Paakam:
Everyday Indian for a Vegetarian Lifestyle
By Anu Canumalla
AuthorHouse, 2008
Paperback $43.00
Ever wonder if Indian cuisine prepared at home is far different from restaurant offerings? Anu J. Canumalla proves home cooked Indian dishes are a world apart from the restaurant experience in her striking, color-packed cookbook Paakam: Everyday Indian for a Vegetarian Lifestyle. Many years of exploration went into compiling these long-standing family recipes accompanying her original dishes that fill this beautiful volume.
During her years studying chemistry in an American university, Anu missed home cooking so much she frequently called her family in India for recipes she could prepare in her adopted country. Beginning with treasured recipes from family members, she devoted many years to honing her cooking skills and passion for her home cuisine. In time she developed expertise in working with the vast array of vegetables and spices that make Indian cuisine so distinctive.
Aware of the health benefits of fresh natural foods, Anu's recipes are largely vegan with some vegetarian recipes that use yogurt and milk. These can easily be made vegan with unsweetened soy yogurt and soymilk. She explains the many aspects in the meal require balancing the spices, flavors, textures, and nutritional quality, while noting that as early as 1500 BC, there existed an awareness of Nava dhanyas or the use of nine grains. Still a focus of today's cooks, the nine grains include wheat, oats, green gram, Bengal gram, pigeon peas, black-eyed peas, sesame seeds, black gram, and horse gram.
While it is typical to measure exact ingredients for a recipe in American cooking, it is uncommon in traditional Indian cuisine where creating the flavors becomes an almost intuitive technique. Further setting the cuisine apart from American tradition is that the foods are commonly eaten with the fingers, and licking the fingers at the end of the meal is not frowned upon. A multitude of culinary traditions of the various regions of India appear throughout the book, either in the headnotes or the extensive descriptions of the spices and herbs that explain how they are prepared and used.
The chapter on chiles reveals that though chiles are not native to India, they are liberally embraced in the cuisine. Indian cooking is noted for its spiciness, a feature that makes so many people fall in love with the food. Because Anu is aware some of the recipe ingredients are unique to Indian cuisine, she provides helpful details on their use and handling. Many of the individual foods appear in thumbnail-size color photos to help identify unfamiliar items like snake gourd or amaranth leaves.
Those new to Indian cuisine will appreciate the suggested Menu List that illustrates how to assemble a typical Indian meal and even a special party meal from the recipes in the book. Readers may be surprised to learn that Indian foods are not typically served in courses, though starters might be offered before a meal or as a snack in the evening along with a cup of hot tea. Appetizers feature delicacies like Aloo Bonda, batter-dipped potato balls with an array of herbs and spices like cilantro, mint, chiles, ginger in a batter of Bengal gram powder.
The vegetable and legume dishes comprise the largest proportion of the recipes. Those who frequent Indian restaurants will find familiar dishes like Baingan Bhartha and Vegetable Kurma among the Vegetable Dishes, but most of the recipes are beautiful assemblages of dishes served only at home. While few Americans are fortunate enough to experience a tasty homemade Indian meal, they can become proficient home cooks with mouthwatering recipes like Anu's Stuffed Karela guided by a beautiful photograph of the finished dish.
Red Pumpkin, a home cooked specialty of South India, appears in an appealing color photo of red pumpkin cooked with grated coconut and black and Bengal gram along with a host of exotic spices that compliment the sweet pumpkin. Served with rice, the pumpkin can also be substituted with other squashes that are not sweet.
The legume section features a spicy garbanzo recipe called Cholé, a whole meal in one dish and an excellent party food. Along for the ride are garbanzos, onions and tomatoes to form the base of the meal. The ample seasonings include powdered spices and spice pastes, giving the dish a well-balanced complexity of flavors. Anu recommends making this dish a day ahead for even better flavor absorption.
Among the rice dishes is Green Pulao, Basmati rice enhanced with a banquet of spices and herbs one can almost taste while reading the recipe. Cilantro, mint, green chiles, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, cashews, and cumin are just a few of the items that comprise this abundantly seasoned rice specialty.
Paakam: Everyday Indian for a Vegetarian Lifestyle includes recipes for breads, salads, chutneys, relishes, and desserts, each clearly explained in this well-designed, graphically stunning, oversized cookbook printed on acid-free paper resembling a delicate gray faux parchment. Even the innovative cover design is composed of food ingredients featuring many colors of lentils, beans, cardamom seeds, turmeric, and chiles on a backdrop of white rice bordered by green beans and cinnamon sticks. This gorgeous volume makes Indian cooking so enticing it almost compels one to want to learn this ancient art. The feast of spices included in the recipes makes Indian cooking seem far less daunting than other Indian cookbooks and far more inviting.
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