Most important trinity of Indian Cooking
Few months back my cookbook of our favourite traditional recipes was published and launched. The book reflects my way of cooking and understanding the techniques of it. For this, being a chemist and analyzing most of the ingredients from our kitchen really helped. I have used this knowledge with simple detailed instructions to form the recipes.
For our daily cooking we like to use our special masala. This masala is nothing else but chillies and different spices we call garam masala. Almost all over Maharashtra, I found such mixture of spices being used. Only the proportions of the ingredients changed from region to region or sometimes from house to house. These recipes are guarded and never exchanged. If forced to share the recipe, some of the secret ingredients were omitted.
In my book I have showcased my masala recipe exactly the way I prepare at home. Usually I prepare this from Bydagi chillies as spiciness of these chillies suits my taste. But some of us use mixture of bydagi, kashmiri and sannam (Guntur) chillies. This combination adds to the heat and flavor variation.
Historically chillies entered India around the year 1498 with the Portuguese. Within thirty years at least three different types of chilli plants were growing around Goa. Gradually chilli became indispensable. It replaced black pepper and long pepper from our cooking.
The chillies we use as fresh green as well as fresh red chillies, dry red chillies and blend with other spices to make the masala. It is essential ingredient in almost all the cuisines in India. It is so much part of the life that it is hard to believe that it was not known to us till 16th century.
Most of our savoury dishes contain chillies in one form or other. In other words I can say that except for our sweets, plain rice and roti we add chilli everywhere. We cannot imagine cooking daily food without chillies. Poorest poor also takes chilli and salt with roti.
Just as my masala is a staple in my spice container, red chilli powder is also a must. Green chillies sit in a box in the fridge. This trio makes my food flavoursome. Our daily bhaji and curry need the chilli to complete their transformation to a delectable avatar. Chatani an essentiai side dish is incomplete without chilli. Our chicken curry or mutton curry will have green chilli, red chilli and the masala i.e. all the different dimensions of chilli and other spice flavours. Chilli is welcome as mirchka salan to fried chillies accompanying batatawada. Our chilli mania has gone so far that we devour chilli ice cream and chocolate with taste of chillies.