On comprehending Indian cuisine

[John Whiting]

In the early 1980s Varadarajan, a Minister at the Indian High Commission in London, organized a remarkable series of intimate recitals by some of India’s greatest classical musicians. These were held at the October Gallery, where my sound studio occupied the basement, and so I was asked to amplify, balance and record the concerts.

I had listened casually and with pleasure to Indian classical music, but knew nothing of its intricacies. There were no scores; no books could tell me what I had to hear. And so I placed microphones where I was told and made adjustments as instructed by the musicians who left the ensemble one by one and listened to the balance among the others.

Gradually over several concerts I began to feel the music as an entity. I was able to anticipate and adjust as one musician, then another emerged from the texture for an extended improvisation (which a jazz musician would call a riff) and then submerged again into the totality. A smattering of applause would often see him out, and I began to appreciate just what had given the audience pleasure. My proudest moment came when the great Ravi Shankar ended a pre-concert sound check after a couple of minutes with the comment, “It is good. Don’t change anything.”

This is very much the way that children growing up in a community learn to understand the strange noises that float about their ears, gradually realizing that many of these sounds convey information. There is no instruction, only repetition, in which certain sounds accompany particular objects, events or emotions. These sounds become “words” and begin to relate to each other; gradually a “generative grammar” gives them a collective meaning.

Children who grow up in a kitchen are apt to learn about food in much the same way. Step by step they may observe what takes place as what comes out of the basket turns into what goes into their mouths – in other words, they learn cause and effect. What they learn and the way they learn it will be conditioned by the cuisine that surrounds them, including the dishes, the tools, the pots and pans, the ingredients. These in turn will influence how the food is handled: whether it is chopped, cut or torn apart, whether ingredients are mixed by hand, by spoon, by fork or by machinery. What are the stages? Is there intermediary cooking or does everything go straight into the pot at once? Is there an effort to save time or are processes allowed to set their own inherent schedules?

For occidental and oriental cuisines there are very different answers to all these questions. For instance, to watch an Indian cook pulverize and sear the seeds and spices before adding the other ingredients one by one to the pan is to enter another culinary world. Even the manner of eating may be foreign to us. As M.F.K. Fisher observes in her introduction to Shizuo Tsuji’s Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art: “Our physical habits are different [from the Japanese], so that we chew and swallow and sip and raise food to our mouths differently, with different tools.”

In the West, our post-Beeton recipe-oriented approach to cookery assumes that any dish, no matter how foreign to our experience, can be created by measuring out the specified ingredients and following a sequence of instructions. But as John Thorne reminds us in his Simple Cooking, “[C]reativity is a one-way street: very few cooks are willing or even able to afterward evoke the ferment, the confusion, the groping before the moment that shaped the dish. What we get instead is a rationale that works backward from the finished dish, a rationale that makes everything seem as if it had all been clear and obvious from the start.” If this is the case with dishes from our own gastronomic tradition, how much more are we deceived when a brief recipe pretends to include the relevant input of an entire foreign culture?

In an era which attaches a monetary value to every aspect of our existence, the creative impulse behind the food we eat must be established as someone’s intellectual property and quantified in relation to the competition. Thus the celebrity chef at the top of his profession must approach every new cuisine, not as part of a culture to be respected, but as a treasure to be confiscated. Sophisticated diners will come to his restaurant equipped with score cards on which they will rate his success in displaying his trophies so as to massage, seduce, astound or ravish their eager palates.

So how, finally, can we properly understand a foreign cuisine? Few of us have the opportunity of absorbing it directly from its masters, even those living in our own country. Even fewer may learn it as Fuchsia Dunlop absorbed Sichuan cuisine, by learning Chinese and going to live in the province for a couple of years. Our most probable source will be books written by those who know – or pretend to know – the cuisines we want to discover. But as Thorne wryly observes, most cookery book writers cite few sources, speaking as though they had invented their subject from scratch. And so one is forced to consult a selection of the most plausible authorities and observe carefully the various ways in which they argue among themselves. Trying them out in the kitchen, one learns gradually what methods and materials are best suited to one’s own tastes and resources.

