Secret Indian Recipes

[Fat Guy]

I've been intrigued to see the in-the-know Indian-food people on this board make casual reference repeatedly to secret recipes, closely guarded recipes, recipes passed down from generation to generation, etc. In my experience with Western cuisines, there are few recipe secrets. Mostly, it's commercial food companies (Coca Cola, Kentucky Fried Chicken), bad Italian restaurants ("That's our secret sauce!"), and the occasional paranoid home baker that try to keep recipes a secret. And it rarely seems to work. For example, a good chef with a good palate can taste most Western foods and deduce the recipes. This seems to be the case all the way up to near the top of the form, where it can get a little tough to figure out Pierre Gagnaire or Ferran Adria's recipes. And even at that level, there's little guarding of recipes. The imperative seems to be to publicize and publish them rather than keep them secret.

Am I pointing to a cultural difference that really exists, or is this just my skewed perception? And if it is a difference, what explains it? And how truly mysterious are these recipes? Can a talented Indian chef not taste someone else's dish and make a pretty good guess what's in it?

[Simon Majumdar]

No it is not your imagination, but I am not sure that this is unique to Indian or indeed any cuisine

In Bengal, each family will have its own mix for Ghanto's ( a dry curry equivalent to Bhuna's in other part of the country ) each one will have its own Chingri Jhol recipe ( my mother's is of course the best - she is btw welsh, but spent many years as a good wife should learning at the feet of Tarmar) and each family will keep records of what has gone in each meal.  These are never shared but then no one would want them as they would dismiss other's recipes as "foolish"

What I think is unique to India is the sheer obsession with food.  I am not saying other countries are not hugely passionate about food, that would be stupid.  I am talking about life threatening obsession.  Our whole family life is predicated around food.  We discuss what we will have for lunch at breakfast, what we will have for supper at lunch and so on.  we can only remember events by what we had to eat and the first conversation we have when we call each other is what are you cooking.

We always say that our way of saying "I love You" is " will you be wanting that prawn/chicken/roti etc"

I think this is reflected in every Indian family whereever they are and which ever bit of the subcontinent they come from

S

[Suvir Saran]

Steven my co-writer for my cookbook has worked with several well-respected and revered French chefs and American chefs. She was an editor with Cooks magazine.  One of the better food magazines in my eye.  She is a French trained chef and has worked with famous and not so famous French chefs.  Lived in France and speaks French.  She has translated the works of some famous French chefs including Alain Ducasse.  She also believes that secrets exist and are often not revealed.  In France, in India and in Egypt or wherever food is cooked and enjoyed.  There are ingredients that are absent in recipe books as we see them.  And those pinches of this and that.. can make all the difference.  And yes that happens in all cooking.

Well any chef can guess what ingredients go into a dish.  It is in their proportion that lies the secret.

Also, there is more meat and produce bias in western cooking.  In Indian cooking, we thrive and live for playing and entertaining spices.  Read, Entertain.  Since, it is in the mastering of the spices full power, that a good chef can make a simple dish seem so much better than just any other chefs rendering of the same old dish.  

When I see entertain, I mean, to understand a spice, one has to understand at what temperature in oil, or ghee or what kind of oil, does a spice give out most of its essential oil.  At what time of the frying should the other spice be added and what in one batch of spice is different from another to change your recipe just slightly.  These are things one cannot share very easily in a cookbook as we see them written today.  And certainly, it takes much experience, learning and entertaining of your ingredients before you get to that learning point.

So, when I say secret recipes, or recipes passed down generationally, I mean, just that.  Those little tricks done by the trained chef, that make a huge difference to the end product.  Not guarding of an entire ingredient list.  Indians will give you every recipe you want willingly.  What you may never get is how they mastered the spices and how they used the spices differently in one home and differently in another.  

In my own cooking, as my co-writer watches me like a hawk, she sees me often do things that I pass off as trivial.  But she makes me stop and documents those little silly details.  As in... Example, a chef trained in the Mughal style of Indian cooking will grind garlic into a paste with the help of a few cumin seeds.  This makes the raw flavor of garlic a little softer and yet leaves the sauce with the savory flavor you need from garlic.  I have not read one Indian cookbook sharing that fact.  And actually, not many Indian chefs know that subtle trick.  

There are many others that are common in kitchens.  And I would love to have chefs you all can find, Indian and non-Indian, come to my home for dinner, and re-create the meal exactly as I made it.  I will give the ingredient list as well.  Believe me..... No one could duplicate the dish.  Nor could I do that with someone else's.  It is plain and simple ego wish-wash to believe our trained minds can create by taste what another creates.  We cannot.  We can make similar results happen.  Will they be close to the one we tasted?  Possible.  Would every subtle nuance be the same?  No.

So, yes... secrets exist and make food interesting and lead us on that journey of discovery.  If all foods could be so easy to prepare, that clean and precise recipes would make things happen, why would we glorify chefs and give them the ego ride they are on and we support?  It is precisely in our knowledge of knowing that some have a way with food better than others that makes us rely on the prior.  If it was as easy as duplicating another's work, we would have clones of each chef existing already.  

In India there is a saying called "Haath Kee Safayee".  Which is close to saying that someone has a green thumb and some have a hand made for cooking.  Maybe someone reading this that knows Hindi can do a better job translating it.

Our romance with food, our indulgence in boards and chats and forums also relies on the food for thought brought out by these secrets and mysteries that prevail all food and cultures.  In those mysteries is the romance of life and living.  What is black and white is easy, but gets to be boring very quickly.

And at least Indian food is based on the moment, inspiration, seasonality, mutability of a moment and personal prejudice.  While one chef may like more cumin in one dish, another great chef would want much less cumin in the same dish.  Another chef tasting the dish would detect cumin for sure, but would not know how much was added.  Since, in toasting, grinding, coarsely or finely, or putting some at the end, in the beginning or raw will change the ultimate cumin experience in a dish.

I hope I made some sense.

[Suvir Saran]

Simon I agree with all you said.  And you could not have said it better.  IN the summer vacations from school in Delhi, I would wake up at 5 AM, only foolish child I knew who did that.  I did so, as I wanted to watch every detail of what happened when my grandmother worshipped and how the statues were bathed, massaged, rubbed with oil, decorated with flowers, their clothes pressed and then the foods these gods were fed and then the birds getting the food to make us believe the gods had eaten them.

At 7 AM a complex and multi-dish and multi-course breakfast would be ready.  Something for everyone's taste and for those with broad tastes.. It would be a feast at 7 AM.  At the feast at 7:00 AM, we were discussing what each child and adult craved for this summer morning.

