I lived in London in the 70s and 80s, which is where I got acquainted with Indian food. At the beginning of that time, it consisted of brown glop (“curry”) served in a room with red flock wallpaper.
The wallpaper was an essential part of the dining experience, and the dining experience, invariably in its take-away form, was experienced after a night at the pub (for salt-of-the-earth chauvinist Brits, it was easier to ingest “foreign muck” — a phrase I actually heard more than once — when cross-eyed drunk).
The brown glop wasn’t exactly un-tasty… but I sensed that, along with all their other imperialist-colonial sins, the Brits had taken Indian food and dumbed it down and watered it down and cross-bred it until it resembled a culinary version of a pair of comfy slippers and a copy of the Daily Mail, just with gravy.
But by the end of my time there, London had fairly exploded with Indian restaurants serving authentic food. That's when I discovered the south Indian dosa. OMG. (for readers unfamiliar, it’s a crispy, paper-thin crepe rolled up like a cigar and filled with spicy veg). And even a cross-cultural Indian haute cuisine was being developed, perhaps more eclectic than authentic, but light-years distant from that original brown glop.
Since then I've devoured, pun intended, Indian cookbooks by everyone from Madhur Jaffrey to Julie Sahni to Suvir Saran, and even tried my hand at "Krishna's Cuisine." I was vegetarian for a long time, and Indian food is the best vegetarian food in the world, no contest. That isn’t surprising considering that possibly up to 40% of Indians are vegetarian and the dishes have been developed literally over thousands of years. Many readers may not be aware that Indian cooking is regional and as varied as the cuisines of Europe. As I live in Toronto, it's pretty easy to get hold of the spices and more interesting ingredients, though the man at the local shop usually raises an amused eyebrow at this white Canadian stocking up on amchoor, hing and methi...
The first time my friend from South India cooked for me — this is a regular guy in his 30's, a cybersecurity expert — he started eating by taking a clump of rice with his bunched together fingertips and using it to sop up the gravy.
I was shocked! We just don't do that here! It breaches every lesson about "proper etiquette" that we're taught.
As I stared at him, goggle-eyed, he said, "Eating is supposed to be sensual! You don't just taste the food, you need to touch it as well!" I soon got the hang of it...
I appreciated your article and it, as well as the photos, are making me very hungry.
DR