In coming to terms with the foreign and the unfamiliar, we must above all approach it with humility. We can’t instantly transplant ourselves into an alien culture but neither should we attempt to force it into the straightjacket of our own culinary tradition. As Diana Kennedy constantly reminds us, we should never try to adapt one cuisine to another, but instead adjust the two of them to each other. This, after all, is what is happening throughout the world as the traditional barriers of time and place are broken down by migration and communication. Just remember – the ever-expanding and interlocking panorama of global cuisines is not solely the prerogative of the rich. The lowly Spam is now a native of Hawaii.

©2002 John Whiting

[Sandra Levine]

This issue has been on my mind for a while now. I love Indian food. I cook Indian dishes, too, but always using recipes form one source or another. But, I am unable to improvise a dish that I have any confidence in, although I am able to cook respectable Italian or French-style homestyle food out of my head.

Perhaps total immersion would help, but that is not practical at my stage of life.

[jaybee]

John, are you a tiger in lama's clothing? Your article is entitled "comprehending Indian cuisine" and apart from the intriguiing music metaphor and a sentence or two about pulverizing seeds, you set about to bash the use of recipes, western tastes and values. Is the implicit conclusion that if one is to comprehend Indian cuisine, one must free onseself of the corrupting economic values of capitalist food culture?

If cooking food is, in part, an art, then the cook-artist must empathise with the cultural and social essences of the cuisine and be able to impart these in his/her food. Spending a few hours in the cramped kitchen of Yves Culliere, owner/chef of La Grille in Paris taught me that there was more to making his superb beurre blanc sauce than knowing the ingredients and their proportions. In fact, the "secret" could not be written down. it had to be absorbed from being with him as he worked.

Several years ago I made my first (and only) trip to Thailand. I had virtually no experience with Thai food before landing in Bangkok. Fortunately I had an excellent and knowledgable Thai host who helped me to sample a range of Thai cooking, from lowly street food to the most refined dishes. With a lot of excusions, in a week's time I had a pretty good appreciation and comprehension of Thai food. I doubt that I could have reproduced any of the dishes I loved without a lot of trial and error. And with my best effort, I would have fallen far short of impressing my host.

If by "comprehending" food, you mean understanding how its tastes and flavors are arrived at, one has to be prepared to work at it, with guidance from a knowledgable source. If "appreciating" food is what you are writing about, I have no more to do than put in in my mouth. If by "humility" you mean not being an arrogant capitalist pig who thinks he can do anything with enough money at his disposal, your piece belongs in the off-topic chat board.

[Gavin Jones]

Spending a few hours in the cramped kitchen of Yves Culliere, owner/chef of La Grille in Paris taught me that there was more to making his superb beurre blanc sauce than knowing the ingredients and their proportions.  In fact, the "secret" could not be written down.  it had to be absorbed from being with him as he worked.

So his beurre blanc is not commoditisable. And you are in full agreement with John.

Or am I completely misunderstanding you?

[jaybee]

So his beurre blanc is not commoditisable.

By definition Culliere's beurre blanc sauce is not and could not be a commodity. Could it be commercialized? Probably. Would the commercial product be as good as Culliere's at the restaurant? Probably not? Would people who used it enjoy eating it? If it were made well, probably. Would Culliere be interested in starting a business to bottle and sell his beurre blanc sauce commercially? I can't speak for him, but my guess is, yes. (I will ask himthe next time I eat there). If he did, would he be less of a beurre blanc artiste? A less admirable man? That's his call.

Do you understand me now?

BTW, commoditisable is not a word, unless you like corporate-speak.

[Simon Majumdar]

Ho Hum

I see JW has managed to cause some more friction in his usual inimitable way.

What he is really doing in his "article" is deal with the usual knee jerk western reaction to their own guilt brought on by cultural imperialism, be it ancient or modern.

I always shudder when people talk about "humility' in their discussions of India.

a) Because it is f**king patronising

b) Because, believe it or not, India and Indian Cuisine is perfectly capable of standing on its own two feet and does not really need the support of Westerners whose teeth are set on edge because their fathers have eaten sour grapes ( to paraphrase the prophet Jeremiah )

Indian cooking is a living form not some atrophied museum piece. Quite frankly so is Indian music. To treat them as if they are some alien entity that one must prostrate ones self infront of ( or should that be "submerged again into the totality" ?) is to misunderstand the nature of cooking, India and Indian cooking.

