44 Indian recipes. Page 2 of 2. Compare ingredients and cooking times. Dal Makhani (Creamy Buttered Lentils), Amritsari Fish Fry (Spiced Chickpea-Batter Fish).
In Punjab the pot was once set beside a tandoor after its coals had died down and left to simmer overnight, then served the next day. Here, black lentils and kidney beans cooked first in a pressure cooker get another two hours over low heat. In that time the grains break apart and release starch, and the dal turns thick and smooth before any cream goes in.
This fried fish started at stalls in the lanes around the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Punjab, and spread across North India as something to eat with beer. The batter is besan, chickpea flour, mixed with rice flour; it clings more thinly than wheat flour and stays crisp longer. Ajwain seeds in the batter bring a smell close to thyme.
The eggplant is cut into big cubes and browned on its cut faces before it goes anywhere near the coconut milk curry sauce. Raw eggplant would drink up oil and liquid and go limp; seared first, the cubes keep their corners after simmering and taste toasty where they hit the pan.
Coconut milk makes it look rich and creamy, but tamarind gives it a sharp sourness, and it eats lighter than it looks. Fishing households on Goa's west coast eat this curry with rice every day, and locally the pair is called xitt-kodi. It carries traces of the Portuguese colonial period along with Konkani cooking traditions, and Goans of every religion and class share it.
Idli are plain, spongy steamed cakes made from fermented rice and urad dal batter, and their job is to soak up sambar, a tangy, warm lentil stew. This version starts from ready-made idli batter, skipping the soaking, grinding, and overnight fermentation.
Yogurt whisked with chickpea flour simmers into a pale yellow, tangy, smooth curry that holds fried chickpea-flour fritters with onion. The ingredient list stays short because the same besan does two jobs, binding the fritters and thickening the sauce.
There is almost no sauce here, just minced lamb cooked until moist and clumping, to be spooned onto naan or chapati; the peas go in at the very end and still pop when bitten.
Starch from soaked chana dal, split chickpeas, thickens the pot into something spoonable, while cubed bottle gourd lends moisture and gentle sweetness. Small, nutty bits of chana stay noticeable in the finished dal, which is eaten warm over rice or scooped up with flatbread.
Grated bottle gourd, a watery squash, is squeezed dry, bound with chickpea flour and spices, and fried into dumplings that finish in a tomato and onion sauce as a meatless curry. The turmeric, chili powder, and garam masala are split between the dumpling mix and the sauce, so both carry the same spice.
Gujarati thepla is whole wheat flatbread, and this version is kneaded with grated bottle gourd and its juice in place of water. The dough looks stiff at first, but water added then leaves it slack after resting, since the gourd keeps releasing moisture.
Fried dumplings of mashed potato and paneer, a fresh Indian cheese, sit in a tomato and cream gravy as the vegetarian centerpiece of North Indian festive meals. Ground cashews give the sauce a nutty density that cream alone would not, and garam masala brings warmth without real chili heat.
Once the coconut milk and mango chutney go in, this shrimp curry simmers for only five to seven minutes, not long enough for the shrimp to toughen. Lime juice and cilantro go on top, with rice or naan alongside.
A large, thin crepe of fermented rice and urad dal (black lentil) batter is cooked until it crackles, then folded around potatoes seasoned with mustard seeds, curry leaves, and turmeric. In South India it turns up from breakfast to dinner, with coconut chutney and sambar, a lentil and vegetable stew, on the side. How long the batter ferments sets both its tang and its crispness.
The name means water dosa in Kannada, and the batter really is close to water: soaked rice and a little fresh coconut ground thinner than any regular dosa batter. It comes from the coastal Mangalore region of Karnataka in southwestern India. Because nothing is fermented, there is none of the sourness of masala dosa, only a clean rice flavor. Poured from the edge of a hot pan inward, the batter sets into a soft, lacy sheet full of tiny holes, cooked on one side and never flipped.
Paneer, an Indian cheese that holds its shape instead of melting, sits in cubes in a bright green spinach sauce and chews a little like firm tofu. For this North Indian vegetarian curry the spinach is blanched for only a minute before blending and simmered briefly, which keeps the green vivid.
A hollow puri shell gets a little potato and chickpea, then a pour of cold pani blended from mint, cilantro and tamarind, and the whole thing goes into your mouth in one bite before it can break. The shell starts going soft as soon as the pani hits it, so each one is filled only when someone is ready to eat it.
At Mumbai street stalls, potatoes, cauliflower, and green peas are mashed and cooked down with tomato and pav bhaji masala, then scooped up with soft rolls toasted in butter. It is less a curry than a spread, thick enough to pile onto bread. The rolls are toasted only on the cut sides, soft outside with a crisp, buttery face.
Goan vindaloo is a pork curry where the sourness of vinegar comes through as clearly as the heat. Pork shoulder sits in a paste of white vinegar ground with garlic, ginger, chili and cumin, then braises with browned onion until that paste has thickened onto the meat.
The deep red comes mostly from paprika, and this Kashmiri lamb curry looks far hotter than it tastes, with a mild sweetness instead. Big chunks of lamb cook slowly over low heat in yogurt and tomato puree.
This Andhra chutney blends sauteed bottle gourd with urad dal, chana dal, green chili, and tamarind, and the blender stops before anything turns smooth. The toasted dal stays in small, nutty grains. Once it is in the bowl, a hot tempering of mustard seeds, curry leaves, and asafoetida is poured over.