Instructions

• Step 1: You Will Need: 2 c. Indian atta flour or mixture of flour
  1 tsp. salt
  2 tsp. vegetable oil, plus more for frying
  3/4 to 1 c. warm water, or as needed Optional: 1 1/3 c. all-purpose (plain) flour and 2/3 cup whole-wheat
• Step 2: Make the dough In a medium howl combine flour, salt, 2 teaspoons oil, and water to make stiff but pliable dough just soft enough to work into a smooth ball. Place in a clean bowl, cover with a wet cloth or paper towel, and let stand for 30 minutes.
• TIP: Use more water if needed Exact amount of water needed may vary somewhat, but dough should be stiffer than bread dough.
• Step 3: Form the discs Lightly dust your work surface with flour and knead dough, dividing into 16 balls and keeping remaining balls of dough covered. Flatten one ball with the heel of your hand and roll it out with a lightly floured rolling pin to 5- to 6-inch diameter and about as thick as a tortilla. Repeat with remaining balls.
• TIP: Use flour sparingly Use additional flour sparingly–otherwise dough becomes tough.
• Step 4: Prepare the oil Heat oil in a wok or deep frying pan to 375°F, or hot enough to cause a tiny ball of dough dropped in oil to rise quickly to the surface, releasing bubbles. If oil starts to smoke, reduce heat.
• TIP: Watch the heat Too much heat will cause the pooris to become crisp and brown; too little will make them look oily and unpuffed.
• Step 5: Fry the dough Cooking one at a time, slip a rolled-out disc into hot oil and press it down gently with a slotted spoon to keep it submerged. Within 10 seconds the pooris should puff up form large bubbles. If not, the heat is too low. Turn it over to cook the other side for a few more seconds, but do not submerge. Remove with a slotted spoon to paper towels to drain.
• Step 6: Continue frying Continue cooking pooris one at a time. They should be soft, easy to tear, and dry in appearance. Serve immediately or keep warm and covered until ready to serve.

Transcript

Hi. I’m Maya Kaimal, and I’m going to show you how to make Pooris. Pooris are an Indian flatbread, and they’re deep fried, and when they’re fried they puff up like a balloon, so they’re very dramatic, and they’re also really delicious.

We start with a kind of flour called atta flour. It’s available in Indian grocery stores. It’s actually made from durum wheat. If you can’t find it though, you could substitute two-thirds part white flour and one-third part whole wheat flour. Atta makes a real silky dough though, so it is best if you can find it.

We’ve got two cups of flour in our bowl, and we’ve got a cup of water here. We’re going to mix in water and about a teaspoon of salt, and two teaspoons of oil. And you’re going to mix it by hand. The water should be warm. And you just want to mix and gauge how much you need. You may or may not use the full cup.

This flatbread is very similar to, you may know Chapatis, or Phulka. Those are also nice, simple to make Indian flat breads. Those breads though, are griddle cooked so they’re just dried cooked on a flat surface. And this one, as I mentioned, is deep fried. So add a little bit more water.

And it’s a good idea to let the dough rest once you’ve got it all mixed together and kneaded. And let it rest for about half an hour or so before rolling. It just tenderizes the dough and makes it a little easier to roll out.

It should be a stiff but pliable dough. Onto our surface, a little extra flour. I’ll keep some on the side in case we need it. And we knead it into a nice ball. And you want to make sure to cover the ball with a moist paper towel or dish towel so it doesn’t dry out while it’s resting.

So we’re kneading it a couple of times, and going to roll it into a log. It’s going to be a fat log, but basically at this stage we just want to get it divided into half. And now, each half we’ll roll out into a thinner log. And this, we’re going to divide into eight equal pieces. And those pieces we’ll roll into balls, and those balls we’ll roll into nice, flat disks.

Try to get them as equaled size as you can. When you roll it into a ball, do try to get it really as spherical as possible, because then the next rolling out will go much better. You’ll get a better circle if you start out with a nice round ball. So, like that.

Transcript

Hi, I’m Maya Kaimal, and I’m going to show you how to make a South Indian vegetable curry called Green Bean’s Thoran. This is actually my favorite curry of all, I love it, I grew up eating my grandmother’s version, and it’s actually pretty easy to make. So we start by actually blending some spices into some grated coconut.

We’re going to make a kind of a wet Marsala spice paste, and our spices are half teaspoon of cumin, quarter teaspoon of coriander, and an eighth of a teaspoon of turmeric and cayenne. There’s not a lot of spices in this one, as you can see, but it still has a fairly nice full flavor. So we’ll mix a little bit of water in, and just get to a moist ball, that’s what we’re looking for. So I’m using some dried, unsweetened grated coconut, which you can pretty easily find, health food stores have them, Indian stores of course have them, don’t use the sweetened kind. But if you can get fresh coconut, that’s extra good.

Okay, so we’ve made our coconut and spice mixture, and to it we’re going to add two cloves of garlic that are crushed, and we’re going to add a green chili. And here’s a nice little trick, you take your chili and you slit it, but you don’t slice it all the way in half, you keep it attached near the stem end. So what this does is it allows some of the heat in those seeds to come out and mix in with your coconut, but the heat doesn’t get out of control. And also, partway through the cooking, if you taste your curry and you feel it’s hot enough, you can remove your chili, and it won’t continue to get any spicier. To start cooking the curry, we do a really typical South Indian technique, it’s a Tarka, and it’s a seasoning of the oil with whole spices. So we’re going to use ground mustard seeds, drop these in the oil, and as these heat up, they’re going to start to pop, as the water inside the seeds boils and explodes, so keep the lid handy, because once the popping starts, they can actually fly out of the pan.