Someone, somewhere has been watching too much Merchant Ivory when they should have been listening to Bangra

S

[Brad S]

Not sure if this is appropriate or not,but anyway.

I have started to become very interested in Indian cuisine because of the many excellent posts in this forum. For me..being a chef.it's an oppurtunity to learn about something so weaved in the fabric of cooking history that I feel somewhat energized by it.

Most American chefs were trained in the "classic" European technique,so after my 23+ years in kitchens I find it absoluty wonderful to study the cuisines of India,Asia and the middle east.

I find that I cook better when I have read and learned about the cuisine I am cooking,when I use spices I look at them diffrently now then before because I studied the spice trade of the middle east,somehow knowing the origins of what your using elevates your passion about it.

I do not really understand the point of the posted article,but I guess it is just another oppurtunity for me to learn from your replies to it

[Fat Guy]

In the West, our post-Beeton recipe-oriented approach to cookery assumes that any dish, no matter how foreign to our experience, can be created by measuring out the specified ingredients and following a sequence of instructions.

I happen to agree with that view of cookery, and I'd love to defend it. I can't see how this thread promises to do anything but degenerate into a flame war, though. Maybe we can all ditch the emotional baggage left over from other threads and just have this discussion. It would be a shame to create yet another situation where the only option for a reasonable user is to ignore the whole thread.

[Gavin Jones]

I have no wish to rehash tedious old arguments.

Sandra's response seemed the most apposite, to me.

I am deeply apologetic for commoditisable. However I am sitting next to a leaflet which refers to 'architecturalizing the vision', so I have been led astray, no excuse though.

Probably it would have been better for John to have written on 'comprehending German cuisine' - it might have lost any sense of cultural cringe.

[John Whiting]

I'm not going to defend statements which I neither made nor implied. Nor will I bother to defend concepts which came straight out of those trendy lefties, MFK Fisher, John Thorne and Diana Kennedy. Having been assigned to the Commie contingent, I suppose I must wear my hammer and sickle with good grace.

[Fat Guy]

the "secret" could not be written down

Is there any more you'd be willing to say in support of that statement, even in light of your opinion that words ultimately won't do the trick?

[Fat Guy]

Having been assigned to the Commie contingent, I suppose I must wear my hammer and sickle with good grace.

We appreciate the good behavior of our Commie contingent.

[Simon Majumdar]

Not sure if this is appropriate or not,but anyway.

I have started to become very interested in Indian cuisine because of the many excellent posts in this forum. For me..being a chef.it's an oppurtunity to learn about something so weaved in the fabric of cooking history that I feel somewhat energized by it.

Most American chefs were trained in the "classic" European technique,so after my 23+ years in kitchens I find it absoluty wonderful to study the cuisines of India,Asia and the middle east.

I find that I cook better when I have read and learned about the cuisine I am cooking,when I use spices I look at them diffrently now then before because I studied the spice trade of the middle east,somehow knowing the origins of what your using elevates your passion about it.

I do not really understand the point of the posted article,but I guess it is just another oppurtunity for me to learn from your replies to it

I suspect that the article ( a La most of Pere Whiting's posts ) was not meant to be understood, but was posted for a whole different reason

I think your view is a correct one in that one should have respect for all countries and all cuisines, but one should not revere them to the point at which they become set in aspic or lose what made them so appealing in the first place.

There is a tendency ( on this site most of all ) to revere French Food. By that I don't mean respect it or even just simply love eating it, but to revere it to a point that it becomes a museum piece incapable of development

Indian cookery quite apart from being as diverse as the country itself is a modern flowing entity. I describe it as the youngest ancient cuisine. It is constantly developing and growing. This is quite different from fusion ( " let's put fill this puri with lemon grass and serve it with mahi mahi" ugh! ) it is a confidence that comes with time. Indian food, or rather those who cook it, know that basics and can exptemporise around the theme.

If working with some of the sublime recipes that Suvir shares with us teaches you one thing ( I don't mean you personally ) it should be that Indian cookery gives you a profound liberation to invent seldom found in any other cuisine

S

BTW - I would love to know how you as a chef have taken some of the things you have read here and used them in your professional life

S

[Gavin Jones]

I would be interested to hear No.1's defend of the Post-Beeton recipe regime - if this can be done in a DMZ.

