Indian culinary terms

• Akhni or Yakni :- Soup or stock.
• Alu:- Potato.
• Amriti:- Asweetmeat.
• Atta:- Wholemeal flour.
• Achaari:- Made with spices almost like those who get into Indian pickles, Achaari dishes are often medium- to very hot- and most frequently will have a tangy flavor. Expect spices like mustard, carom seed, fennel, chilli and cumin. These dishes are going to be on the drier side with minimal gravy so get them organized with a "wet" dish like daal (soup-like lentils) or a raita (yogurt preparation) to feature textural variety and cut out some of the heat. Achaari-style foods go alright with bread like chapatis (flatbread), parathas (pan-fried flatbread), or naans (leavened flatbread made baked during a tandoor or oven).
• Baghar/Tadka:- Tempering done after the dish has been prepared. Onions and a few spices or herbs are fried in a spoonful of fat and added to the cooked dish to enhance flavour.
• Bhaji:- Another term for vegetable preparations.
• Baked Hilsa:- An oily fish considered a delicacy., Smoked slightly—all bones removed and baked with anchovy essence, tomato sauce, salad oil, mustard, etc.
• Balushai:- Around ball made from dough, slightly flattened at the centre, fried and dipped in sugar syrup. 
• Baffad:- Acurry with meat and radish from Goa.
• Barfi:- Afudge like sweet.
• Basundi:- Milk sweet.
• Bhajjia:- Slices of vegetables dipped in gram flour batter and fried crisp.
• Bhaturas:- Slightly leavened bread baked on a grid then fried Generally served with 'Chhole',a dish prepared out of whole chickpeas.
• Bhel Puri:- Crisp fried thin rounds of dough mixed with puffed rice, fried lentil, chopped onion, herbs and chutney.
• Bhindi:- Okra/Gumbo, an Indian vegetable known as ladies fingers.
• Bhujjia:- ANorth Indian vegetable preparation.
• Bhurji:- its mean scrambled, and bhurji dishes, such as scrambled-eggs, are stir-fried.They can range from mild to very popular and therefore the main ingredient is typically Accompaniment by onions, tomatoes, ginger, garlic, and a medley of spices like chilies, cumin, coriander, and turmeric. Bhurjis are dry dishes and, as such, they are going well with gravied ones. When ordering a burji, ask how hot it'll be and pair accordingly with a light or hotter gravy dish.
• Bharta:- Vegetable boiled or roasted in charcoal, peeled, mashed and sauteed with a little chopped onion and chillies.
• Black Pepper:- The berry of the pepper vine dried with the skin on.
• Bhuna, Bhoona:- means "stir - fry" or sauté." Many dishes in India cuisine require spices to be lightly fried(or bhoono-ed) to release their aroma and flavors and stop to having a raw taste. 
• Bombay Duck:- Asmall, phosphorescent, gelatinous fish, abundant at the surface of the salt waters of Bengal and Bombay. It is prepared fresh or dried. When dried, it is toasted crisp and served.
• Bonda:- Mashed potatoes, seasoned and formed into balls, dipped in batter and deep fried — a South Indian snack.
• Baingan:- Brinjal Eggplant or Aubergine.
• Biryani:- A rich preparation of rice. Parboiled rice is put in layers with an upscale meat or vegetable curry and the whole is baked till cooked.
• Cardamom:- Aspice—the fruit of the cardamom tree. The seeds are found in a pod which is dried. It has a pleasing taste and flavour.
• Cashewnut:- The nut of the cashew fruit. It is found outside the fruit, enclosed in a kidney-shaped shell.
• Chapatti orPhulka:- Wheat bread made of unfermented dough, round in shape and paper thin. Resembles a tortilla.
• Charoli:- An Indian nut.
• Cheera:- Flattened shape boiled puffed rice.
• Chikkoo:- A brown Indian-fruit a cross between a fig and a russet apple. Also known as sapota.
• Cocum:- Asour fruit dried and used chiefly with fish. Acid in taste.
• Coriander:- Aspice, the seed of a small herb.
• Cumin:- Aspice resembling caraway seeds.
• Curry Powder:- A mixture of various spices such as coriander, chillies, turmeric, cumin etc., roasted and powdered together.
• Chiwda:- A mixture of nuts, fried pressed rice, fried lentils, gram preparations and spices.
• Custard Apple:- Resembles a leaf artichoke. Aluscious custard-like fruit with hard black seeds inside.
• Dahi:- Yoghurt or curd.
