Indian desserts

[Vikram]

my only aversion involved desserts in Indian restaurants. And then, astoundingly, on a trip to India last October, I overcame this last obstruction to my becoming a perfect omnivore. I'll report on the trip, though probably not much about desserts, in the April Vogue. My only confusion now is whether I prefer a good Rasmalai to a fine.....

Hallelujah! I loved your two books, read them lingeringly, limiting myself to as essay a day like really good pieces of chocolate (OK, so occasionally I binged and read five at a time), and I even conducted a long drawn out campaign to get my office - I write for a financial newspaper - to subscribe to Vogue, arguing that it was next to impossible to report accurately on international business trends without regular reference to Vogue. I got unexpected support from an editor who, I think, was more interested in the lingerie models, but I wasn't complaining. And the magazines arrived and it turned out they'd got us British Vogue....

But yes, sitting here in Bombay, it hurt bitterly to read your comments on Indian desserts, and I cried silently into my kulfi, wondering if there were Mexican fans somwhere choking down sobs along with their fried grasshoppers. I can't entirely blame you though. The very few times I've eaten in Indian restaurants out of India the desserts have been generally unspeakable - stale sugary barfis, kulfis that were more crystals that creamy, greasy halwas, and above all, really leaden heavy gulab jamuns, a dessert that is served everywhere, but VERY difficult to get right, even here in India.

Added to that, there's the problem of the extra-sweetness and intense milk flavours, and here there's nothing much that can be done - either you're one of those people who go for it, and such people tend to really trip on Indian desserts, or just hope you get used to it. I note that when people do take to Indian desserts they tend to be things like phirni (rice pudding) or, as you mention, ras malai, which are somewhat less sweet & milky than the average.

The biggest problem though is that food writers, particularly in the US, very rarely seem to try Indian at all, so the chances of them eating good Indian are pretty low (of course, with eGullet's own Suvir in action at Amma the odds for should be rising rapidly). Has Alan Richman ever eaten an Indian meal? After years of reading his stuff in GQ, I've never read of the merest morsel of tandoori chicken passing his lips. So too with many other food writers, which is why it was great to read you've done a trip here and April is too long to wait to read about it.

I only hope for two things. One, you didn't just go to that awful city up north called Delhi and eat north Indian Punjabi-Mughlai food in the course of the Delhi-Agra-Jaipur quickie which is what too many Americans mean by visiting India. That food can be good enough - though not the debased form of it that's the staple of most Indian restaurants abroad - but there's lots more interesting stuff in the regions, so please tell me you went to the south, or came here to Bombay (even Indians don't go to the east, which is a pity, since Bengali food can be fabulous).

And second, if you did get out to the regions, I hope you got out of your hotel room and ate around a bit. It amazes me how many food writers finally come all the way to India and then don't seem to have the guts to get out of their hotel room. A.A.Gill comes and nominates Kandahar at the Oberoi Hotel as the best Indian restaurant ever. R.W.Apple says the best Malayali (not Keralan, you can read my rant on this in the Indian room on this site) food is in the restaurant at, surprise surprise Brunton's Boatyard the hotel he just happens to be staying in.

These aren't bad places, but honestly doesn't it seem to suggest a certain lack of motivation somewhere? I certainly wouldn't expect it of you.... remember, we have ways of reaching your rasmalai...

Vikram

[Jeffrey Steingarten]

Dear Vikram,

I agree with almost everything you've said. Of course, it doesn't matter whether I do or not because I am less of an authority on India, if there is an India, than anyone you could name. And I share your doubts about certain peripatetic food writers' methods.

I spent three weeks in India and my wife spent four. We had been there before, for several months. But that was long ago.

We might have travelled south, where we've never been, but my wife, who as a museum curator in San Diego, has charge of the finest collection of Indian miniatures in the US (they call them South Asian paintings because some are largish, miniature is insulting, and Mughal art is not Indian)--but the Indians still call them Indian miniatures) . This is the Binney collection, and Caron is first to bring it out to the public. Her tutor and helper is Professor B. Goswamy, professor emeritus at Panjab University, and one of the two or three or one greatest experts on the subject. He and his wife live in a nice house in Chandigarh, are very serious Hindus, and have a good young woman cook. They are vegetarian, and that's why my article will be about. We spent six days with them in Chandigarh, and four or five days on the way to , at, and driving home from the Kullu festival, where we ate awful stuff in the hotel and basic stuff in large group at the festival with a group of priests and officiators. (Goswamy is revered all over India and in on every museum board.) Each meal at the festival containing four or five courses of pulses, plus rice, sweet rice, and once bread.

We spent two days in Ahmedabad to visit the Calico museum (Goswamy calls it one of the four greatest unknown museums of the world), where we had one vegetarian meal with Geera Sarabhai and ate little else. And in Delhi, which is not an awful city, of course, it was half restaurants in and out of hotels, and half at people's houses, hospitable people of means. One dinner was co-offered by the daughter of the last Nawab of Rampur, who brought several real Mughal dishes, truly delicious and very softly spiced. The one outstanding hotel meal was at the Mughal restaurant (not the Bukhara) at the Sheraton Maurya in Delhi.

Well, there's a start.

Jeffrey

[Jeffrey Steingarten]

P.S. I should mention that I've eaten rasmalai six or seven times since I feel in love with it in the Punjab (including a meal in Delhi), and I can remember why I used to hate Indian desserts.