Indian cuisine with spices and vegetables
Spices, curry, thick and perfumed sauces… Indian cuisine is rich and perfumed, nourishing and tasty. There are plenty of dishes in the cuisine of the Indian subcontinent that differs from regions to regions going from ram meat to fish, until paneer, a typical curdled cheese and a lot of vegetables and legumes. But there is a common features in all the dishes, the lavish use, balanced and tasty of many spices and chilli peppers.
Indian cuisine from North to South
Indian cuisine is mainly vegetarian, but there are also meat, fish and fresh cheese.
In the dry countries of the north the cuisine is based on vegetarian dishes with riche or legumes and some meat dishes, mainly ram, lamb or chicken. In the deep south, where the desert give room to a flourishing jungle and the tropical climate reign, the main products are fish, coconut and tropical fruit.
In Delhi, you can taste extraordinary Dahl, a lentil soup, seasoned with Masala and a mix of spices like curcuma, cinnamon, cardamom, cumin, curry leaves and mustard seeds served with basmati rice and extraordinary byriani, a dish with rice enriched with cooked vegetables and chicken.
Going down to south, you will be delighted by abundant steaming fish curry, shrimps cooked in coconut milk and delicious paratha, puffy bread round in a spiral and grilled. Finally, the delicious sambhar, a soup with vegetables cooked with tamarind, mustard seeds and fresh curcuma. But also the Dosa, a kind of omelettes with fermented legumes flour served with coconut chutney.
Typical specialities of Indian cuisine
Specialities of the north? The famous tandoori! A kind of oven realized with clay, with a shape of a deep long vase, where in the bottom there are incandescent embers. With long skewers the masterly chefs place meat, vegetables and the typical thin bread without yeast, chapatti. The foods cook at very high temperatures remaining crispy outside and juicy inside. A must is tandoori chicken, chicken thigh seasoned with spices, like paprika and pepper that give them the red colour, cooked in tandoori.
In addition to fish in curry sauce, the main dish of the southern countries are Thali. More than a dish it is a mix of tasting of different food that are served at the same time in lots of small bowls. The inevitable rice, coconut water and yogurt; together with spicy lentil soup and vegetables: beans with tomato, spinach and chilli chards, Masala potatoes and cauliflower with curry. All paired with crispy and thin fried bread without yeast.
Chai tea, a national institution
We can’t talk about Indian cuisine without mentioning chai tea. Delicious and steaming black tea boiled with milk, sugar and seasoned with ginger, cardamom and cinnamon, and cloves as well. It is drunk at any time in the day and night in clay glasses served by many peddlers.
Indian Street Food….fried and super fried!
If you are lovers of street food, do not eat only the exquisite Italian choices but try to taste the spiced world of Indian street food. If you like fried food and spices you will find it amazing! The Indian street food par excellence is called Samosa, triangles of phyllo stuffed with potatoes, onion and beans cooked with a mix of spices and fried in hot oil. Then the pakora, fritters of vegetables in a batter of chickpeas flour, or vata, fried small donuts made of a soft dough seasoned with coriander; if you like the sweet taste there are jalebi, spiral crispy fritters, the batter is drained in the hot oil and soaked in a syrup of melassa and water
