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Learn to cook Indian cuisine
CURRY is one of Britain's favourite takeaway meals – but could you make one at home from scratch? An authentic Indian cooking class will help you to recreate the magic of Indian cuisine in your own kitchen. Reporter MICHELLE BLADE went along to Curry-Culum in Glasson Dock to see for herself how easy – or hard – it is to cook Indian food...
THE thought of cooking real Indian food is actually quite scary – the closest I've come to tasting the real thing is in an Indian restaurant, or out of a Sharwood's jar.
It all seems so complicated, with a wide variety of spices, marinades and ingredients which are enough to make your head spin.
Curry-Culum Indian cookery classes, dreamed up by friends Swagata Ghosh and Mukta Mukherjee, specialise in marrying the everyday with the exotic.
Swagata, a journalist and keen traveller, likes to combine the delights of Delhi with the colours of Calcutta in her cooking.
Her dishes are quick and convenient and her recipes blend the flavours of yesteryear with a touch of today.
Mukta has lived in India, Singapore and Britain and the cuisine of all three cultures has influenced and shaped her experiences in the kitchen.
With two children of her own, Mukta is all too aware of the demands on young parents and rustles up a healthy meal which tingles the tastebuds.
Her dishes are simple and easy-to-cook, with a touch of colour and aroma.
I was to experience how to cook a three-course meal (level II advanced), which consists of a starter, four main courses, a drink and a dessert. Swagata explained to me that all the spices she was going to show me could be bought in a local supermarket.
Swagata said: "The tricky part in most Indian recipes is in the amount of spices.
"When you want to cook Indian, it is the combination you use that is the most important thing to get right."
Swagata explained that the spices had medicinal or cosmetic use, as well as being used for culinary purposes.
Everything was explained thoroughly and extensively to me and I felt I had learnt a lot about spices that I didn't know before.
The first dish we were going to cook was a chicken dish, which was to be the starter.
For full story, see page 29 of The Visitor.
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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