The new cookbooks promote the mixing and matching of dishes from different regions by dividing Indian food into clearly defined categories. The various recipes are generally grouped together as rice- and lentil-based dishes, breads, vegetable and meat curries, pickles, chutneys and sweets. These cookbooks even use the British concept of curry to help categorise, and thus unite, the various traditions of Indian cookery. In a culture where all the food is placed on the table simultaneously, this categorising provides a skeleton upon which a Gujarati lentil dish can be hung alongside a Tamil vegetable curry and a pickle from the Punjab. As a result of this culinary exchange, a core repertoire of dishes common to the whole of India is gradually developing.
Into this national cuisine the high-status Mughlai cuisine has been absorbed alongside dishes from regions in the south and east which were never incorporated into the Mughlai culinary culture. This process has its costs. Along the way the more specialised and complicated recipes tend to be dropped, and there is a strong tendency to stereotype different regions so that Bengal curries are associated with mustard oil and Keralan curries with chillies.
Keralans have recently become acquainted with northern Indian samosas, and they are just beginning to appear in southern bakeries. No doubt southerners will soon adapt them to their tastes and culinary techniques, perhaps filling them with prawns. This process of exchange and development has already taken place with southern dosas, which are served in Delhi with a filling of northern Indian paneer (cheese).30 Indeed, cookery books have promoted culinary exchange across the globe as volumes containing recipes from different Indian communities, from the Caribbean to South Africa, arrive on the shelves of bookshops in the subcontinent. This latest injection of foreign influences continues the process of fusion through the introduction of new culinary techniques and new ingredients which has, over many centuries, given Indian food its vibrancy, and made it one of the world’s finest cuisines.
Susan’s chicken
This recipe was given to me by an Indian lady from Madras who had spent much of her life in Zambia. Indians formed the bulk of the commercial middle classes in countries like Rhodesia (now Zambia and Zimbabwe), Uganda, Kenya and South Africa until, in the 1970s, Africanisation programmes in Kenya and Uganda drove many into exile in Britain and America. Serves 4–6.
4 tablespoons vegetable oil
6–8 chicken pieces (breasts and thighs with the skins on)
2 large onions, chopped
2cm piece of fresh ginger, finely grated
8 cloves garlic, crushed
1 teaspoon powdered aniseed
1½ teaspoons chilli powder
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 teaspoons coriander powder
½ teaspoon turmeric
6 large tomatoes, chopped
salt to taste
fresh coriander, chopped
Heat the oil in a pan, and fry the chicken pieces until they are browned on all sides. Take out of the pan and set aside. In the same oil, fry the onions until browned. Add the ginger and garlic and fry for 6 minutes. Add the aniseed, chilli powder, black pepper, turmeric and 1½ teaspoons of the coriander powder. Fry, stirring for 1 or 2 minutes. Add the tomatoes and simmer until the sauce thickens. Add the chicken pieces and salt and simmer until the meat has cooked through and is tender. Sprinkle on the last 1½ teaspoons of coriander powder and simmer for 5 minutes. Sprinkle on the fresh coriander and serve.
A banquet including roast goose given to Babur by the Mirzas An open-air banquet much like the one given by Asaf Khan for Edward Terry and Thomas Roe when the many dishes of rice and meat were served in golden bowls on a dastarkhwan (tablecloth) around which the diners sat cross-legged.
Harvesting of the almond crop at Kand-i-Badam Cartloads of nuts and dried fruit were imported into India along roads constructed by the Mughals to facilitate trade throughout northern India, central Asia and Persia. Under the Mughals, Indian cooks learned to thicken sauces with ground almonds.
Portuguese officials enjoyed lives of luxury in India. While one servant holds this man’s book for him, others prepare refreshments. Portuguese bakers were famous for their fragrant egg custards, tarts and perfumed marzipan.
Corn and rice merchants in old Goa heaped up their wares in huge piles in front of their shops much like this modern gram seller.
A sweet shop piled high with fudgy barfis, powdery laddus, made from chickpea flour and sugar, and gulab jamans, crispy on the outside with a soft and melting milky filling, coated in rose-water syrup. Larger versions of these sweets were made at temples throughout India and distributed to pilgrims.