So the other ingredients we’re going to add to this are two dried, red chilies, and some fresh curry leaves, which are one of my favorite ingredients in Indian cooking. They’re predominantly used in South Indian cooking, and they are always used fresh, they really lose their flavor if you dry them, but if you, you can freeze them if it’s something that you can’t get your hands on often, and you want to keep some around. But go to an Indian grocery store and buy fresh whenever you can. Okay, so we got our mustard seeds in this oil, you can see they’re actually starting to pop, and we’re going to give them just a few seconds here to pop, and give there nice nutty flavor to the oil.

Transcript

Okay, now we’re going to put in our two dried red chilies, and let those cook in that oil for a few seconds.

And now we’re going to put in those nice fresh curry leaves, and they’re going to splatter, so I need to put the lid on. Now this is a herb that’s used in a lot of South Indian cooking, not so much in the north, but it’s a kind of citrusy tasting herb. You can put it in Indian grocery stores, and it really adds a wonderful dimension to a curry. Now we’re putting in some rice, this is raw long grain rice, and we’re going to add that and let it cook until it turns white, so we know it’s cooked. And this adds kind of a nice, crunchy quality to the curry. Okay.

Now we are ready to add our green beans. These are chopped small, as you can see, which is one of the trademarks of a thorn, it’s always a very small cut vegetable that stir fried with a spiced coconut mixture. Now I get my heat on pretty high here, I’m going to mix that together, and this will take about maybe three minutes or so, until about the beans are about halfway cooked, and once we get to that point, then we’ll add our coconut mixture. Okay, so I’m going to test these beans, and they’re about half cooked, so it’s time now to add our coconut and spice mixture, and our salt. And we’re going to mix this together and let it cook for not very long, really about a minute or so to get the flavors to meld together. This is really a nice dish to make in the summertime, with mixing fresh corn in. You can use particularly with carrots, beets, you can even make it with finely chopped spinach, very versatile, very delicious, and relatively quick to make.

Okay, I like to take out the, I like to take out the garlic cloves, but I leave in the red chilies, I would take out the green chili too, can be a little bit surprising for someone who is not expecting it, but the red chilies are kind of, so we’re going to plate this and this nice bowl. Okay, red chili on top, and we have green bean thorn.

Transcript

Okay, we have out eight balls. And I’m going to use my Indian rolling pin, that I love, to roll these out, a little bit of flour. And I like this Indian style rolling pin a lot because it gives me a better feel for the thickness of the dough. So, I’m smashing out my ball by hand first, keeping a little flour handy. And then, just quarter-turn the disc. A little bit more flour here, so it doesn’t stick. But, yeah, it’s very, this kind of rolling pin is really sensitive.

You can tell just exactly how thick your dough is, which is nice. So…roll it…and you want to get, it’s pretty thin, I would say. We’re getting a little sticky here, so we need a little more flour, which is fine. Don’t want too much flour; don’t want it drying out. Just enough. Okay, you see how thick that is? Maybe a sixteenth of an inch. So, we’ll roll them all out, and have them all done. And, then we’ll start our frying. So the key to having them puff up properly is that you have them the right thickness, and that the oil be at the right temperature. So we’re going for 350 degrees on our oil. And it looks like we’re there. So, we’re going to carefully stick one in, and then you want. This works great, this Chinese spider. So, we’re going to push down on the disc to submerge it. See, now it’s starting to puff up like a pillow, and we got the whole thing puffed up. So, let it cook a little bit more after puffing; flip it. Let it cook about 15 seconds or so.

And you’re done. So they cook really quickly, once you get going, are a great fun thing to make when you’re having people over. Just save the frying for the last minute, and they’ll be really dramatic and puffy. And they will collapse a little bit, right before you serve them, but they’re still absolutely delicious.

Transcript

Now over to our chicken. I have some thighs and breasts. The important thing to do here is that you need to score your meat so that the marinade can get deep inside. It also helps it cook a little faster too. So, just a couple slits on each piece, getting in nice and deep, and the breast about four slits. Like that. Then, using your hands just work that marinade right into those slits and all around, completely covering your pieces. Indian chickens are rather tough, so this step would be an important one for tenderizing the meat. In this case we are really just flavoring it. You can let it sit overnight if you like and that will really give it a nice deep flavor or you can let it sit for even just an hour or so and it will be fine. We are going to take our chicken and put it on a rack on a half sheet pan. Give it a little space between the pieces. If your breasts are really on the larger side, you can cut them in half and they will cook a little more evenly. Now we are going to take it over to our oven that is preheated to five hundred degrees. We are going to cook it for fifteen minutes. Then we are going to baste it with butter, and turn it, and cook it for another fifteen minutes until it is done.

The chicken has been cooking for twenty minutes, so now we are going to baste it with butter, flip it over and cook it for another fifteen to twenty minutes.

OK. Our Tandoori chicken cooked for approximately thirty-five minutes and now we are going to plate it. I like to serve it over a bed of red onion and some lime on the side. It is really good to squeeze lime over it when you eat it. As you can see, it has a nice, orangish hue, but it is not bright red like restaurant-style Tandoori Chicken. It is still very appetizing looking. Here we have Tandoori Chicken.

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Hi, I’m going to show you how to make paneer. Paneer is an Indian cheese that’s very similar to ricotta. You can buy it pre-made in the store, but it’s so easy to make. I’m going to show you how to do it very simply today.

