Characteristics of Northern Indian Cuisine

Series Summary

Indian cuisine is distinguished by its sophisticated use of spices and herbs. But you don't necessarily have to trek out to a restaurant to experience the exotic combination of flavors which delight taste buds around the globe. Simple ingredients like fresh vegetables and the fact that most dishes are made from scratch means that Indian food recipes are wholesome, healthy, fresh and non-processed.

In this series of free cooking videos you'll learn how to make a quick Indian meal from expert Mona Sishodia. She demonstrates how to make vegetable curry, batter-dipped and fried vegetables called Pakora, and a stuffed potato tortilla, which is a variation on a staple of the Indian diet. Mona takes you through the recipe step-by-step, explaining the ingredients and spices you'll be using and some of the health benefits of spices commonly used in Indian cooking. She shows you how to make dough for the tortillas from scratch, how to roll it out and add the potato filling. These recipes are easy to make and will taste delicious.

Video Transcript

"Hi! This is Mona for Expert Village, and we're here today to learn to make some nice, healthy, easy, to go Indian recipes. Indian cuisine is distinguished for it's sophisticated use of herbs and spices and vegetarianism is prevalent. Different parts of the country have different cuisines according to community and region. I'm from north India, so the dishes are basically north India dishes. We're going to be making stuffed potato tortilla. The bread is the north Indian diet. It's whole wheat bread and people can make it. It's just used as a normal bread or you can stuff it with any kind of thing. Today we're going to make stuffed potato tortilla. Next, we're going to make an appetizer called pakora, which is any kind of vegetable dipped in a batter and deep fried. Spicy. Then we're going to make some normal Indian curry. Curry is the base of all vegetables. We use a lot of herbs and spices. As we go along, I'll also be talking about the use of the herbs and their benefits and properties. So let's go ahead and make sure curry."