Indian cooking - toe in the water

I stuck my toe into the water of Indian cooking last night and had a good experience. In the past I have made a curry dish that called for curry powder and was made much like a stew, the meat being dredged in a flour/curry powder mixture, then browned in butter, then adding milk to create the sauce.

The recipe I tried last night, for Chicken Masala, was different. It called for marinating the raw chicken pieces in yogurt. It didn't call for "curry powder," which I have learned is not a spice but a spice blend, like "Italian seasoning," and scorned by real Indian cooks.

It was the handling of the spices that I found most interesting. First, adding tumeric to the hot oil before anything else, which releases a fabulous aroma. Then mixing the ginger and garlic powders into a paste before adding them, and separately mixing chili and coriander powder into a thinner paste before adding them.

I hope this is not all too elementary to be shared here. I found it a very interesting and enlightening cooking experience, not to mention the delicious result.

Chuck,

Do "real Indian cooks" really use "ginger and garlic powders*," and "coriander powder?" And by that, I mean, do they really use commercially available pre-ground product? Or were you indicating something different?

If I know anything, it isn't the intricacies of Indian cookery, so I am curious.

As for your comment about curry powders, I will say that "real"** Thai cooks, at least, have no compunction about using store-bought/market-bought curry pastes or curry powders. It was considered quite odd, actually, that I took the time and effort to make a big batch of Thai curry powder***, this past holiday season. I toasted and ground all of the whole spices by hand. Additionally, I dried and ground my own ginger and some of the requisite tumeric. That's to say nothing of the spices I sourced from Thailand, but I digress.

Erik M.

* Is "garlic powder" really garlic?

** Of course, those so misguided as to think that (something like) David Thompson's cookery defines terms like "real Thai," or "authentic Thai" will have no truck with my comprehension or use of such terms.

*** ph?ng k?r?i s?mr?p n?ua from David Thompson's Thai Food, p. 241

With only my toe in the water, I don't really know what "real" Indian cooks do. Just thinking of cooks in general, though, some wouldn't be caught dead using commerically prepared "powders," while others do.

The ingredients label on the garlic powder bottle lists "granulated garlic powder" as the only ingredient.

I've been occasionally cooking Indian, making food that tastes at least as good as 'ordinary' restaurant Indian.

My source is "Classic Indian Cooking" by Julie Sahni, which is easy to follow, and has a lot of history and cultural stuff behind the recipes. If anything, I think she modeled the book after Marcella Hazan's "The Classic Italian Cookbook" as they have the same kind of structure and depth to the recipes. I strongly recommend the book, and it's available at half.com
Indian cooking is quite different from my usual cooking background, of western european, Chinese stir-fry, Mexican and such. Actually, Mexican has some similarities with its use of chiles and cumin which get toasted in the pan. If you've done middle-eastern toward the Persian or Moroccan ends, some of the cooking methods are similar.

The things you notice about Indian cooking immediately:
1) Spices get fried before use typically, which releases huge amounts of flavor
2) There's a lot of oil, butter, and coconut in the sauced dishes -- but these dishes are supposed to be distributed over a lot of rice
3) There are some quick fried dishes, but they may be modern adaptations (Jamie Oliver does some stir fries that work well), but a lot of it is long-cooked stews which are a shock to today's fast-food culture
4) The broiled dishes may be a bit more approachable: Tikka is great stuff once you get over the uniqueness of marinating with yoghurt

Dishes to try:
Chicken Makhani
Mutter Paneer
Chana Dal
Fish Tikka
Rogan Josh (a complex one, but worth it)

Well, I'll bite. I am indian and I do sometimes cook, so that could make me a real indian cook.

anyway, To answer Erik's question - depending on locale and the spice, yeah dried stuff is used. For example turmeric (haldi) is almost always used as powder. asoefetida (hing) is also often used in its powdered (somewhat dilute form) just because its a whole lot easier than breaking off a little rock of the resin and you can control the amount better. Also region plays a role. I'm most familiar with kashmiri cooking, and probably due to its northern climate a lot of dried stuff is used most commonly fennel seed powder and ginger powder. As for whether folks have much of a compunction iun using it, you see a lot of the stuff moving off the shelves of patel bros.

