bhelpuri

To start with - Amritsari Street Food

Scott, No. But most Indian regional cuisines up and down the coasts use coconut very liberally.

Read this.

In effect. The tea is a varietal, I'm pretty sure that you can get Ceylon tea not grown on the island (not entirely sure, though). I do know this though. There is a tea called 'Darjeeling'. Thousands of tons of 'Darjeeling' tea are sold each year, but only a quarter of it (at best) is actually grown in Darjeeling. I have the strong feeling this is the same for Ceylon tea.

Someone else will have to describe Bangladeshi food. Though I've eaten meals prepared by guys from Sylhet probably 300 times (we all have, they're the Indian restaurant cook/owner mafia especially in the UK), it's always been half-assed versions of Punjabi preparations. But Pakistani food, once again, reflects the geography and ethinc make-up of the country. It's a very diverse country, hard to describe even in half-a-dozen sentences. There are Baluchis and Pashtuns and Sindhis and Punjabis and Kashmiris, and that's only beginning to describe the main geographic components. There are also tens of millions from all different parts of the subcontinent, who went there post-partition. Anyway, I've not managed to go yet but there are certain things that Pakistan is famous for - each city has signature kebabs, or rice preparations, or certain grilled cuts of meat. Chappli kebabs from Peshawar, Sajji from Balochistan, shammi kebabs in Lahore, etc. In effect, I suppose you could compare Pakistani food best to the range of North Indian non-vegetarian regional cuisines.

Sri Lanka's food ('Ceylon' is colonial, and can be quite offensive) partly reflects the island's ethnic and religious make-up ( Sinhalese/Tamil and Buddhist/Hindu/Muslim/Christian). But the whole mix is made much more interesting by the centuries of being at the center of a trans-oceanic trade as well as the comings and goings of a whole range of colonialists. At various times, the island has been Portuguese. Dutch and British. The first two occupiers particularly left strong impacts on the culture (and food) of Sri Lanka, though the contemporary picture is muddled by the recent near-total migration of the two distinct 'burgher' communities. Anyway, a lot of Sri lankan food is fairly indistinguishable from Indian.The signature items are probably 'hoppers' and 'string hoppers' which are little bowl-like crispy-chewy rice or vermicelli 'pancakes'. You can have an 'egg hopper' which is one of these with an egg cracked (and cooked) in the bowl, and then you eat this with a wide variety of curries ranging from roughly Europeanized and mild to black and fiery. 'Hopper' seems to be a corruption of the word 'appam'. Another famous Sri Lankan dish is 'lampres' or 'lamprais'. It is rice cooked with meat/fish and stock, mixed with a curry or sambar, and then baked in banana leaves. This is apparently somehow of Dutch origin. Then there are all kinds of dishes which Indians would recognize as vaguely anglo-Indian, or the sort of food you can still get at the older Gymkhanas and clubs. Cutlets, potato-chops, croquettes, that kind of thing. -- There are a couple of very decent Sri Lankan restaurants in NYC, and one or two real little concentrations of migrants in the area. The major little community center is in Staten Island, actually, and there is one trade that the Sri Lankans have cornered like Indians have taken over newsstands and Koreans took over corner groceries. Wait for it. If you know it, we now know about you..... ....it's porn. Sri Lankans own most of the remaining porn shops in the city. Odd, but there you have it.

Fine post, whippy. All of that is extremely sensible, a very othodox and reasonable way of going about introducing unfamiliar ingredients to time-honored techniques of cooking. (Also, love that phrase, 'thoughtful masala', it'd make a good jazz-band name) Finally, the recipes for 'Dungeness Tikke' and 'Indian Caesar Salad' are inspired, they sound like perfect (and perfectly delicious) fusion.

The Biriyani Merchant Seems to have its possibilities, and could find a niche in rice-eating countries. Maybe Episure can comment, he's in Bangalore.

Jamaican Oranges is correct. -- Here is the sign from my favorite halal butcher (photographed for a thread in the New Jersey folder). Note the entertaining mis-spellings, "stake" for steak, "champ" for chops, etc.

I'm surprised (very) that all the words are spelled correctly. In the stores near me, there are all kinds of funny transliterations. One example - Jamakan Orens. Can you guess what's being advertised?

This is easily my favorite instant heat gratification food, and we make several versions. The traditional base, as observed in this thread, is a ton of coarsely chopped garlic. Then there needs to be a strong olive oil, we tend to use the intensely aromatic and flavorful Portuguese ones. Then the pepperoncino. Probably my favorite version of this includes some good cured/smoked sausage, finely chopped, anything from linguica to soppresata. And maybe a few finely chopped olives, and then a diced tomato thrown in a couple of minutes before the pasta is added to the pan. No cheese, of course. It's highly satisfying, and takes a round ten minutes to cook - from start to finish.