With Indian cooking where the range of spicing and the order of adding the spices is very important it seems to me that precise Beeton type recipes would be very helpful. What level of documentation was there of high-level cooking (I'm guessing a lot)?

Levels of documentation was discussed on the French v Chinese thread.

I believe the conclusion was that there was a fully annotated tradition (which thoughtlessly the Chinese had failed to translate) - but that might be mis-reading.

[Simon Majumdar]

Gavin

I think precise Beeton type recipes miss the point of Indian food.

We use them on this board because it makes a useful starting point.

I recall ( going back to my childhood yet again ) asking my Grandmother how much to use of certain spices and she would always just reply 'a little" it didn't matter if it was a pinch or a palmful, it was always " a little"

S

[Fat Guy]

I would be interested to hear No.1's defend of the Post-Beeton recipe regime - if this can be done in a DMZ.

My beliefs about the physical universe leave no room for any other conclusion, No. 302. Food is a physical substance composed of other physical substances and manipulated according to scientific processes. All the rest is cultural overlay -- while it can be moving and meaningful, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the physical nature of the food. Any dish that was formed by combining ingredients and cooking them a certain way should be recordable and susceptible to being reproduced. This is my Western positivistic view of all food, and I feel no humility about it.

[Simon Majumdar]

I have re-read John's initial post and while I do think there is an element of the "rose tinted" about it, I think I may have reacted a bit harshly to his motives

Rather than edit the post which would be cowardly, I would rather admit that I have misjudged both his content and intent

My apologies

S

[Brad S]

BTW - I would love to know how you as a chef have taken some of the things you have read here and used them in your professional life

S

Simon,

Unfortunatly I am laid up for a couple months after just haveing back surgery.

So at this time I have not been able to play in my kitchen with what I have learned here.

I have printed a # of recipes that I am going to prepare when I am on my feet again.

I prepare many theme events in my work,so I am anxoiusly waiting to prepare an Indian event.

My goal is to be able to translate from page to plate the recipes I am learning. I had asked for advice on some books (which were answered) on Indian food to help bolster my knowelage and to be able to reference as I move forward.

Simon, I promise to post my "successes" :-) in the kitchen as soon as I am able.

I am going to have my wife prepare your hot and sour onion dish sometime this week as I have asked her to bring home some snapper

[Fat Guy]

And what the hell is a Beeton, anyway?

[Suvir Saran]

This issue has been on my mind for a while now.  I love Indian food.  I cook Indian dishes, too, but always using recipes form one source or another.  But, I am unable to improvise a dish that I have any confidence in, although I am able to cook respectable Italian or French-style homestyle food out of my head. 

Perhaps total immersion would help, but that is not practical at my stage of life.

Sandra,

Living in the US for close to 10 years, I have become a decent French and Italian home-style chef than of any other cuisine. I wish I knew why. They are just easier to grasp sitting in this land.

My friends living in Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong have become amazing Chinese, Malaysian and Thai chefs. I am always jealous. For I would LOVE to be able to cook those cuisines over French of Italian. Which I seem to enjoy but again, the love for that which one cannot do, I crave the ability to be as proficient at those others.

Like you I feel I can only learn those cuisines at the level I would want to know them by total immersion. It is not practical in my life either. And I know many that have done so. Some by traveling and living in those lands. Others by studying these cultures first and then learning their cuisine. So, it is possible, but one would have to make a commitment of time and the desire to lose some of ones own to ever be able to understand some of the finest nuances of foreign cultures and foods that recipes or even books or photo journals could never share. It is that which I find tricky. I love cultures, but do I really want to learn more? At a level of intellect I do want to. But often we all say that, but when life poses those scary thoughts that are scary alone in their being foreign, we quickly get offended and angered and disillusioned. I may be ready to learn the cultures and cuisines of these lands, but I am not totally ready to accept their ways.

My friends living closer to these lands and living in the midst of people from these lands have found it easier for them to understand the subtle unspoken rules and so are easily accepting of these subtleties. For them these things that could irk us living so far away, are a part of their daily lives.

I like you Sandra, was moved by Johns piece into understanding how I fail to have similar confidence when working with dishes I love from cultures other than Indian, French or Italian. These three pose small challenges. The others, those I seemingly love a lot, seem to also make me nervous.

