1. Freeze garlic and ginger paste
Lots of Indian recipes ask for a small quantity of ginger paste and the same of garlic paste - often just a teaspoon of each. An easy solution is to make a big batch with equal amounts of ginger and garlic, pounded together with a little lemon juice and oil if necessary, then freeze it in an ice-cube tray so that you can use a little whenever you need it.
2. Cooking onions the Indian way
Cooking onions to use in Indian food is a technical skill which takes years to perfect. However, you can cheat very effectively if you add a pinch of salt while they're cooking: it helps the onion cook faster, and they will caramelise better.
3. How not to burn spices
When cooking with powdered spices, it's very easy to burn them. A good trick to avoid this is to mix all the required spices with a couple of tablespoons of water and so eliminate the chance of them scorching.
4. Stop pounding
It's fine to use ready-powdered spices.In all honesty, pounding all your spices from scratch at home is never practical, even if the recipe says you should.
5. Or just pound gently
If a recipe calls for whole spices, like cardamon pods or peppercorns, cumin or coriander seeds, then pound them very lightly before you add them to the dish, because it helps them release more pungent flavours.
6. Buy spices on the net
The best spices are available on the internet (www.spicesofindia.co.uk). You should buy them in the smallest possible quantities because spices are fragile and don't keep well at all.
7. Get the right spice container
And try and get an airtight stainless steel spice container, because spices go off in the light and if they come into contact with the air. Transparent jars are absolutely pointless.
8. Presentation is all
People often really don't know how to present Indian food. You don't have to serve everything with rice, or you could make a timbale by setting each portion in a small bowl and turning it out. If you're doing something like tandoori chicken, you could serve it with a little salad. And if you've cooked meat in a sauce, don't drown it on the plate - Indian food doesn't need to be sloppy.
9. How to cook perfect pilau rice
There are two ways to cook perfect rice. This one is to cook it with a 1:1 ratio of rice to water, which is called the pilau method, so if you're doing a kilo of rice use a litre of water. First, sauté a few cardamon pods, a few cloves and a chopped onion in a little butter and add a good dollop of yoghurt. Then sauté the rice in a little butter and oil for a minute or two. Add the water and bring it to the boil. When you can see the top of the rice emerging from the water, cover the pan tightly with a cloth and then put a tight-fitting lid on top, too. You can either put the covered pan into the oven for 10 minutes, or leave it on a very low heat on the hob. Finally leave it, covered, for about 15 minutes, off the heat.
10. Cooking rice by the draining method
In this case you use a ratio of 1:10 rice to water and simply boil the rice with a little salt and a little oil for seven minutes or so, until it is just al dente. They are quite different, but both work.