Great article, Vikram. I just realized that I've been reading and admiring your work in sundry Outlook Traveller issues for a while now. This kind of says it all, and 'traditional-fusion' is a neat coinage. The food is a highly plausible outcome of the Bombay rality, even the regional reality I was talking about. It's not an experiment but a genuine fusion. Or so I maintain. -- This thread will be extremely short, which is fine I guess. But perhaps it can morph into a discussion of something else you (Vikram) said at the beginning of this discussion. What are the others, in the Indian tradition (at home or abroad)? We have lots of restaurants which work on preserving, conserving, traditions. I'd put the dum-pukht and Bukhara's in this vein. But which are the restaurants which are innovating in an intelligent manner? Putting carefully considered new spins on old traditions? Reviving worthy techniques and applying them afresh? I can think of only one, right away. It's called 'O Cozinheiro', and is tucked away in Betalbatim, Goa. There, you have the young Goan equivalent of the monomaniacal chef in 'Big Night', a person so devoted to his loving reproductions of local food that he scorns what is available and bakes his own bread (Goa is a land of good bakers), cures his own meats, makes his own vinegar. The food doesn't stray from the seasonal and the regional, but this is a bright, open-minded, young chef (with years of experience cooking abroad) who is willing to improve and innovate in order to avoid compromise. Goan food, beyond the stereotypical sausages/sorpotel/vindaloo, is terribly represented in restaurants - even restaurants in Goa. Far, far more than the other cuisines in India you have to eat it at private homes. This restaurant, O Cozinheiro, changes that and you'll see it daily packed with the exact same (local) people whose households are famous for their food. It's an expansion of the traditions, see, within genuine homage. And thus a very compelling place to eat. -- You could easily say the same about Swati. Now, where else is this kind of exciting development taking place?

Actually, I didn't mean to leave the impression that Swati is a Konkan restaurant. In fact, it's Gujerati, and made its name as a clean purveyor of Gujju-influenced Bombay street food like sev batata puri and pani puri, etc. It was the only place that I could get away with openly eating that stuff, as a kid. But the more interesting dishes - which have emerged since Swati was redone - are different. These are very fresh and new to my palate, but the underpinnings seem pretty orthodox (speaking in regional terms). For instance, the kokum curry with the jowar khichidi seems like a very plausible item from the Maharashtrian part of the Konkan. Etc. Admittedly, I've never had a jowar khichidi before eating the wonderful version at Swati. Anyway, the geographical strip in question has all kind of long-standing cultural and political ties. For roughly a century, for example, it was part of the larger unit known as the Bombay Presidency (though, granted, this unit encompasses a vast territory including many many totally disparate cultures and cuisines). Anyway, I was hoping to hear more about this suggested fusion aspect of Swati's food from Vikram, who will no doubt be able to describe it extremely precisely. -- It's quite different (what I'm describing) to the 'all Indians are my brothers and sisters' enjoyable culinary mish-mash that might be displayed in an officer's colony tea party, and several giant steps away from the kimchi-stuffed hilsa (or buglogi cooked in mustard oil?) that might result from your interesting personal adventure in cross-cultural affairs. -- Anyway, I've seen it several times and was going to let it slide, but perhaps not. 'Goanese' is much worse than writing 'Parsee', and it's significantly worse than saying 'Keralan' instead of Malayali (or Keralite). At the wrong moment, it's a fighting word. The correct term (which I've also seen you use) is Goan. I know an entertaining old fellow, who when referred to as 'Goanese' in public always used to respond "Go an' ease yourself!" Kindly refrain.

How very odd, I posted (I thought) something quite lengthy to this thread about Busybee, and then it disappeared. But I'm kind of glad it did, because when I searched for it I found a whole thread on the deceased gent.

Totally buy it. Your comments are a bit reassuring because I too have been raving about the place (after only two meals there, though) and it's good to know that it's consistently astonishing. Please do e-mail me the article on Swati, or post it here for everyone. I'm very interested. One thing - You say she's "fusing across Indian traditions", is that strictly true? What are the traditions? It seems to me that the food comes from a roughly contiguous strip of territory stretching along the Konkan coast up all the way to Gujerat, lands which have always related to each other. Anyway, I was not kidding at all when I made reference to New York and the foodie/restaurant scene here. If someone could come close to reproducing that fantastic series of dishes abroad, they'd completely shake the perception of what Indian food can be like. Hell, two meals at Swati certainly managed to shake mine, even in India.

