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Expert Vegan Cooking Tips
5 Tips for Enjoying Indian Cuisine
By Kumudha Venkatesan
Indian cuisine is synonymous with vegetarian food, but it's a breeze to veganize Indian dishes.
I'm a vegan and I frequently make Indian dishes. It's pretty simple to veganize Indian dishes in United States as the supermarkets are flooded with variety of dairy and meat substitutes.
1.Cooking: If you have always enjoyed eating popular dishes such as "Palak paneer" and "Matar paneer" in Indian restaurants, you can still enjoy these great dishes by veganizing in your kitchen. Paneer is cottage cheese, and it is widely used in many popular dishes. I use firm tofu or extra-firm tofu in recipes such as palak paneer or matar paneer. If a recipe calls for ghee (clarified butter), then I use Earth Balance vegan butter. If a recipe calls for yogurt, then plain soy yogurt mixed with vegan sour cream gives the sour taste needed for classic recipes such as "dahi vada" (deep fried lentil fritters in yogurt sauce). Dahi means yogurt in Hindi, national language of India.
You can find many vegetarian Indian recipes at http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/ by the popular cookbok author Madhur Jaffrey. There are numerous great Indian food blogs which are flooded with vegetarian recipes. Madhur Jaffrey's book World Vegetarian has numerous vegan recipes from India. I often make gravies and curries using seitan ,tempeh or firm tofu by following Madhur Jaffrey's non-vegetarian recipes.
If you want to explore variety of spices and lentils and beans online, then visit Indira's blog Mahanandi, http://www.themahanandi.org/. You can find numerous mouthwatering vegan recipes from India. Vaishali's vegan blog, holy cow is brimming with veganized recipes from India.
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2. Restaurants: Indian restaurants offer numerous vegan dishes. Flat breads such as chapati and roti are vegan. Sometimes, to enhance the flavor of the breads and dosa(rice and lentil crepe) a dollop of butter or ghee may be added. Always make sure to communicate with the waiter about your food preference.
You can also find Indian restaurants which offer "pure vegetarian cuisine" . However, in these restaurants milk and milk products such as ghee, and butter are used in some dishes.
In short, avoid any dish on the menu card, if it has the word, "Paneer" (cottage cheese), "Raita" (yogurt with vegetables), "ghee"(clarified butter), "malai"(cream) or "dahi" (yogurt) .
3.Sweets and Dessert: Milk and milk products play an important role in Indian sweets. Sweets are considered to be best if they are prepared with copious amounts of ghee - clarified butter . You may find numerous vegan dishes in Indian restaurants but you can't find a vegan sweet or a dessert.
I use almond milk or rice milk for making variety of payasams and kheers(sweet puddings). If a recipe calls for milk then use plain soy , almond or rice milk.
Halwa and Burfis are also popular Indian sweets. I often make carrot halwa with plain soy or almond milk. The carrot halwa made with non-dairy milk tastes just as good as the carrot halwa made with dairy milk. If you like fudge like desserts then you should try badam burfi (almond fudge) in Manjula's kitchen. Visit Manjula's kitchen website, to find numerous vegan recipes of Indian cuisine. Manjula also has posted numerous recipes on youtube. Viewing Manjula's youtube cooking videos is like taking Indian cooking lessons.
4. Fresh Spices: Using fresh spices is the key for tasty Indian dishes.
The most common spices used are cumin, chilli powder, coriander seeds and turmeric. Freshly ground spice blends impart wonderful aroma and fresh taste to the dishes. If you often make Indian dishes, then using a coffee grinder to blend the spices is a good idea.
Indian cuisine is accociated with elaborate cooking procedures and numerous spices. Some of the great tasting Indian dishes which I adore such as beans poriyal( green beans medley) and raw moong dal salad, can be made using few spices and does not require elaborate cooking procedures.
5.Indian Stores: Visiting an Indian store is like visiting mini India. If you are fond of Indian cuisine, but find it overwhelming to cook Indian dishes at home, then you should visit Indian grocery stores to get a feel for the spices and the beans.
Your local Indian grocery store is gold mine for some great vegan food items. You can find everything from spice blends to lentils and deep-fried snacks made with chickpea flour to spicy chutneys. Tasty Bite has numerous Indian ready to eat boxed items.
Kumudha Venkatesan loves Indian food. She blogs about her vegan lifestyle at Global Vegan http://vegan-fare.blogspot.com/
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