At 11:00 AM, a summer cocktail was served to quench our thirst and prepare our appetite for lunch.  Panna ( the sour unripe mango punch) or Mango Phool or simply a Rooh Afza and soda.

At 2:00 PM lunch was served... a feast for our young eyes and for our vacationing mind set.  A feast that would be light and yet tasty, as my mother wanted us to get homework done.  But the conversations revolved around food and what we wanted for dinner.  

At 4:00 PM, all the children came up with a snack or two that they wanted at 6:00 PM.  Panditji would start preparing those.  And the battalion of neighborhood kids would be ready for a next hour or two of eating.

At 8:00 PM we would be given another appetite awakener or drink.  Most often just chilled milk or lassi.  

At 9:00 PM we would sit for dinner and talk about the days meals.  What we each liked and what we did not.  Tell my father what he had missed.  And then he would make suggestions for the next day's meals.  From his memories of his own summer holidays.  

And then, in the summer we stayed up way after midnight, and we would often end up going to stalls around the streets to grad a small bite of an Anda Paratha.  A paratha topped with eggs.  A light and simple snack at midnight for those that wanted to chat and be up and enjoy a late night meeting of the minds and feast for the not so hungry stomach.

So, yes, food is an obsession and one that is loved for more than just its ability to feed hunger.  We entertain food.  We study it, debate it and crave it.

[anil]

Secret Recipes - Hmmm, actually it is more like undocumented oral traditions with

on-the-fly changes  

Garam Masala: Many families get individual ingredients, cumin,coriander,turmeric,cinnamon etc. etc. and they are mixed and sent off for grinding to the local small grinding mill. It is here lies the secret no: 1

How many grams of each (or in the past, tolas instead of grams)

Extra spices: Hing,Cloves,Saffron etc. are added individually depending on the regional influences.

Utensils and Oven: The chulas, the handi's, different types of Tavas, Concave-side up,convex-side up.

There are Ofcourse many more subtle variations that go into making each recipe unique. Many substitutions done out of necessity due to unavailability of ingredients.

Finally, adding various spices and ingredients are always done without precise measurements. A pinch here, a extra sprinkle there during the roasting or browning does the trick. Nothing special, hardly documented. No ISO 9001/9002 here

Spending time in any kitchen can easily reveal the secrets. Simon and Suvir have covered the rest quite nicely.

[Suvir Saran]

I think we have demystified the mystery behind cooking have we not?  But as Anil said, only spending time in a kitchen would reveal all secrets.  Cooks Indian or western, will have plenty of secrets till one can see them make the same dish day in and day out.. it is easy to give a recipe.. or detect ingredients.  The mastering of that particular dish in a particular style will not happen till you study every step a particular chef or cook does.  

And Anil correctly points out the very many steps whereby even after knowing a recipe, secrets can remain because of other issues.  Like where the spice was ground.  To what fine gradation, in what proportion.  Then what utensils are used.  How much water is added, when it is added and when salt is added etc...

Thus secrets will be endless and never exposed till we can document every move of a chef.  

And in these secrets also lies the pleasure that we get from food.  For if it were not for the endless unknown possibilities where a cook can play with his muse, the ingredients, a true celebration of taste would not happen.  And  this discussion would be a non issue.  

The mysteries around food and life, make us feel the urge to debate, uncover, unmask or demystify.

[Fat Guy]

Suvir I think you're on to something when you describe Western haute cuisine as expressing a "meat and produce bias." You get a lot of herbs being used in classical French cooking, but very few spices. Black pepper is the main savory spice in French cuisine, with very few others appearing. Even today, I would characterize the use of spices even at the Michelin-starred level as primitive outside of a few exceptional places (Roellinger, et al.). It's a bit more common in New-World fusion restaurants, though it's hardly done with great sophistication outside of a few top places (and Gray Kunz isn't cooking anywhere right now, which impoverishes the whole enterprise of fusion).

So, when you get into forensic analysis of dishes, I think it's pretty easy for a well-schooled chef with a good palate to discern not only the ingredients but also the means of reproducing with great accuracy most Western recipes. Not all, of course. But most. Whereas, when you start getting into spice blends, it's quite a bit more difficult to deconstruct them.

That makes it easier to keep secrets. But does it make keeping secrets the right thing to do? To me, cooking is about sharing. So I guess I'd like some clarification: Is the Indian tradition of secret recipes just a natural byproduct of a cuisine based on spices, or is it something that develops because of a refusal to share recipes? I hope it is, and I am pretty sure it is, the former.

[anil]

.................

That makes it easier to keep secrets. But does it make keeping secrets the right thing to do? To me, cooking is about sharing. So I guess I'd like some clarification: Is the Indian tradition of secret recipes just a natural byproduct of a cuisine based on spices, or is it something that develops because of a refusal to share recipes? I hope it is, and I am pretty sure it is, the former.

While it was for Suvir or respond, let me take a stab at it -

No  & No.  Most Indians would take pride at sharing their recipes; however, in the past generation or two

the transfer of knowledge is under going transformation. Instead of knowing by doing [or], knowing by observing, younger generation [MTV crowd   ] want explicit documentation, and no elaborate manusha about fermentation..... blah, blah!!!!!!!!!!!!!  

Similar observations are being made in Costa Rica, Peru, Belize and needless to say in Brazil and Argentina [again, these are just my humble opinions, based on the past few years]

Most Indian housewifes would take pride in sharing their way of cooking -- PSY101

[Suvir Saran]

Steven,

Below, I am posting some text that was a part of my book proposal.  It may help you understand the many layers of complexity that can take place in Indian cooking.  You will realise then, why it would not be easy to simply create good food from just a precise recipe.  A lot more is involved in the creating of Indian food as one finds in kitchens where food is treated as a pinnacle of perfection.

" From his mentor Suvir learned the religion of cooking, Panditji’s particularly Indian love and respect for the sacredness of ingredients.  To prepare ingredients in India is to “entertain” them – the way one entertains a new idea.  To entertain novelty is to be alive in one’s senses as one touches, smells and sees.  The cook “entertains” his own senses with the ingredients and so imbues the food with what he loves about it.  Suvir learned to respect his ingredients as personalities that invited particular ways of relating.  He was forced to learn to trust all of his senses, not just his sense of taste; because all food was prepared for the gods it was not permitted to be defiled by tasting while cooking.  (This is undoubtedly why Suvir, a vegetarian who never eats meat at all, can cook delicious meat recipes without tasting them.)  He learned how to sense the ripeness of produce in his hands and with his eyes and nose.  Panditji also taught Suvir the culture of Indian cooking: why certain vegetables are cooked at certain times of the day and year and which foods are to be eaten when. "

Then, below is what I do when I teach.  Again, you will see how even as I teach, I teach also the very basic tool that makes Indian food both unique and also very hard to demytify.  The stamp that is left by each cook.  It is unique, cherished and encouraged.