While it's true that food coloring is widely used in India (particularly in sweets), their use in things like the bright red tandoori chicken is geared to Western eyes. You might be slightly unhappy to learn that these dyes can be cumulatively posionous - warning.

Ah, yes. The loving, lengthy, descriptions on how best to pair bhang with almonds, milk and so on. Rather got my attention, I mean it sounds great - get high and address the munchie issue at the same time. -- Phd in Indian lit, eh? Nice going, Dr. Jones.

The thread topic has been nagging at me. If you'd asked me some of the common themes always reliably turned to by Indo-Anglian writers, food would trip off my lips quite early. Yet, when you think a bit harder about it - and I spent a swift two-three minutes walking up and down in front of my shelves - nothing specific jumps out. Yes, Amitav Ghosh's evocation of Penang cuisine in Glass Palace kind of sticks in my mind. But without actually opening up the books on hand, the sight of only two specific books properly jog my memory. Neither are Indian, per se, but what the hell. There is Ondaatje's odd and lovely 'Running in the Family' which had me salivating for certain unknown and exotic sounding dishes (then I figured out what they were). And also Romesh Gunesekara's poignant first novel, 'Reef' in which one of the main character spends much of his time lovingly preparing meals for the other. There must be more, certain titles nag at me unspecifically. But one little, light-hearted, book definitely has some enjoyable food writing. It's a flimsy paperback containing some of the self-consciously humorous English-language essays of the Marathi writer, Gangadhar Gadgil. I know of no one who mentions Gadgil's English writings favorably, and no one (other than me) who particularly likes his writing. He is, putting it mildly, quite unsung (for English, in Marathi letters he's a pillar). Still, this little Laxman-illustrated paperback, entitled 'Crazy Bombay' has often given me pleasure when I'm in a mopey where-is-my-Bombay mood. So, for kicks, I reproduce here a lengthy extract from 'Crazy Bombay', on How to Eat Pani Puri. Ah, Bombay.

By the way, the rubber-limbed and hilaririous Aasif Madvi had a one-man show off-Broadway a few years ago. Sakina's Restaurant traced some of the characters associated with an Indian restaurant on Manhattan's 6th Street (the owner, his sexy wife, customers, waiters, etc). Mandvi played all of them, it quite deserves to be turned into a short feature.

After reading quite a lot in the old threads, I think it would be interesting to make a cross-over, cross-cultural movie - Amma Natural - The Suvir Saran story

Hahahaha!

What's wrong with calling a kathi roll simply (zimbly?) an "Indian hot dog", one wonders. However, I've yet to recover from seeing vadai described on a menu as "savory donuts", so perhaps I shouldn't wish for things I can't handle.

Oh, I'm already sold. Love the Parsi one, have several times re-read (but not cooked from) the Anglo-Indian one, and have approved of (but given away, twice) the Goan one. Passed on the N-E volume, but am rethinking. The Hyderabad one is atop the list for my indulgent (but unsuspecting) NY-bound relative.

I tend to agree with Mongo. That is, we have yet to see a bagel moment or a fortune cookie moment, where Indian food enters the cultural lexicon. My instinct is to be skeptical that it can ever happen, the taste/look/smell of Indian food is so very alien to the residents of Yankistan. But then, it has happened in the UK. Granted, there are specific factors which paved the way, and the Indian migrants to the UK are concentrated in a much smaller territory so their tastes/aromas were far more directly thrust under Brit noses. So, I suppose it can happen here but it will take some a-ha product and some cultural moment that ties into it. Like if Shyamalan makes a remake of his hero's ET, maybe the alien can eat chicken tikka or something. Anyway, the guys who have this restaurant (and its sister concept) seem to have something with potential crossover legs. Now if only they can get some product placement in the next version of Friends.

Scott, These unripe mangoes are sold specifically for making into pickles (achars). There are many many different versions and recipes. They don't ripen, particularly. Here is something you should know about Indian grocery stores in general, and J. City in particular. Certain vegetables, those which are prized in indian cooking, are always better at the decent Indian groceries. If a store has a fair amount of business and regular turn-over, they will buy their groceries from specific distributors which serve the rapidly growing (and very particular) Indian community in the tri-state area. Thus, as a rule, you will always get the best okra, eggplant, green beans, coriander/cilantro and ginger at Indian stores. In general, the prices for these will also be better than at your "regular" supermarket or grocery. My okra, by the way, becomes what is pictured below - one of my all-time favorite vegetable preparations. Yum. yum.