Two serious South Asian magazines have devoted their recent issues to
food. Both the issues are available on line The October issue of
Delhi-based Seminar (See
http://www.india-seminar.com/semsearch.htm) and the November issue of
Kathmandu-based Himal (See http://www.himalmag.com/).
The following piece may be too academic, but people might enjoy the
discussion of what happened to hilsa in Guwahati in the
following article.
Sanjib Baruah
The geopolitics of culinary knowledge
ZILKIA JANER
Ashis, a Bangladeshi bartender in my New York neighbourhood, has offered
to bring me some hilsa. I crave the delicate buttery fish yet I hesitate
to accept the offer. When I lived in Guwahati everybody spoke fondly of
hilsa as a great delicacy and I anxiously waited for the brief season when
the fish come to the Brahmaputra river to spawn. Sadly, hilsa has become
very hard to find in the local markets. Aside from dams that have made it
hard for the fish to enter the river, the shrinking supply is being
exported to more profitable markets.
A couple of years ago the irony of this situation became evident when a
fish market in Guwahati was selling frozen hilsa from Bangladesh that was
beautifully packaged for sale in Italy, but that was approaching the
stated expiration date. Guwahati residents had access to the fish only
after it had been packaged for and rejected by the Italian market. Right
now it seems like it would be easier for me to find hilsa in New York than
it was in Guwahati. One of the results of the globalization of Indian food
is that the best quality ingredients and maybe even restaurants are more
readily available in New York and London than in India.
I enjoy this new access to Indian food but I also believe that India has
more to offer to global cuisine than ingredients and restaurants. Indian
culinary knowledge, including philosophy and technique, has not been as
successfully exported as tandoori chicken. I wanted to experience cooking
in India in order to get a deeper sense of its culinary knowledge. After
years of occasional cooking lessons from mothers and grandmothers of my
Indian friends in the United States and reading thousands of pages of
cookbooks, I wanted to move beyond the limits of what can be learned
long-distance. This is why a couple of years ago I welcomed the
opportunity of leaving New York City and setting up a home in Guwahati.
My strategy for learning how to cook the Indian way included watching
other people cook in dhabas, restaurants and homes. But because cooking is
ultimately learned by doing rather than watching, I decided to learn by
cooking my own daily meals. My friends and family were concerned about
this decision because the work involved in food preparation can be too
cumbersome without help. I dismissed the warnings and accepted to impose
on myself the sweet tyranny of cooking in India with minimal use of the
conveniences of the modern food industry and without the help of a
domestic cook.
Cooking starts with a trip to the market and that is where I began to
understand the extent of the challenges that I would face. At first the
market seems like the full spectacle of life in all its beauty and
cruelty. The sight of artfully arranged produce coexists with live fish
and poultry waiting to be clumsily killed on demand. The sweet aroma of
fruits competes with the stench of organic refuse and with the incense
that fails to keep the flies away. Smells, sights and sounds of different
registers are thrown together in an exhilarating staccato. The market is
totally seasonal so I had to learn to wait for the right time to enjoy
foods like cauliflower, mangoes and cilantro. For those of us used to
year-round availability of seasonal products this wait can be annoying at
times (can you really cook without cilantro?) but the mature flavour of
vegetables in season more than compensates for it.
Vegetables are small, irregular and unattractive when compared to the
picture-perfect vegetables that are the norm in the United States. While I
was willing to do without the visual appeal of tasteless industrial
produce, it is undeniable that cleaning and trimming sandy spinach and
dirty onions is time consuming. Finally, seeing your fish and chicken
being killed in front of you definitely spoils your appetite. However,
this is where the magic of cooking begins: the transformation of the
harshness of nature into the refinements of culture. Once an animal is
killed in an Indian market it has started to become distinctively Indian
food. The way in which fish is sliced, and skinless chicken and mutton is
cut into bite-sized bone-in pieces, immediately transforms them into
material for curry.
The process of cooking continues in the kitchen with the erasure of the
connection of produce to the land by cleaning all soil residue, and the
connection of meat to animals by removing the smell of raw flesh. The
latter is quite difficult when the chicken arrives in the kitchen still
warm from the market. Supermarkets and home cooks normally save you from
facing the scandal of death but this is how I learned to appreciate some
of the preliminary steps of Indian cooking like rubbing fish with
antiseptic turmeric and salt. It is a soothing balm for both the fish and
the cook.