" Suvir is now himself a teacher like Panditji.  He combines this especially Indian respect and love for food with an equally precious respect and love for his students’ learning.  His goal as a teacher is to show his students how to become the artist of their own Indian cooking.  The way he sees it, each student artist needs to be inspired by recipes like the ones he teaches but the food always needs to bear the mark of the student’s own spirit and personality.  Towards this end Suvir walks the students through recipes, identifying each ingredient in terms of what impact it has on the food, how it should be cooked, why it is in the recipe (both in terms of taste and any traditional or cultural associations) as well as what other ingredients may be substituted for it.  This builds a relationship between the student and the ingredients so that the student gains the necessary confidence to experiment in his own kitchen. "

Now, the same writer, Stephanie Lyness that wrote the above pieces, said the following, about her own need to learn about Indian food.

" I wrote an article on how to make Indian curries for Cook’s Illustrated magazine in 1997.  That experience taught me that I needed to translate Indian cooking for myself before I could digest and understand it, or write about it.  In retrospect, this shouldn’t have been a surprise.  Indian cooking is a 6,000 year old art.  It stands to reason that it exists in a culture that thinks about everything – and certainly about food – in ways that are utterly different than Americans do.

When I began researching the Cook’s article I had expected to be able to understand the mechanics of cooking curries by looking through cookbooks and talking to people on the phone.  But I could not learn what I needed to from the written recipes. As a French-trained chef, I’m familiar with the way that French cooking structures dishes around technique; I learned to cook by learning the techniques of making stews, roasts and braises.  It was clear to me as I read the Indian recipes, however, that cooking technique was not the organizing principal behind Indian food.  But beyond that I couldn’t discern what made for the integrity of the recipe.  What defined it?  Why were some spices left whole while others were ground?  Why so many spices?  Could spices simply be varied at the whim of the cook or were the combinations driven by some tradition or technique?  

Then Steven it led Stephanie to question what differences and what similarities existed between Indian and French cooking.  She was digging way deep into the reality of Indian cooking, using her experience as a French trained chef, and this is what happens next.

" I found it useful to consider the cooking process I was studying both in terms of the ways in which it was different from and the same as French cooking.  I pursued the cooks relentlessly about all of their cooking choices – why that spice, why so much oil, what were they tasting for?  Their answers gave me a remarkable context in which to understand the cooking.  I learned about the Indian palate, Indian consciousness, Indian historical and cultural traditions, the intertwining of Indian cooking, medicine and religious practices, and the daily life of that culture.  The more comfortable I became with the cooking, the more its sheer difference excited me.

This work has convinced me that the most effective and satisfying way to teach Americans to love Indian food is to guide them through a similar process of acculturation.  This process will serve to demystify the food for Americans by teaching them how to approach the food without being alienated by its foreignness:  

 1) I want to show Americans how to appreciate the cuisine by way of the difference between American and Indian cultures.  

 2) I want to teach Americans to bring an American eye to Indian cooking but not to Americanize it.  

 3) I want Americans to learn to experiment with the food and make it their own.  

Then as Stephanie and I started cooking together.. we realised how many things we did in common and how much there was that could easily drive the other crazy.  Below are the next set of conversations.

" The difference in our perspectives means that we learn from one another.  My desire as a French-trained cook is to “set” Indian cooking in the context of cooking technique because that is how I learned to cook French food.  Suvir, however, wants to “set” the food as little as possible.  Like Panditji, his cooking is driven by a love of “entertaining” the food.  What is important to him is to be alive in his senses while he cooks, to honor the ingredients and the food.  Although it oversimplifies things, I could describe the fundamental difference between us this way:  as a westerner I ground myself in rules of cooking – that is, in the part of the experience that stays constant.  Into the fabric of those rules I weave flexibility, variation and inspiration.  Suvir grounds himself in the mutability of a moment.  He doesn’t commit to an action until his hand is actually doing it: he measures spices by eye in the palm of his hand and adds just what feels right in the moment of seasoning, sometimes deciding right then to add nothing at all.  So he weaves cooking technique into a medium of experimentation and inspiration. "

And then there were the very similar basics in each of our ways... and here is what they are...

" We find other more surprising connections in our work, too.  For example: probably because of my training I hate compromise in cooking.  As far as I’m concerned there often is a right way to cook something.  (So, for example, if you are cooking a stew that depends for its flavor the meat being browned, the meat must be sauteed for as long as it takes in order that it get well caramelized all over; it probably needs to be cooked in several batches so that it truly browns rather than stewing in its juices.  Shortcuts will rob the dish of its taste.)  But I’m writing for an audience that doesn’t have time for long-winded recipes or preciousness.  Home cooking is food that can be prepared relatively quickly and that also has an integrity to it.  As I talked about this to Suvir he volunteered that simply made food is genuinely a tradition in India, too.  In his country friends regularly drop by each others’ houses and no-one gives notice.  Everybody expects food to be served.  The food is always made to order and the cooking only begins when guests are announced at the gate.  The food has to be quick and fresh, as Americans would like, too.  So in this case Americans need for quick food is answered by Indian custom.  (And we can steal a few cooking tips from Indian households as well: Indian pantries are well stocked, and spices are toasted and ground ahead to have on hand as are spice mixtures such as garam masala.) "

Steven, this should answer your questions on what makes recipes so difficult to duplicate without having a very thorough understanding of the cooking process.  While giving a recipe is easy, it is making it just as the chef who gave it to you, becomes the difficult process.  Unless of course, you have trained at that chefs feet.  What Simon had said of his own mother.  Learning at the feet of his grandmother I believe.  Once you have done that ..... you have studied how that particular person deals with those last minute subtle changes  that are considered correct in a culture that thrives and lives in the moment and is steeped in the romance of the unknown and the unexpected.

So, no one gives incomplete recipes or hides them.  Secrets remain, as they are hard to be shared unless one can find time to learn one on one.  It goes back to the very roots of a tradition, where the religion was also called simply a way of life an "Ism".  While the semetic religions found comfort in having strict codes of functioning, Hinduism never had any one text like the Bible or Koran that people could look at for answers. We had many texts, and like with our food, each text had its own relevance for one special moment of time and for a particular mood.  This is the very basic difference between the Indian psyche and that of the western mindset.  

