If you struggle to find the right spices in your cupboard to make Indian food, a Paphos-based company has the answer
WHEN home cooks try preparing Indian food they often face intimidating ‘old school’ cookbooks with complicated recipes and long ingredient lists with the emphasis on rich, not-so-healthy sauces. The key points to remember are that Indian cooks will always let the spices do the work and no two cooks will ever make the same dish exactly the same; so there’s really no wrong way to ‘go Indian’, which is, in itself, empowering.
The big down side for most of us is the inability to either buy, or remember to stock up on the basic herbs and spices that go to make a good Indian dish, so snap decisions to cook Indian food are normally disappointed when the store cupboard is bare of Kokum, Masala, Tamarind, fenugreek, black mustard seeds and green cardamom – the main basics to make a decent, authentic Indian dish.
Not that I am all that gung ho on authenticity, as its not always the same as palatable. So, what is considered authentic as far as Indian cooking is concerned? Well, one thing’s for sure, it ain’t Chicken Tikka Masala, which was seemingly invented in the mid fifties by an Indian chef working at the Taj Mahal restaurant in Glasgow (it was the desperate result of pouring a can of Campbell’s condensed tomato soup over a dish of chicken tikka and then adding cream plus some other spices, all in an effort to satisfy the Brits craving for gravy based meals).
Chicken Madras, Lamb Vindaloo and a Vadas bear little or no resemblance to dishes in India. Basically these are just shorthand for Brits; meaning Madras: hot, vindaloo: bloody hot and Vadas: Incendiary. Indian food (followed by Italian, Thai and Chinese) was one of the first to fall victim to the British habit of taking outrageous liberties with a national cuisine because the palate wasn’t, and probably still isn’t, ready for too much authenticity.
In an effort to prove that you can easily DIY Indian meals, I invited Lesley Barrett, ex TV presenter for Periscope and a long-term devotee of home-cooked Indian cuisine, to prepare an Indian meal using only “authentic spices and modifiers” as supplied by Prema Indian Foods.
Mike, the Indian owner of Prema Foods, has created a range of packet spices and jars of modifiers (ready-blended pastes in a variety of flavours such as coriander, green chilli, garlic red chilli, and pure garlic paste and lemon). These jars are used not as full, tip in sauces, only a teaspoon or two is used as and when you feel the dish requires. In other words, Prema has solved your store cupboard problem, reduced your shopping time, cut costs, and, all importantly, reduced dramatically the time it takes to knock up a decent replica Indian dinner.
The other great thing about this range is the absence of any unnatural colouring agents, animal fats, preservatives, gluten, monosodium glutamate or sugar. Plus each packet of herbs gives complete instructions on how to make a ‘painless butter chicken’, a Rogan Josh or one of about 30 other typical restaurant dishes.
Lesley started by tenderising the lamb in oil and turmeric. Then, in a clean pot, she put 4tbsp of the Prema Korma-based Indian spices, she then went on to deliver to our guests a delicious ‘all the Rahj’ dinner using the Karahi spice mix for the chicken, Jalfraizi mix for the aubergine and mushroom bhajis, and the Kofta mix for the delicious meat balls.
The only addition to the simple instructions printed on the Prema packs was a pinch of sugar, without which Lesley felt the turmeric would have overpowered the meat and made it taste slightly sour. Her reaction to the spices and the modifiers range? “I found using these properly-balanced and measured spices cut by half the time I would normally spend wielding a mortal and pestle, the meal turned out really well so I am now completely sold on them”.
For those not quite so au fait with Indian cooking, the Prema website has an online chef who can help you out of culinary disasters (in addition to Indian recipes).
n Prema Foods. Tel 26 222126 (for orders). www.prema.com.cy