I have some curry powder but only use that for things like vietnamese curries or singapore noodles.

generally however, I don't usually see turmeric going in first in the oil, also usually when ginger and garlic are ground to a paste to put in the oil, its most often fresh stuff, or as a shortcut the somewhat widely used jars of ginger-garlic paste (though I find the preservative stuff in there pretty nasty)

A couple of notes about Joel's post. Many many dishes are "stir-fry" types that are not modern adaptations, personally I wouldn't go to Jamie Oliver as the source for these. In fact a very traditional cooking dish is the karhai which is pretty similar to a wok

about a year ago or so, it dawned on me that i didn't have to go to an indian restaurant to get indian food and that i could cook it at home if i so chose. i only wish i had not been so incredibly dense for so long, because i'd have started experimenting with indian long before i did.

i like to try to be a purist when i'm cooking, especially new things, but sometimes it just doesn't work out that way. i mention this because when i first started on my indian cooking voyage, i went to a fantastic little joint near me, called shan foods (discussed a bit here -- http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=2501) to get some spices. among other other things, including spices, pastes, nuts, rice, ... they carry several packaged spice mixes, which i'm sure are all over the place, especially devon. the first one that really caught my eye was one for chana masala (spicy chick peas). i bought it, cooked it that night, and fell in love with it. over a bed of rice, i couldn't ask for a better meal or side. given that so many indian dishes call for so many spices, the mixes are a nice way to make a dish relatively quickly and see if you like it and want to try to make it from scratch.

that said, i've done a ton of "from-scratch" indian cooking, too, and it's opened up a whole new wonderful world to me. i absolutely love it. lotsa options.

My wife and I do a lot of Indian cooking, and I've been around a lot of Indian cooks. Here's a stream of conciousness list of time and hassle saving tips for your basic curries.

A time saving measure I've seen most use is to Cuisinart the ginger/chili/garlic triad that goes in after the onions (not that all Indian dishes are the same, but you know what I mean). Some even queeze the onions.

Everybody uses spice mixes sometimes. Shaan Masalas, available everyhwere, are my favorite. Store bought pickle is all I ever use (tip: a little bit of mango pickle covers a lot of sins). Mixing a little store bought coriander chutney in yogurt is a lot easier than making a traditional raita. Heck, you could take hormel chili, add peas, put it on a plate with some mango pickle and a little coriander chutney yogurt mix, eat it with a pita, and it would taste like kema.

Tarkas make your Indian dish taste like Indian food. Fry some spices in A LOT of oil in a little pan on your back burner. When the spices gets nice and smelly but not burnt, dump it in the pot - oil and all. Generally this is done once the liquid component has been added to the curry, close to the end. However, my grandma dumps it in prior to the liquid and she's an 89 year old Indian woman, so what the hell do I know.

Good luck - oh - and use methi when you make saag (spinach) dishes. 3 or 4 to 1 spinach to methi. They're fenugreek greens, available in a handy zip bag in the frozen section at Patel Bros. Methi is in the hall of fame of "secret ingredients" as far as I'm concerend.

Alex

ps - Regarding ginger powder - I don't have much experience with it, but come on. Ginger is available at every grocery store in the US and lasts forever in a drawer. It's about as tough to deal with as an onion.

It seems to me that non-spice powders - ginger, garlic, etc - are sometimes used for their inherent qualities, not simply as a substitute for the fresh item. I differentiate thse from spices because most spices end up ground anyway. I've come across authentic recipes (and authentic cooks) that call for dried peels, "sand ginger" (powdered galangal), and other dried/powdered ingredients rather than fresh. Seems that this sometimes has to do with moisture content, sometimes with reducing bitterness, and sometimes other factors. This doesn't address the issues inherent in a lot of "commercial" products - the stuff that gets dried and powdered usually starts with inferior ingredients and goes downhill from there. Of course, often powdered and dried products are used as a substitute. I'm a little short on examples right now of where dried/powdered ingredients are preferable. Can anyone assist?

On another note, all the "authentic" Indian cooks and cookbooks I've come across - as opposed to the glossy "E-Z Indian for Dummies" type of cookbooks - emphasize the importance of fresh spices and blending/grinding/frying them with great care. I have not seen this emphasis anywhere else. As Erik mentions, Thai cooks would find roasting/blending/grinding yourself absurd. I doubt that changes their ability to perceive the superiority of non-commercial products such as Erik's Thai curry powder. An interesting disparity, in my opinion. At the risk of essentializing cultural differences through naive anthropology, perhaps one element in the mix of reasons is the "quickness" of preparing much Thai food as opposed to the "slowness" mentioned in cooking a lot of Indian food. Of course, habit and tradition probably figure as well.

