Fast and Easy Indian Food

Cooking Indian food at home isn't just for the culinary elite anymore. Effortlessly satiate your craving for great Indian food with these easy solutions. You won't need to break a sweat or grind a spice.

Fresh simmer sauces are an excellent, tasty shortcut.
• Try award-winning Maya Kaimal's Coconut Curry Fresh Simmer Sauce. Her all-natural, vegetarian, refrigerated simmer sauces offer skillful combinations of rich and flavorful spices, toasted, ground and blended. All you have to do is add raw shrimp, tofu or vegetables and simmer for a quick main dish.
• Check out Cinnabar Specialty Foods' assortment of fresh simmer sauces, like the sour Vindaloo Curry or robust tamarind-laced curry. Add some rice, yogurt raita and chutney on the side, and there's a full, satisfying Indian meal, as good as anything from a restaurant.

Blends and pastes mean no need to measure and stockpile hard-to-find spices. These companies have done all of the work for you.
• Arora Creations Authentic Indian Spice Blends come in convenient slim packs and make it easy to cook up Goa Fish Curry, Chicken Tikka Masala and Ghobi Masala like a pro.
• Neera's Tandoori Indian Grilling Paste contains 22 spices blended together and are moistened with additional ingredients to take you a step closer to the authentic final flavors.

Breads and chutneys make any Indian meal complete. Chutneys are versatile-served as a relish for curries, vegetable dishes or grilled meats; mixed into macaroni salads for an American spin; or simply scooped up with a piece of warm naan.
• Serving warm Indian bread with your meal is a breeze with Fabulous Flats Naan Flatbreads, soft and chewy with a subtle, hearth-baked smokiness; or Sukhi's Low-Carb Rotis, a dipping bread and accompaniment to dinner.
• Sukhi's Hot and Spicy Tamarind Chutney will give your taste buds a lift. Dollop some on grilled hamburgers for a real kick, or spoon some into a skillet with garbanzo beans.
• Not sure which flavor chutney to choose? Sample a mélange with Neera's Chutney Experience Gift Basket, which includes six 9-ounce jars of fresh fruit chutneys in Mango, Pear Cardamom, Tomato Mint, Ginger Pineapple, Hot Vegetable and Peach. They are full of bold flavors but contain no preservatives, fillers or food colorings.

Heat-and-eat appetizers and entrées are another shortcut.
• Raja Foods' SWAD line offers an alluring selection of popular Indian snacks, including Pani Puri (with potatoes) and Bhel Puri (with puffed rice). Just pop them in the microwave and then into your mouth.
• Sukhi's Chicken Tikka Masala Frozen Entrée lets you pull one of the most popular Indian dishes out of your freezer. It's served with naan instead of rice.
• Kohinoor Foods Frozen Desserts help you end the meal authentically with Fruits in Mango Purée, Mango Custards, Fruit Custards, Fruit Slices and Fruit Pies/Puffs.

You can also turn to your grocer for the prep work for an Indian meal. Whole Foods Market is rolling out a line of cilantro-marinated or Madras coconut curry-marinated fish fillets, while New York-based FreshDirect has a new line of ready-to-cook entrées reflecting famed chef Floyd Cardoz's award-winning New Indian cuisine, such as ready-to-grill spicy Black Pepper Shrimp, rich Ginger-Spiced Beef Short Ribs or tangy Tikka-Marinated Chicken. At Pennsylvania-based specialty foods retailer Cote & Co., prepared foods chef Greg Mondragon makes the store's signature Garam Masala, toasting and grinding the cloves, black pepper, cinnamon and cardamom, and then using it to marinate their wildly popular kebabs. -Lynn Santa Lucia and Denise Shoukas

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