I do hope, this gives you somewhat of a better understanding about where I am coming from in terms of my understanding of Indian cuisine.

[Fat Guy]

Suvir, I think this all underscores something I've believed ever since I first used a cookbook at around age 12: There is something terribly wrong with the current system by which cookbooks, magazines, and television transmit culinary knowledge.

I'm a writer, and I believe in the power of the written word. I believe that a good enough writer can communicate the most complex ideas in writing, even if those ideas involve art, cooking, or tennis. Of course, hands-on instruction is a great way to save a few hundred thousand words, but if a book fails to teach something, it is in my opinion the author's failure and not a failure of the medium.

I agree with you, and I will go farther by saying I think recipes are not only silly in most cases but also counterproductive to the enterprise of teaching people how to cook. Instead, tutorials on basic techniques and discussions of building block ingredients should be followed by lessons in how to combine and expand upon those basics, in the ongoing pursuit of more and more sophisticated and subtle results.

This is all my way of saying that, while I buy into the notion that many Indian recipes have not been committed to paper in such a way as to make their reproduction possible without hands-on training, there does not seem to me to be any reason why gifted writers such as you can't reduce it all to words and package it in a way I'll understand. If it's a question of how long to roast a spice or a particular method of identifying when the correct level of extraction has been reached, you'll say how long, you'll describe a sound or a smell or a taste. Whatever it is, you'll say it well, I know it.

Is Indian cooking really so complex anyway? I mean, I'm sure at the haute cuisine level it is, just as Western cuisine is, but isn't most Indian cooking extremely simple just as is most cooking everywhere in the world? What percentage of dishes really require training by chefs who have been trained by generations of chefs before them?

Perhaps this is my positivistic Western mindset showing, but I'm not entirely persuaded by all this talk of mysterious intangibles.

[Andy Lynes]

Suvir says - He was forced to learn to trust all of his senses, not just his sense of taste; because all food was prepared for the gods it was not permitted to be defiled by tasting while cooking.  (This is undoubtedly why Suvir, a vegetarian who never eats meat at all, can cook delicious meat recipes without tasting them.)

This is complete anathama to the modern western chef, where the mantra is "taste and taste again" to ensure the optimum degreee of cooking and seasoning has been achieved.  Having said that, everyone palate is different, especially that of the potentialy dehydrated and quite possibly heavy smoking chef.

Steven says -  "I think recipes are not only silly in most cases but also counterproductive to the enterprise of teaching people how to cook."

I know where you are coming from but have to disagree. Once you have obtained a degree of confidence with cooking and can interpret a recipe, they are incredibly evocative. I have read numerous books on music, which have driven me either to listen to an artist for the first time, or hear familiar music with new ears. Recipes can have exactly the same effect. Whilst you may be foolish to adhere to them to the  letter, they can inspire the use of new ingredients, or old favourites in a new way.

[Suvir Saran]

Steven,

I am still thinking of how to answer your last post on that thread.  Comparing Coca Cola and its need to keep their formula secret is not at all what we refer to in the Indian board in regards to Indian food.  In fact, Coca Cola and the American need for dominance and control in some ways, has insulted and changes the lives of many in the world.  Many times for better... and just as everything has two sides, just as often for the worse.  Thus, we all need to tread with care and attention and respect, when we work in understanding and debating that which thrives in another world.

Steven, you and many others that are making references to Indian cooking, are making them with a very myopic eye on Indian food and culture.  I would do the same if I start using my sensibilities do define French or American or even Japanese or Chinese cooking.  While I can debate it with my desire to make intelligent conversation and use as a tool to challenge my horizons, I would fail in making it meaningful until the time that I have given as much respect and time to that foreign culture as I have given my own.  My life and its baggage, give me an ease with which I fall deep into the ocean where spices, languages, thoughts and provocation of my Indian world happen.  I seem to not have that with the other cultures that I love and want to know more about.  It is just natural.  It is human and it is this feeling of being reduced at times to being far less intelligent and in control as we often want to be, that makes us realize how this world is not all about ourselves and our own biases.  There is so much more out there  that needs to be lived and experienced.  And often with little if any contribution from us.  Oftern our hands are tied, our eyes can see but our gift is only of enjoyment.  Not to steer.  We can sit back and enjoy the ride, but drive we cannot.

How many of those that chat on these boards have really been to India, other than those that come from the sub-continent?  How many have lived in homes and worked alongside home chefs?  When we have determined that, we would also realize how few of us really have the very lasting influence that a strong culture can have on something as pivotal to it as its food.  

Indians of all communities, castes and wealth, assign a great deal of importance to food.  Whatever their means, a great meal is prepared.  Each, within the boundaries of their wealth's and resources.  And having said that, I will again bring to you the reason why; Indian food has such distinct mutability within its realm.  

Unlike a perfect puff pastry which all chefs in the west can agree upon for its perfection for some few salient reasons, there can never be a debate such as that when dealing with even an Indian bread, as simple and mainstream as a Naan.  Since within the realm of a Naan... each community, each caste, each religious sub-text and community can have their own unique ways of making that classic dish.

And then, within these sub groups, each household will have their own way of changing those recipes that are common to their own community.  In the world of Indian food, there is very little if any need to stipulate rules and identify winning recipes.  The culture like its religions Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism and also Indian version of Islam, thrive in the love and romance of the unknown and the moment and how best to capture things and adapt them into changing form with the beauty and details of a given moment.

Whereas a lot of the world finds comfort in the black and white world of structure and norm and stability, Indians find stability in knowing they have freedom of expression at every breath they breathe.  No priests, no star chefs and no one housewife has the place in this world to feel they alone know something better.  The unique expression of each life in its many ways of sharing its brilliance with another, is where life is recognized as having been lived fully and with respect for a tradition that has little if any biblical text used as a cannon for life and society.

Each temple, each God, each caste, each sub-caste and each community thrives to preserve and yet live harmoniously with the others.  As seen in any other part of the world, life is not perfect, but it is what it is.  While a good writer and a film maker can strive to document something that is a small part of such a vast land, it remains minuscule and infant when weighed against the gargantuan task of defining the every so fluid base of a culture that has within a very small geographical land mass more languages than Europe and as many dialects as most of the world combined.  

That in itself has led to so much more confusion and grays to deal with.  While there is so much difference already, the freedom with which people who are very different from one another by religious sub groups, language barriers and ethnic differences mingle so freely, they create even more interesting and complex social and cultural perplexities.  These have not been spared in the realm of the food industry either.  So, with that said, each family and each cook within a family, brings the myriad subtleties they gathered through travels and assimilation with things foreign into their own cuisine.  This further complicates that which defines the cuisine.  So, at any given time, while a basic recipe may be very similar from one home to another, the exacting need of thinkers to find one perfect recipe or a perfect way of making one dish, will never find hope in the Indian world of home cooking.  It will be odd, misplaced and also sad.  For that culture, thrives in the multiplicity of its people's social patterns and behavior.

