This meal is our riff on the classic Mughal cooking of India, (see our Tandoori Turkey recipe), which reflects a love for simmered creams, yogurt marinades and intensely aromatic spices in meals like this gravy based Sabzi Kurma, which traditionally uses just vegetables.
This is one of the most popular and beloved curry dishes of all, served in Indian restaurants around the world. It’s insanely creamy and luscious, with wildly aromatic spices many of which are probably in most kitchen cabinets. This is an easy dish to make and yet deeply savory and umami.
This feast, known as Kori Gassi in the Tulu speaking Bunt community of Mangalore, on the west coast of India, is a wonderfully pungent chicken gravy dish. This is a fabulous umami bomb from the Land of Spices… India.
This dish is the ultimate exotic feast from South Asia, combining fantastic spices and umami flavors into one wildly savory dish. We don’t find these flavor combinations in any other cuisine. When the spices of Malaysia and Persia were combined with the local Thai flavors like cilantro, lemongrass, garlic, galangal, wild onions or shallots, fish sauce, peanuts, tamarind, spicy peppers and coconut cream, a feast was created out of the fusion of culture, commerce and conquest… and the wild tastes that were created make this curry one of the most beloved in the world. Polls of culinary experts have rated Massaman Curry as the best dish in all the world. But within traditional Thai cuisine itself, it exists only in the south… and even at that, the unique combination of spices that are used in Massaman curry are not generally used in other Thai dishes.
For a long time, we have been passionate lovers of the fusion cuisine that spreads out from the South of India, across the Malaysian Islands, and is greatly influenced by nearby Thailand and Vietnam. Combining the coconut cream, saffron and warm aromatic spices of Southern India, the lemongrass, Kaffir lime leaves, tomatoes and vermicelli of Malaysia and Thailand, to the pork sausage and umami fish sauce of Vietnam, this amazing feast is one to cherish for your own wild savory kitchen.
In India, on the western coast along the Arabian Sea, lies the city of Mangalore, with it’s ancient traditional cuisine of creamy spicy coconut sauces. I have very strong memories of watching cooks from that region, working as chefs in Los Angeles, throw whole mustard seeds into woks of smoking oils, seeing them pop and sizzle along with curry leaves tossed in and blackening, infusing the oil with powerful flavors. South of Mangalore is the state of Kerala, and all along the coast this Malabar Shrimp is a very popular street food and one of the local home cooks’ favorite meals. The proximity of the ocean with its fresh fish and seafood along with the spiciness from the pungent curry leaves and chilies highlight this traditional dish… and it’s beautiful to look at as well, because this little feast also has an amazing shimmering deep red color from the tamarind.
This wildly aromatic Tandoori turkey has been at the heart of our Thanksgiving family tradition for many years. The smell of these exotic spices is always a sure sign in our wild savory kitchen that the Holidays have begun. Originating 5000 years ago in the Indus River Valley, and later the Punjab region of India, traditional Tandoori cooking was done inside huge 5 to 6 foot high clay pots, which were buried in the ground with a charcoal or wood fire blazing inside, at the base of the pot itself. Tandoori pots are explosively fiery and hot, with smoke and flames belching out and the intense glowing heat sometimes reaching 900 degrees. The technique may be ancient, but the actual cooking technique is also very modern. The searing of the meat seals in the flavors and juices.