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CitySaheli sat down with Julie Sahni to find out the secrets to her famous Indian cooking! Julie Sahni’s Indian Cooking School first started in 1973 and has become one of the leading Indian cooking school’s in America. If Sahni could teach her students only one thing, what would it be?
“The most important thing people need to know about Indian cooking is that Indians pan roast food and spices. There is very little, almost no sauté. Indian food needs to be roasted. There is a level of heat that is exposed to the food in the roast pan. Without it you will never get the right flavor. Never! Which is why, when we make for example garam masala or roasted cumin – used in northern Indian cooking, we roast them to the level beyond smoking. The moment people can smell the aroma they think it’s done. But that is only the beginning. It has to go beyond that. You have to take out the batteries to your smoke detector! And then the spices start smattering and popping, and they become dark brown. But until you get that, you will not have the right aroma of the spices, the deep, deep fragrance. This is the underpinning of many Indian dishes, for example chicken, lamb with spinach, sag paneer, koftas, cormas and biryanis. All these dishes, even raita, require roasted spices or cumin.”
It would be very easy to assume that Indian cooking doesn’t mix with other styles of food, like European or South American, but that would be a mistake. Sahni says she finds inspiration for new recipes when she visits all kinds of international markets, and from her students. “I just love ethnic markets. Any little time I have, I go to the market. Korean, Greek, Bolivian, any market. The trick is to ask somebody there to explain how to use the food. That is how I learn. I walk into a place and I grab a vegetable that is not used in Indian cooking, for example the Korean squash vegetable, kimchi. Then I introduce it to my students, so they can also think outside the box. When I teach them how to make a carrot salad, a classic salad from Gujarat with carrots, lime juice, peanuts and cilantro, I use a particular variety of beets taken from Korean cuisine. A student from Japan also told me it would work perfectly in a sushi! So I learn from my students as well.”
So after all of these years teaching Indian cooking to people from all over the world and from all walks of life, what is Sahni’s favorite recipe? “My favorite recipe? Oh my God, it’s so hard! This is probably something very Desi, but it’s Tarka Dal. It’s very soul-soothing, eaten with Pulka bread or a bowl of plain rice. To make a Tarka Dal, you have to cook the lentils correctly, using pink or yellow lentils. Then you heat the ghee and add the cumin seeds. When the cumin turns dark you add loads of garlic, a little bit of asafetida and red chili powder. I also add a handful of cilantro.”
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