Cuisine

Cuisines of India

¤ Diverse Cuisine

All those who think Indian cuisine begins and ends with curry, get ready for a big surprise. The character of cuisine in India is essentially regional; reasons for this must be found in the sheer size of the country which forced every area to develop a style of cooking of its own. In times gone by transportation was a problem, and this meant that each area had to come up with a style of food which made do with the locally available materials. As a result, not only dishes, but flavors, colors, methods of cooking, down to even the style of cutting the vegetables prior to be cooked changes as often as the landscape does.

¤ Cuisine Adopted By Different Religion

What has helped along this diversity is the amazing number of religions and the sects and sub-sects within them; each of them often have strict dietary codes. For example, Hindu Brahmins may not eat onions, ginger and garlic, meat which meant that a special cuisine came up around that bias and so on. Whereas Christians and Muslims favors meat eating.

The most striking contrast in eating habits shows up between the meat-and-bread eating northern regions and the pulse-and-rice southern regions.