Cleaning and preparing legumes and vegetables is a purer pleasure since it
does not involve any guilt. It also provides many of the unsung delights
of cooking. Only the cook gets to enjoy the dance of rice being washed in
cold water, the snapping sound of beans coming out of their pods, the
graininess of flour becoming smooth pliable dough, and the intoxicating
aroma of onion, garlic, ginger and spices releasing the premiere of their
aromas in the grinding stone. After cooking in this labour intensive way I
realized that eating is only half the pleasure that food offers us. By the
time my meals were ready I felt almost completely satisfied and needed to
eat very little. I wonder whether the tendency to over-eat in
industrialized societies is a way to compensate for the alienation from
food production and preparation.
Eating a proper meal in India is a full sensual experience. Dishes of
contrasting colours, aromas and tastes are enjoyed following a relatively
flexible order. Learning to eat with my fingers was another revelation.
Touching your food allows you to extend the pleasure of eating by
anticipating how the texture of the food will feel in the mouth; it is an
exquisite gastronomic foreplay. It was well worth struggling with the
rules that govern eating with fingers, which are as hard to master as the
proper use of knives and forks or chopsticks. Now I resent the mediation
of the fork when eating in situations where eating with fingers is not
considered appropriate.
When I returned to New York I had to admit that I was disappointed by most
of the food, including what I cooked. The will to cook and to reproduce
the regional dishes that I had become so fond of cannot make up for the
poor quality of the ingredients. Big, bright and uniform fruits and
vegetables consistently disappoint in flavour and texture, whether I buy
them at the supermarket or at elite gourmet and organic stores. Milk and
yogurt last for weeks in the refrigerator but the ultrapasteurization that
makes this possible leaves little flavour behind.
My experience in India taught me that the modern food industry provides
convenience at the expense of taste. I also learned techniques to create
many layers of taste in a single dish and how to exploit the different
qualities of spices. However, even though the use of spices in India is so
sophisticated, cooking schools and fusion cooks in western countries often
reduce it to the use of curry powder. Despite the current popularity of
Indian cuisine, it still occupies a subordinate position as 'ethnic' or
'exotic' in the emerging canon of global cuisine.
The explanation for the subordinate status of Indian cuisine is not to be
found in any inherent deficiency but rather in the lasting legacy of
colonialism which still allows the use of western models as yardsticks
with which to hierarchize the world. The discussion of food and
colonialism in India routinely includes amazement about the fact that
there were no chillies in India until the Portuguese brought them in the
16th century. The way in which facts like these are presented exemplifies
that culinary history is still told from the perspective of the West as
its main subject and agent.
Why give more importance to the simple fact of transporting chillies from
the Americas to India than to the creative process through which Indians
incorporated them into their cuisine? Whereas Europe has yet to learn how
to use chillies in a sophisticated way, India has developed a distinctive
way of using chillies which is different from the way in which they are
used in their native region. By focusing on trade without an account of
cultural transformation, historians seem to imply that Portuguese
merchants are the main protagonists of the evolution of Indian food.
The creation of the modern world depended materially and epistemologically
on the colonization of the Americas which provided the logical structure
for the justification of subsequent colonial enterprises. The
modern/colonial world system gave Europe the privilege of being the centre
of enunciation by establishing Europe as the model and point of view from
which all other histories and epistemologies are evaluated.1 In the field
of culinary history, the modern/colonial cognitive system has established
western cuisine, and particularly French cuisine, as the highest point of
culinary development for the rest of the world to follow.
