Dining out within a multi-national food landscape such as Singapore can be stressful for someone who's had a tumultuous working relationship with chopsticks. For the last one year I've held measly morsels of food with a desperate prayer that the food doesn't elude my grasp with a self defence technique. But sometimes bad experiences don't prepare you for certain atrocities. You can never be warned enough to be able to face Indian food that challenges muscle memory acquired over 25 years. Suddenly good old Palak Panneer and Butter Chicken assume intimidating forms plated out in radical symmetries; instead of the loving touch of the hand they seductively ask you to indulge in BDSM type dining with at least two types of fork, a knife and any other cutlery you fancy that day. It's a big bad world out there and they are determined to prove they're worth it. Honestly I am yet to come across a cuisine from a third world country that tries so painfully hard to fit in. Such food is - to draw from an oft repeated 'dont' to young advertising trainees - trying to be interesting rather than interested. And to borrow shamelessly from the Sound of Music - really, how do you take mush and pin it down?
My earliest and fondest visions of food porn involve watching wet lentils yield under granite, to form a reassuringly aromatic soft mass that invites you to play with it. And sinking my palms into a sack of rice grains at the kirana shop. I grew up watching women in my family prepare dosa batter and chutney the primitive, backbreaking way - on a stone grinder. Indian cooking, particularly in the southern region, demands a lot of (wo)manual labour (requiring kneading, rolling, patting, grinding, cutting, grating, pounding) using primitive implements. This creates a sort of Freudian playground for children to take part in the most joyful of kitchen activities - handling different textures. I remember sitting on the floor and possessively rolling balls of Gulab Jamun dough between my palms. And carefully ladling out - with my mother and grandmother - equal dollops of spiced starch on stretched sheets of cloth under the sun, and leaving them to dry into crisp translucent wings of an angel.
Today, I sometimes dismiss all this as tedious, but we'll come to that shortly.
The other manner in which I was at the helm of culinary matters at home was by way of a frivolous role I took very seriously; the role of arranging the table when we had guests over. Usually kids were relegated to this task - the lowest in the hierarchy of Indian cuisine values - a good way to channel their hyperactivity. I would arrange the cutlery in a pompous fan, the serviettes till they looked as snobbish as the best cold cuts at a lavish buffet; I was the self-appointed drizzler of chat masala rangoli on the raita. All this was feverishly set up only to die an unceremonious death:
My earliest and fondest visions of food porn involve watching wet lentils yield under granite, to form a reassuringly aromatic soft mass that invites you to play with it. And sinking my palms into a sack of rice grains at the kirana shop. I grew up watching women in my family prepare dosa batter and chutney the primitive, backbreaking way - on a stone grinder. Indian cooking, particularly in the southern region, demands a lot of (wo)manual labour (requiring kneading, rolling, patting, grinding, cutting, grating, pounding) using primitive implements. This creates a sort of Freudian playground for children to take part in the most joyful of kitchen activities - handling different textures. I remember sitting on the floor and possessively rolling balls of Gulab Jamun dough between my palms. And carefully ladling out - with my mother and grandmother - equal dollops of spiced starch on stretched sheets of cloth under the sun, and leaving them to dry into crisp translucent wings of an angel.
Today, I sometimes dismiss all this as tedious, but we'll come to that shortly.
The other manner in which I was at the helm of culinary matters at home was by way of a frivolous role I took very seriously; the role of arranging the table when we had guests over. Usually kids were relegated to this task - the lowest in the hierarchy of Indian cuisine values - a good way to channel their hyperactivity. I would arrange the cutlery in a pompous fan, the serviettes till they looked as snobbish as the best cold cuts at a lavish buffet; I was the self-appointed drizzler of chat masala rangoli on the raita. All this was feverishly set up only to die an unceremonious death:
Guest: "Wow, what a spread!"
Host, full of fake modesty, in an oblique attempt at drawing attention to the food: "Oh, I suppose when you don't make good food, you just arrange the table very well. Haha."
Host, full of fake modesty, in an oblique attempt at drawing attention to the food: "Oh, I suppose when you don't make good food, you just arrange the table very well. Haha."
The seduction of Indian cooking is in its preparation. Women tease guests and get competitive by adding their own secret twists to time honoured recipes. Glory and success is when their rasam or vermicelli upma inspires love and poetry, or is, at the very least, extolled at a get-together in the presence of other competitive females. The sex appeal is in the secret preparation, and with it comes creative ownership - a flavour to call their own - which they hope will create a legacy. The sensuality in Indian cuisine is in understanding that too much external beauty can be intimidating, and too much make up can repel or take away from the real lusciousness of what's on offer. Food, even at a standard restaurant serving authentic Indian, never dishes itself out; it calls out to you in a soft whisper (except for the occasional silver foil). Conversations at an Indian wedding are almost never about how lavish or gorgeous the food looked, rather about the flavours. The voluptuousness is not in the plating, but in the generosity, variety and the flavour. Indian cooking is about the secret art of fusing spices. Kannadiga women use the term "hada" to describe the art of being able to gauge the proportion of spices to create an optimised flavour.
