My First Cooking Class

On Sunday, my friends Andrew and Faouzi came over for a lesson on South Indian cooking. I was excited to teach them because I find that South Indian food many times is overshadowed by the North Indian food you find in the restaurants (i.e. naan, chicken tikka masala, etc.) and there are not as many places to eat or learn about it. Most of my South Indian recipes come from my mother or other relatives.

I’d say in general, South Indian cooking has a lighter feel to it than North Indian and can be on the spicier side. Many of the recipes include lentils, rice, coconut, lemon, cilantro, mustard seed, curry leaf, dried red chilis, in addition to spice mixtures. A nice tradition also is that every meal ends with rice and yogurt to help digest better.

The first part of the lesson was an introduction to my spice box, something that is found in most Indian kitchens. I put all of the spices that I use most frequently in it and it’s great because I don’t have to fumble around for different bottles every time I cook (and it’s also very cute!).

Faouzi got very into my spice box:

After cooking for about 2 hours, we feasted:

sambar (previous recipe post here)

green beans curry

spinach raita

peanut rice

I will be sharing recipes from this day in posts to come. Thanks to Andrew for taking photos!