One of the most important “part” of the India tour packages is the food. Characteristic of the many and diverse styles of Indian cookery is the use of spices, used not only for flavor but also as appetite nulators and digestives. Care is taken to ensure that the spices enhance rather than dominate the basic flavor. Traditionally, the ingredients in each meal were governed by the time of the year and classifications of heating or cooling foods, age, and even personality. Once there were also injunctions on the six rasas or flavors to be included in every meal: sweet, salty, bitter, astringent, sour and pungent. Each was believed to have its particular physical benefit and was prescribed in specific ratio to the others.
Essential ingredients
Other than spices, the important ingredients in Indian cuisine include milk and milk products, particularly ghee and dahi (curd). To the orthodox, a meal is “pure” only if cooked in ghee; an emphasis that derives not just from its distinctive fullness and unique flavour but from its acclaimed preservative qualities.
Dahi is part of almost any Indian menu. Served to mitigate the chilli “hotness” of some dishes, it is often mixed with vegetables or fruit and is lightly spiced to create the raitas of the North and the pachadis of the South. An important ingredient in several recipes, dahi is also churned and salted or sweetened to taste and served in summer as lassi, a cooling drink.
Dais (split lentils) are common to most parts of the country. Regional preferences and availability have resulted in a bewildering variety, from the thick tamarind-flavored sambars of the South and the sweetish dais of Gujarat to the delicious makhani dal of North India.
Vegetarian variety
The style of vegetable cooking is determined by the cereal or main dish with which they are served. Deep-fried vegetable crisps are perfect accessories to the sambhar and rice of Tamil Nadu. The thick avial stew of Kerala cooked in coconut oil, or the kaottu in a coconut and gram sauce, are perfect for rice-based meals. Sarson ka sag, mustard greens, eaten with maki ki roti (maize bread), is a particular favorite in the Punjab, while the delicately flavored chorchori of Bengal complements Bengal’s rice and fish.
India presents a vast range of vegetarian cooking. The roasted and steamed food of the south is lighter than northern cooking. Rice is the basis of every meal. It is served with sambar, rasam (a thin peppery soup), vegetables, both dry and in a sauce, andpachadi. Coconut is used in cooked foods as well as chutneys. Made of fermented rice and dal batter, the dosa, vada and idli are South Indian snacks popular all over the country.
The semolina-based upma, cooked with curry leaves and garnished with nuts and copra, is another favorite. Other in-between bites found everywhere are the samosa, a three-cornered deep-fried pastry parcel with potatoes, and pakoras or bhajiyas - vegetables coated in a gram batter and deep-fried. In Gujarat, another region famous for its vegetarian food, gram flour, a source of protein, is used in bread-making and as a component of various dishes.
