Indian cuisine

Indian cooking works spices through fat: they are bloomed until fragrant, and that step decides the flavour of everything after it.

The key move in Indian cooking is the tadka: spices fried in hot fat for a few seconds so they release their aroma. Skip it and tip the powder into the pot and you have made a different dish.

The second is region. The north cooks in ghee with wheat flatbreads, the south in coconut oil with rice, and "Indian food" as one thing exists mainly outside India.