DYNAMITE
DALS SIMMER UP GREASE-FREE WHEN SUE SISTA TURNS UP THE SPICE AND
TURNS DOWN THE FATTY GHEE INDIAN LIGHT
SAM GUGINO, Mercury News Food Editor
San Jose Mercury News (CA)
June 9, 1993
Section: Food
Edition: Morning Final
Page: 1C
``TASTES great, less filling" might be the
slogan of a well-known light beer but it hasn't been the byword
of Indian food -- at least Indian food as it is prepared in most
of the United States. Indian food in America should probably have
a jingle that goes, "Kinda greasy, kinda heavy."
Sue Sista knows all too well about this dilemma.
And she's determined to let people know that Indian food is not
all unctuous vindaloos and curries.
"The problem is that most cooks in Indian restaurants in
the United States are from Punjab in northern India. The Punjabi
are generally poor and they think if they don't use a lot of cream
and butter, Americans will think it's poor people's food,"
Sista says.
Thus, Sista, who owns Sue's Indian Cuisine restaurants
in Mountain View and San Jose, is constantly yelling at her Punjabi
cooks to ease up on the fat.
Sista is from the state of Andhra in southeast India,
where her high-caste Brahmin family followed a strict vegetarian
diet. She learned how to cook by watching her mother prepare meals
when the family cook had the day off. By the time she was 13,
Sista was cooking by herself.
It was easy to be a vegetarian in India because
of that country's wealth of produce. And substituting spinach
and eggplant for lamb cuts the fat considerably.
But vegetables or not, Indians love their ghee,
butter which is thoroughly clarified so it's almost like oil.
And if you're going to dump half a cup of ghee in a vegetable
dish, you might as well grill a veal chop.
Instead, Sista uses ghee and oil judiciously, rarely
more than a tablespoon at a time. To make up for the fat, she
uses an endless variety of spice mixes.
''We have a saying in India, 'When you wash clothes,
it's the rinsing that counts.' When you cook, it's the seasoning
that matters," she says.
But forget about curry powder. That's a Western
invention which attempts to synthesize the flavors of Indian cooking
into one simplistic spice blend.
''When I went to England, people said to me, 'Oh,
you're Indian, you must eat curry," Sista says. "And
I asked my friends, what is this curry?"
Sista's special blend
In lieu of curry (the Anglicization of the Tamil
word kari, meaning sauce), Sista uses her own blends of spices
called koora.
The seasoning blends often begin with fiery chiles,
a specialty of Andhra. The chiles are combined with an exotic
blend of spices that include familiar items such as cumin and
mustard seeds, and arcane ones such as asafetida.
Asafetida is a potent spice that is India's answer
to the truffle. In most Indian spice shops this resin from fennel-like
plants comes ground in small tins. But Sista gets her asafetida
whole, directly from India, and grinds it herself.
What separates the cooking of Andhra from other
regional Indian cuisines is the addition of dals to the koora.
Dals are the catchall term for dried peas, beans and lentils,
ubiquitous in India. Most of the time they are boiled and added
to rice or other dishes.
In Andhra, they are added to the spice mix. The
mix is cooked in oil, releasing the flavors of each spice and
giving the dal a wonderful nutty aroma. Then the spice mix is
folded into the vegetables just before serving.
You don't need any special equipment or advanced
skills to duplicate Sista's India light cooking. And you don't
have to send away to India for your whole asafetida; the ground
stuff is fine and there are plenty of places where you can get
it along with dals, fenugreek and basmati rice (see box).
It's also easy to make substitutions with local
ingredients. For example, jalapeno peppers can be used to replace
the long, slim peppers traditionally used in Indian cooking.
Pay a little attention to your spices and you're
home free. To make things a little easier, have your spices and
dals at the ready. Sista puts them in special stainless steel
cups that fit on a tray. The tray sits by the stove so she can
throw the spices into hot oil at the right moment. She never measures,
incidentally. Everything is added by hand.
Keep heat low
''With Indian food, you don't have to be that particular.
It's not like baking bread," she says.
Heat the oil to just below the smoking point before
adding the spice mix, then turn the heat down low so you don't
burn the seasonings. Spices, especially mustard seeds and fenugreek,
will turn bitter if overcooked. Dals should look golden brown
when done.
An authentic Indian meal is eaten by hand. Each
guest is given a tray with several katoris, bowls which hold different
dishes. (Small souffle cups or tea cups can serve as substitutes.)
Rice is put in the middle of the tray. To eat, take
a small amount of food from one dish, mix it with a little rice
and pop it into your mouth. It takes a while to get the hang of
it, but it's fun. It also slows down the meal so you get full
with less food.
In lieu of rice, or in addition to it, you can use
bread to scoop up food. Sista suggests simulating the puffed Indian
poori bread by modifying pita bread.
