Penguin Food Guide to India

O' Brien Charmaine

Description

This first-ever comprehensive guide to regional food across India takes you on a mouth-watering journey through the homes, streets and restaurants of each state, exploring exotic and everyday fare in equal measure. Be it the lime-laced Moplah biryani, the Goan Galinha cafreal, the bhang ka raita of Uttarakhand, or the Singpho people s Wu san tikye, India s rich palette of flavours is sure to drum up an insatiable appetite in you. Laden with historical information, cultural insights and personalized recommendations, The Penguin Food Guide to India is your ideal companion to the delightful world of Indian cuisine.

Sujets

• India

Informations

• Publié par: Penguin Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 15 décembre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789351185758
• Langue: English

Extrait

CHARMAINE O BRIEN


THE PENGUIN FOOD GUIDE to INDIA
Contents
About the Author
Introduction: My Journey into Indian Food
North India
1. Punjab and Haryana Fields of Gold
2. Jammu and Kashmir The Vale of Earthly Delights
3. Himachal Pradesh Hills of Plenty
4. Uttarakhand Celestial Dining
5. Delhi Capital Fare
Central India
6. Uttar Pradesh Plains Fare
7. Madhya Pradesh Nectar from the Forests
8. Chhattisgarh All Things Rice
9. Bihar Food from the Heart
10. Jharkhand Jungle Bounty
Eastern India
11. West Bengal The Sweet Life
12. Odisha Feeding the Divine
North-Eastern India
An Introduction to the North-East
13. Assam Eating Green
14. Meghalaya The Ginger Hills
15. Nagaland Wild Food
16. Arunachal Pradesh The Far East
17. Manipur Fair-Trade Fish
18. Mizoram Bamboo and Bai
19. Tripura Fish-Fuelled Flavour
20. Sikkim Simple Pleasures
Western India
21. Rajasthan Desert Cooks
22. Gujarat Trade Fare
South-Western India
23. Goa Coconut, Cashews and Bakeries
24. Mumbai Metro Feeds
25. Maharashtra Soul Curry
South India
26. Andhra Pradesh Eating the Heat
27. Karnataka Tiffin Time
28. Tamil Nadu All That Tastes Nice
29. Kerala God s Own Kitchen
Selected Reading
Broad Ingredient Categories
Illustrations
Footnotes
Introduction: My Journey into Indian Food
1. Punjab and Haryana: Fields of Gold
2. Jammu and Kashmir: The Vale of Earthly Delights
4. Uttarakhand: Celestial Dining
6. Uttar Pradesh: Plains Fare
8. Chhattisgarh: All Things Rice
9. Bihar: Food from the Heart
11. West Bengal: The Sweet Life
12. Odisha: Feeding the Divine
24. Mumbai: Metro Feeds
29. Kerala: God s Own Kitchen
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
Copyright
Penguin Books
The Penguin Food Guide to India
Charmaine o Brien is an independent culinary writer, historian and educator. She is the author of Flavours of Delhi: A Food Lover s Guide , Recipes from an Urban Village: A Cookbook from Basti Hazrat Nizamuddin and Flavours of Melbourne: A Culinary Biography . She also teaches Indian cookery; designs and caters special-occasion meals; works with individuals to reconnect them to psychosocial and physical wellness through eating and cookery practices; and writes the blog www.eatingindia.com .
She writes to unravel the world and put it all back together so that all roads lead to food. it is her way of channelling her constant thought of what shall I eat next into something more interesting than excess kilos.
Charmaine is currently working on a book about food in colonial Australia.
Introduction
My Journey into Indian Food
It seems unbelievable to me now but when I first visited India, back in 1995, I expected that the food I would find here would be exactly the same as I had eaten in Indian restaurants in Australia. After all, each one of those I had dined in had served the same dishes and these tasted much the same in each place-surely this was evidence of the existence of a national Indian cuisine. When I arrived on the subcontinent, I was confident that I was in the land of curry and tandoori chicken; in fact, my initial experiences proved me right. The eateries that a popular guidebook recommended to me, in places such as Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Jodhpur and Varanasi, served up much the same dishes I had eaten in Indian restaurants back home-only, these were tastier and freshly baked naan cost a pittance compared to what is charged for it outside India.
It was only in the final weeks of this trip that I began to eat from street stalls and eateries not included in my guidebook. I recall entering a restaurant in Hospet (Karnataka) where the signage and menu were in the local language. I had been attracted to it by the sight of its crowded dining room although I had no particular insight into what these patrons might have been eating. I took a seat and almost immediately a plate of rice was placed in front of me, along with bowls of what I took as assorted sauces. I looked around for cutlery; there was none. I observed the people around me and saw that they poured small amounts of the sauces over the rice, mashed it a little with their right hand, rolled it into balls and deftly flicked these into their mouths: I followed suit. I was nowhere near as elegant as the locals but I got the knack and felt quite pleased with myself. Not only was I chuffed with my tangible cultural achievement, the food was a revelation. I had no idea what most of it was yet I had never tasted anything as zingy, as complex, as zesty.