On a side note, the great Indian film Pather Panchali, in addition to being an astounding depiction of rural Indian life, shows food acquisition and preparation as a constant backdrop to the character's lives. The grandmother, who can barely walk, spends all day with her hands in spices and grains ... her entire life a succession of meals linked together by their preparation.

rien

Moroccan food in particular uses dried rather than fresh ginger. They taste (and smell) very different.

This comment is for the inexperienced, but it opened my eyes. This past weekend I made a curried chicken with ground cashews. The recipe called for yogurt to be added near the end, but several people on epicurious.com said they substituted coconut milk. I did that, and to my taste, it transformed an Indian curry into a Thai curry. The dish, by the way, was so good the chicken was hardly needed. We scooped up the sauce with the nan-like loaves from the Georgian backery on Devon (Argo, I think) and were in heaven.

Jonah

AnnieB: My comment on Morrocan was more to refer to the fact that large numbers of spices are used that often aren't thought of as main-course spices: cinnamon, cardamom, etc.

One other note: Don't use Vidalia, Texas 1012, O-So-Sweet, Maui, etc. onions in Indian cooking: They have waaaay too much water, and are much sweeter. If they're all you've got, cut down on other liquids, and you may need something sour to balance (use greek-style yoghurt instead of cream, for instance).

Hi,

I have made chickpea and cauliflower curries from a recipe which combines spices to make our own curry. Amongst the ingrediants is mustard seed, which is cooked in oil to release its' flavor. Missing from the instructions was how the mustard seeds would conduct themselves: they popped like popcorn flying all over the place. I did not have a lid immediately available because this little surprise was not expected.

Long-time reader, first time poster.

I thought it fitting that I would make my entry into the LTH conversations in this thread since i am indian and cook indian food pretty regularly. Most of my cooking is from south indian cuisine - think Udupi Palace, but include any of a variety of meaty (and since the region of india that i'm in has an abundance (relatively speaking anyway) of christians, include pork and beef in that category) and fishy components. Curried Favors by Maya Kaimal is one of the only books i've seen that focuses on traditional south indian recipes.

I think Indian recipes can seem overwhelming b/c there are often lots of ingredients, and the westernized versions of dishes seek to simplify them by substituing "curry powder" for many of the spices most people would not just happen to have in their spice collection. And while using whole spices, after first roasting them and then grinding them yourself may make for a *better* dish, for basic spices or everyday use, the indian cooks i know buy bags of the ground stuff just like you see on patel bros. shelves and are able to turn out excellent dishes.

If you had ground coriander, cumin, chili powder, turmeric, and whole black mustard seeds, plus fresh ginger, onion, and garlic, I would say you could make a whole lotta meat curries and veggie dishes with just that. I would agree with many of the previous comments that a lot of it has to do with the process - heat oil, add mustard seeds (let them pop! and they will once the oil is heated!), add onion-ginger-garlic, fry til brown, add spices, fry and allow all those fabulous aromas out, add meat, fry another minute, add some liquid (tomatoes, water, whatever), and simmer til tender.

If you had curry leaves (a staple of south indian cuisine as far as i'm concerned and a bone of contention i have with Kaimal's book who advises that you can substitute bay leaves - not even close to the same), fresh coriander (aka cilantro; aka chinese parsley), fennel seeds, and asafoetida, even better. But omitting these things won't hurt so much - while every ingredient will add to the dish and enhance the complexity, flavors, and taste, even my mom would say don't worry about it if you don't have it. just make do. it will still taste good.

shyne

asafoetida

I have a large nugget of this resin. When I first got it, it was very aromatic, though now it is quiet. I have the impression once I break the surface of the asafoetida, then the aroma will re-emerge. How do you work with this resin? Soften with water? Grate?

Thanks!

Cathy2 wrote:asafoetida
How do you work with this resin? Soften with water? Grate?

When my supply got too hard, I put it into the micro (very briefly though - like 5 sec increments) to soften it up a bit and then cut off the small bit i was going to use and chopped it into finer pieces to add into the dish. I've never thought of grating, that might work too - but probably depends on how hard it is. If you are able to cut or break off a piece, you can also grind in a mortar and pestle.