• Dahibhalla:- Ground lentil, made into fried balls then steeped in seasoned beaten yoghurt. Served with pulao or as a snack.
• Dhansak:- its meaning "rice & vegetables", a Parsi speciality. It is plain fried rice served with a curry rightly called "wide mouthed" as it contains an innumerable variety of ingredients—meat, lentils, vegetables,leafy vegetables, nuts and a variety of spices.
• Doodh Pak:- Sweetmeat made of rice and milk.
• Dal:- Lentil. There is a large variety of lentils in India.
• Do Piyaza:- Literally "twice onion". Ground and fried-onion added to meat along with other spices.Hence Do (twice) and Piyaz (onion). It is not very hot and will form a tasty accompaniment to parathas and chapatties.
• Dosa:- Atype of savoury pancake made with fermented batter of ground lentil and rice. Cooked on a griddle. Aspeciality of South India.
• Dum:- Aprocess of cooking with heat from above as well as below.
• Dum Phukt:- Adry rich meat dish prepared by cooking meat in pressurized steam.
• Drumstick:- Along sort of bean with hard fibrous covering, resembling a drum stick.
• Garam Masala:- Amixture of cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, pepper and cumin.
• Gaujas:- Afancy sweetmeat made from dough fried and dipped in sugar syrup.
• Ghee:- clarified butter or vegetable shortening processed to resemble clarified butter.
• Groundnut:- Peanut or monkey-nut.
• Guava:- Apopular fruit wont to make guava cheese, jelly and stewed fruit.
• Gulab Jamun:- Khoa or Mawa (milk evaporated to get rid of all moisture) is kneaded and flavoured and give the shapes of ball which are fried till golden brown and dropped immediately into hot sugar syrup.
• Gaustaba:- Large meat balls (Kofta) during a gravy of curd, mixed with ground poppy seeds, nuts and onion,and lightly spiced.
• Hing:- Asafoetida, a powerful flavouring agent. It also acts as a carminative.
• Hopper:- Acounterpart of the American hot cake. for creating it, the batter is fermented by the addition of toddy, an alcohol . Cooked in seasoned earthenware pots. Its subtle and pleasing flavour would appeal to all or any palates. Eaten with stew.
• Halwa:- Asweet dish made from lentils, semolina or wheat, or of vegetables like beetroot, carrot and pumpkin, with butter, milk and sugar.
• Idli:- Afermented batter of ground lentil and rice steamed in moulds. Aspeciality of South India.
• Jaggery:- Refined and solidified molasses.
• Jalebi:- Agolden-coloured, crisp sweet crammed with sugar syrup, formed in rings.
• Khichdi:- Mixture of rice and lentils.
• Kofta:- Minced meat ball.
• Kalia:- ABengali vegetable or fish dish with spices and yoghurt.
• Kesari:- ASouth Indian sweet dish made from vermicelli or semolina.
• Kheema:- Minced meat.
• Kheer:- Apudding-like preparation of milk with other ingredients like rice or carrot.
• Khoa:- Milk is boiled down till all moisture is removed, used as a base for a large number of Indian sweets.
• Kababs:- Asavoury barbecue done on iron rods.
• Khorma:- Rich, thickened brown curry of chicken, mutton or vegetables. Poppy seeds and desiccated coconut are added along side other condiments for thickening. The meat itself is formed tender by marinading in curd (yoghurt) before cooking.
• Lassi:- Abeverage made from beaten yoghurt diluted with water; sugar or salt could also be added.
• Litchi:- Aluscious Indian fruit. it's sort of a bigger version of the strawberry and grows in Bengal, Dehra Dun and Delhi regions. Lime Asmaller sort of lemon. Much sharper.
• Loochi:- Bengali version of puri.
• Laddoo:- Asweet ball made from gram or lentil flour, rice or semolina.
• Macher Jhal:- A special Bengali fish curry where the fish is first fried then curried. Mustard oil is that the cooking medium used. Mackerels make excellent jhal.
• Machhi:- Fish.
• Maida:- Refined flour.
• Maize:- corn .
• Mango:- a really luscious Indian fruit, which has several varieties— Dasehri, Chausa, Langara,Alfonso, etc.
• Marinate:- To steep during a mixture of yoghurt or vinegar to melt .
• Masala:- Indian condiments and spices.
• Moilee:- Fish or prawn cooked in many coconut milk— lightly spiced.
• Murgh Musallam:- Aspicy chicken preparation.
• Mattar:- Peas.
• Mutanjan:- Spiced rice with mutton sweetened with sugar. it's a speciality of Kashmiri non-vegetarian dessert.
