[Sca-cooks] Indian food questions

[Katherine Throckmorton]

Gianotta wrote:
> 
> So what is anise in Indian, and curry and fenugreek? What is in 
> garam masala anyway?

This is a useful link for information on various spices:
http://www.uni-graz.at/~katzer/engl/generic_frame.html?Trig_foe.html
I'm going to assume that the Indian labels are in Hindi or at least offer Hindi as an option. Aniseed is saunf.  Star anise is either badayan or ansaphal.  Fenugreek is methai dana.

Garam masala literally means "hot mixture", think of it as the South Asian equivalent of Pouder Fort.  The mixture will include all or most  of the "hot" spices (black pepper,cinnamon ect) but no red pepper.  The exact composition will depend on who is mixing it.

Curry powder is a artifact of the the British colonial period, and is basically a bastardized form of the commonly used indigenous spice mixtures.  It tends to involve tumeric, cumin, corriander, red pepper.  The exact composition depends on the brand.

There are also curry leaves, which are are used to impart a sour/astringent taste to food.  In Hindi these are karipatta.

Then there is "curry" the food, which has been adopted into most Indian languages from English.  This usually reffers to any dish that dosen't contain rice as a major component and isn't a sweet.  In Hindi this would be called salan.  

-Katie



> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Gianotta
> _______________________________________________
> Sca-cooks mailing list
> Sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
> http://www.ansteorra.org/mailman/listinfo/sca-cooks



Every weekend, we gather hundreds of people together, none of whom have had enough sleep. 
-Robin's Unified Theory of SCA Dynamics 


-- 
_______________________________________________

Search for businesses by name, location, or phone number.  -Lycos Yellow Pages

http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10