There are two issues, I think: a) what is "authentic" -- tradtional, real, etc, and b) what is best.

Rachel Lauden had an excellent article in the LA Times (I think) a while back on authentic Mexican cooking. She lives in Mexico and specializes in Mexican cooking. Very nice and very bright if you ever get a chance to talk with her. Unfortunately, the article is now in their archives and not free. The article pointed out that Mexican-food-puritans who insist that to make an authentic this or authentic that you have to do everything from scratch just aren't familiar with the average Mexican's life. Just like the American who makes stuff from a box or jar, so does the Mexican. As a result, I usually prefer the term "traditional" because it at least suggests what was done long ago and has been done for a long time, even if the term is still quite relative. Obviously, people have always tried to do what is easier and more convenient in every culture. The reason they wouldn't use a pre-made spice blend or curry paste or powder (or mole paste) would be that they couldn't. But this has nothing to do with what's best. That's a separate question.

In things like curries, it seems reasonable that there would often be a negligible difference between one made with packaged spices and one made with freshly ground spices since there's a certain amount of dilution. But it depends. How long have the spices been stored? If they're off the shelf from your local supermarket in an upper-middle-class white neighborhood, how much turnover do you think that turmeric has had? But a place like Patel Bros, they're probably moving tons of the stuff, literally. With each short-cut, too, comes a greater movement away from the potential product. One thing may not make that much difference, but cumulatively, using dried ginger, dried garlic, old spices, American yogurt, etc, may add up to a mediocre dish.

Personally, I don't find it that difficult to make my own spice blends and you know how long they've been on the shelf. With a coffee grinder you whip up a batch of garam masala in less than 10 minutes. And that way you can play with the mixture to fit your palate, just as knowledgable Indian cooks do.

I do think that someone getting into cooking any cuisine should at least try to do things in the most traditional, labor-intensive way possible at first. If they're serious about it. If they just want to whip out something that tastes like Indian food or Mexican food now and then, then who cares. But if they want to have a greater understanding of the cuisine, how certain ingredients affect flavors and combinations, and connect with the culture and history of the cuisine, they should do it the best tasting, often pre-modern, way.

I remember reading Erik explaining his experiences with making pho and how he gained so much respect for the making of the broth afterwards and didn't want to dilute its subtle flavors by adding chili sauce and hoisin when he ate out anymore. That's the type of thing I'm talking about. You keep technologies alive that could be lost, but you also gain a certain respect for the subtleties of a cuisine by doing it the long way. It's not more "real", but there are some advantages to it.

extramsg wrote:There are two issues, I think: a) what is "authentic" -- tradtional, real, etc, and b) what is best.

Rachel Lauden had an excellent article in the LA Times (I think) a while back on authentic Mexican cooking. She lives in Mexico and specializes in Mexican cooking. Very nice and very bright if you ever get a chance to talk with her. Unfortunately, the article is now in their archives and not free. The article pointed out that Mexican-food-puritans who insist that to make an authentic this or authentic that you have to do everything from scratch just aren't familiar with the average Mexican's life. Just like the American who makes stuff from a box or jar, so does the Mexican.

The article to which you refer is, I suspect, the one to which I refer and provide a link (now, as you indicate, not functioning) in this post on authenticity. I could not possibly characterise that article as 'excellent' but will grant that the author may perhaps be an otherwise interesting person. But I find the article and the thinking behind it rather superficial and in its own perverse way stupidly arrogant. I only hope she was exaggerating in order to appeal to the tastes of a largely ignorant audience.

I remember reading Erik explaining his experiences with making pho and how he gained so much respect for the making of the broth afterwards and didn't want to dilute its subtle flavors by adding chili sauce and hoisin when he ate out anymore. That's the type of thing I'm talking about. You keep technologies alive that could be lost, but you also gain a certain respect for the subtleties of a cuisine by doing it the long way. It's not more "real", but there are some advantages to it.

With the above line of thinking I can for the most part agree whole-heartedly and I think it worth pointing out that the sort of respect for traditional ways that you and Erik M. and I seem to share does not exclude the possibility that we may appreciate other, newer and innovative ways of doing things. I also agree with the point you say Erik has made in connexion with pho: the more one studies the traditions of an aesthetically highly developed cuisine, the more one understands how it works and so the less one is inclined to fiddle with it without good reason and to embrace the 'have-it-your-way' and 'everyone's opinion is equally valuable' sort of mind-set that Ms. Laudan seems to celebrate in the aforementioned piece. Everyone should eat what they like, but people who want to discuss food seriously should also think about it seriously and that necessarily involves a course of study that involves both the theoretical and the practical.

