Tag Archive for 'Indian cuisine'

Masala dosa and rosogolla

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on December 27, 2009
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A typical Bengali spread

A typical Bengali spread

According to Outlook magazine’s nationwide poll published in its year-end edition, India’s national dish is not butter chicken but masala dosa. The national dessert is the juicy rosogolla. Outlook carries essays on India’s regional cuisine.

Nilanjana S. Roy, the author of A Matter of Taste: The Penguin Book of Indian Writing on Food:

Given that biriyani, pulao and khichdi are part of the Indian palate, and that a rough three-fifths of the world’s nations have some kind of rice dish as their national favourite, surely we can anoint some combination of rice-and-veggies or rice-and-meat? Not so. Aside from the fact that wheat-eating regions will have their sentiments damaged, there’s the tricky question of which recipe you choose. The classic, plain vanilla dal-and-rice khichdi has over 60 variations. Choosing a Lucknawi biriyani over the Hyderabadi kacchi biriyani over, say, a classic coastal seer fish biriyani is beyond my capabilities. And we haven’t even got to the pulaos yet. More

Chandan Mitra, a politician and a journalist, on Bengali cuisine:

Let me detail some of the items that would be considered non-negotiable in a traditional Bengali meal. It should start with fried miniature bodi, a few spoonfuls of lightly fried saag and uchchhey (small bitter gourd)—aloo fry, begun (brinjal) bhaja and/or bhindi bhaja (chopped fried bhindi). This should be followed by shukto (a light stew of aloo, karela, green banana, laau (green gourd) etc. Coconut-laced preparations are common in Bengali cuisine; hence a chholar dal (dhuli huyi chana with chopped coconut) is considered a delicacy. This also goes well with luchi (medium-sized puris made with maida rather than atta). At lunchtime, bhaja mooger dal (dal made with roasted moong) is often the next item. Alongside, there is a wide array of side dishes. They range from aloo posto, sager ghonto or chocchori (palak cooked with aloo, brinjal and various other vegetables including pumpkin), laau-chingri (shrimps cooked with finely cut pieces of green gourd and cabbage), chhenchki (pumpkin, aloo and other vegetables bunged together to make a mash), and in some cases chhanchra (a mash made of palak, aloo, laau, topped up with the head of fish—a huge delicacy). More:

Farrukh Dhondy, a UK-based writer, playright and journalist, on Parsi food:

Parsis perch or poach eggs on most things—one can have papeta par eida, bheeda par eida, kheema par eida, bhaji par eida, tambotaan par eida, which in turn mean: eggs on potatoes, okra, mince, spinach, tomato and almost anything else. Ideal starters for the wedding banquet (and, while on the subject of eggs, the curried, scrambled, coriandered breakfast dish akoori is far superior to what our Punjabi compatriots call bhujiya), to be followed by sali-boti, sali-marghi, lamb (goat, actually) or chicken cooked with slender, fried potato straws and/or with lugan no sahs—fish, usually pomfret, surmaai or ramus in a gently spiced, sweet and sour sauce—or patraan ni machchi, pomfret baked in banana leaves with a grated coconut chutney. All that is then followed by Parsi pulao, our version of biriyani topped with the definitive Parsi dhan saak daal. More:

Also read V. Gangadhar (Gujarati cuisine), Arun Jaitley (Punjabi), Dileep Padgaonkar (Saraswat Brahmin) and more.

Curry – The sauce of Britain’s addiction

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on October 4, 2008
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So firmly is Indian cuisine embedded in Britain’s food culture, that the industry now employs 100,000 people and generates £3.2 billion. From The Times:

We are a nation addicted to Indian food. Our pedestrian palates perk up at the mere thought of brittle shards of poppadam loaded with fresh mango chutney, or flame-coloured tandoori meat wrapped in blistering naan bread.

“Whether you like a bhuna, a dopiaza or a balti, or whether like me you look at that menu and just panic and have the chicken tikka masala, we’ve all got our favourite curry and [Indian] restaurant,” said David Cameron in his message broadcast at last year’s British Curry Awards.

