Pure & Simple Homemade Indian Vegetrian Cuisine

This week is vegetarian week. Last night we featured the book Pure & Simple Homemade Indian Vegetarian Cuisine. Indian cooking classes seem to be pretty popular 'round here. It was also a vegetarian class. In my opinion, the most exciting and interesting style of vegetarian cooking comes from Asia, specifically India.
It was no-brainer when deciding to cook out of this book. I really enjoyed flipping through it. Loaded with full colour pictures a la Donna Hay. The one thing that's different is that it's not overly styled like Donna Hay. Throughout the class, we realized the food looked just like the pictures in the book, which is a good sign.
Now, I will admit, I'm not the worlds greatest Indian cook. Every time I teach an Indian cooking class, I learn just as much as the students. But I do have a pretty good base knowledge of flavours and techniques I've learned from past guest instructors, authors and family.
My Grandmother, Ruby Cheung, was born in Calcutta and lived there for the better part of her childhood. When I was a kid, I remember the smell of vindaloo and chapati wafting from the kitchen every Wednesday. The best I ever had and will ever have.
This is what we made.


To start, we made Cauliflower Pakora. This recipe, along with every other pakora recipe, starts with making a batter using Gram flour AKA Chickpea flour. We spiced up the batter with some chopped up chili, ground coriander, and cilantro.
I decided to change the recipe a bit due to time constraints and my own personal preference. first, the recipe says to blanch the cauliflower florets, drain, cool, then add to the batter. I opted not to blanch. The reason is because i figured that the deep-frying will cook the cauliflower. If I blanched and then fried, the cauliflower will overcook and turn it to mush.
I was right. After frying, the cauliflower was cooked through perfectly.
The second change I made to this recipe was that it says to dip the cauliflower into the batter, place in the hot oil, and fry for 30 seconds and set aside to drain. Then they do something really strange. When cooled, they squish the fritter into a sort of disk, and then fry it again. The re-frying is probably so it will become more crisp in the end. Sort of like the same idea as blanching french fries in oil, then frying them again so they become really crispy. Due to time constraints and the fact I had 8 people eying this deep fried goodness, I just dipped the raw cauliflower into the chickpea batter and fried it at 375*.
I worked out just fine. They were golden, crisp, and amazingly light. Sometimes when you get pakora in a restaurant, the batter is thick and oily. These were the total opposite. We served it with a refreshing green chutney from the book, simply buzzed up in the food processor using cilantro, chili, ginger, lime and a touch of water.
Believe me, I could go on about the intricacies of deep-fry all day. But I'll spare you rambling and save it for another time. Maybe we can put together a deep-fry class. Dangerous!

Next was a simple salad of chickpeas, lemon cilantro, and an amazing "temper" of hot oil, mustard seeds and curry leaves.
I'm not really a fan of canned beans. The only use for canned chickpeas i think is to make hummus. They are already mushy and super-soft. I was organised enough to soak the dried chickpeas overnight. The next day I simmered them gently until tender. The great thing about using dried chickpeas is, that after they are cooked, they have great texture and flavour. Creamy on the inside with a nice firm outer shell. Perfect for a salad. I mixed together the dressing with lemon juice, sugar and fresh cilantro. Tossed together and allowed to sit for a while. The longer it sits to marinate, the better.
But the most interesting part about this salad is the "temper". Heat up a few tablespoons of canola oil until just smoking. Add in a teaspoon of black mustard seeds and 12 fresh curry leaves. The seeds toast and curry leaves crisp up within second. Immediately pour the hot oil over the salad and voila. A simple salad.

Next we started to prepare the main course. The great thing about vegetarian cooking is that nothing really takes that long to cook. Tonight was a curry with green bananas with a spicy yoghurt sauce, potatoes and peas, and cumin scented basmati.
The Basmati was very simple. I had a dicrepancy with the recipe though. It mentions to use 1 part basmati to 2 parts water. That would work if you want really mushy rice. You should not use more than 1.5 times water, which is what I used. But first, it called to saute some spices (cumin, bay leaves, cloves and cinnamon) in ghee, add the rice, water, bring to a boil and simmer for 20 minutes. I'm glad I caught the mistake of the amount of water. The rice would have been way too wet.

The potatoes on the other hand were pretty bang on. I parboiled diced potatoes and set them aside. Then i prepared the masala by frying up cumin, tumeric, chili powder, and seeded, grated tomatoes. Cooking it slowly until all the water has evaporated and is fairly dry. After adding in the potatoes and tossed in the sauce, i added some ground coriander and garam masala. In a seperate pan, i heated up some more ghee and fryed some cumin seeds and ginger paste. I added the peas and sauteed quickly, then added it to the potatoes. Tossed together and done. Very straight forward. The recipe was great and the poeple really loved it, as did I.

Now the curry. The reason I picked this curry is because I've never made one with bananas or a base of mostly yoghurt. An interesting combination. Firstly i started frying my spices in ghee. Tumeric, fenugreek, chili powder, and dried chilies. Then made a slurry of sorts with yoghurt, a small amount of chickpea flour, and water. After adding the chopped up bananas to the spices, I added in the yoghurt mixture, allowing it to simmer for 10 minutes and done.
A little side note about the bananas. The recipe asked for "cooking bananas". I wasn't really sure what those were. The book said something about green bananas, so i bought the greenest ones I could find. Luckly the Metro grocery store just got a fresh delivery. After buying the bananas and reading the recipe a little more closely, i discovered they were asking to cook the bananas in a pressure cooker. In the back of the book there was a picture by picture guide. In the picture, their cooking bananas looked like plantains. Too late. I only had really green regular bananas.
Finally, another "temper" has to be made. We again heated up some ghee until fairly hot, then added black mustard seeds, curry leaves and chili powder. After a few seconds, it was poured over the curry. In the picture, you can see the it sizzling on top.
It was a very different kind of curry. Mostly everyone liked it. Some didn't. One customer mentioned it tasted a LOT better with a little bit of the "temper" on the spoon. I thought it was pretty good. Maybe I'm not used to the banana part, but the base flavours were there.
Lastly was dessert. This one was a stretch. There isn't a lot to choose from dessert wise in the book, so Vermicelli Pudding was just strange enough that I had to try it. In past classes, we've prepared something similar using rice. The recipe starts with toasting vermicelli noodles in ghee. After 10 minutes on low heat, milk was added and simmered for 20 minutes or so. Instead of using rice vermicelli which i'm not really a fan of, i used mung bean vermicelli because I prefer the texture. Anyways, after it simmered for the 20 minutes, sugar and raisins were added and simmered another 5 minutes. So far looking...interesting. Meanwhile, in the morter, i crushed some cardamom seeds and saffron and added it to the pudding. Right away it turned it a light redish/orange colour. It was garnished with some chopped pistachios then served.
Lets just say it wasn't everyones favorite. Maybe it could have been the mung bean vermicelli. Maybe I'll try rice next time. But the flavour was there. I think it was the texture that turned most people off. I liked the cardamom, saffron, raisin, and sugar mixture. It looked good, but as one person said "It has the texture of rice pudding, and I don't like rice pudding". Fair enough.

Dessert disaster aside, this book was pretty good. For beginners who wants to dive into Indian cooking, it's a winner. Pictures for every recipe, really easy to follow recipes, and full of useful techniques. After tasting all the recipes, i also discovered the spices used were nicely subtle and not in your face like a lot of other books. So people who are skeptical of said spices, no need to worry. This book is also a great vegetarian book for our vegetarian friends. Again easy to follow and adds a whole lot of exotic to your repertoire.

Next: The Complete Tassajara Cookbook