First, you want to start out with about two quarts of whole milk. It’s really important. It has to be whole milk. You’re going to heat it up and bring it to a boil. Now, it takes awhile. You want to stir it, so it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan.

Have your heat on medium high, you don’t want to scorch it. You want to watch it because as soon as it starts to boil, it happens really quickly and it foam up. You don’t want it to overflow out of the pan, which it can easily do.

So, we’re getting really close here and you can see the bubbles starting to form. So, you want to keep your eye on it and watch for that moment. As soon as that moment comes, we’re going to add our lemon juice. So, you see how in the middle there it’s starting to rise up a little bit. Now, it’s really starting to boil and as soon as it gets really close to the top, we’re going to add our lemon juice. There we go.

Lemon juice goes in. The foam subsides immediately. we turn off our heat, stir, and what this is doing is it’s splitting the milk. It’s coagulating the proteins in the milk and separating it into curds and whey. They stirring helps facilitate the process.

Now, we are going to take it over to the sink and pour it into a colander lined with cheese cloth. So, we’re going to let the water drain and we’re also going to let the curds cool a little bit because they are too hot to handle now. But, in about five minutes or so, we’re going to squeeze out the water and we’re going to press the curds in the cheese cloth.

So, we’ve squeezed out most of the water from our Paneer. We’re going to form, press into a disk, and twist up the edge. You can add ingredients to your Paneer. You can put in chopped cilantro, you can put in mint. I like to put toasted cumin seeds in mine and you can put lemon peel. There’s lots of ways to make it even more flavorful. But, plain is also good.

So, here we have our disk and we’re going to weight it. I got this on a little bit of an incline so that any extra moisture can drain off. Here I have a pot with a little lit of water in it. We’re going to let that sit for about an hour and then we’ll come back to it to see how it’s pressed.

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I’m going to talk about the differences between north and south Indian food. North Indian food is what you would have had in your typical Indian restaurant in North America. It tends to have, they have a lot of roasted meats that are cooked in the Tandor. Tandori chicken would be an example. They also serve lovely rice dishes called Barianies. Kind of rice casseroles. You have a lot of flatbreads. Puries [SP], Chopanis [SP]. Those are eaten with thick, kind of mild curries.

In the south, rather than the flatbreads, they eat their main meal with rice. And their curries tend to be soupier. Much wetter. Which soaks nicely into the rice. And in the north, the whole climate is much cooler, and dryer, and there are plains for growing wheat, and grazing cattle. So dairy is a big ingredient. Gee [SP], clarified butter. Cream. Yogurt. Buttermilk. These are all things used to flavor and thicken their curries.

Whereas in the south, where it’s much warmer and more tropical, coconut is the dominant ingredient. So coconut oil is what they use as a cooking medium. Coconut milk is what they thicken their curries with. As well as grated coconut meat. The north Indian curries tend to be a little milder. The south tends to be a little spicier, and a little more sour, too. So you have a kind of a hot, tangy, vibrant flavor profile in the south. And in the north you have a more toasty, mild, creamy flavor profile.

In the south, they use their spices ground into wet masalas [SP]. In the north, they dry roast their spices, and then grind them. Giving the curries a really nice roasted flavor. One way to think about the differences is, if you picture a map of India, and you draw a line across the middle, the northern part has a cooking that tastes more like middle eastern cooking. And the southern part has a cuisine that tastes more like southeast Asian cooking.

So they’re very different. They’re both very delicious.

Transcript

[Background music] We’re talking about asafoetida. Asafoetida is a spice that’s used in Indian cooking. It actually comes from the middle east but it’s used primarily in India. Its the powdered resin of a fennel like plant and they powder it and mix it with a little bit of rice flower and turmeric. So the turmeric’s giving it that yellow color and the rice flower is helping to keep it rather dry. Now asafoetida has a really strong smell. It’s kind of a sulfur sort of rotten egg smell is the best way to describe it but when it cooks it totally transforms. When you drop just a pinch, you don’t need very much of it. Drop just a pinch in hot oil. It changes into a wonderful sort of garlicky, earthy aroma. And it’s used a lot in legume dishes like daals [sounds like] and sombar which is a South Indian lentil and vegetable soup. One thing to know about asafoetida, keep it in an air tight container. It will keep it fresh for longer and it also will keep it from smelling up your whole cupboard.

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Cardamom is one of the most valuable spices in the world. Vanilla and Saffron being the other two most expensive spices. It’s grown in southern India. Grows in little pods that are dried. These are green Cardamom pods which have a nice, almost sort of camphor, sweet smell to them. There’s green Cardamom. There’s white Cardamom pods, which are simply bleached green pods. And then there are black Cardamom pods, which have a kind of a hairy husk on them. And they are a little stronger. Stronger tasting. Have a kind of smoky taste as well. And Cardamom is also sold in a ground form, which is convenient to use. But it loses its intensity after a while.

The best way to work with Cardamom is to, you want to crack open the pods. You really don’t eat the husk. What you want these lovely little seeds. There’s about ten or 20 seeds. You can see one of them there. Cardamom’s the feature in most Indian sweets and puddings. I think of it as the Vanilla of India, because it’s so commonly used in all of their deserts. It has a little heat to its flavor too. So it works well in savory dishes as well as sweet dishes.

You’ll find it meat curries, you’ll find it in biryanis, which are the rice casseroles, and you’ll find it in rice pilafs. You’ll probably want to take the Cardamom pods out if you’ve put them whole into your rice dish. Because to chew on them, it’s a little bit of a sharp bite. Although, Indians like to use Cardamom pods as a kind of breath freshener. They’ll just chew on them and they do have a kind of minty heat to them.

