The history
The Indo-Gangetic plains fed empires. Persian and Central Asian cooks who arrived with the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals met a wheat-growing, dairy-rich land, and the meeting produced dum cooking, the clay tandoor at village scale, and a cuisine built on browned onion, ghee and whole garam masala.
Wheat is king — rotis, kulchas, parathas and naan. Dairy runs through everything as ghee, malai, paneer and yoghurt. Spicing is warm rather than fiery: cumin, coriander, cardamom, cinnamon and clove bloomed in fat before anything else enters the pan.