Indeed, from Southall to Glasgow there are no fewer than 10,000 “spice restaurants” to choose from, providing 100,000 jobs in a £3.2 billion industry. Although it’s facing competition from the likes of Thai, Mexican, Polish and Moroccan, Indian cuisine, along with Chinese, still dominates the ethnic food market in the UK.

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Melting pot

Published
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on September 13, 2008
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In The Guardian, Nicholas Clee reviews “Indian Takeaway: One Man’s Attempt to Cook His Way Home” by Hardeep Singh Kohli:

Hardeep Singh Kohli is a broadcaster, writer and newspaper columnist. A keen amateur cook, he was a runner-up on Celebrity Masterchef. He is also one of the 2008 Booker judges. His first book, Indian Takeaway, is a likeable but clumsy contribution to this busy CV and joins a well-worn genre – the travel memoir with a zany twist. Kohli journeys from the south of India to the north, the twist being that he attempts to cook typically British food as he goes. “Understand someone’s food and you understand them,” he reasons, and he sets out to understand himself by bringing together his Indian and British culinary heritages.

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Feast from the past

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on July 6, 2008
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The old-world Mughlai flavours, found in Lashkari, Moplah, Awadhi and Salar Jung cuisine, rest in the hands of a chosen few. Meher Fatma in The Indian Express:

In a charmingly dilapidated bungalow at Parel, Mumbai, the kitchen is suffused with the aroma of exotic spices. It is noon and Kunwar Rani Begum Kulsum, 52, is busy slicing meat into tiny pieces while slivers of onion and chillies sweat in a deep-bottomed pan. She is cooking Tala Ghosht, a 100-year-old recipe of the Salar Jungs, the noble family which served the Nizams of Hyderabad. Begum Kulsum is a descendant of this family and this dish was a favourite of her grandmother, who used to cook it in the 1950s. “Tala Ghosht is safri khana (travel food) and we add no water to the dish so it can be preserved,” explains Kulsum, who now recreates these dishes at the ITC Grand Central in Mumbai. It was a custom with the Salar Jungs to be secretive about these recipes. So the daughters of the family weren’t allowed access to the kitchen and the secrets of the kitchen were shared only with daughters-in-law. “My grandmother was born in an aristocratic Iranian family and came to Raza-Yar Jung haveli at Darushafa, Hyderabad, after her wedding,” says Kulsum. “Nawab Yusuf Ali Khan Salar Jung III even had a separate bawarchi khana for experimenting with ingredients,” she says.

[Photo: Begum Kulsum and chef Gulam Rasool]

Click here for more, and also for Begum Kulsum’s Chutney Mutton recipe that can be preserved for days like a pickle:

Between the dhaba and the diner

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on April 8, 2008
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In Himal South Asia, Vijay Prashad reviews “American Masala: 125 new classics from my home kitchen” by Suvir Saran with Raquel Pelzel (Clarkson Potter, 2007):

Tandoori turkey on Thanksgiving, for example, is the staple response to the cultural undertow of Americanism. A South Indian friend tells me that when he was young in upstate New York, his mother would grudgingly take them to McDonald’s, where she would order a hamburger without the meat. This was gentle accommodation to the desires produced in our children by their peers and the media. Saran also treats us to some suggestions on how to spice up quintessentially American dishes. Here we get macaroni and cheese with a twist with pepper; or, even better, fried chicken with masala and a buttermilk marinade. For his meatloaf, Saran turns to a recipe from his Armenian-American friend Richard Arakelian, whose use of peppers, cumin, coriander, peppercorns, garam masala and tamarind (as a glaze) give the dish an undeniable desi robustness. Saran recommends that you serve this dish to your family with his roasted baby potatoes with South Indian spices, doused with garlic; an equally good side dish is his tangy sweet-potato chaat.

Fusion is a misnomer in Saran’s universe. Such a term assumes a stable Indian and American cuisine that is melded together, often thoughtlessly. Saran is voracious, liberally borrowing recipes from his mother’s Nagpur donuts and his polycultural friends. There is no anxiety about ‘authenticity’, nothing to hold him back from even offering his version of rum raisin ice cream, which evokes for me Delhi’s Nirula’s, although Saran uses real rum.

[via Amitava Kumar]

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