Cardamom has a really lovely flavor. And if you want the most intensity from your Cardamom, then I recommend you buy the whole pods, and grind them yourself.

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Fenugreek is a spice used in Indian cooking, although it actually comes from the Mediterranean. And the name fenugreek translates to mean “Greek hay.” Indians use it, and they use it in many different forms.

The fresh leaves are actually cooked as a green, much like spinach. In north India, they’ll also use the leaves in a dried form like this, crumbled up and added to a curry like a tikka masala or a buttered chicken, towards the end of the cooking.

The other forms are the seeds, which are these little, small squarish tan seeds with a little ridge in them. And they are quite hard, so if you want a powdered form of fenugreek, you actually should buy it already powdered commercially, because it’s really, really hard to grind up on your own.

So let’s talk about the smell. The smell of fenugreek is really quite butterscotchy. It’s kind of almost like a bitter maple butterscotch smell. It tastes wonderful after it’s been cooked in hot oil. And it kind of mellows out the flavor and sweetens it up. Takes out the bitter and adds more sweet. And it’s a very nice ingredient used in fish curries in south India. It’s also used in sambar, which is an important vegetable lentil stew, eaten in south India.

So you don’t need much of it. But having a little bit on hand is really handy if you want to make authentic Indian cooking.

Transcript

We’re going to talk about Garm Masala. The name Garm means hot. Masala means spices. So it’s a mixture of hot or warm spices. It’s typically used in north Indian food, and it’s arguably the most important spice blend that’s used in Indian cooking. Indians don’t actually use curry powder. That’s something that was created by the British, so that curries could be made outside of India. But really, no Indian cook would use curry powder. But they do use Garm Masala. And they typically will use it at the end of making a curry. Especially a meat curry. The elements of Garm Masala can vary from cook to cook. But generally, it has the sweet spices in it.

The ingredients in Garm Masala are the sweet spices, Cardamom, Cloves, Cinnamon. Then we have Coriander in there. We have Black Pepper, which is going to add a nice little bit of bite. And then we have lots of Cumin. There’s two ways to do Garm Masala. You can grind up all your ingredients, the whole spices, fresh. Or you can toast them first, and then grind them. I like the toasted version, because it really coaxes out the flavors. And just makes it a little bit more full flavored at the end.

Once you’ve ground up your spices, then you’re going to get a really nice, aromatic brown powder. So this is a, I can really smell the Cardamom in this. This would be added at the very end of cooking. You would just sprinkle a little bit on. You don’t need much. And it’s not going to cook in the curry. These are spices that don’t really require the long cooking time of other spices. Things like Turmeric, Cayenne. All those things that you really want to make sure you cook thoroughly.

But these can be just very lightly cooked. And they really do add an amazing fragrance to your curry when you add it at the end. So I recommend making your own Garm Masala, storing it in a nice, air tight container, and using it liberally on your chicken curries.

Transcript

I’m going to tell you about turmeric. Turmeric is a spice used in much of Indian cooking. It has a that bright yellow hue that’s often associated with curry powder, but it’s just one ingredient that appears in many curry powders. When it grows fresh it’s a rhizome, it’s an underground stem. And it grows on a plant similar to ginger. And it’s brown on the outside, and when you open it up it has this really beautiful orange color. Then they skin it and dry it, and then powder it, and we get this gorgeous powder.

Turmeric has kind of an astringent quality, it’s not particularly pleasant to taste. It’s kind of acrid. But, once it’s cooked it mellows the flavor, and it adds nicely to the other components in a curry like cumin and coriander. Plus, it does lend a really nice color to a curry.

It’s often used in dolls. It’s used in vegetable curries, and it’s used in meat fish and chicken curries. It contains a component called curcumin, which is being researched to see if it has possible beneficial qualities for people who suffer from Alzheimer’s disease and cancer. So it’s always been known to Indians to have antiseptic qualities, so it’s been important in Indian medicine for a long time.

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We’re going to talk about chutneys. Chutneys are a distinctly Indian condiment, there kind of like a Indian salsa. They’re usually a little bit spicy, and they’re eaten in small dollops either on a plate with your curry’s and rice, or as a condiment to spicy fried snacks like pakoras, or poppadom. In India the chutneys are usually made fresh that day. It was really a British convention to make chutneys into jammy, jarred preserves so that they can take them back to England and enjoy them there. But the true Indian chutney is a fresh chutney, but we’re going to talk about some you can find in stores. Major Gray’s Chutney is probably the most famous one, that’s the classic British style chutney. It’s made with fruits like mango’s, and apricots, and raisins, and it’s very sweet, and it’s not very Indian but it’s kind of become known as a Indian condiment.

Another popular chutney is tamarind, or tamarind-date chutney. This is really nice and tangy, and it has a bit of, little bit of sweetener in there too. Sweet and sour, dark brown chutney that is really nice with pakoras, or bugee, or on some of those famous snacks called honey poury. Then we have coriander chutney which is also very popular, its a fresh coriander that’s blended up with a little onion, garlic, lemon, and some cumin, and it’s very refreshing. Coriander chutney’s great, and mint chutney is similar to coriander chutney only made with fresh mint. So that’s a little sample of the kind’s of chutney’s you might find in your Indian grocery store, or you can make your own chutney fresh a home which will also be very, very yummy.

