One of my goals for this blog is to share some of my mom’s and grandma’s South Indian recipes. It’s a way that I can not only share their great Indian cooking, but I’ll be able to document it for the rest of my family. There happen to be a lot of Indian restaurants in my area but he majority of them are north Indian restaurants which is just a different type of food than I grew up with (think naan and tandoori chicken). Luckily my mom lives close by so whenever I am craving a good chicken curry I can go over there. Yes, I know how to make some of the food, but my mom knows how to make it SO MUCH BETTER. Because of that, a lot of these recipes will be her or my grandma’s original recipes but I hope to add the american-make-it-easier version. I work full time and have four kids and just don’t have the patience to grind my own flour or make my own doughs all the time and am always looking at ways to do it easier and faster. I hope to have a lot of short cuts added in with the original recipes so you can make the choice to short cut it if you want to.
First things first, setting up your masala dubba or Indian spice box, it is a necessity in any Indian kitchen. Most of the containers when sold come with little teaspoons that get stored with the spices, so it’s a one stop shop. A dabba not only keeps your spices all together and easily accessible, it makes cooking a lot easier because everything is all set and ready to go. Typically, every household keeps different spices in their dabba, I’m going to show you what’s in mine, but feel free to adjust based on the tastes of what you like!
Spices to include:
Cumin Powder
Coriander Powder
Turmeric
Chili Powder
Mustard Seed
Cardamom Pods
Cloves
Whole Dried Chili’s
All of these items can be bought at Indian grocery stores and probably most specialty stores such as Sprouts, which you can actually buy by the teaspoon if you just want to try them out. I’ve also linked the above spices to Amazon if you just want to order them so you don’t have to run around town to find them.
Other items to have on hand
salt
garlic
ginger (not pictured)
cinnamon sticks
curry leaves
The next lesson I am going to show you is how to make my grandma’s masala which is a mix of spices and herbs that adds intense flavor to dishes. Every household has their own spice mix and is a must have when cooking. I hope that this is the beginning of your Indian cooking journey!
