Flatbread and Flavors Reviewed by Ruth Paget
Armchair travelers and cooks will enjoy Flatbreads and Flavors: A Baker’s Atlas by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid for its wanderlust and easy-to-follow recipes.
Alford and Duguid crossed continents on bicycles and rickety trains in search of warm, fleshy loaves of blistered brown flatbread waiting for delicious fillings and dunking opportunities.
My favorite chapter in the book covers India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. These three countries consume:
-curries (spicy sauces eaten with bread in the North and over rice in the South)
-dals (spicy lentil stews)
-garam masala (spices mixes called curry powder in the West that go into curries and dals – these spice mixes are called sambhar masala in the South)
In a former lifetime, Duguid was a lawyer, who still writes easy, step-by-step directions to follow in her recipes. The cookbook has a recipe for a vegetable and fruit curry that I have further pared down to understand how to put together a curry from memory:
Curry Sample Recipe:
1-Cook vegetables and set aside.
2-Heat oil in frying pan. Cook onion till brown.
3-Add garlic and ginger. Cook till garlic begins to color.
4-Add fruit and hot chile pepper, if using.
5-Add cooked vegetables.
6-Stir in yogurt and heat everything thoroughly.
7-Add garam masala (spice mix called curry powder in the West) and top with freshly chopped cilantro (also called coriander). Serve immediately.
When you make garam masala (curry powder) at home, you make about two cups at a time and store it in a glass, air-tight container and keep it in a dark place.
Alford and Duguid list a typical spice combination from Northern India as containing:
-black peppercorns
-coriander seed
-cumin seed
-cloves
-cardamom
-cinnamon stick broken into pieces
A garam masala made of ingredients like these is stirred into curries to give them their pungent taste in Northern India. In Southern India spice mixes are called sambhar masala and are made of different ingredients.
The authors write that a Southern Indians sambhar masala might typically contain the following ground ingredients:
-urad dal (black lentils)
-chana dal (yellow lentils)
-coriander seed
-cumin seed
-black peppercorn
-fenugreek (onion tasting spice)
-red dried chilies
-pinch of turmeric
Sambhar masala is the final ingredient mixed into dal, spicy lentil stews, that are famous throughout India.
The Indian pantry recipes in Flatbreads and Flavors: A Baker’s Atlas by Jeffrey Alford and Namomi Duguid encouraged me to buy this travel cookbook.
I think the spice blends also taste good in chicken noodle, tomato, and mushroom soup as well as stirred into sautéed vegetables like green beans. I must admit there are many great recipes that make you lose track of the bread.
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
