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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