hi everyone. i just have a quick question and i am in a bit of a hurry so forgie me if this has been asked and asnwered befor. is it ok to make garam masala using brown cardamom pods instead of green cardamom pods? everywhere i o=look online and in cookery books it says to use green pods and not brown.
thanks sid.
I always use brown/black cardamoms for GM, as used in most Indian recipes. Green cardamoms can be added too, but are not necessary.
There a many ways to make garam masala and this is one! Also look at Mamtas
http://www.mamtaskitchen.com/recipe_display.php?id=1
For the garam masala
1 tbsp cardamom seeds (if you can't buy the seeds then buy cardamom pods and shell them yourself)
1 tsp black peppercorns
1 tsp black cumin seeds (you can use regular cumin seeds if black aren't available)
1 tsp whole cloves
1/3 of a whole nutmeg (you can break a whole nutmeg by placing it on a cloth and bashing it with a meat mallet or rolling pin)
a medium stick of cinnamon, about 5-8cm/2-3 inches, broken up into 3-4 pieces
I suppose it depends on what you are used to.
Most shop bought garam masala is diluted with cheap spices. The more useful GM's are made with very powerful spices. Some have green cardamom, but those originate more towards the NW of India can contain the brown/black ones. This makes a GM which has a smokey flavour (from the drying process of the black cardamoms), and if black cumin is added, a very 'dark' GM is formed.
I like to make GM from green cardamom, cloves, cassia and mace for general use, but with black cardamom and black cumin and others for a more Kashmiri feel.
i agree with lapis. it depends what you want to do. its fine if you like the taste. everyone is different. there are many uses for garam masala. for example it is used in tandoori masala. full ingredients here:
http://www.tandooricookingexpert.com/blog/2010/11/06/glossary-tandoori-masala-bbq-marinade-dry-mix/
you are unique dont ask others if ok, you like then its super good. be yourself.
what is the big difference with normal garam masala and th kashmiri version? can someone point me in the direction of some recipes on this site where they would use kashmiri masala?
also if anyone can point me to some recipes on this site that they know ofthat dont use onion and garlic. im not asking anyone to search for me because i can do that myself but if anyone knows of a few can you please list them.
thanks sid.
Tom,
that tandoori mix is about as much Indian as I am! Loads of stuff in there that would never go into a tandoori masala mix. And tandoori chicken is as much abut cooking technique as it is spices.
Kashmiri spices are a little different to those used in most of other parts of India (and Pakistan). The typical ones used are fennel seed, dry ginger powder, brown cardamom, black cumin seeds and saffron, dhania of course, but they also use something called ver, which is onion/garlic based, with loads of chilli and some other spices, which are made into a paste, then dried into a 'cake', bit like a stock cube.
Kashmiri cuisine, along with Awadhi, are my two favourite regional cuisines.
As for GM, one containing black cardamom and black cumin would be appropriate, but make sure it is black cumin, and not black onion seeds (kalonji), which are called kala jeera in Bengal!
I'm not sure garam masala contents are too prescriptive, I once thought of doing smell tests of different mixes, but the variables were too many, freshness of spices, how well ground, temperature, etc.
Looking at the list of the ingredients for the recipe Tom posted I saw Star Anise...and that reminded me of this question.
Is Star Anise used in Indian or Pakistan cuisine? I don't remember seeing it before.
Star Anise tends to be more towards Chinese style cooking but I'm sure it will be used in many other places...
Steve
Put it this way azelia, I had not heard of star anise until I started cooking oriental food here in UK. I am sure that if I asked any of my family members in India, they will not know it. They are all north Indians. I am not sure of south Indians, whether they will know it.
I sometimes add it to a curry, where I am using other whole spices, but not very often.
Interesting Mamta...what spices are used which country. I've never seen star anise with Indian/Pakistani food but the spice trade has been going on forever and a day and wondered just like the other spices not native to India why star anise is not one that entered the cuisine...
I find the history of ingredients interesting and knowing with migration there goes food, recipes and spices taken into new places.
Could it be that the aroma and taste of star anise is so strong and all-pervasive that is just does not sit comfortably with the traditional spicing of indian cooking?
