Indian

This is a very popular dish in Delhi, where it is made with bone-in cubes of goat meat. I generally make it with lamb. I like to serve this with Indian flatbreads. Store-bought pita bread or tortillas would be good too. A vegetable and a legume should be included at dinnertime.

You need a fair amount of the fresh mint and cilantro here so the meat really tastes both lemony and herbal. The ginger adds to the fresh, cleansing feeling. Serve with flatbreads or rice. For a snack, this ground meat, or keema, may be rolled up in flatbreads along with finely sliced shallots, chopped tomatoes, and, if you like, chopped fresh hot green chilies. Today, in the Western world, this would be called a “wrap.” As children we wrapped this keema in a chapati (a whole-wheat flatbread) and my mother called it a batta.

Our family eats this so frequently that, along with a moong dal, rice, a yogurt relish, and pickles, we consider this to be our “soul food” meal. Nothing fancy here, only the homey and soothing.

Bhuna means “browned”—actually, the process of browning. So in this dish the meat has a browned look to it, and whatever sauce there is, it is thick and clings to the meat. This is a family recipe that comes via my niece, Abha. If you like, two slit hot green chilies may be added at the same time as the cilantro, just before the final stir. I like to eat this with Indian flatbreads (pita or other store-bought flatbreads may be substituted) as well as Potato and Pea Curry. You could also serve it with rice.

Apart from serving these kebabs, freshly grilled and hot, at mealtimes, when they are always popular, I find that if I refrigerate the cooked kebabs overnight and then put them into a hamper for a picnic, they are equally loved outdoors and hold well. In fact, if properly wrapped and refrigerated, they will hold for a good 5–6 days, making them perfect for an impromptu cold meal. For a hot meal, serve with a rice dish and Indian vegetables. For a picnic, serve with salads and crusty French bread.

This is a basic Indian kebab recipe that has probably not changed much since the sixteenth century except for the addition of chilies and what is now the ubiquitous chaat masala, a mixture of hot and sour spices that most Indians just buy in the market. The use of mustard oil is interesting—I have seen it used for kebabs in both India and Pakistan. Both countries have a Punjab, as that state, today on India’s western border and Pakistan’s eastern border, was split into two when the British partitioned India. Chaat masala can be bought at any Indian grocery. It is a spice mixture containing sour mango powder, roasted cumin, cayenne, and other seasonings. It adds a spicy sourness but is not essential. Just sprinkle a dash of cayenne, and some roasted ground cumin seeds, if available, over the top and add some squirts of lime juice. I like to have these with Rice Pilaf with Almonds and Raisins and Sweet-and-Sour Eggplant.

Chappali kebabs, popular throughout much of Pakistan but originating near its borders with Afghanistan, are beef patties shallow-fried in the fat rendered from the tail of a fat-tailed sheep. If you can imagine a juicy, spicy hamburger cooked in roast beef drippings, you get a general idea: delicious but iffy on the health front. So over the years, I have come up with my own version, a turkey kebab. I serve these kebabs with Thin Raw Onion Rings and the local Peshawari Red Pepper Chutney. You may even put this kebab in a hamburger bun, along with the onion rings and either a good squirt of lemon juice or some tomato ketchup.

A gentle, family-style curry. If you leave out the cayenne pepper, this may even be served to small children, along with rice and perhaps Corn with Aromatic Seasonings.

Vindaloo implies garlic and vinegar, and this dish certainly has plenty of both. Make it as hot as you like. The heat balances the tartness. This dish holds well and, because it does not have too much sauce, is wonderful to take on picnics.

This is an oven-cooked version of the Indian classic Murgh Mussallam—a whole chicken cooked in a rich spicy sauce. Although Indians like their chicken skinned, partly to let the spices penetrate better, I have not bothered too much with that in this book, just to make life easier. But it would be good to do it for this recipe, as this is a dish for special occasions. You can ask your butcher to skin the chicken, but it is really not difficult to yank most of it off yourself. The wings are a bit troublesome, so I just leave them alone. I might go to town here and serve Black Beans, Yellow Basmati Rice with Sesame Seeds, and Sweet-and-Sour Eggplant. On the other hand, you could treat this as a spicy roast and just have parsley potatoes and fresh summer peas!

