Question On Spicing

As we have been preparing some spicy meals lately, as well as getting take out from some quite good local Indian restaurants, a question arises for me.

When you cook a dish yourself for hours, the spices mellow and become much more complex than simple heat. When you order the same sort of dish from a restaurant they ask you how hot you want it. That leads me to believe that although they probably have a pot of this either on the stove or in the fridge, the only way the could tailor the spice level would be to take a mild version and add raw spices to suit your request, in which case all the hours of simmering in the oven are gone and the spicing will be bother more 'raw' and less complex.

Does that make sense? Does anyone have actual knowledge of how they adjust 'heat' to order? I've always been curious. Maybe the way to get mature flavours is to just ask for it with the lowest heat level (presumably their 'stock' formula on the back of the range or in the fridge) = no additional spicing to tailor it to your request?

BTW, a vindaloo I made myself recently was far better than the restaurant version. I used arbol chiles (my first time with these) which have an interesting smoky grassy smell and although six times as hot as a jalapeno they develop some interesting complexity with time in the pot and the end result was acceptable even to SWMBO who has a 'delicate' palate where heat is involved.

When restaurants talk about "spicy" they usually mean "hot". With Chinese or Thai stir-fries varying the level of hotness is easy--you vary the amount of chiles that you put in. As you point out, a lot of Indian dishes are cooked slowly over low heat. Indian restaurant curries and dals are prepared ahead of time and the heat level is adjusted by adding more hot chiles before serving. And you're right--that will not produce quite the same effect as having added the extra chiles when the dish was started. The added chiles won't have had time to marry with the other flavors. It's easier with dals. Most dal recipes call for the last minute addition of a fried spice mixture called a tarka or chaunk. A tarka has carminative spices such as hot chiles, curry leaves, and ginger. These are all known to help prevent the intestinal gas that often accompanies dishes made with dried legumes. One could adjust the heat of a dal by varying the amount of hot chile in the tarka.

Regarding the vindaloo, in my experience Indian restaurants suffer from the same problem as Chinese restaurants--the dishes have been tweaked to cater to Western tastes. Indians themselves have the term "railway curry" for the style of food you get on passenger trains in India. India has a large number of local food styles and "railway curry" are designed to offend nobody's palate, which means they also please nobody. You were probably working from a real Goan home-style recipe.

-Paul W.

Thanks Paul - very informative.

The recipe I was working from was one that used presumably traditional peppers - Mexican arbols - but I loved the earthy complexity of those after long simmering. I figured that just dumping in cayenne (or any other uncooked pepper) at the end at a restaurant would ruin the subtleties.

The tarka concept sounds like an ideal way to be able to accomplish the desired heat without changing the taste profile.
I like dal but the Boss says red lentils give her indigestion. I have to disperse my culinary attempts at satisfying her into other lands - tonight a bean sprout with togarashi spice salad.

the dishes have been tweaked to cater to Western tastes.

More specifically they have been tweaked to suit the local customers because if locals don't patronise a restaurant it goes out of business, and also they are limited by the ingredients they can source.

Some years ago I shared a table in a Chinese restaurant in Stockholm with an international team drawn from USA, Germany, Denmark, UK (me) Sweden and more I've forgotten and for each of us, except the Swede, the dishes were not like 'back home'.

In the USA I noticed the Indian restaurant dishes featured meat more and chilli less than in the UK, in South Africa you could get meat free dishes but not as side dishes whereas in UK all Indian restaurants offer vegetable side dishes.

As you might expect, India has its own set of chile varieties, and as with their Mexican cousins they range from mild to blazing hot. Our local Indian grocery stocks several of them. I don't know which varieties are traditional in Goa, where vindaloo comes from. I have several Goan recipes (including vindaloo) that call for Kashmiri chiles. These are moderately hot, but their main claim to fame is that they give a vivid red color to the dish. The dried chile has a deep red-purple color similar to the New Mexico chile. Kashmiri chiles are responsible for the vivid red color of rogan josh, and they're used for the same purpose in the Goan recipes I have. Many Indian recipes adapted to the Western kitchen call for both hot chiles and paprika. The original probably used Kashmiri chiles, and the paprika is there to impart the proper color.

Chiles de arbol sound like they'd be a fine substitute in vindaloo for whatever they use in Goa.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

I love kashmiri chiles. I have a jar of already-ground; the color's really sensational.

All this chili chat has me hot under the collar - we are planning another vindaloo next week - either beef or goat.

BTW, I tend to shy away from preground chili powder as it oxidizes more quickly and loses flavour/potency. I have had better luck using whole peppers ground in my Braun coffee grinder. They stay fresher longer.

[Jenise]

You're right on all accounts. But the powdered form is all there was available when I shopped for Kashmiri chile at an Indian market in Delta. Perhaps that's the only way it comes--like paprika.

So you grind Brains, too?

You're right on all accounts. But the powdered form is all there was available when I shopped for Kashmiri chile at an Indian market in Delta. Perhaps that's the only way it comes--like paprika.

So you grind Brains, too?

There are a bunch of Kashmiri chilis available right now from Amazon in unground state.

As for brains, I gave up grinding them quite as hard when I retired as no one was paying me for it! (fixed the typo)

It's not like paprika. Our local Indian grocery carries both whole and ground Kashmiri chiles. I didn't find the whole chiles the first time I shopped for them and bought the ground chiles. That caused problems because the Goan recipes I had called for the whole chiles. I had to guess how much of the ground chiles to use.

-Paul W.