Transcript

I’tm going to tell you about papadam or pappads. These are the lentil wafers that are made out of Urad Dal, which is a small white bean that is ground into a paste and rolled out into discs and then these are dried in the sun. They are called papadam in the south of India and pappads in North India. Papadam’ts should be a little bit flexible. This is something that happens, because they are sun-dried and they have a little give to them and they come in a bunch of different flavors. You can get them in plain like this, you can get them in black pepper, they come in cumin and they come in green chilly flavors and they come in different sizes too. You can get little minis and you can get. This is up along, this is a slightly different version which is South Indians, and a smaller, as you can see. And there’ts lots of different ways to cook them. In the north, they like to dry roast them and they come out, sort of like this where they get all little bit of nice toasty brown is to them, and in the south India, they like to fry them, and you can see, they really expand, they-they get quite a bit bigger when they are deep-fried. The way these are eager and is there often crunched up and crumbled over rice and mixed together with rice and Dal to create kind of really nice textured mixture to be done with curries.

In north India, where the food is milder. They prefer the spicier flavors and in south India where food is spicier, they prefer to eat plain papadam. Papadam is-is really easy to cook. You can cook it in a broiler or you can microwave it even cook it over a flame. You just need to turn it frequently and make sure not to scorch it or you can deep-fried it in oil and you have to act really quickly because it cooks within about 30 seconds. They are really fun to have. They also make a nice appetizer just set out with chutneys before serving the dinner.

Instructions

• Step 1: You will need: 1 c. thoor dal, masoor dal, or yellow split peas
  2 tbsp. vegetable oil
  1/2 tsp. mustard seeds
  1 dried red chili
  1/4 c. finely chopped onion
  1 tsp. minced garlic Spice Blend
  1/2 tsp. cumin
  1/4 tsp. turmeric
  1/8 tsp. cayenne
  1 tsp. salt
  1 tsp. fresh lemon juice
  10 fresh curry leaves (optional)
  1 tsp. Ghee (optional)
• Step 2: Wash the dal In a large bowl wash the dal in several changes of water and drain.
• FACT: Cook the dal Place the dal and 2 1/2 cups water in a 2-quart saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook, partially covered, for 30 minutes or until the water is absorbed and the peas break up under pressure from a spoon. Check to make sure it doesn’t boil over.
• Step 3: Add mustard seeds When the dal has finished cooking, heat the oil in a frying pan. Add the mustard seeds to the oil and heat until they pop. When the popping subsides, toss in the dried red chili and curry leaves. After a few seconds, add the onion and fry until light brown. Put in the garlic and fry 1 minute.
• FACT: Add spices Add the spice blend and fry for another minute. Stir this mixture into the dal along with l/2 cup water (if needed) and the salt. Partially cover and continue simmering another 10 minutes, adding more water if the mixture is too thick. It should be the consistency of thick pea soup. Remove from the heat.
• FACT: Add finishing touches Stir in the lemon juice and ghee. Taste for salt. Recipe may be prepared in advance and reheated.

Transcript

Hi, I’m Maya Kaimal, and I’m going to show you how to make dahl. Dahl is a term that refers to the dried beans, peas, or legumes of India. It also refers to the finished dish that you make with those beans.

There’s a whole variety of dahls. We have tur dahl which is a very flat yellow, yellowish dahl. We have masoor dahl, also known as red lentils. These are green split peas. This is urad dahl that still has the skin on it. So it’s got a black husk, and when you take the husk off it’s actually a nice creamy white bean inside. And then this is moong dal which is a nice small dahl that is excellent toasted before it’s cooked.

Today we’re going to cook with masoor dahl, also known as red lentils. I like this one because it cooks fairly quickly, because you can see the beans are very small. And it also has a really nice creamy texture when it’s cooked.

The first thing we need to do, though, is we need to wash the dahl. Because it does get rather dusty, so you want to make sure that you wash it in a few changes of water until the water starts to run clear.

Okay, now we’ve washed our dahl and we’re going to put it in our pot. This is one cup of dried red lentils. And we’re adding two cups of water. So we’re going to bring this to a boil. We’re going to slightly cover it. It’ll boil over if you don’t and make a big mess. So we’ll turn the heat down to low and we’re going to simmer it for about 20 to 25 minutes.

The dahl we’re making today is a seasoned dahl. You can have a lot of flavor in your dahl. You can have a little bit of seasoning in your dahl. It’s excellent with rice and, say, one or two curries on the side. Dahl is an important staple in the Indian diet. It’s flavored with fresh curry leaves, mustard seeds, dried red chile, onion, garlic, some salt. We’ve got cumin, turmeric, cayenne, and we’re going to finish it with a little lemon juice and some ghee.

Okay, so our dahl has been simmering about 20 minutes. And it’s getting nice and soft. The way you can test it is to see if the little beans smash under the pressure of a spoon. And they do, so we know it’s finished. We’re going to take it off the heat, and I’m going to mash it with a potato masher. You can use a spoon, too but we want to get a nice soft consistency.

Now, we’re going to do our seasoning. And the way we’re going to do that is heat some oil in a pan and, one by one, we’re going to add these aromatic ingredients that we have. And then we’re going to put the whole thing into our dahl.

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Okay, we’re going to season our dal now. We’ve got some oil heating up in a pan. And we’re going to add our ingredients to our hot oil, starting with our mustard seeds. Now, these will actually pop so you want to have a lid handy. They’re going to pop slightly as the moisture inside them heats up. They explode a little bit. They also turn from a brown to a grey color. I am using brown mustard seeds. You can use yellow too, if they’re what’s available. But the brown has a nice, sharper taste.