It is also apparently quite difficult to grow, even within China. Finally its use within Chinese cooking is often associated with pork which would not be so prolific in India,
Winton
Traditional recipes could only have what grew locally, not the imported stuff. That must be the reason Star Anise never got used in Indian cuisine. But in these days of mix and match, everything gets used in everything!
Winton - thanks for that info, you made a good point...and I agree star anise can overpower a dish if not careful!
i use star anise for making chinese five spice powder but that really is about it. i made a variation of samosa a few weeks ago that was just made with finely chopped cauliflower and a sprinkle of five spice powder and it was really nice. it was a recipe that gary rhodes did while in india but he used anise seeds or something like that. i have never come across them before but i will look the next time i am in the indian grocers.
i had a dream last night that i walked into a shop to buy spices and mamta was working behind the counter wrapping up star anise in bags and lapis was stood telling people that they should only be buying small amounts of spices. even though i have never sen mamta of lapis it really was quite bizarre. then i come on here and find that someone had mentioned star anise in the garam masala thread. i think i am cracking up. :-o
yes Sid it does sound like you're cracking up! :)
I'm going to tell you what I have found looking around recipes for garam masala in regards to dry-roasting or grinding them raw.
Can't remember where I first mentioned this on another thread but this thread titled garam masala seems appropriate!
Mamta mentioned before that she grinds the spices raw and so does everyone she knows. living in the uk for many years all I see is garam masala spices being dry-roasted on tv by chefs but also tv cooks (not chefs) was puzzled by this because I didn't know why or when it's appropriate to dry-roast or not.
After coming on here about this I went away to look in my books, recipes on the net and have a good look around. It appears and this is most interesting to me that when recipes are taken from "home cooks" or regional recipes specific to an ethnic group the spices are not dry-roasted. When the recipes appear to be from either a chef or interestingly enough from a cook book author who was born here, uk, the spices are dry-roasted.
One cookery writer pointed out that her experience was in Indian spices have to be dried during the rainy season because everything gets damp and therefore they need to be dried first before you are able to grind them and this makes sense since it's difficult to grind something with moisture. So her point was they are not dry-roasted to roast them to change flavour but to heat them up just barely in order to dry them out.
Interestingly I've seen recipes for dry-roasting garam masala where it states you can store it for a few months to ones by Atul who say use it straight away don't store it...and I would have to go along with Atul's view from my own experience of dry-roasting, I think it loses flavour quickly.
My own conclusion is when you want to change the flavour of garam masala by all means dry-roast but for me there is a wonderfulness from raw masala mixes freshly ground that deserve to be used. It's down to what you're after.
Give you an example, one of my absolutely favourite spices after green cardamon is ground coriander, it has the most citrusy aroma and I've noticed how this orange tang is lost when dry-roasted, it changes...hence you pick your choice of what you want!
hope you find my little research interesting...and i wanted to thank you for the initial help with the dry roasting question I posted.
interstin stuff. personally i never dry roast garam masla i just grind it up and store it in a marmite jar. i find marmite jars great for storing herbs and spices. i have come across recipes for making GM that use star anise but i have never tried adding it. i like to keep things as traditional as possible but in this day and age that is not always an easy thing to do.
Very Interesting Azelia, thanks for sharing it with us. It is true, I have never seen anyone in India dry roasting GM spices when it is being made for storing, only when it is for immediate use. I do sometimes dry roast them (as in a Vindaloo/curry type of dish), just before grinding and using.
Sid, this is so funny. When I was young and we lived in Shepard's Bush in London, one of our very good friends had an Indian +general grocery shop on the High Street. I did occasionally stand behind the counter when we visited them or when we went shopping to them and they were short staffed. I do remember selling a few packets of Indian spices in that time. How Bizarre! LOL!!
Star anise is used in Indian cooking, around the ports of Kerala in particular, where they traded with China, Cochin comes to mind.
Although garam masala (GM) is perhaps the most well known of all India's masalas, there are many more, often quite regional. And with some pretty unique ingredients.
There are many examples of mixed spice in many cuisines, all due to early trading like 2-3000 years of trading. I have a Roman cookery book which mentions most of the ones we use in Indian cooking.