This is also true about its music.  Indian classical music that is considered to be as old as that form of art gets, is just as complex.  And for that reason alone, many musicologists believe, over centuries, we have been unable to document it.  And yet, even after centuries of having been nothing more than an oral tradition, it has maintained its very unique base.  

So, while people can try to find a way of uncovering certain small parts of a great and large culture, it is amusing to find a need to uncover something that has taken thousands of years to form, be uncovered by the fragile sensibility of a human brain, clearly very separated from the culture but in need to define it for their own curiosity.

While critical thinking and curiosity enrich us.  And certainly are the best gifts we have in our human grasp, it is also unnecessary to fit everything into a tangible world, where we can each find solace.  That is where curiosity can falter the one and only time in my book.  

I hope I have made some sense.  I did not want to share with all what I feel very strongly.  This is not the first time I have seen someone try and find great need to see something foreign find an easy fit in the world as we see living in the comfort of our western set ways.

While I will do everything I can in my own cookbook to uncover the secrets in my mind and hands, I will never be able to unmask every detail that I unmasked at every session where I cooked alongside another chef.  It is physically and humanly impossible.  And also not my goal in life.  I have succeeded as a teacher of Indian cooking for one main reason, not my personal brilliance as a chef, but for my ability to train the non-Indian student to learn about the spices, the grains and the ingredients that form Indian cooking and share with them my limited repertoire.  But after making them comfortable with my own ways and my approach, I also have shown them how I would vary my own classic recipe for the next moment, often in the same class, when in prepare that dish again. In seeing that, these students have understood the secret behind Indian cooking. The secret of letting the moment, the mood around you and the passion you are lost in dictate how you work with your ingredients.  

While a lot of this may sound like BS coming from someone who is ethnic, I certainly am very aware of that.  And can only say to you, I am by no ways a leftover of the hippy generation.  While food is my passion and consumes most of my life, I am as precise and organized in my other chores as anyone can be. In fact, those that know me, often wonder if I would have been better off being a Swiss Watch, for my need to be very structured in all other parts of life.

But when it comes to cooking that I have indulged in since the age of 5 to Indian Classical Vocal Music, that I have studied ever since I was 6, I lose myself completely to the romancing of the moment and creating with deep respect for a tradition that thrives in the play of the unknown.  In my grasp to find and explore is an expression that is at once pure, classic and yet full of hope for the unknown.

[Suvir Saran]

Andy,

All I can tell you is that it would have been easier to cook whilst tasting as I went along.  But I grew up in a culture where tasting food is not always considered Kosher.  This was a part of being Hindu.

It took time for me to get the freedom and confidence with which I cook vegetarian cooking to find its way into my cooking of meats.  I needed friends to taste my food, taste it for many subtle nuances, more than just salt, but today, I feel confident spicing and adding salt without feeling the need to have a taster.  My eyes, my smell, my touch and my sense of training my senses for each of these properties has been honed in with many years of trying and failing and finally succeeding.

There are friends of mine, gourmets, that call me the only vegetarian whose non-vegetarian food they will eat and crave for.  So, there must be something just as ok about cooking without tasting as there is about tasting as one cooks.  These are people that I respect for their taste and are visible in the food community as well for being well respected taste makers.  Not that it should matter.  Since even non food business folk should be able to enjoy good food as well.

And Andy, I am not alone in cooking without tasting.  Most Indian chefs do not cook as they go along cooking.  It is considered in poor form.  And then there are many that do.  Like all things in life, there are contradictions that do exist.

Now about recipes, Andy, I do agree with Steve to some extent, but I read recipes and cook books to understand about that food and culture.  While I may never cook with recipes, I do as you write, find a begining, and from thereon, I create what I seem to get inspired into doing.  So, there is a certain relevance to recipes and yet a need to make clear that by no means can a recipe alone give one an experience of a food style.  You articulate very well what recipes can do in your words.

[Fat Guy]

Andy, I'm familiar with the kind of information you're getting from recipes: New ideas for food combinations, etc. Recipes can indeed be evocative. But is the recipe, as it is currently constituted in most cookbooks, the best way to communicate the kind of information you're talking about? Is it even a somewhat good way? I think you're saying that because you're an experienced cook and reader of recipes, you can read beyond most recipes. You shouldn't have to do that.

Suvir, I'll be back soon to address your points.

[Andy Lynes]

Recipes are an inadequate means by which to learn to cook. However, what is the alternative for those of us who do not have a family tradition to follow. Recipes are boring to read and they are certainly boring to write, but what might replace them as a means to document the preperation of food?

[Fat Guy]

It depends on the context:

For the kind of thing I was talking about in my previous post -- communication of possible ingredient combinations (this is what most professional chefs will tell you is the only thing they read cookbooks for) -- lists are a good way to start. No reason to hide the ball: Just say the things that go well with tamarind, the uses for tamarind, and the techniques that flatter tamarind -- and even better say why. Better still are entire treatises on flavor, such as Gray Kunz's latest, where he proposes a theory of flavor and flavor combining. (Of course he still provides recipes, but they are at least functioning within the context of a fully elaborated theoretical structure.)

When discussing technique, an English-language (or whatever language the audience speaks) description of the technique is best.

And when communicating precise formulae -- yes I do think recipes have a place, as in some baking applications -- the professional recipe format followed in culinary-school texts (where mise-en-place requirements are listed out as such, followed by technique steps that rely on agreed-upon terminology for clarity) is far preferable to the recipe format known to consumers.

Finally, if we are to have recipes from chefs, let them be real. The recipe as currently constituted in the mainstream culinary media is a patronizing hoax from which few people can actually cook anything. You will rarely see a cookbook present the actual recipes of a chef. Such books contain, overwhelmingly, dumbed-down adaptations.

Still getting back to you, Suvir.

[Andy Lynes]

I agree with you, and I will go farther by saying I think recipes are not only silly in most cases but also counterproductive to the enterprise of teaching people how to cook. Instead, tutorials on basic techniques and discussions of building block ingredients should be followed by lessons in how to combine and expand upon those basics, in the ongoing pursuit of more and more sophisticated and subtle results.

Four words : "Think Like A Chef"

[Fat Guy]

Now, back to Suvir's comments.

