Recipes of India and Pakistan

Most Westerners when asked what food they associate with the Indian subcontinent, will say 'curry', but not every spiced dish is a curry, and curry is not just one dish. It embraces a whole range of dishes, each distinctly different according to the spices and herbs used in varying combinations. Spices, imaginatively used, are the outstanding feature of Indian and Pakistani cuisine - subtle or pungent, hot or mild, there is something to suit every palate. Much of the cooking of northwestern India and Pakistan is so similar that one, would hesitate to say which dishes belong to one country and which to the other. Pakistan, being a Muslim country, uses no pork; but boasts a diet rich in other meats and has as many sumptuous biriani and pilau as does the celebrated Moghul cuisine of the neighboring Indian provinces. Lamb is predominant in both areas, and both use spicing and ingredients such as yoghurt and ghee in dishes that are elaborate without being hot as well as relying more heavily on wheat-flour chapati than on rice. Bangladesh is more than 1,500 kilometers from Pakistan. With the eastern Indian province of Bengal, of which it was once a part, it shares more pungent spicing, a tendency to cook in mustard oil rather than ghee and emphasis on a variety of seafood instead of the fat lamb popular in northwestern India and Pakistan. The culinary offerings of southern India are different again. The coconut plays a commanding role, rice largely replaces wheat, mustard seeds are widely used as a spice, and chilies come into their own - as anyone who has tackled a really hot Madras or Mysore curry will readily acknowledge! Throughout the subcontinent, different religions impose food taboos that are rigidly adhered to. Hindus will not eat beef. Muslim will not eat pork. Buddhist will not take life and so will not even crack an egg. And many Indians are strictly vegetarian, enjoying a cuisine that is in a class by itself.