SPICE-INFUSED OIL OR GHEE JOLTS SALAD WITH FLAVOR
India’s tadka cooking technique uses hot fats to unleash piquancy
Salads may not immediately come to mind when Indian food is mentioned. Spice-rich, ingredientheavy, multistep dishes such as chicken tikka masala, samosas, biryani more often symbolize the cuisine.
A variety of salads, however, are savored throughout India. They differ in style and f lavor from region to region and table to table, and usually perform in the background as a crunchy sidekick — an obligatory part of a spread or a palatechanging contrast to a meaty dish.
Perhaps the most common Indian salad in the United States is raita, which is popular in northern and western India. It is made with diced cucumbers, onions or tomatoes, mixed with yogurt and spiced with cumin or mustard powder and garnished with chopped mint or cilantro.
That yogurt-based salad fits into one of the broad categories of Indian salads, which also include cooked, oil-free and tadka-based. Like India itself, with its inexplicable unity among head-exploding diversity, these varied salads often intersect and overlap.
For me, the most intriguing of the lot is a tadkabased salad.
Tadka, also known as chaaunk, vaghaar, bagar, phodni, popu or thaalippu, is a cooking technique so omnipresent in India, most kitchens have a special pot reserved exclusively for it.
Tadka is oil or ghee drunk on spices. Zapping spices, such as black mustard or cumin seeds, in hot fat is the perfect way to extricate — or bloom — f lavors. Turmeric is a common addition to the tadka, giving a golden gloss to the dish. Tadka may be the first step of a dish — or the last one.
And, in some states in the south and west — including Maharashtra, where I come from — tadka is commonly repurposed as a dressing for diced vegetables.
Like others from west India, I prefer to use a neutral oil, such as peanut or vegetable, for tadka, preferring a blank canvas for the spices. North and east Indians are partial to mustard oil for their tadka.
To start your tadka, heat the oil in a small, heavybottomed pot. To test if the oil is hot enough, add a seed or two. If the seeds start sizzling the instant they hit the oil, the temperature is just right.
As the oil heats, the seeds will start to pop. Once they stop dancing, the oil is cumin-y, mustardy and is ready to inject these f lavors and hues into anything that follows, including a sabji, a dal or a fresh salad.
In my mother tongue, Marathi, salad is called koshimbir. Cucumbers, tomatoes, onions and red pumpkin are popular koshimbir ingredients, but I have seen nontraditional choices, such as guava and apple, too. The diced vegetables get an enriching boost from roasted peanut powder that imparts creaminess as well as a protein punch. On top of all this goes the scorching tadka.
The aroma and sizzle unleashed by tadka as it hits the vegetables is a heady sensory experience and a harbinger of the contentment to follow. Tadka magnifies the oomph, bestows richness, tames the grassiness of greens and subdues
vegetables until they realize who is the boss and start giving up soppy, slurpy juices.
Until I came to the United States, more than 20 years ago, I didn’t know that salad dressings existed as a category, or that salads were commonly eaten as a main course.
That has changed. Below, you will find one of my favorite salads — a lunchworthy tadka-based meal that is bulked up thanks to sprouted mung beans.
I continue to experiment, because you can dress any salad with tadka. A grain or bean salad would each take to tadka particularly well.
And go to town with spices: Mustard seeds, cumin seeds, coriander, nigella, caraway, black peppers, cinnamon, star anise, cloves. Garlic pieces and chile peppers, both fresh green and dry red, can add a satiating kick.
Whether you make it for salad or not, tadka, with its flavor-enhancing, tiny-butmighty powers, is adaptable, letting you tailor spices to suit your cravings in a variety of recipes and cuisines.