The many colours of Indian Traditional Food

So you thought Indian food is only about a lot of chillies and hot sauce? Well, you couldn’t have been anymore wrong! A host of spices dominate Indian curries, rich delicious halwas melt in your mouth, and fruit ‘Lassies’ can show fruit yogurts the door. If you ever want to experience a culinary roller-coaster, skip your way to an Indian diner and ask for their best. Indian traditional Food can woo the most reluctant eaters. Work up a huge appetite before you step into the Indian food zone, or may have to end up leaving after the starters!

Indians love their films and their food. One of the basic preparations of meat include marinating meat in generous amounts of curd, red chilli powder, ginger-garlic paste, coriander and mint leaves. This goes on to tenderize while the onions are sautéed a deep brown. In goes the meat with a dose of coconut milk and viola! You have landed to this world-kitchen where lies a mystery inside each pot and a magic that cracks up the pans! Your taste of Indian Traditional Food will never be complete without tasting the choice of desserts drowned in copious amounts of ghee (clarified butter) and nuts. The carrot halwa, Bengali sweets made out of hung curd, the churmas, or the beautiful crimson jalebis, you are loaded with so many options you may never want to leave.

Any kind of food has its own charm. Each ingredient in a recipe is mostly there for a reason. Like, Indian chicken curries use poppy seeds to tone down the heat of the chicken. This adds a nutty flavour to the curry all the while making it absolutely thick, creamy and delicious! Break a piece of flat bread/Naan and drench it in this curry before you take a bite. Indian traditional Food has the power to transport you to a different place full of royal caravans, fields of yellow mustard flowers, and metal glasses filled with unreal amounts of Lassi meaning, curd churned and sweetened with sugar and flavoured with cardamom and nutmeg.

However, like all cuisines, Indian food is evolving. Not that it is imperfect in anyway, but the East and the West are fundamentally different people. They have different food choices which makes it essential for both parties to prepare their food in such a way that is accepted in each other’s societies as generations have been brought up on one kind of food. Tweaking recipes can add a whole new twist to the way a particular dish is perceived and who has ever said no to improvement? Those who like sampling different foods and cuisines are mostly open to the most bizarre experiences too. An Indian dish famous to where it originated, makes use of watermelon peels to add depth and flavour to curry!  Sounds like something you wouldn’t try? Only a matter of time before you let you inhibitions fall and let the wave of Indian food engulf your senses and impress the hardest critic!