Next, I’m going to put in a dry red chili, and I like to break it in half to let the seeds come out. It gets a little spicier that way. Now, I’m going to add fresh curry leaves, which are used in a lot of South Indian cooking. And these are really going to splatter so, I definitely want to have my lid handy.

You can get this amazing aroma off of these leaves. The combination of the leaves and the seeds, it’s a trademark of South Indian cooking. And it’s just a great herbal, nutty smell. Now, we’re going to add a little bit of onion and some garlic and fry this up. We’re going to brown the onion slightly.

Okay, so our onions are a little bit brown now. We’re going to add a half teaspoon of cumin, quarter teaspoon turmeric, and a pinch of cayenne. Now, I used curry leaves in this dal, but you don’t have to. It would be still really flavorful, if you can’t find curry leaves. They’re usually sold at Indian grocery stores, but like I said it’s just without.

So, we’ll fry up these spices until we get a nice aroma that they’ve cooked through and they’re not raw and sharp tasting anymore. And now we’re ready to add this to our dal. The mustard dal as you might have noticed starting out red, but it turns yellow as it cooks. And the turmeric helps enhance the yellow color. It often used in dals.

We’re going to add our salt and at this stage you find that it a little bit too thick, you can also add little more water but this looks about right now.So, going to make sure it heated through adding a teaspoon of lemon juice and that just brightens up the favors at the end. And we’re also add a little bit of clarified butter, also known as ghee, which will add a nice, rich sweetness to our dal. That’s all you need to do to make some really flavorful, seasoned dal. And here we have our delicious seasoned dal.

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Hi, I’m going to teach you how to make ghee. Ghee is an Indian form of clarified butter. It’s butter fat, but it has all the water evaporated out of it. It’s not hard to make, but it does take a certain attention to detail. You want to start out with unsalted butter, which you are going to melt in a pan, and I like to use a pan that has a stainless bottom, not a dark bottom, because it’s going to be really important to see the color of the melt solids as they start to brown.

The difference between ghee and clarified butter, which is something used in French cooking, is that clarified butter doesn’t take the melt solids to the point where they actually brown on the bottom of the pan. They just fall to the bottom of the pan, and they’re still in there, kind of white light stage.

But with ghee, you actually brown those butter fat solids, and in the browning you get a kind of caramel nutty flavor. It’s a really, really flavorful ingredient that makes a lot of north Indian food really delicious.

So, what we’re doing here, is we’re heating up our butter on a medium high heat. We’re going to start to hear the water sputter as it boils and evaporates. Now, you can buy commercial ghee, but usually it’s made with hydrogenated fats and it isn’t nearly as nice as your own homemade ghee.

A couple of things to know about ghee, is it has a really high smoking point, so you can fry in it at a rather high heat, and it won’t burn the way that it does. Another nice thing about ghee is it has an extremely long shelf life.

We’re starting to get some boiling action here. I’m going to turn the heat down, so it doesn’t go too quickly. We want to really be in control of this process. It can kind of run away from you, if you don’t watch it really carefully, and you want kind of an even boiling going on, so that’s it’s not just happening in one spot.

You can also stir it so it will circulate the mixture. So, keep pushing your foam aside, because you really want to see those bubbles. Keep track of the rate at which it’s boiling. So, you can see the surface of the butter is starting to change here. We’re getting a fine foam covering the top, and now you really want to pay attention, because this is the point at which, see now I will turn my heat down, that there those particles have settled on the bottom. And, they’ve turned brown, and we’re just going to make sure that all gets a chance to fall to the bottom.

Okay, and the smell changes too. You get that mm, really kind of toasty butter smell. Okay, so this is done and I’m going to decant it into a little container. I’m pouring slowly so that the solid stays settled on the pan. It’s okay some if the brown solids go into your container. You can leave most of them behind though. That’s how easy it is to make ghee.

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Hi I’m Maya Kaimal and I’m going to show you how to make channa masala. Channa masala is a nice basic chick pea curry with tomatoes. It’s also known as chole. Today we’re going to make my father’s recipe with chick peas, and we’re going to start with a taiga, which is a seasoning of the oil of whole spices.

So, we’re going to heat up our oil, and add some brown mustard seeds, and cumin seeds. So, we’re going to add our seeds to some hot oil, and the mustard seeds are actually going to kind of explode a little bit. So, you want to be aware that they might pop out of the pan, and they are also going to turn from brown to a grey shade, and then you’ll know that they’ve released their flavors and the oils will start to take on a kind of a nutty quality, and the cumin seeds also add a nice warm sort of bitter-ish warm-ish quality too.

So, these are cooking nicely. Even if the mustard seeds don’t actually pop, as long as they’ve turned grey, then they’ve done their job. So, sometimes they pop a lot, sometimes they just quietly turn grey, and now we’re going to add our onion. We’ve got a cup of chopped onion, and we’ll sauté this until it gets nice and soft. It takes about five minutes or so.

Okay, our onions are getting nice and brown. Get a spatula here and we are going to add our ground spices. We’re adding two teaspoons of coriander, a teaspoon on cumin, quarter teaspoon of turmeric, and an eighth teaspoon each of cayenne and black pepper.

Any time you add dry spices, it’s good to keep a little bit of water handy, because you don’t want your spices to scorch. If they seem like they are getting really dry too quickly, add a little bit of water. These are doing okay, we have enough oil in here. I’m really getting a nice smell off of these spices.

I’m smelling the coriander, and once that smell really smells nice and toasty, I’m going to add our fresh tomatoes. We’ve got two cups here. Canned would do, but fresh is a little nicer in that they cook down faster. We’re going to turn the heat up a little bit and I’m going to add some salt as well.