This dish may also be made with ground lamb, or, for that matter, with ground beef. When using turkey, make sure your butcher includes both light and dark meat. White meat alone will be very dry. In Hyderabad, in the very center of South India, this keema (the Indian word for ground meat) is typically served at Sunday brunches with khichri (the dish of rice and split peas from which the British kedgeree was derived; see Rice with Moong Dal, page 213), pappadom for crunch, and pickles for pizzazz. Store-bought Indian pickles such as mango, lemon, or chili will do, but if you prefer, a sweeter preserved chutney would be just fine.

You could use any chicken parts you like for this recipe—dark meat, light meat, or a combination. The bones should stay in but the skin should be pulled off. This chicken needs to be marinated for at least 4 hours. Serve with Plain Basmati Rice, My Everyday Moong Dal, Spinach with Garlic and Cumin, a yogurt relish, and a salad to get the feel of a simple family meal in North India.

Here is a creamy, coconut-enriched chicken curry that takes me back to the balmy southwest breezes of Kerala’s palm-lined coast. Serve with Plain Jasmine Rice and a green vegetable.

Coat chicken legs with a spicy fresh-ginger– and cilantro-perfumed yogurt, then bake for an easy Indian weeknight dinner.

This very home-style Indian dish may best be compared to a New Orleans gumbo. It is the okra and tomatoes that give it the gumbo feel, but the seasonings are very North Indian. Serve with rice or with Indian breads.

Here the chicken is marinated overnight with most of the ingredients needed and then baked in its marinating dish, magically creating a curry. If a slightly sweet taste is desired, 2 tablespoons of golden raisins may be added to the marinade. Serve with rice and Green Lentils with Green Beans and Cilantro.

Here is another of my party favorites, as it is quite easy to prepare and may be done ahead of time and reheated. I do all the chopping in a food processor, which takes just a few minutes. You may, if you prefer, chop the onions by hand and grate the ginger finely and put the garlic through a garlic press. The results will be the same. I have used fresh spinach only because I grow so much of it; you may use frozen chopped spinach instead. For a dinner, I might serve this with Rice Pilaf with Almonds and Raisins, Eggplants in a North-South Sauce, and a yogurt relish.

A karhai is an Indian wok (many anthropologists believe that the utensil actually originated in India), and this is a stir-fried dish. I like dark meat and prefer chicken thighs here, but lovers of white meat may use boned and skinned chicken breasts. Serve it with rice or Indian (or Middle Eastern) flatbreads. You could serve the Mushroom and Pea Curry on the side. You could also have this cold, even take it on a picnic.

There is a whole family of Goan meat and chicken dishes that have in common the use of garlic, vinegar, and hot chilies—all of which help preserve the food and give it a slightly “pickled” feel. As in the case of the more famous vindaloos, the garlic and vinegar combination probably came from Portuguese culinary traditions—Goa was their colony for four hundred years or so. It was the Portuguese who introduced chilies to India in the late fifteenth century. Indians, already familiar with their own black pepper, took to them with a passion. The chilies used in Goa are often of the Kashmiri variety, which give off a very red color but are of medium heat. Each dish requires rather a lot of them and ends up being very hot and very red. I have used a mixture of cayenne and paprika. You can add more cayenne if you like. In Goa this is eaten with partially milled red-hulled rice. You could serve it with Plain Brown Rice, Plain Jasmine Rice, or Coconut Rice. Add vegetables and salads.

I like to use bird’s-eye chilies here, but any fresh hot green chilies will do. Use only as much of the larger chilies as you think you can handle. I often make this when I am in a hurry, as it cooks fast. You could serve this with any rice dish. I like it with the Tomato Pullao. This is also great to take on picnics or serve at a summer lunch: fill pita bread pockets with this, spoon in a little Fresh Green Chutney, and eat!