what is your favourite indian dish?

[meemee]

do you like it the way that restaurant made it or do you like it from any number of restaurants.

do you cook indian food at home? what do you like to make?

i was just given this indian cook book and dont know where to start.

[CherryBomb]

I cook a lot of Indian. I don't how authentic it is, but I love it My favorite, hands down, is butter chicken It's the family favorite. I also love to make saag paneer and sweet potato curry, and I always serve Indian dishes with basmati rice and naan. I really need an Indian cookbook myself!

[Arduinna]

My favorite indian dish is probably chana masala. I do cook Indian food pretty often at home. I mostly make a variety of rice dishes, dal, raita, curries ( and not with that yellow "curry" powder), tandoori, lussi, sambar, chutneys ( favorites here are tamarind and mint/cilantro chutney). Our two favorite dishes at Indian restaurants is murg makhani and korma neither of which I've mastered as well as at the restaurant. The other dishes, I often prefer my homemade to the restaurant versions. I do love biryani but I'm still tweaking my homemade recipe.

What cookbook did you get? I have a few that I like and I really enjoy the new Spice Goddess cooking show on the cooking channel. I tried her salmon with coconut curry sauce and it was really good.

My 2 favorite Indian cookbooks are The Dance of Spices by Laxmi Hiremath and 1000 Indian Recipes by Neelam Batra. I have some others I get a recipe here for there from but those are my 2 go to cookbooks.

[Megan73]

I bet you that once you start cooking Indian at home you'll prefer what you can make to the average Indian restaurant.
This is my all-time favorite (and really easy) recipe: http://www.finecooking.com/articles/...px?ac=ts&ra=fp
Add rice, vegetables (I like Madhur Jaffrey's brown lentils and spinach and her grated carrot and mustard seed salad) plus raita and you have a really impressive meal for guests.
My only tip is to invest in a coffee grinder that you keep for spices, always use whole spices and roast them gently before using.

[cristeen]

I started by picking out recipes that sounded good, or had some of myfavorite ingredients, had ingredients i had on hand, etc.

Fragrant rice, saag aloo and chana masala was my first meal.

[velochic]

Yes, I do cook a lot of Indian dishes. My favorite is Mattar Paneer (peas and cheese), dd's is Keema Mataar (lamb keema and peas), and dh's is Bhindi Masala (okra). These are on our "regular" menu list, but I tinker around a lot with vindaloos when dd is not eating them (too hot for her) and Biryanis (which dd likes, as she likes rice so much). Makhanis are also well liked around here, but they're often more fattening than we like to eat regularly. I discovered a favorite dal soup just this past winter that I haven't made since May. I also make some sides like naan (using a pizza stone), samosas, and pakora. Never all of these in the same meal. Once I had all of the spices, I found it to be very easy to make up the mixtures ahead of time and keep on-hand. We love Indian food here!

It can be daunting at first, but well worth it.

[Otto]

I haven't been doing much Indian cooking lately, but late at night, I still get some powerful hankerings for a straight-up cauliflower uppma (Malt-O-Meal, naturally). Fortunately, fenugreek seeds seem to last forever and there's a startup greengrocer in the neighborhood who just started carrying fresh curry leaves.

[canadianhippie]

mutton roti!! no idea how to make it authentic though, sorry, i just eat it :P

[texmati]

My parents and dh are from india. Food in india is so rich and varied-- its difficult to pick a favorite dish. I just wanted to say if you know any Indian people that you can learn from that would be my preferred way of learning. I've never seen any of my family cook from a recipe, and books and blogs seem to make everything so complicated!

[homemademom]

One of my favorite comfort foods is any kind of dal with basmati rice and a huge dollop of raita. Yummmm.

I love butter chicken, too, but I've never made it. I've only ever eaten it a restaurant, but it is SO good.

[meemee]

arduinna i have this book http://www.amazon.com/Madhur-Jaffrey...ref=pd_sim_b_2

apparently madhur jaffrey is the indian julia child.

wow velochic. you made nan <bow> <bow> to you.

one of the reasons why i want to make the food at home instead of eat out, is because i am trying to cut out the grease. i find indian food too greasy and 'brown' though yummy.

a friend of mine asked me to make dal, rice and tomato chutney as comfort food. seh is from mumbai and said that's what they ate a lot.