Contemporary accounts of the history of cuisine in the West take the
familiar structure of a narrative of progress from the obscurantism of
medieval cooking to the increasing refinement of modern cuisine. In
medieval Europe spices were used liberally and cooking was determined by
the principles of alchemy, humoral medicine and religion. The publication
in 1651 of Le cuisinier Franois by Pierre La Varenne is considered the
turning point that marks the beginning of modern cuisine. In his book the
use of spices was minimized in favour of local herbs, and sweet dishes
were confined to the end of the meal. Medieval European cooking was
heavily influenced by Arab culinary knowledge and the creation of modern
cuisine intended to separate Europe from that influence and to establish
its own culinary identity and authority. The use of sugar and spices with
the corresponding health and even alchemic claims, were all but Rajasthan
or Nagaland, among many others, implies travel, meeting people, and
challenging the very categories on which Eurocentric culinary knowledge is
based. The proliferation of so-called ethnic cookbooks does not
necessarily solve this problem since the genre itself imposes the
categories and structures of European cooking, failing to grasp the
epistemologies that shape different culinary systems.
The world has been impoverished by the modern bias in favour of the
printed word. Indian culinary knowledge has indeed been codified
throughout the centuries without the use of the printing press. Oral
transmission and apprenticeship guaranteed the passing down of formulas
that served as the base for constant innovations. The problem in India
today is that there is a discontinuity between the oral transmission of
culinary knowledge and the modernizing project of cookbook writing.
Cookbooks that intend to pre-sent different kinds of traditional Indian
cooking are almost exclusively based on family recipes of elite families.
There is a need for cookbooks based on systematic interviews with the
non-literate professional cooks that have kept and improved recipes for
generations in the different regions of India. Disturbingly, this kind of
research is being done today, not in order to allow more people to explore
and appreciate a vast cultural heritage but for the benefit of the
companies that are patenting old recipes.
In contrast, the culinary system codified by the French was exported
worldwide through a genre of writing about food from their perspective and
through modern professional restaurants which are considered a unique
French creation. Science, rationalization and standardization was the
modern faith that French/European cooking counterpoised to cuisines that
were regarded as guided and limited by religion. But instead of creating a
truly universal cuisine, the French created a cuisine driven by the need
for efficiency in the restaurant kitchen. By limiting the number of dishes
and creating a system in which many steps can be performed ahead of time,
a very exportable and learnable cuisine was created. The system of French
cuisine is ironically in a continuum with the system of fast food
restaurants. The success of both has more to do with ease of production
and predictability than with taste.
Many high-end Indian restaurants whether in Bombay, Delhi, London or New
York, force Indian dishes into western restaurant guidelines which more
often than not results in an unsatisfactory dining experience. One of the
main problems is the centrality that sauces have in the modern restaurant
system. A French-style restaurant depends on a number of mother sauces
which are used to produce different variations to dress meat, fish or
vegetables that have been cooked separately. Indian restaurants were quick
to adapt this system by creating a master curry sauce with which they cook
almost everything on the menu. They just add a few more spices as needed
to customize each dish.3 This is a far cry from the traditional
slow-cooked dishes made with freshly ground masalas and in which complex
layers of flavour merge seamlessly. My point is not in favour of
authenticity as if Indian cooking has to remain frozen in the past, but is
against the uncritical acceptance of western cultural authority.
In spite of the celebration of multi-culturalism, most professional
cooking schools in the world still teach using a French technical
framework. French-style restaurants dominate because in the
modern/colonial world they are considered a mark of civilization and
development, but also because they are relatively easy to set up. Even
with the increasing interest in other cuisines it is much easier to become
a French cook than any other kind. Six months at the Cordon Bleu, the
elite cooking school with franchises all over the world, guarantee a
successful career whereas there is no neatly packaged way to become an
expert on Indian cuisine. Cuisines that have not codified their culinary
knowledge in a way that makes it easy for outsiders to learn and efficient
for a restaurant kitchen, are at a disadvantage.
In the global culture that is emerging we should not perpetuate the
hierarchies established by modernity that allowed a few regional cultures
to stand as universal. As Indian cuisine becomes better known I hope that
Indian culinary knowledge would not only claim a niche but also challenge
the culinary hegemony of Europe and the United States.
Instead of accepting the hilsa that was offered to me in New York, I have
decided to prepare a sors jhol using our local shad fish.
Footnotes:
1. Walter Mignolo, 'The Enduring Enchantment (Or the Epistemic Privilege
of Modernity and Where to Go from Here),' South Atlantic Quarterly 101(4),
2002, 927-54.
2. Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance. University of
Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1995, p. 204.
3. Chris Dhillon, The Curry Secret: Indian Restaurant Cooking at Home.
Jaico Publishing,
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