But perhaps the emphasis on preparation earns disfavour among young women today, many of whom make a virtue out of not being able to cook anything at all. Even the most unglamorous homey dishes in Indian cuisine can be very process intensive. Sabudana Khichdi requires the thoughtfulness to soak sago pearls for half an hour before draining out the water and leaving them damp for eight hours. Dosa and idly batter need soaking, grinding and fermenting of urad dal and rice. Chapatis require kneading, rolling out and roasting. Indian cooking assumes that a woman stays at home and her domain is the kitchen. It still does not accommodate women who step out of the home to work. To make mean Akki Rottis or Dosas at home, the pancakes must slide straight out of the pan into the plate. Leave them lying around and they turn into lifeless hard carcasses. This demands that someone (a woman) be standing by the stove instead of sitting at the table and eating with everyone.
So a woman migrates to some western dishes that save her time: pasta, noodles, soup.
Now living in a multi-national society gives you the opportunity to peek into different shopping baskets and shopping hubs. An ang moh (white-skinned people) basket contains alcohol (crate of beer or bottles of wine), processed meat and maybe some broccoli. A Chinese basket will have meat, some processed meat, a few vegetables and Yakult. An Indian basket has a lot of raw material for cooking. Pulses, rice, vegetables and fragrant herbs (mainly coriander and curry leaves) that go gratis with bought items. And they are mostly bought from the wet market, not a super market.
Convenience products are aplenty and are tempting, but clearly, Indians love preparing food using fresh produce. Indian cuisine needs to solve the woman's dilemma; it must evolve and inspire working women to cook before we turn into processed and packaged food junkies and abandon our own cuisine for other alternatives. And as for pretentiously plated upmas and chaats, my sincere appeal to the advocates of such bastardisation: cut the embroidery and the fake accent and be the custodians of true Indian food porn.
But perhaps the emphasis on preparation earns disfavour among young women today, many of whom make a virtue out of not being able to cook anything at all. Even the most unglamorous homey dishes in Indian cuisine can be very process intensive. Sabudana Khichdi requires the thoughtfulness to soak sago pearls for half an hour before draining out the water and leaving them damp for eight hours. Dosa and idly batter need soaking, grinding and fermenting of urad dal and rice. Chapatis require kneading, rolling out and roasting. Indian cooking assumes that a woman stays at home and her domain is the kitchen. It still does not accommodate women who step out of the home to work. To make mean Akki Rottis or Dosas at home, the pancakes must slide straight out of the pan into the plate. Leave them lying around and they turn into lifeless hard carcasses. This demands that someone (a woman) be standing by the stove instead of sitting at the table and eating with everyone.
So a woman migrates to some western dishes that save her time: pasta, noodles, soup.
Now living in a multi-national society gives you the opportunity to peek into different shopping baskets and shopping hubs. An ang moh (white-skinned people) basket contains alcohol (crate of beer or bottles of wine), processed meat and maybe some broccoli. A Chinese basket will have meat, some processed meat, a few vegetables and Yakult. An Indian basket has a lot of raw material for cooking. Pulses, rice, vegetables and fragrant herbs (mainly coriander and curry leaves) that go gratis with bought items. And they are mostly bought from the wet market, not a super market.
Convenience products are aplenty and are tempting, but clearly, Indians love preparing food using fresh produce. Indian cuisine needs to solve the woman's dilemma; it must evolve and inspire working women to cook before we turn into processed and packaged food junkies and abandon our own cuisine for other alternatives. And as for pretentiously plated upmas and chaats, my sincere appeal to the advocates of such bastardisation: cut the embroidery and the fake accent and be the custodians of true Indian food porn.
3 comments:
Love! Love! Love!
I'm wondering if there aren't quick fix dishes around somewhere though. My mom makes a lot of those - mostly North Indian - but I suspect they're some kind of experimental and not the true blue thing :-) Would've been fun to go food sampling with you in Stamboul!
Wow, very well written.Women who actually love to cook, prefer doing it the hard way. The world may have moved to eating off the shelf, but Indian cuisine would never be the same without the 'kneading, rolling, patting, grinding, cutting, grating, pounding' :)
on the one hand you pine for the old school charms of a cuisine that derives its appeal from a tedious but nuanced process. On the other, you ask for an evolved version of Indian cuisine, that by implication, is speedier and less nuanced. your demands are mutually exclusive, unless, of course, you are suggesting that Indian cuisine shift its locus of appeal away from elaborate preparation.
also, I see nothing wrong in adding an additional dimension of appeal to Indian food by plating it in visually pleasing ways.
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