Any experts in Indian cooking?

Well look! We happen to have some experience with this! While I don't consider myself an expert on Indian cuisine, we (shadus, myself and all 5 of our kids) LOVE indian dishes. We make some kind of curry dish generally once a week or so. The challenge with cooking this particular ethnic food is finding replacements for the butters and creams/milks. We have found a great culinary friend in plain greek yogurt. We use Fage, Total Zero brand. It's a fantastic replacement for cream or milk. The butter can be replaced with most any low cal margarine.

Spice wise - Garam Masala is your friend. Buy it in bulk if you can! It's a nice premixed blend of common spices and just beautiful tasting. You can use curry powder or you can buy a variety of curry pastes depending on what you're looking for. I would recommend paying a visit to your local ethnic food store (if there is one close by).

In our curries, we use a lot of chickpeas, onions and whatever other fresh or frozen vegetable we have on hand. Lots of zucchini, broccoli, bell peppers. Shadus or I will post some recipes for you once we get them written down. We've been making these kind of dishes so long we don't use recipes anymore, ha! It's all in our heads!

Rice - well there's no good replacement for it. You can eat rice, just be very aware of how much. We tend to prepare our dishes a little thicker than is traditional, because we aren't often using rice in them, just eating them in a bowl like a stew!

I'm not an expert, but I am Indian and grew up eating healthy indian food.

For dry curries (think aloo gobi) here is my template:

Chop some onions and sautee them in a bit of olive oil over medium low heat. Cook them down. Not for five minutes. at least 15 minutes. A lot of the flavor comes from cooking down the onions. Add ginger and garlic, if using fresh, cook a couple more minutes. Add your spices and then cook them for a few minutes - cumin, coriander, garam masala, turmeric, etc . When you see recipes that say "fry in oil" it does NOT mean you have to deep fry them. It means to just cook them in oil for a few minutes. Add a fresh tomato or two then your veggies. To give you an idea of proportions - If I were using a large head of cauliflower and 3-4 small red potatoes, I might use 2 tablespoons of olive oil, 2 teaspoons, cumin, 1 coriander, 2 garam masala, 1/2 turmeric.

The key is too cook the onions down and sautee your dried spices in the small amount of oil you are using. I cannot emphasize this enough. This is where a lot of deliciousness comes in. If I'm making a chicken curry, I cook the onions down so that, say, eight onions could fit into two cups. This can take awhile. I like to cook down a whole bunch of onions at once, and then stash that onion-ey goodness in the freezer in ice cube trays.

If you want to post a recipe, I can tell you how I'd modify it to make it something I'd eat every day. I cook the way my mom cooks, so it's legit, I promise.

I like to cook down a whole bunch of onions at once, and then stash that onion-ey goodness in the freezer in ice cube trays.

ooooh that is genius.

I will share that feedback with my mother. She'll appreciate it.

These are likely not traditional - but they're our variations and delicious.


Paneer Jalfrazie

12 baby corns , cut lengthwise
1 1/4 cups low fat cottage cheese (Breakstones)
1/4 tsp cumin seeds
1/8 tso garam masala
1 tsp ginger-green chilli paste
3 spring onion whites , sliced
3/4 cup chopped spring onion greens
1/2 green pepper , cut into 25mm (1") strips
1/2 red pepper , cut into 25mm (1") strips
1/4 tsp turmeric powder (haldi)
1/2 tsp chilli powder
1 tomato
1 tbsp tomato puree
2 tsp oil
salt to taste

Cut roughly and blend the tomato to a smooth purée.
Heat the oil in a non-stick pan, add the cumin seeds and garam masala. Saute about a minute then add the green chilli paste, spring onion whites and green and red capsicum and sauté for 2 minutes.
Add the baby corn, turmeric powder, red chilli powder, prepared tomato purée and salt and sauté on a slow flame for 4 to 5 minutes till the baby corn is cooked. Add the tomato purée, cottage cheese and spring onion greens and toss lightly.

This yields enough for 4 and is roughly 490 Calories for the -entire batch-.