Chick peas are a staple bean in North India, especially in the region of the Punjab, and they’re almost always paired with a sour ingredient. So, sometimes it’s pomegranate powder which has a really nice, fruity dry taste. Sometimes is tamarind and in our case we’re going to be using lemon juice.

Transcript

Our tomatoes are nice and soft, and it’s time to add our chickpeas. I’m using canned. If you like to soak your beans and cook them from scratch that’s great, but I find that canned is also good and really convenient. I’m going to add about a half cup of water and put this on high and get it really nice and hot. Then we’re going to let it simmer for a little while.

What’s really nice to do with this curry is when the chickpeas have cooked for a little while we’re going to mash them up partially so there’ll be some whole ones and some broken down ones. It gives it a really nice texture so that you could eat it with a flatbread which is really a typical way to eat a chickpea curry and you can easily scoop it up when it’s partially mashed like that. This is going to be cooking for about roughly 10 minutes or so.

Okay, our chickpeas have simmered now for about 10 minutes with the tomato and spices. Now I’m going to take a potato masher and crush some of the chickpeas so we get a nice broken down texture. We’re not going to mash the whole thing up because then that would just be like having dahl but we’re going to get kind of a coarse mash on this.

This is the kind of dish where you may have to adjust the water depending on how hard you’re boiling or how juicy your chickpeas are. It shouldn’t dry out, you may need to add a little bit extra.

This is a pretty good consistency here. It should be a little bit loose like this. You see how that’s kind of half mashed and half still whole chickpeas, that’s ideal.

Okay. Now, our last ingredients are a little bit of lemon juice and some cilantro. I’m going to save a little bit for my garnish. Keep the heat on. I’ll let it cook another minute or so.

Pour it in our bowl. Always nice to top it with a little fresh cilantro. So, here we have chana masala.

Transcript

Hi, I’m Maya Kaimal I’m going to show you how to make chicken curry. There’s millions of different ways to make chicken curry, but we’re going to make a very basic version here, sort of a north-Indian style. And we’re going to make it using chicken thighs. I’ve got some bone-in chicken thighs that I’ve already cooked. We’ve browned them in a little bit of oil on both sides, and then set them aside. Then in the same oil that we cooked our chicken pieces in we’re going to add some chopped onion.

While our onions are cooking I’ll tell you a little bit about the spices that are going into this curry. We mostly have coriander. Coriander is great because it also acts as a thickener in the curry. So we’ve got six teaspoons of coriander going into this. We’ve got two teaspoons of cumin, we have a half teaspoon each of black pepper and turmeric, an a quarter teaspoon each of cayenne and fennel. So that will make our masala, our spice mixture. Now our onions are getting nice and brown as you can see. The browner that you take your onions, the darker your curry will actually be. So it’s nice to get them fairly brown. It also has that nice, caramel-y sweet quality which acts as a kind of counterbalance to the spiciness. You have the sweet and spicy and it just helps to create a really nice, full, deep flavor.

To our onions we’re going to add some ginger and some garlic. Onion, garlic and ginger are often referred to as the trinity in Indian cooking. They’re the three essential aromatic ingredients that begin most curries. So these ingredients will provide the real backbone of the curry. They really lay down that first layer of flavor. So once your onions are browned and your minced garlic and ginger start to give off a nice aroma, then you’re ready to add your ground spices. You want to make sure, though, to have a little bit of water handy because you really don’t want those spices to scorch, and depending on how much oil is in your pan, you might need to add just a little bit. They shouldn’t scorch, but they shouldn’t boil either. They should just fry. So we’re going to fry these until we get a nice scent of, sort of a toasted spice smell. You can tell, if they’re still raw there’ll be a kind of a sharp smell, and you don’t want that. You want to take it further until it’s nice and toasty smelling.

Okay. We’ve got our spice now nicely browned and we’re going to add our tomato. We’re using fresh tomato, but you can used canned chopped tomato as well. I find that the fresh cook down nicer, they get a little softer. So we’re going to let this mixture cook. Also we’re going to add our salt, the salt also helps to break down the tomato. So this will cook together until the tomato breaks down and is nice and soft and pulpy, and that usually takes about ten minutes or so.

Transcript

Okay. Our tomatoes have cooked down nicely, so we have a nice, soft, wet masala here. We’re going to add to this some sour cream. You can use yogurt also. You can also use coconut milk. If this were a South Indian style curry, it would have coconut milk, but it’s a North Indian style curry so we’re using dairy, and in this case sour cream because it’s really nice. It makes it so rich and delicious. And, were also going to add a little bit of water. It’s starting to smell really, really good, too.

The warmth in this curry is going to come from the cayenne and the black pepper. That’s the thing about Indian curry, they shouldn’t have too much of one kind of spice. You should never be able to taste a dominant ingredient, in terms of the ground spices, or in terms of the hot spices. It should be a medley; one, full, nice round flavor in the end. The heat should come from different sources, because if it just comes from cayenne it kind of gets caught in your throat, and black pepper is a little hot on the tongue. So, you’ll often find a mixture of cayenne and black pepper, and then green chile too, which adds that fresh vegetable-like heat. So, we have our sauce all made. Now, we’re going to add our chicken pieces and coat them nicely. These have been partially cooked, but they’re going to need some time to cook in this sauce to get cooked all the way through and also to absorb all these nice flavors.

