Kebabs, Snacks, and Starters

The Indian counterpart to the Western barbecue grill is the tandoor, a clay oven fired with charcoal. Also known as a sanjha choolha (“common cooking place”), the tandoor literally brings people together. Women gather at the communal village tandoors at sundown, bringing dough with them from home. They chat and socialize while cooking their bread in the tandoor.

Tandoori cooking is one of the oldest ways of cooking food in India and can be traced back to the nomadic tribes of the northwest frontier who cooked their food in fires of charcoal and cow dung that they built in holes dug in the ground. Today, of course, the tandoor is used not only for the daily bread—naan or tandoori roti—but also more exotic fare like kebabs and tikkas. Even dals and sauces can be cooked slowly to flavorful perfection in a tandoor. The most distinctive thing about cooking in a tandoor is the smoky flavor that it imparts to the food, and it is perhaps no accident that tandoori dishes were the first from India to gain international popularity.