I am so excited to see Indian Food Challenge on your website. I made your saag paneer recipe and totally fell in love with it. The idea of encorporating full leaves was amazing.