In China, we have the already mentioned five spice, although it can contain more spices than the usual five, including ginger, licorice and cardamom. Japan has a seven spice. The Middle East has baharat, a lovely mix of the usual suspects, and less pungent than GM. North Africa has many, due mostly to Arab trading, like Ras el Hanout in Morocco, and from Ethiopia we get berber?, with about eight spices, and Dukka from Egypt.
AFAIK, anise seed is not an Indian spice, it is often a name given to Fennel seed, but the flavour is near, but not the same, and a bit alien to Indian flavours. With most seeds of the umbelliferae family, confusion abounds.
Lapis what history food books do you have?
I've asked one for Christmas called the "History of Food" Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat
For my birthday I have on my list, "Food: A Culinary History from Antiquity to the Present (European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism"
and
"Art, Culture and Cuisine: Ancient and Medieval Gastronomy "
I have a feeling I'm going to be a bit disappointed by the first one because I had the briefest look through and I got the impression it wasn't quite what I thought...but we'll see.
I've just got a couple on the history of Indian food, they are packed away somewhere, so I can't tell you what they are, but they are rather academic, and not too informative! There are even some mistakes!
I like to know about the origins of food, my first degree was in Chemistry and Archaeology, so I have an interest in origins and developments. It amazes me that when good recipes are stripped of their obvious recent ingredients, what is left is usually very good. People do want to change recipes, though, to their own tastes, which usually end up spoiling the result, IMHO.
As many (good) chefs say, simplicity is the key to good cooking, the less we do to good ingredients, the better!
I watch Indian Masterchef on Star TV now and then. They (the chefs) make such mess of traditional recipes, but I guess that is what people want these days.
I love to know the history of food and ingredients and the trading between nations over centuries.
There is nothing like food to take you through both time and cultures and tell you the history of alliances and enemies...just pick one type of food/ingredient and you'll have an interesting piece of history don't you think?
I recently did a little research into pasta...actually it was about durum wheat and that little search took me to Sicily and the Saracens and before that it also took me to pre-Roman times, Etruscans for the first glimpse of lasagna sheets...
When I found out years ago that chili was not native to India/Pakistan I think that's where I started to think about food history. You have the Portuguese & Spanish always fighting and trying to out do each other...conquering the Americans bringing over all sorts that then go over to the other side of the globe...you have the Portuguese going to Japan and introducing batter to the Japanese, tempura.
The tomatoes that now we can't think of Italy without thinking about beautiful tomatoes are a S. American plant. You have the oranges that you think of the wonderful Seville oranges but the orange originated in Asia.
And there is the trade of tea, spices, salt, coffee all of which countries have fought over through the centuries. I want to find a good book on the history of tea because that one little drink has had so much trouble associated with it...China, Portuguese, British, India....
You are so right about about the history of tea. I had a book 'Tea: addiction, exploitation and empire' by Roy Moxham (Pub. Robinson 2004) from the Library a while back.
It starts with an entertaining account of the author's experiences of managing a tea planting station as a young man, before going through the history of tea including the wars, suffering, smuggling etc. associated with it. How one innocuous beverage changed world history!
It could well be out of print but read copies are available on Amazon
Winton
Look at the history of pepper. That is behind much of the history from the 1400's onwards, Cristoforo Colombo's voyage to America, chillies from Brazil to India, even Yale University is based on pepper history.
The history of ingredients gives a good insight into their uses, and what ingredients are 'foreigners'. Rajma, a dish made from red kidney beans, but couldn't have originated in India, because they come from S America, but Rajma is mentioned in antiquity. How to resolve the conundrum?
And what, exactly, is dhansak? What were its origins? When one realizes that it came from Persia in the 7th century, when the Zoroastrians were banished by the Turks, one can understand some of the ideas behind this dish, and which ingredients could be used. The more I look into the history, the more it all makes sense.
