Sweet dreams are made of cheese

“Waiting for Celebi”

Beautiful art by Arna Miller + Ravi Zupa

It’s HOW they used seasoning, compared to other areas of the world. 

Indian seasoning does this neat color wheel of flavor, fitting a bunch of spices that are very DIFFERENT from each other, to create a huge range of complex flavor. 

Meanwhile in Italy for instance, they tend to use flavors that are SIMILAR. For instance, Basil and Oregano, or Sweet fish with Sweet wine. It makes foods less likely to contrast weirdly in your mouth, and it’s the basis of why fancy european people pair red wines with steak and white wines with chicken. Savory with Savory, Light with Light.   

But the Indian food steps it up a notch. The research is definitely worth a read. 

1. use whole spices, dry roast small quantities of individual spices together and then grind them to a powder. balance is what you’re looking for, not just chucking in handfuls of seasonings willy nilly because quantity does not equal flavour when it comes to spicing indian food. 

2. whole spices go in the oil first. always. also everything gets fried on its own before it’s chucked into the sauce/curry. even the curry base is started off by frying onions/ginger/garlic/tomatoes or any combination thereof. basically…FRY THAT SHIT. i don’t know of any regional cuisine in india that uses stock for simmering. frying everything individually is how we add flavour instead.