Wash the pita briefly in water and wrap in tea towels
to absorb excess moisture. Then put the pita, thick side up, under
the broiler. Turn after it begins to brown -- it's the thin side
that puffs up.
And don't forget the yogurt. It's the best antidote
to those hot chiles.
SO, WHAT'S ASAFETIDA?
Many ingredients used in Indian cooking, such as
cumin and mustard seeds, are also used in other cuisines and are
readily available. But some may be unfamiliar.
(box)Asafetida: A dried gum resin from fennel-related
plants. The resin is ground into a pungent yellow powder that
somewhat resembles truffles, garlic or onion. Most often available
ground in small, round tins. Less frequently it is found in brown
lumps, much like truffles. Grind the lumps in a blender or spice
mill.
(box)Basmati rice: A fragrant, nutty rice with long,
thin grains. Mostly imported, though strains are grown in the
United States. Cooks a bit faster, with less water than regular
long-grain rice.
(box)Cardamom: An aromatic spice (sometimes likened
to lemon zest and eucalyptus) found in South India. It is preferable
to use cardamom in pod form rather than ground. The air-dried
green pods have more flavor than the sun- bleached white pods.
Grind the pods in a mortar and pestle or spice mill.
(box)Chiles: Both dried and fresh chiles are used
in Indian cooking. Standard red chile peppers (the kind used in
chile flakes) are fine. Use whole. For fresh chile peppers, use
jalapenos.
(box)Coconut: In recipes calling for ground or shredded
coconut, used unsweetened coconut, available in Asian markets
and natural food stores.
(box)Curry leaves: Not related to curry powder,
they look somewhat like bay leaves. Highly aromatic, they should
be used, if at all possible, when fresh. (box)Dals: The general
term for dried, split peas, lentils or beans. Most dal in India
is split and husked for ease of preparation and digestion. Look
for dal that is uniform in color with a minimum of foreign matter
in it.
(box)Chana dal: A relative of the chick pea, it
is very much like a yellow split pea but smaller and sweeter.
The most popular dal in India.
(box)Moong dal: Split mung beans, they are pale
gold in color and smaller than chana dal.
(box)Urad dal: A split bean closely related to the
mung bean but much paler, almost white in color. Takes on a nutty
flavor when fried.
(box)Fenugreek: A brownish-yellow, flat seed most
often used whole. It is frequently roasted with other seasonings
to bring out flavor. Seeds have a slightly bitter flavor which
can become unpleasant if allowed to burn and turn a reddish brown.
(box)Ghee: The preferred cooking oil in India. It
is butter that is so thoroughly clarified (with all trace of milk
solids removed) that it can be used for deep frying.
(box)Tamarind: The dark, almost black pulp from
pods of the tamarind tree. It is sold compressed into bricks or
in jars as a paste. Its sweet-and-sour flavor is used in many
dishes. Once opened, store in the refrigerator.
Finding ghee and other goodies
FOR several key ingredients in Indian cooking, you'll
need to go to Indian markets such as the following:
(box)Jyoti Emporium, 1615 McKee Road, San Jose.
(408) 259-8988.
(box)San Jose Spices, 1029 Blossom Hill Road, San
Jose. (408) 265-0106.
(box)Spiceland, 1591 Pomeroy Ave., Santa Clara.
(408) 554-1378.
(box)Bharat Bazaar, 3680 El Camino Real, Santa Clara.
(408) 247-4307. Also, 49127 Milmont Dr., Fremont. (510) 623-0390.
(box)Tajmahal Imports, 3085 El Camino Real, Santa
Clara. (408) 247-4507.
(box)Maha Imports, 3087 El Camino Real, Santa Clara.
(408) 248-5025.
(box)Sugandh India Imports Inc., 118 S. Abel St.,
Milpitas. (408) 956-9509. (box)Narayan Enterprises, 2512 California
St., Mountain View. (415) 948-4777.
(box)Ratna Palace, 2630 Broadway, Redwood City.
(415) 365-1832.
(box)Guru Palace, 5146 Mowry Ave., Fremont. (510)
791-7410. Also, 1053 E. El Camino Real, Sunnyvale. (408) 554-8675.
Illustration:Photos (2)
PHOTO: JIM GENSHEIMER -- MERCURY NEWS
Sue Sista's restaurants serve Indian food whose
taste depends on spices, not fat. (color)
PHOTO: JIM GENSHEIMER -- MERCURY NEWS
An authentic Indian meal is eaten by hand: Each
guest is given a tray with several katoris, bowls of different
dishes, and rice or bread (poori) in the middle. Mix together
and pop in the mouth. (color)
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Copyright (c) 1993 San Jose Mercury News
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