• Muligutwanny Curry:- Chicken or mutton curry with a flavour popularized within the West as Mulligatawny soup.
• Nan:- Indian bread made from slightly leavened dough, baked on the wall of a mud oven.
• Nargisi Kofta :- Minced meat, mixed with spices and egg, covers a hardboiled egg (like scotch eggs) and it's fried and dropped during a spiced curry.
• Neera:- Anon-fermented drink obtained from the palm tree.
• Pachadi:- Seasoned yoghurt with vegetables—served in South India.
• Palak Gosht:- Meat or chicken cooked with spinach, lightly spiced and thick, without much gravy. The spinach is mashed and cooked with the meat.
• Pani Puri:- Apuff of dough fried and eaten with tamarind water and sprouted gram.
• Panir:- cottage cheese made by curdling milk with lemon juice, curd etc., and therefore the whey removed by straining and hanging during a muslin bag.
• Papaya:- Aluscious Indian fruit; papaw or pawpaw.
• Paratha:- Fried bread made from unleavened flour .
• Payasam:- A South Indian milk pudding made up of cereal (such as rice or vermicelli) or pulse, and sugar.
• Phirnee:- A creamy milk pudding made from rice flour.
• Pomfret:- A type of white round fish extremely popular in Bombay.
• Prawn Malai Curry:-Prawns cooked in spiced cream and coconut milk and baked during a coconut.
• Pulao:- A rice dish. Rice is fried in fat and cooked available and water.
• Pulao Rice:- A special kind of rice utilized in pulao — thin and long and not as starchy as ordinary rice.
• Pumpkin:- A big, round vegetable of the squash variety.
• Puri:- Deep-fried round wheat bread. About 5 cm. or 2 inches in diameter and puffed.
• Quabarga:- A type of meat kabab.
• Rabri:- Sweet, thickened milk.
• Raita:- Vegetable, raw or parboiled, mixed with beaten and seasoned yoghurt.
• Rasam:- A spicy soup made from lentils and tomatoes. Hot and sharp; served sometimes as an appetiser.A speciality of South India.
• Rava:- Semolina.
• Reshmi Chapatties:- unleavened bread resembling tortillas, but as thin as silk, and about 20 to 25 cm. or 8 to 10 inches in diameter. Baked over an upturned dome-like iron vessel over live coal.
• Rista:- Aminced meat ball curry, a speciality of Kashmir.
• Rogan Josh:- A red curry with a skinny gravy made up of the leg of mutton cut with bones into fairly large pieces. The distinct flavour is that of saffron and nutmeg. Saffron is added just before removing from the hearth . The red colour is obtained by the addition of saltpetre and rattanjog,a red coloured bark.
• Rasgullas:- Milk is curdled by the addition of curd and lime, the casein separated from whey which is then kneaded smooth and made into balls. a bit of sugar candy is typically kept within the centre. These balls are put into clarified simmering sugar syrup and cooked.
• Sambar:- A preparation of lentils with one or more kinds of vegetables— served as a necessary accompaniment to rice in South Indian vegetarian food.
• Samosa:- A thin pastry cone crammed with boiled or spiced vegetable or minced meat and deep fried.
• Sandesh:- Sweetened milk, condensed to solid form by slow cooking, and flavoured.
• Snake Gourd:- Vegetable with an extended snake-like shape.
• Seekh Kabab:- Minced meat and spices ground together bound with egg and glued on to a skewer and grilled.
• Sev:- A fried savoury resembling vermicelli. it's made from gram flour dough skilled a mould and deep fried till crisp.
• Shami Kabab:- Cutlets made with minced meat and lentil.
• Srikhand:- A sweet yoghurt based dish with liquid removed by straining, and flavoured with saffron and nuts.
• Tamarind:- Asour fruit used for curries, chutneys, etc.
• Tandoori:- Spiced meat or fish barbecued during a specially designed tandoor oven.
• Toddy:- An alcoholic drink obtained from a spread of palm.
• Turmeric:- A yellow spice used for imparting a characteristic flavour and colour. the basis of a plant belonging to the ginger family.
• Uppuma:- A savoury South Indian dish made out of semolina and lentils.
• Vindaloo:- Asharp and hot curry made from pork, prawn, chicken or mutton. Originated in Goa.
• Vada or Pakora:- A rissole of lentil or vegetable served as a snack.
• Vark:- Thin foil of silver or gold which is edible.
• Yellow Rice:- Rice flavoured and colored with saffron or turmeric.
• Zarda:- A sweet pulao served at the top of a meal.

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