Gastronomy outside the West

January 9, 2011 8:37 PM

I would like to learn about gastronomy outside the West, if there is such a thing. In particular, I'd like to learn about the dominant cooking principles of the regional cuisines of India. What resources would you suggest? The kind of literature I'm looking for is similar to Krishnendu Ray's articles about ethnic restaurants in the U.S. and also Elizabeth Collingham's book about the mixed roots of curry. Also, I've found a couple New York Times articles about how Indian cuisine in New York isn't really Indian but instead something prepared by Bangladeshi immigrants...are there any books or any food scholarship on the topic of Indian food in America?

What got me started in this was Yelp reviews, but I've found many of the reviewers, including myself, to lack knowledge about an ethnic cuisine's dominant cooking principles, spices, etc., and to impose their own flimsy requirements and call it "authentic" along with the additional "I have an [ethnic friend]" phrase, which is really less helpful given the variety of Indian cultures in India.

I was raised in an Indian Bengali household, and have a good idea of Bengali cuisine, but would like to expand this knowledge so I am more able to identify and detect other Indian cooking principles.

posted by jackfruit to Society & Culture (10 answers total)

I've found a couple New York Times articles about how Indian cuisine in New York isn't really Indian but instead something prepared by Bangladeshi immigrants...

This is a little misleading. In my experience, Indian restaurant cuisine in New York falls into three categories. All of them tend to be operated by Bangladeshis. However it's important to realize that Bangladesh didn't exist as a separate country from India until 1949, and was a part of Pakistan (looonngggg story...) between then and 1971. So the fact that Bangladeshis operate these restaurants doesn't mean that they're not authentic or that the people cooking the food don't know what they're doing.

There's Indian-American/British, which is the cuisine as it's found across the US as well as in Britain. This is chicken tikka masala and all that. It's catered more for a western palate (for instance a heavy presence of meat main courses), and a lot of the dishes don't resemble anything that you would find in India. The restaurants on "Curry Row" in the East Village, as well as your neighborhood curry joint in a predominantly white neighborhood like Park Slope or the Upper West Side, fall into this category.

Then you have Indian restaurants that cater to the wider South Asian community. These restaurants tend to be halal or vegetarian, and for the most part concentrate on food that is more authentic. Still, the emphasis is on the cuisine of northern India, especially Punjab. Which you have to admit is sort of funny considering that the chefs are often Bangladeshi and the customers could be from anywhere from Tamil Nadu to Kandahar. But, again, this doesn't mean the food is inauthentic, just that it's evolved into its own very specific thing. You'll find this sort of restaurant along Lexington Ave in the 20's, as well as in South Asian enclaves in Queens and New Jersey. Basically anywhere South Asians congregate in the New York area. A lot of them involve steam tables and combo meals where you pick a few different vegetable dishes and either rice or chappati.

Finally, you have a few restaurants which are outliers. Restaurants which should fit into the second category above, but instead of that standardized quasi north Indian cuisine, they serve regional cuisines from different parts of the subcontinent. A lot of these get most of their business from the South Asian community, but because they're so offbeat they tend to attract the attention of foodies of all races. A great example of this sort of restaurant would be Saravana Bhavan (south Indian), Chinese Mirch (Indian-Chinese), or the Afghani and Himalayan restaurants that are starting to pop up around the city.

There's also a fourth category, which is Indian haute cuisine, but I haven't figured out whether those restaurants mainly belong in the first category or the third or need their own entirely separate category.

Sorry, I know this doesn't answer your question, per se, but it will give you a good start if you want to figure out the essence of what Indian cuisine is from the standpoint of New York, by going to restaurants and eating food. If you want to look at Indian cuisine from the standpoint of the home cook, I can't recommend Madhur Jaffrey's books enough. Friends of mine also swear by Manjula's Kitchen as a sort of cheat sheet to how one's South Asian mother would do things. Jaffrey is definitely more "gastronomic" as we would think of it in the West. But if you want to know how to make a chappati, Manjula's will set you straight.
posted by Sara C. at 9:16 PM on January 9, 2011 [11 favorites]

(Oh god. I didn't read the last sentence of your post. You of course know how Bangladesh relates to India and Pakistan. Sorry. I kind of assumed you were starting from square one.)
posted by Sara C. at 9:17 PM on January 9, 2011

Flavours of Delhi gives a sort of gastronomic history of Delhi. It explains how the cuisine changed as successive rulers ran the city, and how that's reflected in the North Indian cuisine of today. It's by a non-Indian, but very well-researched.
posted by embrangled at 12:40 AM on January 10, 2011

Oh, check out and Jennifer 8 Lee's TED Talk, Looking for General Tsao, in which she traces the development of American Chinese food.
posted by embrangled at 12:44 AM on January 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

Hmm, looks like the Charmaine O'Brien, the author of Flavours of Delhi, has continued her interest in Indian food. She's in the process of writing the Penguin Food Guide to India, and blogging about Indian food as she travels.
posted by embrangled at 2:58 AM on January 10, 2011

The Indian food blogosphere is pretty well developed. So if you search google blogs for "state, food" or "state, cuisine" you'll often get a blog being written by a local, or a seriously interested outsider.

I just did it for Assam, and got this and this, amongst other results. Neither has a huge amount of content, but you can put info from various sources together and end up with a lot more knowledge than you previously had.
posted by Ahab at 6:38 AM on January 10, 2011

Check out the the "another subcontinent" food forum as well as the blogs. Additionally there is a series of books (available on AMZN) that are indian region specific that was rec'd to me by one of the "another subcontinent" folk I know from a western food board.
posted by JPD at 7:00 AM on January 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

I think in general ethnic restaurants that try to mesh together foods from all different parts of the country generally fail to get an authentic taste. In india or china, each region has their own specialty and nuances, ingredients etc.

When aiming for an authentic taste, go to restaurant that specializes in food from a particular region , although be warned you might not like it because its not adhered to western tastebuds.
posted by radsqd at 9:35 AM on January 10, 2011

Serve the People by Jen-Lin Liu is a memoir that includes her experiences working in kitchens in fine-dining restaurants in China (as well as her work at a noodle stall and with a collective cooking school). There's a lot of discussion there about gastronomy in China today.
posted by Sidhedevil at 11:57 AM on January 10, 2011

Response by poster: Thanks, everyone!
posted by jackfruit at 3:50 PM on January 16, 2011