Mara:: Welcome to a taste from the melting pot. Hi I’m your host Mara Mcfalls and today we’re here in Edison New Jersey to learn a little bit about Indian cuisine. The spicy layered colorful flavors and also to meet Kurdi, who’s from India but now lives in the states and we’re gonna learn all about her fresh organic approach to cooking, some favorite home cooked meals but before we dive in to the food, lets take a closer look at life in India.

Male: With more than a billion people five thousand years of history and several hundred languages, India simply defies comparison its both a country and sub continent Beijing from the Himalayan mountains to the palm French beaches of the Indian ocean. Just like its land and people, the cuisine of India is remarkably diverse no matter the region chefs and cooks utilize a dazzling array of herbs and spices and the North Kebabs, curries and fresh baked Nan, bread serves hot from a clay oven. Star along side dessert soaked in safron scented rose water.

Now food may lie at the heart of the culture but religion holds the key to India’s soul. Down through the ages, dozens of faiths have come to co-exist there including Hinduism and Islam, jaanism, Christianity and Buddhism. Male:ifesting their love of the spiritual is the Indian zeal for friends and family whether it’s a wedding feast, birthday or funeral the whole community often comes together to share in life’s pain and joy. Today across India ancient festivals, breath-taking forms of music, elaborate folk dances and unparalleled monuments like the Taj majhal continue to stand the test of time

Mara: I was really excited to cook with Kurdi, she’s the owner and the Chef of a restaurant in New Bronzeway called the phi-kent bread bar. She has an organic and eclectic approach to cooking, which she calls new age Indian.

Mara: Thank you for having me here these are for you.

Kurdi: Oh thank you so—

Mara: This is mint.

Kurdi: Thank you so much.

Mara: Fresh herbs for the Chef.

Kurdi: That’s very refreshing.

Mara: This is such a beautiful house.

Kurdi: Thank you, come on in let’s get into the kitchen now.

Mara: Oh I love seeing kitchens for the first time.

Kurdi: Thanks, welcome.

Mara: So now, here we are in the kitchen this is beautiful and I see in front of us are some spices and maybe some common ingredients in Indian food and we’re here with Kurdi to dispel some of the myths about what curry is we’ve all heard of curries so what is curry.

Kurdi: Curry is nothing but a blend of few spices. I have my own set of spices that I used to make a curry powder that’s coriander seed, Anel.

Mara: Okay.

Kurdi: Cumin and black pepper corns.

Mara: Okay so curry is not just one spice.

Kurdi: No it is not.

Mara: It’s a combination of different spices.

Kurdi: Combination yes it’s a blend of spices, different spices.

Mara: She used various spices like poori masala , cumin and ground pepper to make the base for the curry and then she added all sorts of vegetables to fill out the meal. And here are some of the spices that I see that make up curry powders?

Kurdi: Yes, this is poori masala which in other word you can call curry powder.

Mara: Okay.

Kurdi: If I add tumeric to it poori masala becomes a curry powder.

Mara: Oh great now what are some of these other ingredients that we see here.

Kurdi: In this container here is black cardamine.

Mara: Cardamine.

Kurdi: Yeah.

Mara: Ah, and what is—what is a cardamine taste like how would you, what is it used in?

Kurdi: They are two kinds of card actually a three kinds of cardamines white, green and black. Black is used for making food and the green one is more for, fresher, mouth freshener every time when you go to any restaurant or any home, I like after dinner they will offer you a green cardamine and you use that as a knout freshener and white one is very, I’ve really seen it but some people use it in different recipes maybe to make a sweets and all that and this one here is cloves.

Mara: Oh I’ve seen this before.

Kurdi: And then good for your tea.

Mara: We stick those in different meals.

Kurdi: Good taste.

Mara: And Easter for us and these is for?

Kurdi: Tooth—

Mara: That’s right tooth paste.

Kurdi: Toothpaste, toothpaste has cloves it’s very good for your teeth if you have your gum hurt just you know, have a bite on it.

Mara: A natural remedy.

Kurdi: Remedies exactly.

Mara: Oh great and what are these here.

Kurdi: These are red curry beans and Hindi we call it rahjima.

Mara: Rahjima.

Kurdi: Yeah and here is garlic.

