Have you ever wondered how a delicious paneer tikka masala or a malai kofta were concocted? Probably not, because you do not even know the names of those dishes — just like me, before I came to India — and could not imagine whatever they might be. Well, over the last few weeks, we tasted as many different Indian dishes as we could. And, eventually, we started to know food-related Hindi words such as chana (chickpeas), jeera (cumin), paneer (Indian cottage cheese) or masala (a mix of Indian spices) and learned to distinguish different types of bread like roti, puri and naan.

However, we could still not fathom how all those delicious curries and masalas were concocted. We marveled at the explosion of different tastes in our mouth, but could not name the ingredients; and that is why we decided to take a cooking class with an Indian chef to discover some secrets from the Indian cuisine. Just a few minutes walk from the beach of Palolem, under swaying palm trees, we found a nice establishment with a huge, clean kitchen and a motivated, competent cook called Raul. And the good things did not stop there: as we and our friend Marine were the only ones for this particular cooking lesson, we had the opportunity to select the dishes we were to cook — and, of course, we chose the most intriguing bites we ever had on an Indian plate! As their composition was quite difficult and the recipe goes over three pages, I will not bore you with the details of the cooking class. However, I think the pictures will give you an impression of the dishes and I hope they will convey the fun we had, being back in a kitchen after more than half a year!

     

More culinary impressions of our discoveries in India…

  

… and let us not forget the famous Indian street snacks!