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Anyone with even a nodding acquaintance with Indian restaurants abroad knows that Indian chefs are addicted to spices, particularly chillis and curry. Popular dishes such as butter chicken and pork vindaloo merely confirm the belief that all Indian food is hot, hot and hotter.
While it's true that Indian cooks are bold in their use of spices, heat is not always the desired intent as we'll discover on our Lemongrass journey to North and South India.
Indian cuisine reflects the vast Republic of India – a multi-cultural stew of one billion people who practice five major faiths, speak countless languages and dialects, and live, work and play in 29 states. This regional, cultural and religious diversity – coupled with geographic and climatic differences – has created a rich and glorious cuisine, much of which can never be exported.
Just as cooks the world over add their own imprints to familiar recipes, each region of the sub-continent has its own cooking style. In the North, where the Muslim conquerors fused their own favorite dishes with local cooking methods, cream, yogurt, ghee (clarified butter), raisins, nuts and saffron are featured. Meat, except for pork, was introduced and evolved into today's delicate kormas, spicy kebabs, tandooris and fragrant biryanis. In the lush, tropical South - Kerala means Land of Coconuts - coconut leaves, meat, milk and oil, black pepper and curry leaves infuse the profusion of fish and shellfish dishes.
Everywhere, grain of some sort is served at every meal: rice in the south and wheat, usually in the form of roti, the generic name for the plethora of breads, in the North. Curries also differ by area. In the south, they have thinner gravies that absorb well into rice. In the wheat belts, the gravies are thicker, better suited for scooping up with naan and parathas.
Although potatoes and daals made from lentils are ubiquitous, most vegetables are not eaten as accompaniments the way they are in Western cuisine. That's in part because religion played a major role in the development of Indian cuisine, creating a wealth of feast days as well as food taboos.
Everyone knows Hindus, who make up 80 per cent of the population, don't eat beef because the cow is considered sacred in Indian mythology. Meat is not taboo but many are vegetarians. Some avoid fish and eggs as well as meat and poultry. And the very devout eschew tomatoes, watermelon and beets because their colour resembles raw meat, as well as garlic and onions which "heat the blood and excite passions."
People of the Jain faith try not to hurt any living creatures and so they not only don't eat fish or meat; they don't eat vegetables that grow underground - potatoes, carrots, onions and garlic - because extracting them might injure bugs. Some very observant Jains wear masks to avoid accidentally inhaling insects.
Throughout India, food is eaten with the right hand rather than cutlery - although in big cities, chic Indians use knives, forks and spoons when they dine in the better restaurants that are rapidly multiplying to serve the exploding Indian middleclass and foreign tourists. Eating in restaurants may be the new fashion for the social elite, but Indians of all economic classes have always snacked. Food stalls whipping up hot, freshly made morsels such as samosas, pooris and bhajitas abound as do markets large and small. Thalis - plate-sized buffets that are the Indian version of grazing - are served everywhere.
Our Lemongrass journey is planned to let you taste as widely as possible from Mughalai, Punjabi, Rajasthani, Gujarati, Keralan and "pure" Hindu vegetarian dishes. Our hope is that you never have a daal meal.
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