KAILASA's Sattvic Cooking
2. INGREDIENTS
Many of the recipes in this book include frying spices and seasonings. Typically, oil is heated on medium and then spices and seasonings added in a specific order:
- The first ingredients fried are typically whole spices like cinnamon sticks, cloves and cardamom seeds.
- The next ingredients added are seeds, for example mustard seeds and cumin seeds. These seeds are fried until they begin to splutter or make intermittent popping sounds.
- Next come dals like urad dal and channa dal that are fried to a golden brown color.
- Then come bay leaves, curry leaves and dry red chillies.
- These are followed by fresh ingredients like tomatoes.
- And last to be added are powdered spices like asafetida, turmeric, cumin, coriander and red chilli powders.
The table below lists commonly used spices and seasonings along with their alternative names and notes.
| Asafetida powder | Hing powder, helps with digestion |
|---|---|
| Bay leaves | Whole, fried with seasonings. |
| Black pepper | Whole corns or powdered. |
| Cardamom pods | Elaichi. Whole seeds or powdered. |
| Channa dal | Yellow gram dal. |
| Cilantro | Coriander. Fresh leaves often used as garnish. |
| Cinnamon | Sticks or powdered. |
| Cloves | Whole or powdered. |
| Coriander | Dhania. Seeds or powdered. |
| Cilantro leaves often used as garnish. | |
| Curry leaves | Fresh or dried. |
| Cumin | Jeera. Regular Jeera has a dark brown color, Kala Jeera is |
| black and Shahi Jeera is smaller than the other varieties. | |
| Unless specified, cumin in our recipes calls for Jeera seeds | |
| or powder. | |
| Coconut | Dry or fresh grated |
| Fenugreek | Methi. Fresh, seeds or powdered. |
| Fennel Seeds | Saunf. Good for digestion. |
| Ghee | Clarified butter. |
| Ginger root | Often grated. |
| Jaggery | Gur. Pure, unrefined sugar cane sugar |
| Mint leaves | Typically used fresh. |
| Mustard seeds | Whole seeds fried in seasonings. Also used powdered. |
| Nigella seeds | Sometimes incorrectly called onion seeds. |
| Poppy seeds | Khus-khus. |
| Red Chillies | Dry whole, crushed or powdered. |
| Sesame seeds | |
| Saffron | Gives distinct aroma and yellow color to deserts. |
| Tamarind | Typically soaked and then squeezed to extract juice. |
| Turmeric powder | |
| Urad dal | Split white lentils are used for seasonings. From splitting |
| whole black gram, black lentils. |
This table lists beans and legumes commonly used in the recipes:
| Black eyed peas or | Chavli. |
|---|---|
| beans | |
| Black Chickpeas | Black channa, Kala channa, |
| Bengal gram - more brown in color than black. | |
| Channa dal | Yellow gram. See table above |
| Garbanzo beans | Chickpeas |
| Masoor dal | Red Lentils |
| Moong dal | Yellow Split Moong beans |
| Toor dal | Split Yellow Lentils |
| Urad dal | Split White Lentils. See table above |