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Homemade recipes add some spice

By Cody Kraatz

This is not restaurant Indian food; this is Indian food done like that on the subcontinent.

"Most of our recipes are hand-me-downs from friends' mothers. Some of them my mother passed down to me, and she got them from her mother," says Jayati Goel, owner of catering service Lazeez Dinners.

Lazeez (pronounced "luh-zeez") means "delicious" in Urdu, a language written like Farsi but spoken like Hindi, said Manish, Goel's husband and business partner. They live with their children, age 6 and 2, behind Archbishop Mitty High School in West San Jose.

Goel's unique catering service delivers Indian food to clients' homes and businesses all over the South Bay, having grown from a few clients when it started in November. Thus far, doctors, venture capitalists, high-tech engineers and working parents make up the Lazeez clientele. The company gains a couple of customers each week, usually by word of mouth, said Goel. Many of them are Indian.

As Goel watches her cooks prepare rajmah, a spice mix for a larger dish, and kadhi paneer, a dish with Indian cottage cheese and vegetables, she explains why many decide to leave it to professionals.

In their commercial kitchen, her cooks Surjit and Rahinder Kaur draw from a palette of golden curry, chickpea powder, and bowls of ground turmeric, cumin and coriander, mixing them up for the crucial seasoning blend.

"In every home the taste is different because the combination of spices is different," said Goel. The flavor also requires that the cook know which spices release their essence in hot and cold oil, because if they get it wrong they will kill the flavor.

Few working people have the time or energy to cook Indian cuisine perfectly at home.

"Most people work 9 to 5, and around here that's more like 9 to 8," said Manish, a software engineering consultant who handles Lazeez's finances and website.

"If I'm given a choice I would always have Indian food, but it takes a long time to cook and it's not worth it," said Ashish Sharma, an Indian native who has lived in the United States for six years. He works long hours and, because he's single, finds no reason to put much time into his meals.

He has been a regular Lazeez customer for about two months, and every Friday and Monday he gets a delivery of three lunches and three dinners. Each delivery comes with six or seven neatly packed black plastic containers with plastic covers.

"Indian food can get oily and spicy, and it's not like that," said Sharma, a software development consultant for Microsoft Inc. "They have a very big menu, and it's cheap as well. They're quite economical."

Economics are not the most important consideration for everyone.

"I would not compromise on what my kids would eat with us," said Cupertino resident Naresh Gupta, who knows Goel and tried out the food at her house with his 14- and 15-year-old children.

"The kids like it, and it's very close to what we'd want to eat at home," he said. His father, who lives with them, wants to eat Indian food, but his children often want unhealthy food, he said.

Lazeez has become a compromise the family can agree on.

Also, since the whole family is vegetarian, they appreciate that Lazeez offers a wide spectrum of options so they do not get bored, said Gupta.

Most of the vegetarian dishes are vegan, said Goel.

Their clients include a lot of Hindu Indians, many of whom maintain vegetarian traditions because their religion holds that all life is precious, said Manish. A couple are Muslims who have trouble finding meats in the United States that are butchered according to Islamic law.

Goel switches up the menu frequently and is constantly experimenting to bring more variety and create new vegan and vegetarian options.

A very common Indian dinner that Lazeez customers can order is dal hariyali, a lentil soup with spinach and a special blend of spices that is typically served with a vegetable side dish and flatbread. An entrée package that will feed three to four people costs $10, and Manish recommends topping it off with water or a smoothie-like mango lassi.

In March and April, Lazeez Dinners will donate 10 percent of its gross sales to the Cops Care Cancer Foundation, a group founded by San Jose police officers that provides financial help to the families of children affected by cancer. Lazeez will also give a 10 percent discount to anyone who donates $100 or more directly to Cops Care. Goel said cancer support is a cause very close to her heart. To donate or learn more, visit www.copscarecancerfoundation.org or call 408.699.2273.

Orders need to be placed 24 hours in advance. To order or learn more, call 408.655.8701, email orders@lazeezdinners.com or visit www.lazeezdinners.com.

Some Indian cuisine defined:

Curry--for Indians, this is a sauce with a precise mixture of spices and seasonings. Meat, vegetables or seafood are added.

Dal--soup from legumes, usually lentils, of which there are many varieties. It is a good source of vegetarian protein.

Korma--rich creamy sauce with a blend of spices, traditionally a mincemeat dish, but often served vegetarian.

Lassi--yogurt and water smoothie that can be served sweet or salty, often made with fruit like mangoes.

Masala--unique blends of ground spices, herbs and seasoning. It can be mixed with water, yogurt or milk for a sauce. The dry mix, garam masala, is commonly known in English as curry powder.

Naan--soft wheat flour bread made in the tandoor oven, commonly served in restaurants.

Paneer--Indian cottage cheese, absorbs whatever flavors it's cooked in.

Paratha--whole-wheat unleavened flatbread, sometimes stuffed with meat or vegetables.

Raita--a salty yogurt side dish with vegetables.

Roti--the name means "bread" in Hindi. It is an Indian's everyday tortilla-like unleavened bread.

Tandoori--refers to marinated meat and bread cooked in a clay oven, or the tandoor oven itself.

Sources: Lazeez Dinners, www.cuisinecuisine.com, www.gayot.com.