Nasir al-Din Haidar (King of Oudb, 1827–37) at dinner with a British official and wife The Nawabs of Oudb did their best to incorporate European culture into their court life. They entertained British guests in style, and the wife of a British army officer reported that French, English and Indian food were all served at the Nawabs’ table.
Cooked food and kawab makers The Mughlai art of kebab-making was perfected at Lucknow where the cooks produced such soft, velvety shammi kebabs that even the toothless Nawab Asaf-ud-Daulah could eat them.
The streets of eighteenth-century Lucknow were lined with cook shops where the cooks could be seen ‘basting keebaubs over a charcoal fire on the ground with one hand, beating off the flies with a bunch of date leaves in the other; kneading dough for . . . bread, or superintending sundry kettles and cauldrons of currie, pillau, [and] preparing platters and trays’.
These are modern-day descendents of such cookshops.
Our hurra khana The British dinner party in India was a hot, crowded affair. Even a punkah swinging above the table could not cool the air. Nevertheless, guests tucked into great saddles of beef, enormous turkeys and bowls of curry and rice.
The interior of the Governor-General’s travelling kitchen tent with numerous uniformed cooks engaged in cooking a meal British Governor-Generals travelled in great state. Lord Auckland’s entourage in the 1830s consisted of a train of 850 camels, 140 elephants, 250 horses and 12,000 personnel. This included his French chef, St Cloup, and a small army of cooks who provided lavish entertainments when the Governor-General entertained Indian rulers or British officers at the various towns he visited.
A servant setting out a meal in camp (1930s) The British loved camp life and developed a separate branch of shikari cookery characterised by incredibly fiery sauces.
Grinding curry stuff (1901–4) No Indian kitchen was properly equipped without a heavy flat grindstone on which the day’s supply of spices was freshly ground each morning.
Kitchen servants (1880) ‘To destroy the illusion of effortless elegance, so carefully created in the British dining room., all one had to do was to step onto the back verandah of the bungalow, Here one would discover a host of servants pulling the punkah, sleeping, washing up or boiling a kettle for tea.’
The breakfast Fish was served for breakfast in Anglo-Indian households and accompanied by rice or khichari. Eventually these dishes were amalgamated and, garnished with fried onions and hard-boiled eggs, the combination of fish and rice became known as kedgeree. The couple in the picture have also been served a plate of sweet Syhleti oranges.
Delivering tiffin boxes in Bombay Painted on each tiffin box is a series of symbols which tell the dabba-wallahs where it needs to go at each stage of its journey. These are being delivered to Churchgate railway station.
A dabba-wallah in New Delhi A group of residents living in a modernised area of New Delhi in 1995 decided to set up their own tiffin-carrying business, along the lines already established in Bombay. Here a dabba-wallah has loaded boxes onto his bicycle ready to deliver to various offices in time for lunch.
Packing tea for export By the 1880s, planters in Assam were producing sufficient quantities of high quality Indian tea to take on the challenge of Chinese tea, which had until then dominated the market.
Madras tea shop It was the British who energetically marketed tea within
India itself by setting up tea shops in urban areas. Once the shops were established, hawkers equipped with kettles and cups moved in to sell sweet milky tea.
After a long and successful campaign by the Indian Tea Association almost everyone in India now drinks tea, even the sadhus (holy men).
Lovers’ picnic
Anglo-Indian picnic (1930s) Eating in the open-air has long been a favourite pastime in India. The Mughals enjoyed picnics while relaxing in their ornamental gardens. The East India Company merchants followed suit and drank punch and watched dancing girls in the gardens outside Surat. The British in India continued the tradition.
Indian picnic (1980s) Nowadays picnic parties can be seen at beauty spots all over India. The members of this party have removed their shoes to ensure that they do not pollute the area where they are eating.