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Butter Chicken

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 shallot, finely chopped
1/4 white onion, chopped
2 tablespoons margarine
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon ginger garlic paste
1 teaspoon garam masala
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 bay leaf
1 1/4 cup plain yogurt
1/2 cup tomato sauce
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 pinch salt
1 pinch black pepper

1 tablespoon oil
1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into bite-size pieces
1 teaspoon garam masala
1 pinch cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/4 cup water

Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a large saucepan over medium high heat. Saute shallot and onion until soft and translucent. Stir in butter, lemon juice, ginger-garlic paste, 1 teaspoon garam masala, chili powder, cumin and bay leaf. Cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Add tomato sauce, and cook for 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Stir in half-and-half and yogurt. Reduce heat to low, and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Season with salt pepper. Remove from heat and set aside.
Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a large heavy skillet over medium heat. Cook chicken until lightly browned, about 10 minutes. Reduce heat, and season with 1 teaspoon garam masala and cayenne. Stir in a few spoonfuls of sauce, and simmer until liquid has reduced, and chicken is no longer pink. Stir cooked chicken into sauce.
Mix together cornstarch and water, then stir into the sauce. Cook for 5 to 10 minutes, or until thickened.

Roughly 350 calories per serving. Serves 4 (1 cup).

I love Indian food.

Not sure if this is what you're looking for but some decent vegan recipes here:

http://21daykickstartindia.org/mealplan/index.cfm

Hi Jon, congratulations on your success so far, I hope I can lose as much. I'm just starting with MFP.

The easiest way to find out how to make curries is on Youtube. There are thousands or videos - make sure they have minimal oil, just enough to fry the spices - don't burn them. Vegetarian recipes are delicious and are usually lower in calories.

I share my house with a beautiful young Sikh woman who taught me how to make Chapatis, also called Roti. She makes the hottest curries in the world. I use it like Vegemite - just a thin scrape on a chapati is more than enough. They are the easiest and quickest thing to make to go with curries.

Here's a video that was the closest I could find to her recipe. You can leave out the oil but do make sure you buy proper atta flour from an Indian shop. Without oil or ghee, a twenty centimetre chapati is about 70 calories. They are very quick to make. In my house we roll and fold the chapatis in four and roll into a ball twice to give them extra layers. You press on the chapati with a dry tea towel to move the steam through the whole chapati.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzLBDkEtXNE

I hope you enjoy your Indian cooking
Jo

Anybody makes 'Dosa'?

I make a quick "ghetto curry" that is pretty respectable (taste wise, calling this curry to anyone who knows curry would probably result in me getting beat up by a wandering squad of Indians who find my bastardization of their cuisine to be unacceptable) and named a pox on their food forever more.

Chick Peas, 1 container
Boneless/skinless Chicken Breast, 4 ounces
Thai Kitchen - Red Curry Paste, 1 tbsp (carried at walmart)
0% Milk Fat Plain Greek Yogurt, 4 ounces
Butter, 2 tbsp (we use country crock margarine)
Natural Tomato Paste, whole can (small can)
water, 1/2c
Milk 1%, 1 cup
Onion, 1 large, chopped
Garlic, 4 Cloves, chopped
Morton - Coarse Kosher Salt, 1/2tsp
Spices - Pepper, black, 1 tsp
Spices - Garam Masala, 2 tsp
Sambal Oelek - Ground Thai Chilli Paste, 1 tsp
Pam - Olive oil spray

Hit bottom of the pan with as little pam as possible, dump in the onions and get them about 50% of the level you want them cooked, toss in the chick peas, when everything is about 70% done then toss in the garlic, curry paste, pepper, salt, garam masala, sambal oelek, and chicken breast. Get the chicken breast mostly done and then add the tomato paste, water, and butter... soon as everything is combined nicely add in the milk slowly and then the greek yogurt, keep stiring until everything is combined. Let it come back to a nice simmer and then spoon it off onto a plate of rice or eat it straight (i have no need for rice, I like it well enough straight up.)

Keeps well, reheats great, makes about 5 servings in my opinion... depending on brands and quantities mine usually runs in the neighborhood of ~1250 for the pan or 250/ea serving. Everything here can be found at either walmart, audis, or save-a-lot around here... which is why I'm rather fond of it.... nice and cheap

Yes. I make Dosa. Are you looking for a recipe? Youtube has many for example I found this website provided a good step by step instruction on making Dosa as well as uttapams and vada: http://showmethecurry.com/

It is not hard to cook healthy indian food - especially south indian (I'm a little biased). You might want to try a quick egg curry or fish curry. You can used canned sardines or frozen fish for the fish curry. These are high protein and I can usually whip them up in under 20 minutes with items I have on hand.

I second the suggestion earlier to make sure you cook down those onions!! very good advice, my mother also did that and made sure I did the same.

bump for the recipes. I'm no expert but:-
I mix my own pastes and spice mixtures - they're great. The recipes are usually gleaned from the web and using MFP means I know exactly what has gone into them and what the kC cost is.