Maybe someday, I would have lived long enough in many of these lands and really understood what makes their cuisine what it is. For now, I am trying to immerse myself in the HUGE differences that I encounter even just within the borders of India. I fear that even in this one lifetime, I would have only succeeded in making a small scratch.

[Simon Majumdar]

I am going to have my wife prepare your hot and sour onion dish sometime this week as I have asked her to bring home some snapper

Snapper is wonderful with it

Fillets of John Dory, even better.

S

[Suvir Saran]

Gavin

I think precise Beeton type recipes miss the point of Indian food. 

We use them on this board because it makes a useful starting point.

I recall ( going back to my childhood yet again ) asking my Grandmother how much to use of certain spices and she would always just reply 'a little" it didn't matter if it was a pinch or a palmful, it was always " a little"

S

Simon,

When you speak of your beloved "Tarmar", grandmother, you bring out the essence of India and what John was touching at.

While certainly some people will be forever robbed of the magic of not knowing that India, it also perhaps is of not relevance to them and their lives. And why should it be? They have other realities and magical moments of their own life that lose the interest in another person from a foreign land. That again is so humbling about life. We each hold what we think of as ours so dearly.. And then someone from the outside can come and diminish it and erase it or simply even call it wrong, old and just poor.

I have learned to simply accept what is mine… enjoy it as much as I can.. and let others enjoy and life happily what they call theirs. If we can each find some space to co-mingle and share, great. If not, there will be other moments where someone may share. But why even try and make everything fit one mould? That is ugly and not necessary. We can create anew, things that are ours and take a form we give them, we can then make them fit any mould we choose. But that is different from making things not ours fit into our realm for our selfish greed of wanting to own everything that we fancy.

But every time you speak of your Tarmar, I thank myself for the Internet and my being lucky enough to be able to share in your memories and experiences.

That is the magic of Indian cooking. It is that "a little" that makes Indian food so different from home to home or even from chef to chef. It is also that "a little" that can humble any great chef into never being able to demystify Indian cooking completely and also what forms and inspirits Indian cooking like nothing else. It is the Essential ingredient of Indian cooking.

That "a little" is also exactly what makes India "very of the moment". Simon you are right in saying Indian food is the most ancient modern cooking. For if that "a little" did not exist, we would not be seeing each day some new fusion recipe taking place in another small town in India or even big ones.

Can any of the Jain founders ever have thought that these people would be eating Jain Pizzas?

It is the magical "a little" that I am humbled by each day I cook. I am always trying to see how my own Nani or Dadi would add that something, just "a little" of to have made what I am cooking uniquely and preciously their own.

[Suvir Saran]

Sandra's response seemed the most apposite, to me.

Gavin,

What an apposite word! Really, I have not used it in a very long time. What a great word. And yes Sandras post was indeed most apposite.

[jaybee]

Is there any more you'd be willing to say in support of that statement, even in light of your opinion that words ultimately won't do the trick?

No.

[Suvir Saran]

In coming to terms with the foreign and the unfamiliar, we must above all approach it with humility. We can’t instantly transplant ourselves into an alien culture but neither should we attempt to force it into the straightjacket of our own culinary tradition. As Diana Kennedy constantly reminds us, we should never try to adapt one cuisine to another, but instead adjust the two of them to each other. This, after all, is what is happening throughout the world as the traditional barriers of time and place are broken down by migration and communication. Just remember – the ever-expanding and interlocking panorama of global cuisines is not solely the prerogative of the rich. The lowly Spam is now a native of Hawaii.

©2002 John Whiting

Funny you end your piece this way... John, an Indian friend of mine browsed eGullet from India. He was laughing for he thought we wasted too much time talking of things they consider lowly.

He was shocked that I "wasted" my time worrying about where to eat good Bhel Puri. To them it is street food with little need to be fussed over. And to the Indian food lovers, Bhel Puri and several other dishes that would never be given much thought by Indians, are precious goodies from a foreign land.

So, yes, as the world shrinks.. and people migrate, strange things are happening and there is great beauty in them. If we only let them be what they are. Often we risk losing their beauty when we look to deeply into them.

I was mocked by some even in India for eating Bhel Puri from the streets. And I mocked some for eating some other things from the streets... but here in the US, far away from India, I see myself romancing so many things from India that I would never have given much time to.