Comment by Karrot_Kream
Comment by Karrot_Kream 10 months ago
I do a lot of Indian cooking also and have for decades, and my suggestion is to just play around with tastes and smells. Dry roasting especially your nose is your friend. That or corner an established South Asian chef and talk to them about their use of spices :)
Acid is also really important for veg proteins because most veg proteins on their own have very little flavor. You can impart umami through various ways but umami without at least a bit of acid does not come across balanced on the palate, so you need to balance the acid with the umami.
The thing that gets me about how Indian food uses spices is that the flavors change so much during cooking.
If I use cumin in a Mexican or even Chinese dish, cumin will likely be a dominant flavor, it will be obvious that cumin is in the dish.
Meanwhile a similar amount of cumin in an Indian dish will get completely transformed and melded into a much more complex flavor profile.
Same goes for cardamom, I use a lot of cardamom when making American desserts, and its presence is obvious.
Meanwhile, my curries have cardamom in them and it adds levels of depth and complexity, but not in the overpowering way it does when used in western cooking.