Cooking Cheaper Indian food & My Dal recipe (the real thing too!)

[Deleted User]

Okay, I live miles from a big town but have a Nepalese hubby & my own preference for spicy food on a very low income!

So.... we buy online - I save up & get a Tescos delivery (most Tescos sell 2kg bags of Dal & Value Basmati rice can be as low as £1/kg)

If anyone is going to a big town or London I'll try to hitch a lift (offering petrol money naturally) or I save up & order from one of the Asian grocery online firms like iTadka.

• Sometimes places like Approved Food have Dal in stock & we bulk buy this or basmati rice
  
• Health food shops (the independent ones) will often sell spices etc at lower prices loose per ounce.
  
• Dal(s) - 'dal' is simply a generic term for a lentil, dried pea or bean. Chana Dal has a terrifically low GI - great for diabetics.
  
• Basmati rice - old or OOD is better as it gets better with age, and a much lower GI than normal long grain rice.
  
• Essential spices to start off with: Turmeric "Haldi" , Cumin Seeds "jeera" , Red Chilli ground or flakes "Lal mirch"
  
• Garam masala isn't necessary for making proper Indian light dal from split lentils, it's better for meat or heavier dishes.
  
• Buy whole seeds of any spices you may need, and grind up to make a powdered version. I make my own garam masala like this.
  
• If you are near any markets, ethnic shops or large supermarkets it's worth visiting after 3 pm - marked down stock etc. Garlic, ginger and green finger chillies will cost much much less at an ethnic greengrocer usually.

Here is a good simple authentic recipe for "Dal"

Jools’s recipe for Tarka Dal - serves 4 - less than £1.00 per portion including rice & raita


For the Dal

• 1 x 500g pack split red lentils (‘Masoor dal’) or Chana dal,or Moong dal
• 2 tsp turmeric (‘haldi’)
• ½ tsp ground/flaked red chilli
• Salt to taste
• 3 tsp crushed garlic, or garlic paste
• 3 tsp grated ginger, or ginger paste
• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• One thick slice of lemon, de-seeded.
• A handful of chopped coriander stalks (save the leaves for later)

For the Tarka

• 1 tbsp ghee or mustard oil, or a light vegetable oil.
• ½ tsp ground asafoetida (‘Hing’)
• 1 or more green chillies, sliced into fine rings
• 3 cloves garlic, finely sliced & chopped lengthways
• 2 tsp cumin seeds (‘Jeera’)

Check the lentils for stones and wash them in several changes of water

Put the lentils into a large saucepan or stockpot and cover with plenty of water, at least double the dal if not triple. Leave to soak for a couple of hours.

Add all the other dal ingredients, stir, cover and bring to the boil.

Turn the heat down and simmer, covered . Make sure lentils do not burn and add extra water if necessary.

Cook for around 40 minutes (red masoor lentils) or up to 1 ½ hours for the other types of yellow dal. A big pressure cooker is useful.

At the end of the you should have a deep yellow soup-like mixture.
Remove the lemon slice.
Chop a good handful of the coriander leaves and add to the cooked dal.

Adding the tarka:

Heat the ghee or oil in a small omelette pan or similar.
Add the asafoetida, then the cumin seeds, chilli, garlic. Fry, stirring constantly for until the spices splutter and everything turns a deep golden brown -but make sure they do not burn.
Immediately tip all the tarka into the dal, it will sizzle a little. Use a little of the dal to swirl around the tarka pan to make sure all the tarka flavours go into the dal.
Stir everything well and check the level of salt
Serve with rice, raita, roti


Raita

• Onion
• Cucumber
• Tomato
• A few sprigs of coriander (‘Dhania’)
• Chopped mint or mint sauce
• Low fat plain yogurt
• Raita/chutney masala
• ½ tsp cumin seeds

Finely chop your onion, cucumber, tomato & coriander.

Add to yogurt, add chopped mint or mint sauce (2 tsp per 500g yogurt)

Add raita/chutney masala, if wanted.

In a dry pan, toast the cumin seeds then scatter these over your raita and eat!

Also wanted to add - my hubby works in the Indian restaurant business & obviously we have lots of south Asian connections - so any help I can give with how to cook 'real' Indian type food I'll be happy to do so!

natbags

I'd really love some of the recipes for home cooked indian food. At my local restaurant, as much as I love most of what they have on the menu, i really love the veg curry the staff have for tea at the start of the evening - they just laugh and think I'm mad! Now if we have a take away they include a portion of it. I love the authentic home cooked food rather than the madras', jalfrazi, vindaloo's etc... but all the recipes seem to be mums or grandmas and are never written down

[Deleted User]

Hi natbags, yep most methods & 'recipes' are just learned by heart & never written down, but I did write down a couple here & there. Is your local restaurant staffed by Bangladeshi or Indian guys? If the former, ask them if they can save you some Bengali fish curry (often they have it lunch)

Here's one 'recipe' (but it's a loose term lol) for meat curry. It can be adapted for chicken & veg but the spices would have to change a bit.

