Are the curries recipes we are given on tele magazines or cookery books authentic or are they adapted?

Question

OK, so I have followed some of the recipes from cook books ect, but am I eating athentic ethnic cuisine or crap?

Answer 1

You want authentic? here goes
Saute onions in oil til golden brown, soft and mushy... the longer u spend cooking the onions the better your sauce for the curry will be...now add ginger/garlic paste and 2 green chillies finely chopped. again brown for a few mins.
then add one teaspoon cumin powder
one teaspoon coriander powder
one teaspoon red chilli powder or half tsp if you want milder
one teaspoon garam masala powder
one and a half teaspoon salt
stir in all the above into onions, ginger.garlic and chillies.
if you are making a dry curry like a karahi or masala based add tomato puree or for a more saucy base curry add tinned chopped tomatoes...then just add chicken or lamb or veggies. add a few cups of water or less for a drier base and cover and cook....enjoy!!!! for a very authentic flavour before adding the onions to the oil add some black large cardomons and cinamon sticks to the oil and then add onions. Once curry is cooked sprinke over freshly chopped coriander.

Answer 2

I think that the whole point of the so called ethnic cuisine is that it is cooked by real people doing their own thing who have never been near a cookery book in their lives. My favourite way of learning is to wangle my way into other people's kitchens (they are welcome in mine, if there is room) and watch them carefully. They don't measure things out: they know instinctively whether you shove in a pinch or a handful or something in between. They have no idea of temperatures, either: they will put their pan full on the heat or slightly away from the heat. Everybody will have his or her own method of doing things and ingredients may well be dictated by what is available rather than what would ideally like to have. Can we, at the end of the day, say what is genuine and what is not? Cookery evolves and if proof were needed, look at the way in which Indian cuisine uses all kinds of ingredients which a very few centuries ago were unknown in their subcontinent and Italian cuisine makes such heavy use of pasta (introduced by Marco Polo from China) and tomatoes (from the New World). If your curries (on the basis of the recipes and perhaps a few secret ingredients of your own) taste good to you and your Indian friends, then who cares how authentic they are? The proof of the pudding, as well as the curry, is in the eating.

Answer 3

The best way to get authentic curry recipes is to contact the cultural Attachees at the Embassies of India and Pakistan - this can be done on the web and the web sites contain links to authentic recipes.

There are many cuisines in India and Pakistan - Bengali, Gujerati, Kerala, Baluch, Kashmiri etc all of which are distinctive.

There is also the Anglo-Indian cuisine of Indian food that has been adapted to suit the taste of the British.

None of this is 'crap'. Restaurant Indian food can be very tasty, even if the dishes are contrived. Chefs are clever people, and we often adapt recipes to suit our clientele - that way we please our customers, and, hence, make money.

Unfortunately, some Asian restaurants are now offering foods that are prepared in bulk off the premises, frozen or chilled and delivered to restaurants. In my opinion, this borders on crap, as it leaves no room for the individual touch of the trained chef. It is standardised food.

I have 4 Indian/Pakistani restaurants near me (they all cook 'proper' - on the premises - I know all of their chefs). Rogan Ghosh is my favourite, and the Rogan in each restaurant is different from the next one. (One chef is from the Punjab, one is Bengali, the third hails from Bradford and the fourth is Welsh!). Needless to say, the Rogan that I cook is different from the lot of them!

Answer 4

Does it really matter ? All recipes are guide lines its you that makes it what it is. A lot of recipes around today have been derived from old and tested recipes, what works for you might not work for some one else.
Be creative and throw in some thing different, experiment, thats what makes cooking great fun and it just might make it authentic to you !!

Answer 5

Depending on what you're watching, the recipes could be either adapted or 'authentic'. Keep in mind that cooking does have to be somewhat adaptable.

As for whether what you're eating is crap or not- What do your taste bugs say?