One can look at some Indian dishes, and wonder where some of the less typical ones came from. And one can begin to see why some spices are used in some regions, but have not pervaded others. This is quite easy to see in chillies, their forms (morphology. Chillies came to India from S.America via the Portuguese, and Goa was a Portuguese colony even up to the 20th century. So, its not unreasonable to think that chillies entered India via Goa. Initially, chillies were called Goan pepper, just like cayenne pepper is named after the port of Cayenne in, what is now, French Guiana, and it has been reported that just three varieties of chillies were imported. It is fun to surmise which three they were, as there are only about thirty different old varieties of chilies in India. In a visit to my friend in Bangalore, One afternoon was spent looking at his bag of chillies he bought in Kashmir. After a couple hours, I had arranged the bag of 300 chillies into 21 different shapes. And from these shapes, I concluded all could have beed derived from just two shapes, a sanam type (sword like) and a reshampatti, rather like a sweet pepper.
One can apply this type of reasoning to other chillies, the round type, mundu, its name looks like the Portuguese name for round, or an orb, mundo. So its not a huge leap of guesswork to assume that mundu came to India via the Portuguese, probably through Goa. Today, chillies in Goa are still round to strawberry shaped, but have spread to TN, but not to northern India.
Fascinating.
There was an interesting-looking conference here at Montpellier University recently on migration and plants, combining botany and archeology. I didn't have the time to attend any of the papers, alas.
Phil
have enjoyed reading this..thank you...and Phil what a shame you missed.
though I'm Portuguese I had not realised just how wide spread the Portuguese trade was from 15th century onwards when they and the Spanish were excellent sea merchants.
With regards to chili, what I find interesting is that we have Piri-piri marinade but apart from that our food is rather bland in comparison to the spices the Portuguese explored centuries back. The majority of Portuguese who live in Portugal don't like spicy/hot food nor do the Spanish and traditional food reflects this.
I've wondered why...when they and Spanish were at the forefront of discoveries why isn't there more spice influences?
Then I think of the 19th century when Spain & Portugal were both under dictatorship for most of it and under extreme poverty...there was a lot of starving folks and this only goes as far back as my mother's generation 1960's.
I'm guessing if you can't grow the spices in your own country because of climate and quality of land then you will only use what you can grow in your land...when times are hard.
The tea story is an interesting one because I know of two facts about it but not the connection details.
What we know as black tea comes from China and China became the supplier of this drink but then something changed and the British decide to grow its own tea plantations....I'm guessing profit/taxes/import duties had something to do with it.
But before the English did any of that we need to go back to the 17th century when the Portuguese princess Catherine de Braganza married English King Charles II and brought with her her treasured drink, tea, up til then the British drunk a lot of alcohol because water wasn't safe to drink.
Tea houses become extremely popular because it was seen as a delicate drink one which was suitable for women folk as opposite to the bad male oriented coffee houses around.
Also with the marriage between Catherine to Charles the Portuguese gave Bombay to England as part of the dowry.
A whole new way with tea was born, with the tea cups made of china and so on..
Pepper is interesting too and became very political just like the tea and I'm not even mentioning the most important one of all seasonings: Salt.
We use a lot of pepper in seasoning and marinating our meats even though we don't grown any ourselves. We also use a lot of cinnamon in sweet things and you'll find a very traditional pork dish called Rojoes which has to have ground cumin.
i was just browsing through some of the replies on this thread. lapis i was looking at the spices that you use for making general garam masala recipe and noticed that there is no pepper corns in there. did you just forget to add it or do you not use it?
the last batch i made was mamtas recipe on site. i just used nutmeg brown cardamom black pepper cassia and clove. the next time i make it i am thinking of adding some black cumin seeds (i bought two bags today from the local store). do you think it is a good idea to add black cumin or do you think it is better to just keep it simple?
thanks.
sid,
I didn't mention pepper because I add it freshly ground. If pepper is ground, then kept, the flavour changes. I have a food chemistry book which gives a graph of about a dozen different flavour compounds found in pepper. All the individual components are lost at different rates, over about 20 days. So, any black pepper which is ground will lose flavour, and change flavour.
As for black cumin, kala jera, I would have a go making Kashmiri garam masala with it. I find it a little difficult to grind it fine enough, but maybe a little heating will dry it out sufficiently. Kashmiris use ground kala jeera as a garnish.
Make sure it is kala jeera you have, it looks like cumin, but is thinner and, erm, black. A slight medicinal flavour, not that pleasant, but it will grow on you.