[Bokonon]

I love Indian food but don't know a lot about it, so buffets are my favorite! I know I love chicken tikka masala and veggie korma. But I'll eat anything Indian and have never had anything I don't like! I made a tikka masala last week according to the spice packet's instructions, and while it didn't taste like I expected, it was still very good!

And now I'm going to try to convince DH to take me out for Indian tomorrow!

[Ammaarah]

I love a good chicken korma or beef or mutton biryani. I had some amazing Bengali style butter chicken in Chicago when we went there a couple weeks ago, too.

I also love South Asian fast food, like paratha stuffed with meat and veggies or samosas.

And for dessert, mango kulfi!

[velochic]

Originally Posted by meemee

wow velochic. you made nan <bow> <bow> to you.

It's not as hard as it sounds, if you have a pizza stone (or can be done on the grill, although I've never attempted that). I learned how to do it from Chowhound, a foodie board. Here is the link to the thread that discusses naan and inside that thread, there is a link to a youtube video about how to make naan.

[mamadelbosque]

About the only indian dish I make is curried lentils w/ potatoes - mostly I make it with moong dal, but every now and then I mix it up and use red lentils & sweet potatoes for a change

ETA: I usually make flat bread with it too. Its so easy: just flour, water, and a little bit of salt and a cast iron skillet!! Serve it with basmati rice, the flat bread and yogurt.. mmmm sooo good!!

[Storm Bride]

I started doing some Indian cooking about three years ago (dh bought me a fabulous curry cookbook for Christmas, because I was interested, and he thought it might help give me something to focus on, after Aaron died). I haven't done that many dishes, but my favourite, by far, is a recipe for murgh makhani, which seems to be exactly the same as butter chicken. I've had butter chicken from several restaurants, and I like mine better than any of them.

DS1 likes chicken korma, and I do find it quicker and easier to cook than the murgh makhani. We've tried a few rice pilaus, and a biryani, which were all pretty good. I've also got a Sri Lankan recipe for a really yummy fish stew (with coconut milk for the broth). It's really good, too.

I need to start mixing it up a little more, and try some more new recipes. The book is huge and I've only tried about 10 or so.

But, tonight we're having murgh makhani. Yummy.

[Storm Bride]

Originally Posted by velochic

I also make some sides like naan (using a pizza stone), samosas, and pakora

I've made roti, but not naan. I don't have a recipe for samosas or pakoa, but I want to try both, eventually.

Oh - I did one chickpea dish, too...might have been channa masala, but i honestly can't remember.

My singe biggest problem with Indian cooking is space. We keep all the standard "western" spices (sage, thyme, rosemary, etc.) and basil and oregano and such. We keep both ground and whole cinnamon and cloves (for several purposes). Then, we keep some other spices, which are mostly, or solely, for Indian cooking. My spices are out of hand, and I really don't have a good answer to how I'm going to store them. We have a whole bunch of them sealed up in giant Ziplocs in our bowl cupboard!

[artzy_fartzy68]

my favorite is chana dal curry, but I've never had it in a restaurant, so i don't know what it would be like.

Next favorite is paneer mukanwala and I've never had that in a restaurant, either.. ...actually, I'm not sure Ive seen either of those on a menu! ha ha!

another thing I like is paneer w/ green papaya...that's TDF!!!
I think mine recipes are pretty authentic as I took a cooking class from an indian at a hare krishna temple. She practices ayurveda and is vegetarian so I got TONS of good vegetarian onion/garlic-free recipes...so delicious! And she's from a region that uses a lot of coconut milk and coconut....mmmmmmmmm!!
I swear I have a recipe for every variety of chapati a person could make!

[laohaire]

I'm a sucker for chana masala, and though I can make a nice tasting chick pea dish at home, I am still trying to figure out the elusive piece that makes it taste like restaurant food. Yup, I know my way is probably actually more authentic, but I love restaurant chana masala. And can't afford to eat it.

I've made garlic naan before, using the artisanal bread in 5 minutes a day method. Mine comes out a little heavy but pretty good.

[PGTlatte]

I love rogan josh and vegetable koftas.

I don't know how to make either of these myself though.