Indian

I like to use cremini mushrooms, as they have a firmer texture, but if you cannot get them, ordinary, medium-sized white mushrooms will do. Remember that a relatively firm tomato can be peeled with a paring knife like an apple. A great curry for vegetarians and meat eaters alike. Serve with rice or Indian bread and some relishes.

For this dish of stir-fried mushrooms, I use largish white mushrooms, but if your mushrooms are medium-sized, you should just halve them. Serve this as a part of an Indian meal, along with rice or breads, a fish dish, and a relish, or have it with scrambled eggs for brunch.

One of my cousins was married to a Kashmiri gentleman, and for the period when he was working at the United Nations in New York he had brought along a manservant. My cousin let me have him once a week to cook and clean. His repertoire was limited—he could only cook dishes he had learned from my cousin, such as this simple Kashmiri staple, which we loved. Soon he was making it week after week, and it remains one of our favorites. In Kashmir, collard-type greens and rice are eaten as commonly as beans and rice in Central America, the season for them lasting from spring (when the greens are tender) until the snows start to fall in early winter (when the greens get coarser). Note: Young greens will cook faster. So if you are using them, start with half the stock and add more if needed. Serve with rice and either a dal or a meat curry.

Eggplants come in so many sizes and shapes. You may use 4 of the purple “baby” Italian eggplants (aim for 1 1/4 pounds), 4 Japanese eggplants, or 8 of the very small Indian ones. All are quartered partially—the top, sepal end always stays attached so the eggplants retain their shape—and then stuffed with a spice mixture before being cooked. For the mixture to hold, a little starch needs to be added. In India, this is the very nutritious chickpea flour. You may use cornmeal or masa harina instead if you have them at hand. All will need to be slightly roasted first. This is easily done in a small cast-iron frying pan. This very gratifying dish may be served as a main course, along with a green vegetable, some dal (such as Black Beans), rice, and a yogurt relish. It would also go well with hearty chicken and lamb curries.

Here is an everyday carrot dish. In India it is served hot, but I often serve it cold in the summer, almost like a carrot salad.

This is a stir-fried broccoli dish. A karhai is the Indian wok that actually predated the Chinese wok and has been used since ancient times for deep-frying, for reducing milk for dozens of Indian desserts, and for stir-frying and sautéing. Broccoli, once unknown in India, is now found in many specialty markets. For this recipe I use a nice-sized bunch (about 2 pounds) and use most of the stems as well, after peeling them and cutting them crossways into thickish slices. I cut the broccoli head into small florets, each no longer than 1 1/2 inches—with each small head attached to a bit of stem so it retains its elegance. Serve at Indian or Western meals.

You need medium-sized egglants for this. I use the purple kind, 5 of them, each weighing about 5 ounces, and then cut them, unskinned, into 2” × 1” chunks, each chunk with skin on at least one side. Normally, eggplant chunks require frying first to give them their unctuous, satiny texture, after which they may be folded into a variety of sauces—here it is a tomato sauce. But I have found a less oily way around that; I broil them instead. You serve this dish hot with a lamb or chicken curry or cold, as a salad, with cold meats, Indian (such as Tandoori-Style Chicken with Mint) or Western.

In North India, greens are often cooked simply, with ginger, garlic, and chili powder or green chilies. Indians love eating greens at all meals. They go well with meats. If you are having a simple Indian meal of dal and rice, all you need to add is a green and a relish, perhaps with yogurt in it.

This is an easy, perfumed, stir-fried corn dish that can be made with fresh or frozen corn. This may be served with most Indian meals but also goes well with Western-style roasted or grilled pork, duck, and chicken.

Beef is eaten by Muslims throughout India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh and is often referred to as bara gosht, or “big meat.” It is sometimes “baked” using an ancient top-of-the-stove method known as dum. A tightly closed pot with the meat inside (or it could be rice and meat) is placed over low embers and more charcoal is placed on top of the flat lid. With heat coming from the top and the bottom, a slow baking ensues. When the pot is opened, the aromas permeate the room to great cries of appreciation. I find that an oven can, very conveniently, do a dum with similar results. Serve with rice or Indian breads. Black Beans are also good on the side along with vegetables and relishes for an elegant meal.

