ALL THINGS NICE
Anjum Anand, the British-Indian food writer says there are many misconceptions with Indian food.
“People think it’s really unhealthy food, but it uses all these amazing ingredients: ginger, turmeric, garlic, tomatoes,” she says. “It’s always a very balanced meal, it always has some vegetables, some protein, some carbohydrates, often whole wheat breads, and it’s all freshly made.”
The host of last year’s SBS series Anjum’s Australian Spice Stories and author of eight cookbooks, including the recently released I Love India, says one of the biggest fallacies about the cuisine of her heritage is that it’s always heavy, filled with cream and hard to cook at home.
“At home we never use cream in a curry because it dulls all the flavours, all the lovely spices,” she says.
Ah yes, spices. It’s hard to think of a cuisine that makes greater use of a bigger range of spices, and this is the reason, for many home cooks, Indian gets relegated from the kitchen to the takeaway menu.
GET STARTED
Anjum has one piece of advice for the cook nervous about jumping into the world of Indian spices.
“Choose something to cook that feels quite familiar. If you love a barbecue, for instance, choose a tandoori chicken, because you know chicken, you understand the barbecue, so it’s just the marinade that’s different,” she says.
That way you can dip your toe into the world of spice and the array of Indian flavours in an easy, familiar way. It’s a great way to build confidence – and cooking any type of cuisine is all about confidence.
“If you’re going to delve into a complicated biryani as your first dish, and it doesn’t work it’s easy to say, ‘I knew I couldn’t cook it’ and give up, and that’s not the case. Anything can be learnt.”
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
The first thing to do is stock the pantry with fresh spices.
“Try not to buy powdered spices from the supermarket,” Anjum says. “When you cook a fresh spice in oil, it releases all the volatile oils within the spice, but when you buy powdered spices, the manufacturer has dry roasted them to help them grind, so you lose some of the volatile oils.”
This means they become less potent and leave a powdery finish on the palate, Anjum says.
Once bought, always keep your spices out of sunlight and in airtight containers.
“If you do this, your whole, fresh spices will keep for a year. And it means you’ll get the best flavour in your dishes.”
The key to cooking Indian, like any cuisine, is to look for good-quality ingredients and then treat them well.
“People understand this with other cuisines. With Italian people buy the best tomatoes, the best olive oil, but with Indian people buy bog standard stuff and then wonder why their cooking doesn’t taste great.”
CUMIN READY OR NOT
One of the most versatile spices to add to your arsenal, cumin works across a broad spectrum of dishes, complementing meat, fish, vegetable and chicken-based meals.
“People are familiar with cumin, so it feels less scary than other spices,” Anjum says. “Dry roast and grind it and it adds a next level of flavour.”
Fry cumin seeds at the start to add a deep nutty, earthy character. Crush dry roasted seeds and add to yoghurt to make raita, sprinkle across roast potatoes and finish with a spritz of lemon, while cumin-flavoured chicken is a favourite.
PLANT A (MUSTARD) SEED
Mustard seeds are the tiny dried seeds from the flower of the mustard plant and come in three colours: brown, black and pale yellow. Anjum says that when they are fried they develop a deep nuttiness and when ground release a strong mustard pungency that can then be used in a variety of dishes. Fry brown mustard seeds in hot coconut oil – once they “pop” they are ready – and then use the seeded oil in lentils, use it to dress potatoes, or with chicken. “In Bengal, they grind the dried mustard seeds and that goes into 80 per cent of dishes,” Anjum says. Whole seeds are nutty, but once ground become tangy and mustardy. “The tanginess of mustard works wonderfully with fish, where it can be used like lemon.”
TURN ONTO TURMERIC
Long before hipsters were adding it to lattes and morning porridge, Indians were using turmeric for its medicinal, healing properties. Anjum says the new adopters are doing it wrong.
“It’s great that people now have an understanding of the medicinal properties of turmeric, but you only absorb the curcumin (the active ingredient) properly if you pair it with black pepper and fat. That’s the best way to get the benefits of turmeric. So a curry is the best.”
Anjum says getting the best out of adding turmeric to your diet is simple: “little and often”.
Said to be antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal, it can be used as a salve on cuts, as a gargle for sore throats, and as a preventive when the first signs of a cold strike.
“Warm some milk with black pepper, turmeric and a touch of honey,” Anjum suggests to ward off the sniffles.
ALL FENUGREEK TO ME
The seeds of the fenugreek plant are used sparingly in Indian cooking as their bitterness can be overpowering. “But the leaves have the most wonderful aromatics and, when dried, don’t have quite the same bitterness,” Anjum says.
The dried and powdered leaves are great to add to potatoes, lentils, cauliflower, paneer (Indian cheese) and chicken.
DON’T LEAF A CURRY
Forming the Holy Trinity of South Indian flavours along with mustard seeds and coconut, curry leaves are a fragrant, unique addition to many dishes. Found in Indian supermarkets, they are at their best fried in hot oil until crisp. The leaves and oil can then be poured over the dish just before serving.
They can also be used dry – take them off the stalk and dry on kitchen towel. Store in an airtight container and use over the next two months.
PEPPER UP
Anjum says humble black pepper is the most underrated spice and deserves a greater position in our cooking vocabulary.
“Everyone’s so used to having it on the table in the
most powdery form, it gets overlooked,” she says. “But I think good black pepper can transform dishes.”
The key, of course, is to always grind your own as you need it and “never ever buy powdered pepper”.
“One of my favourite dishes when I was growing up was my mother’s black pepper chicken and she’d crush a whole tablespoon of pepper in it. It’s so fragrant.”
MIX IT UP
Masala simply means a mix of spices, so garam masala, the most famous Indian spice blend means “hot/warming spices”. While the blend varies from region to region and home to home, Anjum’s mix is a complex blend of black pepper, cloves, cinnamon, Indian bay leaf, black cardamom, mace, nutmeg, coriander and cumin.
She says it’s worth going to the effort of making a batch as garam masala made from fresh spices is the surest way of elevating any dish and will keep for up to three months.
CHAI HARDER
Chai is an increasingly popular drink made from black tea, milk and spices. And it’s easy to make at home. “I don’t put cinnamon in my chai,” Anjum says. “I just take tea, milk, lots of fresh ginger and green cardamom, perhaps a bit of black pepper in the winter and that’s it.”