Woodstock’s Kiran Sancious teaches Indian home cooking

Kiran’s parents met and married in Kenya, and she was born in England but visited the African nation as a child and made fond memories. When she was little, her family moved to a small farm town in western Canada where they needed doctors (her father was one). It was a big adjustment for the family, but soon they were enmeshed in a society of fellow Indians who had a community there. The family were Sikhs, but before there was a temple, they held Sunday services at their home, followed by 20 people cooking for 100. “My family is all food-crazy,” she said. Her father, who passed away last year, taught her mother to cook, she says, and both were avid cooks who made sure that their children learned the essential foundations of preparing food.

As a young adult she lived in Vancouver and worked in the fashion industry, and as years went on she realized the value of the culinary traditions that had been bequeathed to her. Although she has a few siblings, they had all intermarried, she said, and Kiran was aware of the risk of traditions not being passed on to her nieces and nephews. Meanwhile, she met and married her husband, musician David Sancious, a keyboard and guitar player currently touring with Sting, and he was very appreciative of her cooking. Eventually she realized that she had knowledge and traditions that needed to be shared.

At first she felt that it should all be kept secret, but as it grew on her how healing food is – cinnamon and other spices have antioxidants, and cardamom is good for celiac disease, for example – she decided that she needed to share it with others. “It should be recorded,” she says. So she started writing down recipes and teaching classes. She is now working on a cookbook of heritage recipes called Passions of Punjab (the region that her family is originally from), with a beautiful old wedding photo of her parents on the cover and her own food photos within, embellished with lighting and lovely textiles.

“I love teaching!” she says. “I’ve found my raison d’être.” And her students are just as enthusiastic, telling her that it’s the best Indian food that they’ve ever had, happy to learn simple ways of putting together amazing Indian meals. She loves the one-on-one of private instruction, as well as bigger classes, from a cozy few in someone’s home to a larger group. She loves teaching kids and beginning cooks.

Students may discover why she uses turmeric so much, and cayenne instead of black pepper; how she blends cuisines, letting in something that enhances traditional dishes, like spicing up a sauce for pasta with a bit of garam masala, an Indian spice blend often added towards the end of cooking; or spiking her Indian dishes with a bit of habañero or Scotch bonnet pepper; or supplementing the spinach in her saag with dandelion leaves instead of the traditional mustard greens; or balancing the tang of an assertive chutney with a sliver or two of goat cheese. “There is flexibility and variety with this cuisine,” she says.

She has been a guest chef at the DePuy Canal House in High Falls. For the sixth year, she’s running a popular workshop at Omega, with an immersion in savoring Indian cooking à la Kiran from June 28 to 30. Each guest goes home with a small cookbook and a round stainless steel seven-compartment spice tin holding cumin, coriander seeds, turmeric, cardamom with cloves, mustard seeds, cayenne pepper and garam masala. See www.eomega.org/workshops/kiran-s-indian-kitchen.

She also plans private summer parties, with David playing in a little stone amphitheater and lessons in cooking in her wood oven. She teaches private classes for one, or for a few, as well. Contact Kiran Ramgotra Sancious for more information on learning how to cook homestyle Indian food at www.kiransindiankitchen.com.

Read more about local cuisine and learn about new restaurants on Ulster Publishing’s dinehudsonvalley.com or hudsonvalleyalmanacweekly.com.