Vegetable market in Pushkar Here the women are selling beans, cauliflowers, potatoes, tomatoes and chillies – all of which were introduced to the Indian subcontinent by Europeans, and significantly widened the range available to a largely vegetarian population. ‘Simply boiled vegetables are never eaten’ in India. European and American fruits and vegetables have been integrated into Indian cookery and are prepared according to Indian methods.
Chicken seller in northern India Indians prefer the taste of freshly-killed chickens, and in Birmingham in the 1950s the chicken-sellers congregated with the prostitutes on the Varna Road on Sunday mornings.
A village store selling curry powder and corned beef on the of Savai’i, Samoa In Samoa, curry is a luxury food, made with expensive tinned ingredients bought from the village store. But rather than eating it with rice many Samoans consume their curry with boiled taro or breadfruit which they grow in their gardens.
Notes
1 CHICKEN TIKKA MASALA
1 Cited by Driver, The British at Table, p. 77.
2 Jonathan Meades, ‘Goodness gracious!’, The Times, 21 April 2001.
3 Iqbal Wahhab and Emma Brockes, ‘Spice …the final frontier’, The Guardian, 4 November 1999.
4 Sharma (ed.), Rampal, p. 142.
5 Appadurai, ‘How to make a national cuisine’, p. 18.
6 Conlon, ‘Dining out’, p. 114.
7 Buchanan, Journey from Madras, I, pp. 101–2. See also Rao, ‘Conservatism and change’, pp. 127–9; Lewis, Village Life, p. 267.
8 Gardener, ‘Desh-bidesh’, p. 6.
9 Phillip Ray in conversation with the author.
10 Jubi and Hafeez Noorani, ‘A unique culinary culture’, The Taj Magazine, 11, 1 (1982).
11 Cantile, ‘The moral significance of food’, pp. 42–5.
12 Achaya, ‘Indian food concepts’, pp. 221–2.
13 Marriott and Inden, ‘Toward an ethnosociology’, p. 233.
14 Marriott, ‘Caste ranking and food transactions’, p. 134.
15 Ibid., pp. 133–63.
16 Rao, ‘Introduction and overview’, p. 3; Beck, The Experience of Poverty, pp. 137–42.
17 Rao (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Indian Medicine, IV, pp. 3–8, 45–8.
18 Zimmermann, The Jungle, p. 24.
19 Sharma (ed.), Caraka-samhita, I, pp. 44–5; Sharma, Social and Cultural History, p. 100; Achaya, Indian Food, p. 81.
20 Storer, ‘Hot and cold food beliefs’, p. 34.
21 Chattopadhyaya, ‘Case for a critical analysis’, p. 217.
22 Zimmermann, The Jungle, p. 126.
2 BIRYANI
1 Manrique, Travels, II, pp. 213–20.
2 Ibid., pp. 207–13.
3 Madan, Non-Renunciation, p. 143; Sethi, ‘The creation of religious identities’, pp. 16, 202–6; Richards, The Mughal Empire, pp. 20, 34.
