"Food is not about chefs—it's not their job to feed you every day. What you eat should be made by home cooks because it's the real food that sustains your health." These are the words of Suvir Saran, who is the chef/owner of the Devi Restaurant in Manhattan. He is also the author of two cookbooks: Indian Home Cooking and his newest one, American Masala.
I recently took a cooking class that was taught by Chef Saran and after it was over, I immediately purchased his newest cookbook. This book isn't about Indian food—it's about adding new flavors to American favorite foods to liven them up a little.
The first two recipes that I tried were Steak au Poivre with Cilantro-Garlic Butter and the Cardamon-Roasted Cauliflower. The steak was easy to make and a take-off of the favorite French recipe by the same name where you just rub ground peppercorns on the outside of filet mignon steaks before grilling or frying them. The butter that is served with it is a combination of cilantro, shallots, garlic, lemon zest, garam masala (a purchased blend of dry-roasted ground spices) and salt. The butter was delicious and went well with the spicy steak.
The cauliflower was seasoned with olive oil, cardamom pods, red chiles, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, pepper and red onion and was so good that I would have been happy to eat it for diner even without the steak.
The next two recipes I tried were the Tamarind-Glazed Meat Loaf and Roasted Baby Potatoes with Southern Indian Spices. I made the meatloaf on a Sunday afternoon, which took me over an hour —which doesn't inclulde the 1 1/2 hours of baking time. It has 23 ingredients in it plus another six ingredients for the glaze. I made a special trip to an Indian grocery store across town to purchase fresh curry leaves for the potato recipe and tamarind paste for the meatloaf glaze.
Fresh curry leaves.
I baked the meatloaf on Monday night and served it with the potatoes. Our daughter-in-law, Katie joins us for dinner on Monday nights and after dinner we packed some up for our son, Jason, to eat when he got home from his night class.
Jason called me the next day at work to tell me that it was the best meatloaf that he had ever eaten. His phone call alone made all the time that I spent making it, worthwhile. I had to agree with Jason that I loved the flavors in the meatloaf too and will definitely make it again—when I have lots of time.
Another good Indian cookbook is Betty Crocker's Indian Home Cooking by Raghavan Iyer.