This dish is a specialty of the mixed-race Anglo-Indian community and probably started out as a way to use up leftover roasts of lamb or beef. When there were no leftovers and there was a craving for the dish, fresh meat was diced into small pieces and boiled with a little salt and ginger until it was tender, and this was used instead. These days you can buy roast beef from a delicatessen (ask them to cut 1/3-inch slices—you will just need a few) and use those, or make use of leftover meats. There are many versions of the jhal faraizi, most being stir-fries of julienned meat, onions, and both hot and sweet peppers. Jhal means heat from hot chilies, so chilies are an essential ingredient, either in their fresh green form or their dried red form. I found the version below in an old, thin Anglo-Indian cookery book in Calcutta, and this is the version I like best. It is like a hash, only it is spicy! You may serve this at breakfast with or without eggs or by itself with a salad.

South Indian vegetables can be very simply prepared. Here green beans are blanched and then quickly stir-fried with spices. These can be served with any meat, poultry, or fish dish, South Asian or Western.

Chinese influence in India is ancient—the two nations have been trading since the BCs. The older Chinese restaurants in the major cities serve an Indianized version of Chinese food, and Indians at home think nothing of adding a bit of soy sauce to this and that. Here is one such modern dish. Ideally, the pork should be marinated overnight. Plain Jasmine Rice and any vegetable dish would be perfect.

You need the patties from the preceding recipe and the same pan used for browning them with its leftover oil. This is in fact a continuation of the last recipe and makes for a quick curry, good with rice, bread, and also with fried eggs and toast! So, make the preceding recipe, remove the patties from the frying pan with a slotted spatula, put them on a plate, and proceed immediately to make the curry sauce. For a simple meal, serve with a rice dish and Corn with Aromatic Seasonings.

Indians love dried beans and split peas, eating them in some form at every single meal. They are sometimes cooked on their own, but they can also be combined with vegetables, fish, or meat. This recipe is for pork and lentils, but you could use lamb, if you prefer it. Ideally, make this dish ahead of time, as the lentils absorb a lot of liquid after the cooking is done. Served with a salad and relishes, this becomes a meal in itself.

An Anglo-Indian acquaintance in Calcutta once told me that when he went to buy his sausages from the family butcher, he always took along the spices he wanted as flavoring. He would hand these to the butcher and then watch as his choice of meat was ground, seasoned, and pushed into casings. I made a note of the seasonings and now make those sausages all the time. I do not always bother with the casings. I make sausage patties, using all the same spices. We eat these with eggs on Sundays, ensconced between slices of bread as sandwiches, or I put them into a curry (see next recipe), just as Anglo-Indian families have been doing over the years.

This recipe may be easily doubled. I just love it with Tomato Pullao.

Lamb shanks make for some of the best braised meat. The bone and marrow enrich the sauce and the gelatinous nature of the meat nearest the bone gives it a silken texture. In India we braise shanks in dozens of ways. Muslim families sometimes eat the shanks for breakfast with all manner of flatbreads and raw onion relishes. You could serve them with rice as well, such as the Yellow Basmati Rice with Sesame Seeds.

Pronounced “eshtew” by the locals, this aromatic, soul-satisfying stew is a much-loved dish, often eaten by the Syrian Christians of the southwestern state of Kerala at Easter. It has all the spices that grow in the backyards of Kerala homes—cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, and peppercorns. It also has the Kerala staple, coconut milk. While it is generally served with the rice pancakes known as appams (“appam and stew” being somewhat akin to “meatloaf and mashed potatoes” or “rice and beans” or “ham and eggs”), plain jasmine rice is just as good.

When this dish is served in the Rajasthan desert region of India, its color, coming mainly from ground hot chilies, is a fiery red. I have moderated the heat by mixing cayenne pepper with more calming paprika. Use a fresh red paprika if you want the proper color. This is generally served with Indian flatbreads, but rice would be fine too. A calming green, such as spinach or Swiss chard, could be served on the side. For more robust flavors, have one of the eggplant dishes with it.