Preena Chauhan - New Indian Basics: 100 Traditional and Modern Recipes from Arvindas Family Kitchen

A spice journey for everything a home cook needs to know about Indian food, through authentic family recipes. CHEF SUSUR LEE

In New Indian Basics, Preena Chauhan and Arvinda Chauhan the masters behind Arvindas Indian spice blendspresent a collection of flavorful, accessible recipes and kitchen wisdom gained from a lifetime of personal and professional experience teaching Indian cooking, where spices take center stage. With their clear instructions and signature warmth, this mother-daughter duo will guide you to flawless renditions of Indian dishes, both traditional and modern, with absolute ease.

Here, youll find recipes perfect for all meals and all home cooks, whatever the time of day or level of experience. Chapters like Indian Brunch & Eggs are full of modern dishes like Chai-Spiced Apple Buckwheat Pancakes with Maple Cream or Indian-Style Baked Eggs in a richly spiced tomato sauce. Indian Street Foods & Savory Appetizers will make traditional snacks, like Chaat Papri, your new go-to nibble. And whether youre looking for vegetarian or meat mains, youll find options to excite your palate, from a classic Butter Chicken or Channa Masala to a celebratory Vegetable Biryani with Saffron & Nuts or a Mapled Tandoori Salmon with Mint. There are many accompaniments that go along with a full Indian meal, so there are chapters dedicated to these components such as chutneys, pickles, raitas, and masalas to help you build your pantry, rice dishes, and, of course, flatbreads, like homemade Naan. And dont forget about dessert! Preena and Arvinda share a full chapter on exquisite mithai, traditional sweets, and modern desserts as well. With this focus on the many expansive regions that make up Indias culinary fabric, youll be enticed to learn about beloved specialties and new flavor profiles. No matter the recipe, Preena and Arvinda use their many years as educators to walk you through every step.

In addition to their vibrant recipes, Preena and Arvinda include helpful resources like a spice glossary, a guide to different lentils and beans, a mint workshop on the best way to cook basmati rice, and information on how to serveand eatan Indian meal. They even suggest ways to put it all together with their celebratory and seasonal Indian menus. With a wealth of incredible recipes, knowledge, and gorgeous photography, New Indian Basics is sure to become a food bible in your kitchen.

Copyright 2022 Preena Chauhan

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisheror in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agencyis an infringement of the copyright law.

Appetite by Random House and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Library and Archives of Canada Cataloguing in Publication is available upon request.

ISBN9780525611318

Ebook ISBN9780525611325

Cover and book design by Andrew Roberts, adapted for ebook

Photography by Reena Newman, with photos on by Sandy Nicholson

Published in Canada by Appetite by Random House,

a division of Penguin Random House LLC.

www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

a_prh_6.0_141688264_c1_r2

This cookbook is dedicated to our elders and ancestors, who have guided us through writing this book. Thank you for passing on your knowledge, immense wisdom, and culinary traditions down the generations.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

MAKING HOMEMADE DAIRY PRODUCTS

MAKING MASALAS AT HOME

CHUTNEYS, PICKLES, RAITA & SALADS

INDIAN BRUNCH & EGGS

INDIAN STREET FOODS & SAVORY APPETIZERS

LENTILS & BEANS

VEGETABLES

PANEER

NON-VEGETARIAN CURRIES & MAINS

FLATBREADS

INDIAN RICE

MITHAI, TRADITIONAL INDIAN SWEETS& MODERN INDIAN DESSERTS

INDIAN-STYLE DRINKS, HOT & COLD

INTRODUCTION

My first foray into the kitchen was at around the age of five. I would help my mother, Arvinda, sort out beans and lentils and do odd jobs for her in the kitchen. I loved to bake and made my first cake at this ageincidentally, this was about the same age as my mother when she first started cooking. Although we have that in common, our circumstances couldnt be more different.

When Arvinda was seven years old, living with her family in a small village in Kenya, her mother passed away, so she started cooking out of necessity from a young age, helping her grandparents while her father was away studying in Germany and the U.K. Her first cooking experience was making chapatis on a chulha, a traditional earthen or clay stove heated by fire, which is a cooking method still used today. To care for her four siblings, she learned to grind fresh flour through a heavy grinding stone and pound spices using a large mortar and pestle. What started out as an obligation early on in her childhood later turned into her lifelong passion, as cooking and food became a channel for my mother to express her creative passions.

My parents moved to Canada in the early 1970s, and my mothers love of cooking continued to grow. Over the years, she developed her skills as an Indian cook, learning to create curries according to traditional family recipes. She gradually understood the intricacies and nuances of spices, using this knowledge to cook delicious curries and dals that quickly became family favorites. She churned out complete Indian mealssavory appetizers with delicious chutneys, traditional Indian flatbreads prepared fresh and piping hot, fragrant jeweled basmati rice, and, of course, delectable Indian sweets for dessert. My mother experimented with international and Indian recipes and treated us to delicious home-cooked meals every single day.

During a Canada Day celebration in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1993 while we were volunteering for a fundraising initiative for a womens charity, we sold a variety of Indian snack foods like pakoras and dal wadas (lentil fritters) to help raise money. After receiving numerous inquiries about how to make these savory Indian treats at home, I recall my mother offering ad hoc cooking instruction on the spot, enthusiastically explaining how to make these tasty appetizers with only a few simple ingredients. The adventurous people kept asking if there was somewhere they could go to learn this. It was at that very moment that my mother discovered how much she loved to teach people how to cook Indian food, so she began setting up a business to start teaching Indian cooking classes that coming fall.