Classic Meat Curry Recipe

This a good basic recipe for a classic lamb, mutton or goat curry. Try and get the meat from a shoulder cut or other cheaper area, and chopped up into large cubes with the bone in, but trimmed of most of the fat. Cooking meat on the bone is universal in south Asia and greatly enhances the flavour and eating experience!

• 1kg / 2 lb cut up meat, bone-in
• 1tbsp ghee or light vegetable oil
• 3 medium onions finely chopped
• 6 cloves garlic, crushed/chopped, or 6tsp garlic paste
• 4 tsp grated fresh ginger, or ginger paste
• 2 chopped green chillies
• 3 fresh tomatoes, finely chopped (or 1/2 can tinned chopped tomatoes)
• small handful of chopped coriander stalks (save leaves for later)
• salt
• hot water

Spices:

• 2tsp turmeric ("Haldi")
• 2tsp ground Garam Masala
• 1/2 tsp ground red chilli (or more if you like it hot)
• 2 tsp ground coriander

Whole spices:

• 2 bay leaves - or if you can get them - "Tej Pattia" - dried Indian cinnamon leaves
• 2" length of Cassia bark "Dalchini"(like cinnamon sticks but darker and stronger) broken into pieces
• 6 cloves
• 6 green cardamom pods ("Elaichi")

heat the ghee or oil in a large heavy saucepan or wok with a lid. When the oil is hot, add all the whole spices & stir until they are slightly coloured and begin to give off a lovely spicy scent (This called the "Barghar" or frying the whole spices)

Add your onions, chillies and stir & fry until they get a good golden-brown colour. Add your ginger & garlic.

Add all the ground spices and stir quickly to cook the spices without burning for about 1 minute (This is called "Bhuna" cooking a ground spice paste)

Add the tomatoes and coriander stalks and reduce the heat slightly. When the tomatoes are soft and reduced, add the meat and salt to taste and stir to coat the meat.

Add hot water to only just cover the meat and bring to a boil, then reduce to a very low simmer. Cook, with the lid on, on a very low heat or put into the oven at 150c for about an hour.

Serve with fresh plain Basmati Rice (see recipe) and Watch out for the whole spices in the curry and discard as you eat!

[Deleted User]

Perfect Basmati Rice

(we buy the cheapest basmati per kg and this method works fine - never pay over £1.50 per kg for basmati!)

• 1 large cup or tea-mug Basmati rice for 2 people

Wash the rice in several changes of warm water - don't skimp on this.

Boil a pan of plain tap water on the stove. Add the rice & stir. Bring back to the boil, lower the heat and cook for 5 minutes only.

Quickly drain the rice, replace back in the pan & tightly lid the pan. Place back on the still-warm cooking plate.

Uncover & gently stir every 5 minutes. After 15-20 minutes your rice will be perfectly steam-cooked and separate.

natbags

the chaps are Bangladeshi, and I will ask then when i go back in
Thanks for that

dogstarheaven

how about a chick pea, aubergine curries. i've tried so hard in vain to emulate curries from recipes, but they never taste like the ones from the t/a/restaurants. i have all the spices, but i don't use ghee tho. maybe some of my spices are a bit too old. they're stored inside a cupboard and they're only around 1 year old say. the other day, i made a saag aloo with nettles as a sub for spinach (from my allotment) and used turmeric, cumin, coriander and a bit of cinnamon, cooked potato diced, coriander seeds, ginger/garlic paste.sliced onion, garam masala and chilli powder. it didn't taste nice and chucked it..

what am i doing wrong. the recipes i have used have been in books like Madhur Jaffery and online resources.

i'd appreciate all help coming from authentic sources..thanks in advance.. i have to travel across the city to the asian community to get my fix of a curry once a week on two buses!!

PipneyJane

To the original poster, thank you. I cook my rice in a different fashion to you, but otherwise, I'm in total agreement to every thing you say.