"Cooking in the moment" is a phrase I first heard used by Charlie Trotter, though I believe one of his people told me he got it from the East. There are a few other Western chefs I'd describe as running restaurants where cooking in the moment is the guiding principle. Pierre Gagnaire comes to mind.

What does cooking in the moment really mean, though? To me, it still gets back to basics. Isn't cooking in the moment just the process of taking a dish you already knew how to make, and perhaps altering it a bit? Or taking a bunch of ingredients and applying the techniques you know to the combinations you're sure will work? We're not talking about inventing whole new dishes in the moment, at least not most of the time. We're talking about small departures. Small departures from what? A standard repertoire. It is this standard repertoire that, I submit, we should be able to reduce to a set of written instructions.

Suvir, the examples I'm thinking of based on what you've written seem to consist mostly of altering the ratios in spice mixtures. That seems significant, but not radical. Is much else changing about recipes from household to household?

I understand that India is many regions. So are Italy, France, and others. India is bigger, for sure, and has more regions. But eventually you get down to whatever is the smallest unit of meaningful differentiation, and there you should find culinary common ground.

As for the inspiration and confidence necessary to depart from the standard repertoire, certainly more skill and experience are necessary. But I don't see this as a difference between Eastern and Western cooking. Housewives in Italy and elsewhere have been doing this same sort of thing for centuries. What two Italian households make the same dish exactly the same way?

Indeed, you see in Italy a situation quite similar to what I imagine the situation in India will be as the country becomes more industrial: The housewife-as-cook is no longer as common, and the old ways are dying out. And much to everyone's surprise and chagrin, nobody in Italy seems to have bothered to codify thousands of regional dishes that were common knowledge just 50 years ago. Now that project is underway, at least in part, aided by various foundations. I hope someone in India is getting started on this project too.

So different households make dishes differently. That doesn't prevent us from figuring out the master recipe for that dish, from memorializing in writing the procedures common to all or most variants of the dish, and from applying the scientific method. Never underestimate the scientific method. Just because something has never been codified, does not mean it can't be codified. I may be myopic, but I have yet to meet a culinary challenge that logic wasn't up to tackling.

I don't know enough about Indian classical music to address that point. I'm hoping Steve Plotnicki does and can help us out here.

[Suvir Saran]

Steven,

Indian classical music and Indian cooking can be codified for sure.  And you will have success with it as well.  Will you be coding a master recipe that is a master recipe to all people in India?  Nope.. You cannot even begin to make that happen.

Differences between India and Italy are many.. And similarly between India and many other countries and cultures.  Did you know that India a predominantly Hindu country also houses the world's second largest population of Moslems?  Did you know India also has the world's largest chunk of a very small living population of Parsees?  India also houses Jains, Sikhs, Buddhists ( some pure vegetarian and others eating some meats ) and many other religions.  Christianity came with the British and the other colonists from the west, and has also taken a very Indian form.  Then, like in the west, each of these religions has many of its own denominations and in a language where unlike in Italy, you also are talking of at least 16 very different languages; each of these religions and culture has been further changed by the very basic differences that occur from area to area.

Just this afternoon, my Bangladeshi bad driver had tears in his eyes, after I sang Aamar Shonaar Bangla whilst sitting at the back.  It is the national anthem of Bangladesh.  Written by Nobel Laureate Rabindra Nath Tagore who is celebrated both in India and Bangladesh.  And respect dearly and fanatically by both his Hindu and Moslem fans.  While Tagore was Hindu, his poetry did not have borders.  It affected all that read it.  So, this taxi driver today, could not believe looking at my features that I was Bengali for one, and then, he could tell by my unease in communicating in Bangla that I did not speak the language.  When asked why he cried, he said he was shocked that I sang without an accent and sang it like Rabi Daada ( an honorific for the grand old poet ) would have envisioned the song to be sung.  He said he cried for he knew wherever Rabi Daada was, he too was crying in happiness for his poetry was alive in the US with my rendering of this classic.

So, I was deeply moved.  He seemed very quiet.  I asked why.  And he looked back and said something to the extent of that; the British have raped us.  They have created a deep wound in a part of t he world, where there was so much difference already, that this religious divide they created, has confused people just so much more that now, they are losing it completely.  When I egged him on for more, he came out with the logic that within India are cultures that are as diverse as the US is in comparison to China.  And yet, he said, we lived closely and peacefully till the British hacked into our spine and carved us as ruthlessly as they carved on those spiced legs of lamb that they fell in love with in India.  He said our languages divide us; our food is foreign as we move from one part to the other, our features change and our religions change.  What kept us together was a common sense of hope and love for that which was different and new, but now, politicians from within and outside are using our differences to divide us and use that division for their advantage.

That said, you would perhaps understand where Italy and India couldn't be compared.  And yet, many of the things you say make sense.  Italy cannot boast 16 languages, hundreds of dialects and millions of people practicing unique and different religions.  What these diverse facts of life have left India with is the bare mix of things very different and unique t hat have been forced to come under a union where pluralism in very important and yet, since any union comes with at least some cross pollination, we see some places where things have been married.

While it could be easy to go back to the 10th century and hope to recover the master recipe that was used by the then relatively pure Hindus in their cooking, but where does one even begin to find a trace?  While one can read some history books and see from a British perspective for the most part, a very narrow and biased view of the Indian culture, one has not much more to fall back upon.  10 centuries of fusion cannot be traced back in time accurately and without our own biases corrupting any realm of accuracy.

All we can do with our scientific tools is to make a very humble and very primary scratch on that thick surface that is impenetrable for the most part.  And has been thickening with every generation of people that have lived in India since the 10th century.  

Yes Tandoori foods are common to the north, but even in that limited repertoire, we now have in India many variations and each being very grounded in its history.  And for centuries so as to not make it fit for dismissal as being a master recipe.  And so, for a plain Chicken Tandoori, you will find recipes that are slightly different, to very different and some radically different from one another.  People are allowed to add, subtract and alter a recipe of a classic to leave their own very unique signature.  And no one will complain.  The recipe will simply be called a Chicken Tikka cooked by Steven and how wonderful it was.  And so on and so forth.  People will love the change... miss how their grandma did it, love what you did with it.. And feel no need to belittle your efforts and will accept them as your own way of making something they find familiar.  Sometimes just in name.

Take Kadhi ( made in northern India with yogurt and chickpea flour ) it changes from home to home in northern India.  It is sweet and very different in form in Gujarat. In the south Mor Koirambha is a version similar to it and certainly one could assume as having similar roots centuries ago, but little common flavor profile today.  So, while each Punjabi family may think they have the perfect recipe for a Kadhi, the Gujeratis think theirs is better and the South Indians in love with their own.  And yet, they each love tasting the others and learn to make it from the other.  But not to change it, call it a master recipe or a recipe that is different.  