Mara: Good old garlic.

Kurdi: Garlic.

Mara: We all love garlic.

Kurdi: And ginger.

Mara: Oh smells so good I love that ginger.

Kurdi: And here’s with some red onions, you can use white onions also but I’m for the milk flavor I always use grenadine to put—

Mara: They’re little hotter little, little bit more heat.

Kurdi: More pungent.

Mara: Yeah more pungent.

Kurdi: And pungent to ester.

Mara: And these, coriander?

Kurdi: And this is cumin.

Mara: Cumin.

Kurdi: Cumin is used in like leave to me everything anything you make in Indian dish, you will use cumin.

Mara: Tsai tea latte’s are almost as common now in the states as they are in India and Kurdi: made a cut for me from scratch.

Kurdi: It’s a black tea with low spices like cardamine, clove and little nutmeg.

Mara: Do you add a sweetener to it?

Kurdi: Sugar.

Mara: Sugar.

Kurdi: The sugar I use turbinado sugar.

Mara: Okay.

Kurdi: —which is cane sugar, brown cane sugar.

Mara: Okay this is delicious now I know that we wanna start on our first meal rahjma.

Kurdi: Rahjma—exactly.

Mara: Alright.

Kurdi: We’re gonna be making rahjma and we’re gonna be eating that with a chavo which is rice. I like to make my rahjma is using red onions, instead of white onion I use red onion because it has low more pungent flavor to it and some baby garlic, not baby garlic baby ginger.

Mara: Baby ginger.

Kurdi: And garlic.

Mara: And garlic.

Kurdi: Garlic.

Mara: Okay.

Kurdi: And tomatoes, I have some fresh tomatoes what I do is I take all these 3 ingredients and I puree them in the blender.

Mara: Like a paste, paste.

Kurdi: To make it pasty yes I blend it and then I take little bit of olive oil and let’s cook it in that olive oil until the oil separates from the mixture.

Mara: The onion and the tomato paste mixture.

Kurdi: It takes about good twenty minutes to prepare that mixture, in case you want to be always ready you could always make these and keep it in refrigerator and take this and add it to any of the curries you want.

Mara: And then how do you add the rahjma.

Kurdi: Rahjma what I do what I had was bean soaked in all night in the water and then I boiled it and here’s the beans that I boiled.

Mara: Do you add the beans and the water all together?

Kurdi: Yes because all the nutrients are all in that water.

Mara: Wow.

Kurdi: So you don’t want to throw that water out. So here—

Mara: There it goes.

Kurdi: I add those beans to it.

Mara: Oh it smells so good you can really smell the all the spices.

Kurdi: All the spices, well it’s almost ready.

Mara: So exciting to taste this.

Kurdi: I’m gonna add some fresh cilantro to it.

Mara: And that’s just is that that’s for color, flavor.

Kurdi: Color, flavor.

Mara: Just add it in the end.

Kurdi: Yes color, flavor ended at green.

Mara: And now is there’s something that you would eat for dinner or for lunch or what would a typical day’s meal be?

Kurdi: This rahjma, I would have it like as growing up, I’m used to have it if on Sunday afternoon that would be a typical Sunday afternoon brunch rahjma — which is like rahjma the red curry beans with the rice and some yogurt. That would be like the mean by itself, comfort food.

Mara: And is it is it usually just on it on your meal just one main dish or is it as an array of little things that you add together.

Kurdi: It depends from family to family but the fact the day we grew up we always have one beans and one vegetable with some rice and also some bread flat bread.

Mara: And what about for breakfast, what is that—

Kurdi: Breakfast—

Mara: Oh.

Kurdi: Purees, puff purees.

Mara: Puff purees you don’t know what that is.

Kurdi: I can’t tell you, oh yeah that’s puff puree is like a, how would I say it’s a tortilla but is deep fried.

Mara: So, it’s bread. Is it savory or is it sweet?

Kurdi: It’s savory.

Mara: Savory.

Kurdi: It’s a savory, a savory with some potatoes, vegetable curry middle of potatoes and onions and with some pickle with it and yogurt on the side.

Mara: This is really starting my appetite.

Kurdi: Well, you know be ready for it

Mara: Well now we are gonna finish up with our dish here but stick around cause we got a lot more coming up next.