Antonius

I'd say that we disagree on the meaning of "authentic", agree on the benefits of studying and educating one's palate in the traditional, and possibly disagree on experimentation or bastardization or fusion (however you want to put it). I'll comment on this in the other thread, though.

shyne wrote:Long-time reader, first time poster.

I thought it fitting that I would make my entry into the LTH conversations in this thread since i am indian and cook indian food pretty regularly. Most of my cooking is from south indian cuisine - think Udupi Palace, but include any of a variety of meaty (and since the region of india that i'm in has an abundance (relatively speaking anyway) of christians, include pork and beef in that category) and fishy components. Curried Favors by Maya Kaimal is one of the only books i've seen that focuses on traditional south indian recipes.

shyne

shyne, kaimal has another more recent book out. But I think even better Penguin India has put out a book by Mrs. K.M. MAtthew, which is starting to become available in the states - Flavors of the Spice Coast. I'm pretty sure I saw it at India Book House on Devon. She's kind of like the betty crocker of Kerala cooking, with a long running column on cooking in the main malayali language paper there. You also can find the prettied up version of the greatest hits of Cook and See, the tamil veg cooking bible. However I haven't found a good one here on chettinad stuff, aside from a few recipes in the tamil nadu section of Jaffrey's flavours of india, where she goes around reporting recipes from various regions of India.

Thanks for your post, btw, hope to hear more from you.

AHava wrote:
Everybody uses spice mixes sometimes. Shaan Masalas, available everyhwere, are my favorite.

I know for a fact that Rajun cajun in Hyde Park uses shaan masalas for many of their dishes


Store bought pickle is all I ever use (tip: a little bit of mango pickle covers a lot of sins).

AHava wrote:Tarkas make your Indian dish taste like Indian food. Fry some spices in A LOT of oil in a little pan on your back burner. When the spices gets nice and smelly but not burnt, dump it in the pot - oil and all. Generally this is done once the liquid component has been added to the curry, close to the end. However, my grandma dumps it in prior to the liquid and she's an 89 year old Indian woman, so what the hell do I know.

I agree wholeheartedly on the importance of tarkas, especially in relation to some of the veggie dishes and daals, in fact they provide most of the flavor in most daals. I usually cook the stuff in ghee before adding

Good luck - oh - and use methi when you make saag (spinach) dishes. 3 or 4 to 1 spinach to methi. They're fenugreek greens, available in a handy zip bag in the frozen section at Patel Bros. Methi is in the hall of fame of "secret ingredients" as far as I'm concerend.

AHava wrote:ps - Regarding ginger powder - I don't have much experience with it, but come on. Ginger is available at every grocery store in the US and lasts forever in a drawer. It's about as tough to deal with as an onion.

This points out something which is I think is a problem in a lot of thinking about "indian" food. It is not a monolithic cuisine, after all we're talking about a billion folks with a lot of spearate cultures and histories. once again I'll note that in kashmiri cooking for instance dried and ground ginger i.e ginger powder is the preffered stuff for many dishes. much different flavor

My 2 cents
1) Try not to buy pre ground coriander or cumin. They lose their pungency. Buy these spices whole and grind in a coffee grinder that you keep just for spices.

2) Put the garlic/ginger mixture that is used in many many recipes in a small amount of water to make a thick slurry before adding it to hot oil to release their aroma. This way they will not burn.

3) Use store bought Curry powders only as a last resort. As each curry (especially South Indian) has slightly different spice mixtures making them fresh makes the dish sparkle. the only store bought spice mixture I use is smaller quantities of Garam masala from the store brands. Well sealed this seems to last sometime.

3) For a good South Indian cookbook try Dakshin by Chitra Padmanabhan. This is the BEST cookbook on authentic souht Indian vegetarian recipes I have seen. Moreover it has good pictures of what the dish should look like so you know what you are aiming for.