As I traversed India by train-from north to south and back again-I noticed that whenever we pulled into a major station, the food items sold on the platform or hawked by vendors through the train carriages would be quite different from those available at the previous halt. This intrigued me. Added to my other experiences, such as the one in Hospet, this inspired me to want to know more and thus began my exploration into Indian food history, culture and practice. I can still recall what I thought Indian food tasted like before 1995: a singular flavour shared by almost all dishes-no matter what flashy name was given to them-served in a typical Indian restaurant in Australia. It is my memory of this, and of my complicity in accepting it, that made me determined to encourage others to explore India s culinary bounty and use their palates to discover this ancient, complex, multifaceted, fascinating-and sometimes frustrating-land.
To the unknowing, such as my younger self, the homogeneity of menus in Indian restaurants around the world does suggest the existence of a homogeneous Indian cuisine. Such a thing does not exist, however: what does is a culinary landscape so expansive and so finely nuanced that to capture it properly would require an encyclopaedic work. This book is a rather more humble offering.
If we take the time to examine food in a broader context, it can connect us to history, to culture, to the material world. What people eat and how they cook can be a code to a society. Each chapter of this book begins with a condensed history of a particular state and historical detail is interwoven throughout. When I write of regional cuisine, I am concerned with the traditional food of a distinct area, and the history of that area is important because it will have significantly affected the development of that region s cuisine. I have learnt so much about India s history, culture, politics and social idiosyncrasies through my study of Indian food. I have also gained an education in global history as India has long been connected to much of the rest of the world, including my native Australia to which it was physically conjoined many millions of years ago, and to which it became socially reconnected in the eighteenth century as part of the British Empire.
My aim in writing this book was to create a historical and cultural guide to India s regional cuisine, and to recommend places where you-domestic tourist or international visitor-can find distinct regional food and season your travel experiences with some genuine local flavour. In doing so, I hope to inspire you to think more about the food you see and taste because it offers an easily navigated route into a more profound understanding of the diverse cultures that make up India. If you are an armchair traveller or a scholar with an interest in Indian culture and food, you will find this book equally rewarding as it is densely packed with stories and information: I hope that reading it might encourage you to take a trip to taste India.
How to Use This Book
To research this book I visited every state of India (with the exception of Tripura, Manipur and Mizoram). It was not possible, though, for me to visit every part of each state or to uncover and visit every place that might have been suitable for inclusion in this book. I wanted to create a work that would inspire you to plan your own unique gastronomic explorations. By guiding you through the flavours and foods peculiar to a particular region, I am arming you with the practical tools to become your own culinary archaeologist. I want to encourage you to look around, to ask questions, to taste new foods, to sample dishes you have never heard of and to gather gustatory memories that might just render the culinary clich s of what I call Menu indicus typicus unpalatable to you ever after. (As a remedy to this, I have provided a list of regional cookbooks that you could cook from. You can also visit my website at www.eatingindia.com for recipes for many of the dishes mentioned in this book.)
I have eaten at most of the restaurants, cafes, dhabas, guest houses, hotels, etc., which I have recommended in this book but I have also included a handful of recommendations for places that were advocated to me by knowledgeable people, which I could not get to. I do not expect that you will be limited to my recommendations though and will make your own discoveries inspired by what you learn here.
My basic criterion for recommending a place to you was that it served good regional food. There are referrals to exclusive hotels as well as the simplest of eateries, and some of the best regional food can be enjoyed at street stalls. Not all of you will feel comfortable eating from these rudimentary open-air kitchens and will exercise your own discretion in choosing street eats but here are a few points in their favour. The street vendor does not have the option of storing food; he-or she, although street stalls are largely run by men-buys only the food needed for that day; he knows exactly how many serves he will sell and therefore exactly how much food to purchase; he prepares only as many items as are duly sold out . . . and then, the next day, he starts afresh.
I have not experienced any adverse health consequences from eating at street stalls in India but I have after eating in tourist restaurants-during my earlier travels-with menus designed to ap