Cooking & Baking

Indian Home Cooking: Curries and Dal

Meets Mondays · 6:00 PM - 8:30 PM · on Zoom Fall 2026 · registration open Free to audit

This class runs in the Fall 2026 session. Registration is open now; lessons, materials, and the class discussion board are posted before it begins.

This is a class for people who already feel at home in the kitchen and want to get past the jarred sauce. I'm not going to pretend jarred is evil — it fed my family for years — but once you toast your own spices, you'll get why people don't go back.

Over six Monday evenings we'll build a spice base from scratch and cook three things: a vegetable curry, a chicken curry, and a pot of dal. You don't need twenty spices. You need about five, plus fresh ginger and garlic and the willingness to stand at the pan and watch.

You'll leave able to cook these without a recipe holding your hand, tasting and adjusting as you go. Heads up: we're not doing naan. I buy mine and I'm staying in my lane.

What you'll learn

Build a spice-based curry sauce from scratch
Toast and bloom whole and ground spices correctly
Cook lentils and chicken to the right texture
Fix common mistakes like watery, bitter, or over-salted sauce
Cook rice properly and time two dishes together

Lessons

The Spice Base (Start Here)
Blooming spices in oil is the whole game, so we're spending the first night on it before we cook anything complicated.
Building the Onion Base
Nearly every curry we make starts with onions cooked down properly, so we'll get that right before adding anything else.
Vegetable Curry
We'll cook the cauliflower-and-pea curry that even my vegetable-refusing 15-year-old will eat, and I still don't know why.
Chicken Curry
A weeknight chicken curry that a 21-year-old once told me was better than the place by Costco, which I have not stopped thinking about.
Dal
Dal is the best thing I make and the cheapest, and people skip it because it looks humble.
Pulling It Together
Rice, adjusting by taste, and putting a whole meal on the table without losing your mind.

Class discussion

The class discussion board opens when the class begins this fall. Auditors and enrolled students ask questions and share work here once the session starts.