Just pinch, pinch, pinch...

I love Indian food. And learning to cook South Indian is almost as enjoyable – colorful spices, tasty ghee, no documented recipes, no real measuring, Indians just “feel the food” and did what their mother’s mothers did.

My two teachers have been Meena and Tina. Tina is an institution with Ashtanga Yoga students…she is a brilliant cook with a huge heart and a sassy attitude (originally from Calcutta, I have learned “moxy” is not a South Indian female trait). Apparently the brothers from Dosa (hip Indian on Valencia Street in San Francisco) learned to cook some of their their dosas from “Tina in Mysore…” This is what Tina hears anyway, I’ll have to confirm when I get back...

For those of us who don’t know much about Indian cooking, the only basic understanding we need is “masala.”

Every recipe demands your masala dabba which contains the fundamental Indian spices only in the form that does not exude smell:
Powder Form:
Salt
Chili (you choose the spice level)
Turmeric – gives color (mix with salt to keep away the ants, drink with milk as an antibiotic, put it in oil and heal a burn, notice it on Thursdays on women’s faces to remove unwanted hair, also on the third eye as yellow is good for intellect)
Seeds:
Fenugreek (seed form – not leaves)
Black Mustard Seeds (not white or yellow as those are for chutney and pickling)
Coriander (Cilantro – Tina says don’t buy coriander powder in America as it is usually just “rusk” and won’t give you the flavor)
Cumin
Then you have the garam masala which are kept whole and separate from masala daba.
Cloves
Cardamom (Black, green – must crack it open to get the seed)
Peppercorns
Cinnamon

And a few more tips…

Buy your curry leaves fresh if you can. If not, dried/crushed use at the end of the cooking process to retain flavor.

To retain your optimism, don’t try to learn it all in one day. Get a knack for sambhar, move on to chutney, then a masala and finish with dosas and idlis over a few weeks.

Oil should ideally be ghee (but if not – use white butter, saffron, sesame, or coconut oil but NO olive oil).

And a random tip - drink water stored in copper pitchers to lower cholesterol and improve the health of heart-attack patients…

And for those who want more, drop me an e-mail or comment below and I’ll send you the ten or so recipes I have tried to document after cooking with Meena and Tina. Yum.