Vinod - INDSPIRED : indian inspired fusion cuisine

Indspired

indian inspired fusion cuisine

Ann Vinod

AuthorHouse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: 1 (800) 839-8640

2015 Ann Vinod. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 06/12/2015

ISBN: 978-1-5049-0970-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-0971-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015906976

To three generations of very special people:

my wonderful children and best friends, Kathryn and Avi, who have become amazing adults and greatly exceeded all of my expectations,

my loving husband, Balakrishnan Vinod, who understands my constant questions and interruptions, graciously eats every dish I make and makes life an adventure, and

my devoted mother, Justyn, who has loved and championed me all of my life.

Table of Contents

I have been fascinated by Indian cuisine, not only the mysterious spices, but the techniques and methods in which it is cooked, since my days in college where I made my first Indian friends. I have sampled the cuisine in as many Indian restaurants around the world as I could to feed my addiction for this delicious food. As I moved around the United States during my early professional years I was fortunate to make many more Indian friends. One of them eventually became my husband. I was thrilled that his family included several excellent cooks so I had access to this delicious food when I wanted it.

A few years ago I published a cookbook, Kachis Kitchen , dedicated to Indian recipes, primarily those from the southern states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, that belonged to my mother-in-laws family. I wanted to demystify Indian cuisine for Western cooks and embolden them in the use of these flavorful spices. As I started to create my own recipes for what has become this cookbook, I could not find a unique niche for a new cookbook of my Indian recipes. With so many excellent Indian cookbooks on the market I could not identify a special, exclusive theme.

During a discussion with my husband, I realized that creating yet another of the thousands of Indian cookbooks already on the market was not in my future. I needed to focus on what I knew best. We examined the recipes that I prepared for my family on a regular basis. They were not Indian, or Italian, or French, or even American. They were, in actuality, a bit of, and the best of, many cuisines.

I examined Indian meals to determine what makes them so appealing and well balanced. Each dish brings special characteristics to achieve harmony in the meal as a whole. Items are colorful with bright red or yellow and every shade in between due to the spices used to season them. Dishes feature a mix of different tastes and flavors across the entire range of possibilities. Some dishes are spicy hot while others are cool to relieve the heat. Since the dishes are made with different blends of spices and ingredients, they have unique aromas. Bring all of the dishes together, and the air is filled with exotic and enticing scents. The best feature of Indian cuisine is the variety of dishes that comprise a meal; each bite brings excitement and a new discovery of flavor.

I wanted to create something new and exciting, to apply the flavors and techniques of Indian cooking to Western cuisine. Starting with a few of my favorite French, Italian and Spanish recipes, I started to change some of the spices and techniques to discover what would happen. Next I reworked some of my Indian recipes to use typically Western techniques and ingredients. I suddenly had a food riot going on in my kitchen. Ideas were flowing so fast that I could not manage to capture and create all of them. I would wake up in the middle of the night dreaming about parts of new recipes. Finally I knew I had discovered my niche.

What is Fusion Cuisine?

F usion cuisine is simply a term applied to a traditional cooking style, the set of recipes learned from our parents, which has been adapted and updated to reflect the memorable experiences, influences and tastes of our modern times. It is influenced by the wonderfully diverse cultures of the people we encounter every day with their recipes, unique ingredients and cooking techniques that become part of our repertoire. Restaurants provide the opportunity to experience international foods and flavors without leaving home. We can experience a different cuisine every day if we wish. People have more discretionary income than they did when I was young so we can sample new food more often. In addition, specialty-cooking tools, like electric food processors and convection ovens, as well as online cookbooks and instructional videos that can be accessed with the click of a mouse make it easier to discover new recipes and incorporate the best of everything into our own fusion cuisine.

The result is an integrated new cuisine that reflects the best of everything that went into it the best flavors, the best spices, the best techniques, the best presentations, and the best of ourselves. Fortunately, fusion cuisine is not an endpoint but a whole new beginning of what is yet to come.

Even though many of these recipes are based on ones that originated in India, my French and Italian culinary education, experiences, preferences and family have influenced each one of them. I want dining to be the fun part of the day when family members can come together, share a meal and spend time in each others company. Since my children are grown and starting our on their own, I want to make sure I create happy memories for them of an atmosphere where we have laughed, argued and learned from each other.

My cooking training and experiences are French, Italian and American while my tastes are quite international. However, I have been influenced significantly by my husbands tastes and preferences since he was born in India, moved to the United States to pursue his education and had to learn to cook for himself. I have spent many years studying and tasting Indian food, both here and abroad, to become comfortable and confident enough to use spices, ingredients and techniques in creative ways to produce the taste, texture of food that is approachable, flavorful and delicious. Through study and experimentation I have created my own way of preparing Indian recipes. The techniques are a combination of Western and eastern styles that I chose to complement the ingredients selected for each recipe.

Creating recipes and revising them are at the center of this experience. During many meals, the conversation may have seemed more like a scientific experiment or an interrogation. How do you like this curry? Is the color appealing? Does it have too much or too little cumin? I would make adjustments and the dialogue would continue. All of these questions and feedback led to the creation of these recipes.

The recipes in this book have all been transformed in some way by multiple international forces. Many recipes originated in France, Italy or the United States and have been influenced by Indian spices, techniques and ingredients. Others started as Indian recipes that have been adapted based on my background in Western cooking in a Western kitchen. These recipes are easy to make. Some of them require a bit of patience due to the large number of ingredients or steps but the instructions are written in such a way as to make them very easy to follow.