My method of cooking rice (comes from Ken Holm, I think):

• Rince your rice several times.
• Meanwhile boil the kettle.
• Place rice into a saucepan with a tightfitting lid. Cover with 2x the quantity of boiling water, so if you have 1 cup of rice, use 2 cups of boiling water. Put on the lid.
• Bring back to the boil. Boil for 2 minutes. (If it starts to boil over, turn it down.)
• Switch off the pan and leave covered for 15 minutes.
• Voila! Cooked rice.

dogstarheaven wrote: »

how about a chick pea, aubergine curries. i've tried so hard in vain to emulate curries from recipes, but they never taste like the ones from the t/a/restaurants. i have all the spices, but i don't use ghee tho. maybe some of my spices are a bit too old. they're stored inside a cupboard and they're only around 1 year old say. the other day, i made a saag aloo with nettles as a sub for spinach (from my allotment) and used turmeric, cumin, coriander and a bit of cinnamon, cooked potato diced, coriander seeds, ginger/garlic paste.sliced onion, garam masala and chilli powder. it didn't taste nice and chucked it..

what am i doing wrong. the recipes i have used have been in books like Madhur Jaffery and online resources.

i'd appreciate all help coming from authentic sources..thanks in advance.. i have to travel across the city to the asian community to get my fix of a curry once a week on two buses!!

Re spices: as long as they are kept in an airtight container in a cool, dark cupboard, they'll last for years. Most spices don't go "off" in the conventional sense; it's just that the volitile oils that give them their flavour gradually disperse/degrade. Always sniff your spices before you use them - if they don't smell of anything much, that's the time to chuck them. If you think the smell is getting a little weak, just use more of that particular spice. (I keep my spices for years - buy them by the 1kg bag, so I have to. My spice jars are recycled Douwe Egbert coffee jars.)

I've not knowingly eaten nettles, but wonder if that is the reason your "Saag" tasted horrid. How long did you cook it? English cooks use spinach because it's easily available and cooks quickly, but it isn't the traditional green. According to Vicky Bhogal, author of "Cooking Like Mummyjii", the greens for Saag have to be simmered and stirred for an hour or more (I'm working from memory here, don't remember exactly which greens they use).

I can recommend that book by the way, together with its sequel. Another recommendation would be the Indian Restaurant Cookbook by Pat Chapman.

[Deleted User]

the other day, i made a saag aloo with nettles as a sub for spinach (from my allotment) and used turmeric, cumin, coriander and a bit of cinnamon, cooked potato diced, coriander seeds, ginger/garlic paste.sliced onion, garam masala and chilli powder. it didn't taste nice and chucked it..

Sounds nice to me but maybe a bit heavy on the "warm/sweet" spices, Indians & Nepalis don't tend to use many spices when doing veg, but more garlic.

My sag aloo (I use mustard greens or pak choi from the garden atm but any kind of nice greens will work)

• Potatoes, peeled & parboiled for 4-5 minutes, I add a little salt & turmeric to the cooking water - enough for 4
• Sag greens, washed & chopped - enough for 4
• 1 Onion finely sliced
• 4 cloves garlic finely sliced
• 1 green chilli finely sliced
• 1 tb sp light veg oil
• 1 tsp black mustard seeds + 1tsp whole cumin seed ("jeera") + 1 tsp fenugreek seeds ("methi")OR 3 tsp "panch puran" (5 different whole seed mix)
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• salt to taste
  2 tbsp water (if needed)

Heat the oil till pretty hot, put in the whole seed spices, they should pop & fizz & splutter everywhere - this is a good thing

add the chillies & onion & garlic - fry & stir until cooked, colour is good but not burned.

chuck in the greens, keep stirring until wilted, add turmeric (haldi) and a little salt, the the potatoes. Tightly lid & turn heat right down, almost off.

Shake & stir the pan pretty often until the spuds are steamed through and cooked - add a little water if necessary but the dish should be pretty dry & cook in its own juice & steam.

dogstarheaven

as we were in the 'Hungry Gap' in the gardening season, i didn't have enough spinach at the allotment and heard that nettles can be used as an alternative to spinach. i cooked it in the water that it was rinsed in (what clung on to the leaves) and then chopped and added to the cooked potato, onion and spice mixture for about 5mins.

the spices are either kept in small jars or some that were bought in big packs from the Asian grocers are still in their original packaging.. so no, some of them aren't all airtight...

thanks for the recipe joolz .. i forgot to add i used mustard and fenugrek seeds too.

twinkle_star_2

Hi joolzred,

Thanks for your recipes and tips so far - I love Indian recipes, both for flavour and frugality (plus I'm vegan so I love the huge number of veggie recipes available)!

You've mentioned a couple of times about the types of spices used for different types of food (meat, vegetable, chicken, dal) and I was wondering if you might be able to write out a basic sort of guide.

Though I've got several Indian cookbooks, they don't explain that sort of thing and I've never really paid attention enough to notice which spices appear only in certain types of dishes. It makes sense though, now I think about it!

pink_princess

Great thread, I love Indian food.

I'll look forward to more recipes