4 Thackston (ed.), The Baburnama, pp. 332, 334, 350–1, 359–60.
5 Ikram, Muslim Civilization, p. 136.
6 Thackston (ed.), The Baburnama, p. 350.
7 Peterson, ‘The Arab influence’, pp. 321–2.
8 Cunningham Papers, p. 397.
9 Vambery, Sketches, pp. 118–19.
10 Schuyler, Turkistan, p. 125.
11 Sastri, ‘The Chalukyas of Kalyani’, pp. 370, 453.
12 Zimmermann, The Jungle, pp. 30, 55–61, 98, 170, 185; Sharma (ed.), Caraka-samhita, I, p. 222.
13 Sastri, ‘The Chalukyas of Kalyani’, p. 453; Arundhati, Royal Life, pp. 113–30.
14 Saletore, Social and Political Life, pp. 310–11.
15 Arundhati, Royal Life, p. 125.
16 Prasad, ‘Meat-eating’, p. 290.
17 Keay, India, pp. 96-7.
18 Majumdar, The Age of Imperial Unity, pp. 73–4.
19 Murti et al., Edicts of As’oka, pp. 3, 9, 11, 105, 107.
20 Wadley, Struggling with Destiny, p. 45.
21 Jaffrey, A Taste of India, p. 57.
22 Carstairs, The Twice Born, p. 109.
23 Tavernier, Travels, I, p. 38; Valle, The Travels, p. 294.
24 Tavernier, Travels, I, pp. 311, 326; Hamilton, A New Account, p. 96.
25 Chattopadhyaya, ‘Case for a critical analysis’, pp. 212–13.
26 Jha, The Myth of the Holy Cow, pp. 30–7, 95–8; Brockington, The Sanskrit Epics, pp. 20–1, 197.
27 Achaya, Indian Food, p. 55; Jha, The Myth of the Holy Cow, pp. 61–89.
28 Manucci, Storia do Mogor, pp. 42–3.
29 Peterson, ‘The Arab influence’, p. 321.
30 Khare, ‘The Indian Meal’, pp. 162–4.
31 Thackston (ed.), The Baburnama, pp. 367–8.
32 Eraly, The Last Spring, p. 108.
33 Ahsan, Social Life, p. 152.
34 Quereshi, The Muslim Community, p. 31; Ahsan, Social Life, p. 155.
35 Tavernier, Travels, I, p. 41.
36 Zubaida, ‘Rice’, pp. 92–4; Fragner, ‘From the Caucasus’, pp. 57–9.
37 Jaffrey, Madhur Jaffrey’s Indian Cookery, p. 154.
38 Fryer, A New Account, III, p. 240.
39 Burton, Savouring, p. 197.
40 Richards, The Mughal Empire, p. 17; Dalrymple, ‘That’s magic’, The Guardian Review, 1 January 2003, p. 18.
41 Allami, Ain-i-Akbari, I, p. 60.
42 Bernier, Travels, p. 287; Richards, The Mughal Empire, pp. 190–1, 195; Kulshreshtha, The Development of Trade, pp. 184–5.
43 www.menumagazine.co.uk/asafoetida.htm; Fryer, A New Account I, p. 286.
44 Singh, Indian Cooking, p. 25; Thirty-Five Years’ Resident, The Indian Cookery Book, p. 16.
45 Allami, Ain-i-Akbari, I, p. 61.
46 Ibid., pp. 59, 64.
47 Eraly, The Last Spring, pp. 195, 219; Richards, The Mughal Empire, p. 47.
48 Eraly, The Last Spring, p. 165.
49 Beveridge (ed.), The Tuzuki-i-Jahangiri, p. 184; Eraly, The Last Spring, p. 239; Srivastava, Social Life, p. 2.
50 Eraly, The Last Spring, p. 169.
51 Tavernier, Travels, I, 95–6.
52 Lal, Twilight, pp. 276–7; David, Harvest, pp. 246–8.
53 Goody, Cooking, p. 98.
54 Manrique, Travels, II, pp. 218–19.
55 Terry, A Voyage to East-India, pp. 206–11.
56 Eraly, The Last Spring, pp. 274, 312.
57 Beveridge (ed.), The Tuzuki-i-Jahangiri, p. 215.
58 Manrique, Travels, I, pp. 65–6.
59 Manucci, Storia do Mogor, p. 68.
60 Chapman, The New Curry Bible, p. 111; Jaffrey, A Taste of India, pp. 128–9.
61 Thackston (ed.), The Baburnama, pp. 423, 445.
62 Foltz, Mughal India and Central Asia, p. 7.
63 Beveridge (ed.), The Tuzuki-i-Jahangiri : I, pp. 116, 435; II, p. 101.
64 See, for example, ibid., I, p. 116.
65 Bernier, Travels, p. 284.
66 Foster (ed.), The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe, p. 152.
67 Manucci, Storia do Mogor, pp. 37–8
68 Thackston (ed.), The Baburnama, p. 343; Beveridge (ed.), The Tuzuki-i-Jahangiri, p. 116.
69 Eraly, The Last Spring, p. 337.
70 Ibid., p. 322.
71 Foster (ed.)
, The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe, pp. 99, 190, 240, 324–5.
72 Hawkins, The Hawkins Voyages, p. 437.
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