The Indian cookbook that seems to be the most used by me for north Indian cooking is Madhur Jaffrey's or Julie Sahni's. I have seen Neelam Batra's book on sale but never had the inclination to pick it up. What do the other readers think of Batra's book? BTW, Zim I saw a book written by a woman from Milwaukee that has a lot of South Indian meat dishes including variuos Chettinad dishes. I forget the name of the book, but I saw it in Borders.

zim wrote:shyne, kaimal has another more recent book out.

i've actually got that one too (i think it was called The Spice Coast of India), but did not find it too helpful. iirc, the format and style were not very reader-friendly. i also seem to remember it not being very south indian in terms of the recipes she included.

zim wrote: But I think even better Penguin India has put out a book by Mrs. K.M. MAtthew, which is starting to become available in the states - Flavors of the Spice Coast. I'm pretty sure I saw it at India Book House on Devon. She's kind of like the betty crocker of Kerala cooking, with a long running column on cooking in the main malayali language paper there. You also can find the prettied up version of the greatest hits of Cook and See, the tamil veg cooking bible.

thanks for the suggestions. i'll keep an eye out next time i'm on devon. i'm always happy to add to my cookbook collection!

Indianbadger wrote:1) Try not to buy pre ground coriander or cumin. They lose their pungency. Buy these spices whole and grind in a coffee grinder that you keep just for spices.

while i'm sure that ground spices lose some pungency as compared to whole, my experience has been that there is still plenty left in the ground spices. esp. if you're getting your ground spices from a place that has a high turnover and you can be fairly certain your spices haven't been sitting on the shelf very long.

i also say this in part b/c i don't want people turned off from indian cooking b/c it seems too labor/time intensive. i'm concerned about the time involved for myself as well. if i'm coming home late after work - which is often the case - i'm not going to invest the time to roast and grind the spices i need for one or two dishes.

the other option is to buy whole and grind it yourself in larger quantities so that you always have a relatively fresh, but still "pre-ground" supply. i do that with some spices like black peppercorns, fennel, and fenugreek. but since i go through a fair amt of coriander and cumin on a regular basis, i'm okay with using the ground stuff, unless i'm really going all out.

Indianbadger wrote:2) Put the garlic/ginger mixture that is used in many many recipes in a small amount of water to make a thick slurry before adding it to hot oil to release their aroma. This way they will not burn.

and while your ginger/garlic may not burn as quickly, you probably want to make sure you have a lid handy since the minute you add water to hot oil, there will be spluttering...

Indianbadger wrote:3) For a good South Indian cookbook try Dakshin by Chitra Padmanabhan. This is the BEST cookbook on authentic souht Indian vegetarian recipes I have seen. Moreover it has good pictures of what the dish should look like so you know what you are aiming for.

i'm a fan of cookbooks with lots of great photos. do you know whether this is a veg only book?

shyne

Yas Shyne, that is a veg only cookbook.

To go back to some of the earlier comments in this thread, having been lectured by my Mom (pubjabi) this weekend on related issues, I felt the need to share(!).

A lot of usage of dried ginger/turmeric/garlic is driven by convenience here. Fresh turmeric is extensively used in Indian cooking (particularly in the south). Whenever I visit the NJ/NY area its now widely avaialbe - it seems to be rarely available here in Chicago & wasn't available at all when I was growing up here in the US, so everyone substituted dried. In India, though Cuisinarts etc aren't usually available, there is usually is staff in the kitchen to deal with grinding the turmeric, for example. Here it simply often takes too long (though my Mom is a great fan of grinding ginger, onions etc in the food processor to save time). Some recipes specifically will call for fresh or dried & in a strictly "authentic" case if you use the other, the dish won't be right, but that said, many indian recipes had a myriad of variants where its authentic in one sense if it uses the fresh, authentic in another if it uses the dried. Often it simply boils down to your own taste - a good example is to try using fresh ginger rather than dried (preferably freshly ground) in a tharka for dal to compare to the dried version & see what you prefer. Also, while you may find a given dal in many communities, the tharka will vary accordingly (sugar in gujarati dishes, for example, would never be found in punjabi style).

Anyone intersted in indian spices might find this website interesting.

http://www.agriculture-industry-india.c ... meric.html

One of the most "authentic" cookery books I know for Indian food (though only veg) is Lord Krishna's Cuisine by Jamuna Devi. Its huge & incredibly detailed but she traces the history of each dish - many of them are temple recipes handed down through the generations. She then discusses common variants & how to adapt for home/western cooking. Remember "authentic" is a relative term - butter chicken & gobbi manchurian are quite recent creations!