Are capers and olives ever used in Indian cuisine?!
Back story: I'm currently learning how to cook various Indian foods, and I recently tried making some Goa fish curry which wound up tasting like it needed capers and/or olives. I suspect this has something to do with colonial Portuguese influence in that region.
Any info would be appreciated. Links are helpful, as are any recommended cookbooks.
Answers: If so, please let me know which dishes, which regions, and how frequently.
Back story: I'm currently learning how to cook various Indian foods, and I recently tried making some Goa fish curry which wound up tasting like it needed capers and/or olives. I suspect this has something to do with colonial Portuguese influence in that region.
Any info would be appreciated. Links are helpful, as are any recommended cookbooks.
Capers yes...in pickles, veggie curries...its used mostly in rural Gujarati/Marathi cuisines.
Olives no!
Ofcourse olives and capers are common in modern indian/fusion foods like pizza and pasta modified to indian taste.
I have several cookbooks from India. My favorites are written by Julie Sahni and Madhur Jaffrey. I have about 10 Indian cookbooks but the best 7 I have were written by those two authors.
The only thing in which I have had a caper was in a hot relish. I have never made or eaten an olive in any Indian recipes or when I have dined out at Indian restaurants (which does not mean that it's not used). I can say it's not common.
http://allrecipes.com/Search/Ingredients...
I did a search for ingredient olives and keyword indian.
no,middle eastern
No, never used in traditional Indian cuisine. Modern day or fusion cuisine may use them but authentic classical cuisine does not use olives nor capers. Even with Portuguese and Greek influences, capers & olives were never used in Indian cuisine!!
My ancestry is Goan and there are no Indian recipes that contain olives nor capers. Even Goan recipes do not use any olives or capers.
Try these recipes:
http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art2...
http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art5...
http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art4...
There arent too many Goan cookbooks that are available in the US. A great South Indian cookbook is Dakshin by Chandra Padmanabhan and a fantastic Indian cookbook is 1000 Indian Recipes by Neelam Batra.