Anyone Can Cook...Indian?

I'm taking the plunge and moving closer to work. I'm hoping the reduced commute time will mean I have time to learn how to cook. And I'm hoping to learn a cuisine that is distinctly different from the one I grew up with. I want to learn to cook Indian cuisine.

To be fair, Indian cuisine is as varied as it comes, much like Chinese cuisine. There's the difference of north vs. south, with chapatis and breads of the north, and rice and coconut of the south. There's vegetarian cooking favored by many a Hindu, and there is meats, the staple of Muslim cooking.

I had a Muslim Indian friend who would invite me over for dinner. This would often by 8:30 PM or later, and he said he'd prepare dinner, and I could help. I had no idea, initially, that it would take so long. His primary dish was a beef dish, made with ginger, onions, and various spices, and start to end, it would take an hour and a half.

Refrigeration has meant many a thing. Perhaps the most important is that meat doesn't go bad so easily. Remember all the fuss that was made by Europeans going to India? It was to get spices, presumably to cover the taste of rotting meat that they could do little to prevent. Once you could stop rotting (or slow it down), you didn't need so much spices to hide the taste.

Even so, people soon began to appreciate the taste of spices in their food, and Muslim Indians, in particular, discovered they wanted to get rid of the natural taste of meat, and have the flavor of spices infused into meat.

I've had several Indian cookbooks, but many have been far too daunting to follow. An authentic book might have a recipe containing a dozen spices.

But somehow, recently, I stumbled on a book whose title seems like a gimmick. It's called 5 spices, 50 dishes. It limits Indian cooking to only 5 spices, which may seem ridiculous given the number of spices that go into Indian cooking. Just off the top of my head: turmeric, coriander, cumin, cinnamon, mustard seeds, fenugreek, cilantro, ginger, chilis. OK, OK, some of these aren't technically spices.

The book is written by Ruta Kahate. No idea who that is. I assume it's a "she". In case, you're curious, the five spices are: coriander seeds, cumin, mustard seeds, cayenne pepper, and turmeric.

I've long known that what the Brits (and Americans) refer to as curry is not a spice at all, but an amalgamation of several spices, which Indians refer to as masalas. And to that extent, masalas often do not taste anything like what we call curry. Indeed, the Vietnamese come closer to using that kind of curry in their cooking than Indians. (There are curry plants and curry leaves, but this isn't the kind of curry that typifies Indian cooking).

I have no idea how the recipes will turn out. I tried Indian cooking once, many, many years ago. However, back then, I hadn't really eaten as much Indian food as I have now, so I wasn't sure what things were supposed to taste like. I suspect that's still true even now, though I figure if I'm happy, then it should be OK. (I recall making dal, which is lentils, and really having no idea how dal was supposed to turn out. At least I've had some since then.)

I do have a Chinese cookbook, which I'll also try (indeed, I own 100 cooking books, many of which I've never tried a single recipe). We'll see if this works out. I hope it does, because I'd like to cook a lot better than I do now.