Indian classical music like Indian cooking begins with the structure of set notes allowed in any given raga.  And once the notes are understood, the singer or instrumentalist have the freedom to create that which gives them peace, provokes their soul and fulfills their need to be one with their art.  But at no time are they supposed to duplicate that which they have done before.  Follow the lead of a master or feel stifled by the limit set by the notes stipulated in the Raga.  Many singers, after years of having shown their brilliance in music, that are then honored as grand master, have been allowed to borrow notes from another raga, alter a note just so slightly and also meld a tune in ways that would seem incorrect to those that study a raga purely as a science but seem diamonds being encrusted in a piece of jewelry to fill those places where luster was necessary. In that change in the very structure of the original raga, the grand master has shown how little changes that come from his or her rendering of a raga; they leave an indelible mark on it for posterity.  Their proven brilliance in performing that raga in its chaste form over several years gives them the ultimate freedom to even change that which most others cannot every think of doing.

This translates into food.  While we may think Saag Paneer (spinach with Indian cheese)  as we eat in Indian restaurants may be of a standard that is close to what the master recipe could be.  We are wrong in assuming so.  The recipe would change from home to home.  Restaurant to restaurant. Chef to chef.  Only thing common will be the use of spinach and Indian cheese.  Each home I went to as a child had its own version of this classic dish.  And each version had its own very unique attributes.  It was not alone in the spices used but also in how the cheese and spinach were handles.  Some pureed the spinach, some chopped it finely some coarsely and some left the spinach leaves whole.  Others kept the cheese plain; some flavored the cheese with herbs and spices.  Some added fenugreek greens to the spinach.  And those that used fenugreek chose at the mood of t he moment to use it fresh or dried.

So, the idea of finding a master recipe is a great one.. But Steven, it is not something most people in India that I have met with in the food industry or even at homes care to do.  It does not come for fear of technology, since India provides just the US with a rather HUGE percentage of technology people. Larger than our minds can imagine.  For an ethnic group that forms one of the smallest chunks of the US population, the engineers, the doctors, the computer scientists and venture capitalists that have Indian ethnicity is frightening.  When one looks that these percentages for each of these professions, once realized how such a small group of people have such a high presence in these industries.  So, by no means is it daunting to an Indian to be scientific about all of this.  It would be easy.  I know my own brother did that with food.  Even as a young boy, he wanted to stipulate what everything was and what it did.  And this young boy that then studied electronic and electrical engineering came home after school as someone far in awe of the magic that can happen in kitchens where we do not just want order.. But from chaos, chefs create exciting new renderings of classics every time they cook.

Sambhaar that most wonderful southern Indian daals has as many variations as there are southern households and southern Indian restaurants.  In Bombay it is made sweet and to my taste very poorly, but is loved by those that have grown up in that region.  In New Delhi it is cooked to the exacting standards set by the owners that live in the north but are pious southerners.  In the neighboring states of Delhi where Sambhaar is made by locals who ate it in Delhi and fell in love with it, it has become a totally different animal.  There are many similarities. But a pronounced difference in taste.  But to tell any of these people that their recipe is wrong opens up the whole issue of whose is the correct one?  Since even within southern India there are so many variations of this one classic.  It can be cooked with some sugar in some homes even in the south.  Some would make the sambhaar powder fresh every time and also do a tarka with it at the end of the dish as done to most Daal recipes in the north.  Some add garlic to the recipe.  Some would find that offensive.  Some add coconut to the recipe, other south Indians would be aghast that the thought of that.  SO there is another example of where and how can one find that master recipe.  

I can only give master recipes from my kitchen.  And they can be called Suvir Saran's Indian Home Cooking.  It will be Indian in that I have made it.  With my understanding of what Indian food is and can be.  And will showcase my biases from my own upbringing and my travels and my forays into the culinary world.  

Not many in India speak all of its languages.  And certainly not today.  So, even translating that work becomes very difficult.  In translation much is lost.  But a good translator can make up

[Suvir Saran]

But at the core of this debate, lies the fact that we are dealing with a culture that is not interested in pontificating and preaching that which is in human control. Rather, this is a culture that thrives in the logic that what we have today can be gone tomorrow.  Enjoy today for tomorrow is not ours for certain.  Make the most of this moment.  And in this lies the freedom with which one can express oneself, create, change and alter, as one feels free.  While the illiterate many of India can be very logical and resilient, the rich can be the same and also totally in control of their finances and businesses while being also controlled by the myriad unknown factors that affect many of their decisions.

Steven, all of this is very easy to correct on paper and yet not as easy to work with in reality.  I like you, would love to see it all on paper, perfect, coded and shared for posterity as gospel truth on Indian cooking. But the Indian in me, cannot even think of doing that as a blanket effort in regards to Indian cooking.  While I am doing that with my own limited cooking repertoire, I cannot fathom beginning that with Indian cooking in general.  I seem to know my culture, my own people and what makes them tick.  It would be a shame to make stagnant a culture where one can thrive in a moment being lost in history.  A culture where even today, you can enjoy every luxury afforded us by industrialization and yet be walking on a soil as old as time.

The romance of India, if there can be any left after seeing the teeming millions that live below the poverty line, is the romance of being in a place and time where nothing else can dominate.  What encompasses you completely and totally is that moment, the surroundings and the many layers with which the people, the culture, the climate and the food affects you.  Even as you see the teeming millions starve even as your own western currencies can buy you luxuries these people will never know, you see in their eyes joy and happiness and hope we can never have.  In their misery they find some semblance of happiness.  They find some little nothing to cherish.  They find in poor limited means a way to celebrate life and food.  You love them for being such great humans.  For it is easy to be angry and hateful when desperate and destitute, but for the most part, these are people that are far from angry and hateful.  But also, in that beauty of being comfortable, one wonders, that perhaps it would be better for their own good, if they revolted and were up in arms protesting their sad lot in life as compared to their own fellow citizens of India and of the world.

A train journey through India, taken while traveling in the second class unreserved car could give you a glimpse into the India you so want to see coded for clarity, but can never fit into a mold.  Scores of people fill a car where 6 people should have been sitting.  People with little if any money; share with one another food that has been packed by loved ones.  Simple home made flat breads and most often dry potato dishes ( Indian home fries ) are the most common fare.  And as people take out these humble eats, one sees how each persons dish is similar in form, but distinctly different in taste.   Everyone shares with the other.  And for the sole purpose of discovering how each persons family cooks the same classic differently.  No one tries to condemn one recipe over the other.  Or feel any one recipe has more closeness to the master recipe in comparison to another.  People simply live that hour of feeding their appetite and breaking bread together for what it was meant to be.  A social setting that can break the ice between strangers and endear those that could easily have been stereotypical adversaries.