Chicken curry is really good the day you make it, but it’s even better the next day. So, if you have the chance to prepare your curry a day ahead, it’s a great idea because the chicken will absorb all of those wonderful spices and have a lovely, deep flavor. Okay. Now, we’re going to add another typical North Indian ingredient, which is garam masala. It’s a wonderfully fragrant blend of cinnamon, clove, black pepper, cumin, and cardamom. We’ll just sprinkle that on top. Okay. Now, we’re going to put the cover on this and let this simmer for about 30 minutes. Okay. Our chicken curry has been cooking for about 20 minutes. Looks really, really nice and it smells great. We’re going to finish it with a little bit of lemon juice, sprinkle that over the top, and some nice, fresh, chopped cilantro which always a lovely way to finish up curry. Now, our chicken curry is complete.

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Hi, I’m Maya Kaimal, and I’m going to teach you how to make chicken tikka masala. Chicken tikka masala has the hallmarks of a north Indian style curry. It has a lot of dairy. It has garam masala and dried fenugreek at the end. But, it’s actually a dish that was created in Britain by Indian restaurants who were looking for a way to use up their leftover chicken tikka which is pieces of barbecued chicken. They made a creamy tomato sauce, added the tikka pieces, and chicken tikka masala was born.

We’re going to start by melting some butter to which we’re going to add ginger, garlic, and green chile. We’re going to fry these aromatics in butter. We have a little bit of green chile in here, but not a lot, because this really shouldn’t be a spicy curry. It should have some nice warmth in your mouth, but it shouldn’t be fiery at all.

Now that these are sizzling away nicely I’m going to add my spice blend. For this curry we use predominantly cumin. We’ve got four teaspoons of cumin. We’ve got two teaspoons of coriander. We’ve got a half teaspoon of paprika and an eighth of a teaspoon of cayenne. It’s important to fry your spices until they give off a kind of warm, sort of full roasted smell, because if you don’t then the whole curry will have kind of a raw edge to it which catches in your throat and isn’t very nice.

So, our seasonings are nicely cooked here. Next, we’re going to add our tomato puree. Mix that in with a little bit of salt. Then we’re going to let this mixture cook for about five minutes. We’re going to let it simmer and let those flavors develop.

Okay, our tomato mixture has had time to simmer and thicken nicely. We’re going to add our cream. We’ve got half a cup of heavy cream and half a cup of yogurt. It’s good to whisk your yogurt up so it’s nice and smooth. Yum. Yeah, if you don’t whisk your yogurt you can end up with lumps, and they’re hard to get rid of. So, I always try to do that before I add it to my curry. We’re going to mix this together and whisk. Bring it up to temperature, and then we’re going to let this simmer together for another 5 to 10 minutes until it’s nice and thick.

Transcript

We’ve got our cream and we’ve got our yogurt in. And now, we’re going to add some chicken. So, we have our chicken Tikka here, which I’ve already cooked. And I’m gonna add, not gonna add all of it. I just like to have mine saucy. Stir it up nicely. You could also use Tandori chicken, if you have that on hand. I know if you buy a pre-roasted chicken, just cut it up and add that and that would be delicious too.

So we’re going to let this simmer for about ten minutes. Okay, so, you can see now that the color has deepened. It’s gotten a little more red. And the oil from the butter is starting to separate out. And we’re ready to add the final ingredients. We’re going to add Garam Masala, which is, mmm, really nice, fragrant mix of warm spices. Cinnamon, Clove, Black Pepper, Cumin, a little Nutmeg you can buy it or you can make it yourself. It’s very easy to make.

And then we’re going to put in this, which is dried vinegary leaves. These have kind of a nice, kind of bitter, bittersweet, almost kind of maple-y, kind of flavor. And they add just a really nice extra herbal quality. Then I’m putting in toasted Cumin. Toasted Cumin is something you can make easily by toasting Cumin seeds lightly in a frying pan. And oh, I’m also going to add a little bit of fresh Cilantro. So toasting Cumin seeds can be done very simply. You toast the seeds in a frying pan until they’re light brown, and then you grind them up. Either with a mortar and pestle or with a coffee grinder.

But you can also buy it, now there is a brands that are producing it and selling it in supermarkets. So it’s a great convenience, it’s a really wonderful ingredient. It has such a great aroma and adds a lot of depth to curries like this one. Okay, these last few ingredients just need to warm through and we actually are finished with our chicken Tikka masala. We’re going to add a little fresh Cilantro on top as a garnish. This is such a well loved dish, because it’s nice and mild, and creamy, and everybody loves it. Kids love it. From my product line it’s our best selling sauce.

So, now you know how easy it is to make a delicious chicken Tika Masala.

Transcript

Hi, today I’m going to teach you how to make a mango lassi. Lassis are a refreshing Indian drink made with yogurt. They’re a mixture of yogurt and fruit or yogurt and salt. Today we’re going to make a sweet one, a sweet mango one. We’re going to add two cups of plain yogurt and we’re going to add half a cup of mango pulp. Now, there’s different kinds of mango pulp you can find at an Indian grocery store. There’s alphonso mangos and kesar mangos, just different varieties of the fruit. I prefer alphonso mango. It’s got a very rich, full, lovely balanced flavor so if you can find that I highly recommend it.

I’m adding two tablespoons of sugar. You can sweeten it to taste. Actually, I’ll put in a little extra. It’s up to you. I like it a little bit sweet. And I’m going to add some water and this also is variable depending on what consistency you like. And we’re just going to mix this up until it gets really nice and frothy.

Okay. This looks like a nice consistency and I’m going to pour it over ice so it’s nice and cold. This tastes great on a hot Indian afternoon. And I’m going to garnish it with just a little sprig of mint and there is your mango lassi. Yummy.