Arvinda's North Meets South - cooking class

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April 23 2016 took a cooking class at Nella Cusina - Arvinda's North Meets South

We learned how to make 6 recipes.

The recipes are, in fact, copyrighted so I'm not going to post here. You can go hunting down these recipes online and find someone's variation on this stuff, but seeing it, done, smelling it done, and tasting it, is the way you should learn IMHO.

Overview and Notes

  • Run by mother daughter team.
    • go sign up now! https://hgic.ca/shop/index.php/toronto.html
    • wait times are long, but it's worth it in my opinion.
    • They were really great
    • Very knowledgeable, friendly, good clear speakers, lively and not boring.
    • Very approachable , easy to ask questions.
  • One down-side , was that I felt we were really pressed for time.
    • The class was 3 hours from 12noon until 3 and were busy busy busy.
    • they did make a point of getting the first dish done quickly so that we could snack quickly on it. ( Sambar )

Notes on chillies and heat

  • Fresh is hotter than dried
  • Chillie powder is ground up chillies with the seeds
  • with seeds is hoter than without.
  • Do not use mexican or spanish chillies as that will not be the correct indian flavour.
  • Note that our instructors didn't make it clear what variety of chillie should be used. I'm sure for them it's jsut chillies. But there are more types : thai chillie, green chillie,
  • google it but; http://www.saveur.com/article/kitchen/types-of-indian-chiles

On Tumeric

  • Related to ginger
  • A rhyzome
  • easy to work with the fresh produce, found a BJ's Supermarket (1449 Gerrard St E, Toronto, ON M4L 1Z9)
  • Stains fingers yellow.
  • I'm not a big fan of tumeric, getting the right amount is key. None is not enough.

On Curry leaves

  • Removed some uncertainty about curry leaves. Increased my confidence shopping. I could see what a curry leaf was, and how to use it in a dish.
  • We fried curry leaves in oil breifly and then poured that over the vindaloo as the last step.
  • Very fragrant and pleasing to the nose and mouth.
  • According to our instructors also known as limbri ( but I think I might have heard or spelled wrong because I can find no reference to that name online.)

File:Curry leaves.jpg

On sourcing ingredients

  • After a long lecture on how important good ingredients were to the final product, I asked our instructors where do you get you ingredients from. They mentioned that they had just been to india to meet with their suppliers. D'uh! That doesn't help me, so I asked: where should I get my ingredients from. The answer: Little India. Bing!, that's easy enough. After the Class I went straight to BJ's supermarket. Knowing what I was looking for helped imensly in finding it.
  • use basmatii rice.
  • ghee isn't just melted butter, it's the fat of butter with none of the milk solids, or moisture. You can make it, but you should buy it. and you should get ghee that's "jsut ghee" no perservatives or additives. They did recommend a certain variery of ghee called St. Francis that is in fact blended with coconut oil and has a great flavour.

On Cinnamon

    • use the bark not the curled sticks as the bark has a less sweet flavour.
    • You can find the bark at BJ's.

On What oil to use.

  • oil is an important part of Indian cooking bringing out the flavours of the various ingredients.
  • The recommendation was to use a "light vegetable oil" such as Grapeseed oil, of sunflower oil.
  • The goal is an oil with a higher smoke point.

On Naan

  • A relatively new addition to indian cooking.
  • use "atta" flour ( available at BJ's at least )
  • Cooked in a tandoir oven which is a very hot over 700-900 degrees. Ones own home overn might get up to 500.
  • So you need to use the high broil setting to get the quick browning effect you want for Naan.
  • According to our instructors it was "Introduced by the Mughals in the 12th century" (1101 -> 1200) , that +900 years ago. But the Mughals were from the 16th century. So that's odd. Also, that was long before the spice trades opened up, so it would have been long before curries are we know them existed.
  • Our instructors mentioned that the "every day" bread of India was the chapati or even the roti, that Naan was not an "every day" bread. Naan is levened ( rises ) and chapati and roti are not.
  • Our instructors used the same "active" yeast you might find at a mainstream north american supermarket , which is to say modern "engineered" yeast.
  • This raises all sorts of questions ( sorry for that pun but I felt it was kneaded. ) : The Mughals didn't have engineered yeast. † so what did they use? And what did our instructors Grandparenst use when making Naan?

† I highly recommend watching Netflix's "Cooked" , episode 3 "Air" has a peice about modern yeast you should watch if you care abut that sort of stuff.

On Vinadoo

  • a Portuguese word for "with wine"
  • We used chick as the protein, I used a brick of paneer at home and it was fantastic!
  • Was originally developed in Goa.

North Versus South

  • in the south
    • the temperatures are hotter
    • seafood is more common.
    • coconut is more common.
    • the temperature levels ( spiciness of the food ) is greater.

References / Further reading

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