What magic ingredient transforms ho-hum ground beef and frozen peas into exotic lusciousness? Garam masala. This blend of warm spices usually gets sprinkled on sparingly at the end of Indian cooking for a bright, fragrant finish. But in beef and pea curry (Keema Matar), a heap of garam masala added early on infuses every spoonful with the excitement of a Bollywood extravaganza. If pumpkin spice had a savory, more sophisticated, less seasonal cousin, it would be garam masala. Besides cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and cardamom, garam masala throws in cumin, coriander, and black pepper. Garam masala adds mysterious warmth to tomato sauce. You can find a similar effect in Greek tomato sauce, which leans on…
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Spinach Cooked with Onions (Mughlai Saag) from the ‘Godmother of Indian Cooking’
As we approach the Oscars, I propose a new category of Lifetime Achievement Award: “Best Actor & Cookbook Author.” The recipient would be an award-winning star of motion pictures as well as a best-selling cookbook author with James Beard honors. And, naturally, she or he would be a host of popular cooking shows. And the winner is: Madhur Jaffrey. I had no inkling of Jaffrey’s double life when my friend Wendy gave me her authoritative Indian Cooking cookbook 30 years ago. I had never even heard of her. But Wendy was a fan. She had just come back from living in Amsterdam, where she had watched Jaffrey’s BBC cooking show, and had picked up…