It is a profound journey for the many reasons that come up when you are there.  One sees in a confined setting, every possible nuance of life and history and culture that one could want to see.  And one sees the very best and the very lowest that life can show one.  Poverty and richness living side by side. The ancient and the very modern thriving in the same little car.

And Steven.. I only share a very biased and humble opinion of Indian food and culture.  Every Indian will have their own take on this and most any other topic.  So, you will have to find the answer for yourself as you travel there and spend time living in that land of many contradictions.

A social and food historian of sorts in the US said of India and his first trip to India, as having changed him for life.  Just as he had been warned.  I talk of what Michael Batterberry, the founding editor of Food Arts Magazine said to me.  Many others have said that same thing to me.  Again and again.

[Jinmyo]

Sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to say that I think, with a bit of editing, Survir Saran and Steven Shaw's conversation might be put to good use perhaps not in Survir's current book but one in the future.

[Simon Majumdar]

I have to confess a familial link ( although a very slight one ) to Tagore as he was close friends with my grandfather who was a young surgeon in calcutta at the early part of the century.

Fat Guy - I think the analogy of Tagore is an interesting one as although his poems knew no bounds, he realised that they needed to be translated to reach a wide audience.  His first translator was the wonderous Priestley ( who carried a copy of Gitanjali around with him every day of his life ) and Tagore cried when he read it because Priestley had caught the majesty of his words ( the first poem he translated, I think was Unending Love ) However,  He always complained that taking his poetry from bengali and translating was like looking at it thru smoked glass.

This is how I feel about recipes for Indian food.  They are a necessary vehicle if the food in its superb reality is to reach its deserved audience, but by the same necessity they are debased the moment they arrive on paper.  Ingredients become prescribed as do quantites.  This is not baking, this is cooking, it is an expression.  This is not a symphony it is a variation on a theme.  Recipes take on an importance they should not.  They become set in stone, so people speak in absolutes.  You cannot do that with Indian food.  What I call a Ghonto would be unrecognisable to Suvir, but just as valid.

Indian households have recipes but they are usually vague and orally transmitted ( with such a low literacy rate that is hardly surprising ) and can be as little as "put some salt in"  when you ask how much, my aunt ( again a wonderous Bengali cook although she is Fillipino - don't ask ) will say "it depends on how I feel"  Co-incidentally, that is the same thing she says about opera ( she was a soprano at the Met for years ) and how pieces should be sung.

I guess this is a long winded way of saying that Indian recipes are a useful starting point and worthwhile.  I don't think someone with the skill and passion of Suvir would waste time and energy on a book if it was pointless.  But, and it is a massive but, they can only ever be a starting point.  Indian cookery above all others is a journey and while you don't have to take it alone, no one is going to carry you, you have to figure it out for yourself

S

[Suvir Saran]

Simon... you have shown your majesty with words yet again.  Very well said.  I would never think that recipes are not relevant or necessary, I only point to a very strong need in understanding how limited they are when dealing with a vast knowledge that recipes or even an oral tradtion alone cannot teach or document.

One needs to absorb, assimilate, stew with and live these recipes day in and day out. And after that, you still have only the very limited repertoire of a very small minuscule part of the Indian realm.  

One of our biggest victories and our losses is the very loose identity we Indians have about being Indian.  We tend to love being Gujarati, Bengali, Panjabi, Maharashtrian, Goan, Tamil etc.. before being anything else.  And then within those large groups we are still brahmans, baniyas, khatris etc.. and each of these changes our culture and lives dramatically.

It is very foreign to other Asians and so easily beyond any comprehension to a western way of thinking.  One is certainly not better than the other.  It just is what it is.

[Suvir Saran]

jinmyo,

would you want to publish that book you see in Steven and my thoughts? We are ready to get the advance.  I am speaking for Steven without knowing how he feels.. but certainly, I am ready... show me the money..

Kididng.. Thanks for your encouraging words in this lengthy dialogue.

[Fat Guy]

I want to make clear that I am not speaking here as an advocate of recipes -- that should be clear from my posts on this thread. I am for the most part anti-recipe. Or at least, I think contextless recipes are worthless, while recipes given in a particular context (i.e., where all the underlying techniques and assumptions have been defined) are more like checklists than recipes as we have come to know them

What I'm speaking in defense of is the power of the written word. Perhaps it is true that in order to appreciate Indian cuisine fully, one needs to travel to India. I suppose it also helps, in understanding French cuisine, to travel to France. But what is learned by such travel? Whatever is learned, should be able to be written down. No matter how surprising it is, that surprise should be able to be communicated by a good writer.

Words can be a surprisingly effective substitute for real-world experiences. And for most people in the world, the closest they will get to most experiences in one lifetime is reading about them (or hearing about them, or seeing them on TV). Of course one needs some common ground, a certain cultural literacy as it were, in order to make the interpretive leap from what is written to what is being written about. But a good writer is defined at least in part by his ability to exploit that common ground for the purposes of communicating that which lies outside the common ground.

So all I'm saying is that Indian cooking -- any cooking -- is at the most fundamental level a series of steps. Especially in terms of basic, underlying techniques, those steps can and should be recorded in words. When it comes to taking those basic techniques and turning them into impromptu recipes that are personal to the chef, sure, that's a different story. I still think you can take a snapshot of any such recipe, but I agree there might not be much point.

But again, as I understand it, we're not talking about creating whole new recipes. The difference between a particular dish in one household and in the neigbhoring household is not fundamental. It is in the details. So what is fundamental and common to the two dishes can be recorded. And the details, which are changeable, can no doubt be described as variables with which one can work.

I'm sure that visiting India is a life-altering experience. But I'm not sure it's a necessary step in the reproduction of Indian food. I really think that in all this overarching discussion of cultural differences, we're overstating the complexity of the act of cooking. Yes at its highest levels cooking is an excruciatingly complex endeavor. But at the level of the average home cook in the average Indian village, just how complex is it really? Perhaps more complex than what occurs in the average American home. But complex by the standards of serious amateur cooks like you find on this site? I doubt it. I think we're tough enough to learn the basic repertoire through secondary sources.

Perhaps if I went to India I'd see it differently. But I've traveled a fair amount, and I come home from most places saying, "See, people are pretty much the same everywhere." Cultural differences in my opinion serve mostly to obscure our fundamental sameness as human beings.