On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 12:50 AM, Kiran K Karthikeyan <[email protected]> wrote: > 2009/6/2 Charles Haynes <[email protected]> > >> Anyway, enough raving. I was astonished to discover just *how* >> unadventurous your average Indian was with respect to trying new and >> different food. > > > Unadventurous might not be the right word, but rather lack of exposure.
Hmm. If so I don't see how that would explain the marked lack of enthusiasm for trying the few non-indian places I did suggest. It seemed to me that there was a resistance to trying new foods, which I would characterize as "unadventurous." Especially when contrasted with my western foodie friends who seek out new cuisines and new eating experiences. [Note that your average american is pretty unadventurous when it comes to new foods too.] > I > think save Chinese, its only maybe a decade ago that you had options in > cuisines in India. And it is a little unrealistic to expect that a people > who are used to having everything spiced up where the original flavour of > the ingredients pretty much dies out will take to other cuisines. Well there's "unlikely to like" and "unwilling to try." It's the second attitude I'm referring to as "unadventurous." > Indian meat dishes are a classic example. They are so drowned in spices that > its > mostly the texture of the meat thats left. That doesn't have to follow, the two can be independent. There are cuisines that use a lot of seasoning, but still use rare or even raw meat. Korean is an example, Ethiopian is another. The Indian penchant for cooking all meat till all the proteins are fully denatured is independent of the desire for spice. > Which also explains why most > Indians (even Christians and Muslims who eat meat more regularly than > Hindus) are very averse to trying steak, or even if they do, its so well > done that there is no point in calling it steak anymore. I usually warn > those from abroad having steak for the first time in India to not order well > done, but rather medium. Oh my god. The stories I can tell. My "favorite" is the time I ordered foie gras at Graze. I am a huge fan of foie gras and order it whenever I can. I was very excited to see seared foie gras on the menu at Graze - so I ordered it. When it arrived, it was swimming in a puddle of fat, and had been cooked completely through till it was chewy. In other words it was completely ruined and inedible. I sent it back. The waiter was shocked, and the chef came out to ask what the problem was. I pointed to it and said "this is not how you make seared foie gras" he asked how I wanted it. I replied that it should be browned on the outside, and still pink and barely warm in the center. [This is the classic preparation for seared foie gras. The 'standard' if you will.] He said "Well foie gras is like steak, you have to say how you want it prepared. If you want it rare, you have to ask for it." I was gobsmacked. I couldn't believe my ears. I to this day can be heard to occasionally mutter "foie gras is NOT like steak." It was absolutely inconceivable to me that any restaurant that would put seared foie gras on the menu would not know the classic preparation, or would abuse such a delicate rarity as if it were a cheap hamburger. I had a similar problem trying to order duck in Bangalore. I must have tried a half dozen times to order duck. I finally thought I'd succeed at Blue Ginger, the fancy ass vietnamese place in the Taj West End. The Vietnamese understand duck almost as well as the Thais do. So I ordered a roast duck, hoping for something like a chinese BBQ duck. Hah. The duck I got was grossly overcooked, dry, tasteless and stringy. It got to the point where I wondered if there wasn't something about Indian ducks that made them always come out that way, so I ordered a whole duck from our local cold storage place, and roasted it in the teeny tiny toaster oven I had. (That's another thing -- no ovens? I was surprised to find that most Indian kitchens don't have an oven. After thinking about it it made sense, but it surprised me at first.) Anyway, the duck turned out magnificent. Tender, juicy, flavorful. Yum. So it wasn't the duck's fault... Both of these examples actually serve to illustrate the basic conservatism of most Indian diners, even ones adventurous enough to try new cuisines. They seem unwilling to take the cuisine on it's own terms, rejecting bits that are "too foreign." Indians are not alone in this of course - westerner diners do it all the time, the difference being that you *can* find "authentic" ethnic restaurants in most large american, european, and australian cities, not just the westernized versions. Besides the "every meat has to be cooked well done" example, there's also the example of pork. In China, almost every farmer raises pigs, ducks, or both. Chinese meat cooking is, to a first approximation pork cooking. The Chinese word for "meat" is the same as the word for "pork" and if a dish says it's a meat dish without further qualification you know it's pork. So why is it virtually impossible to get pork dishes in Chinese restaurants in India? It would be like going to a country where none of the Italian restaurants served pasta! > However, now Bangalore can boast of almost all major cuisines which are > available at least in one place in the city. Bangalore has over six million people. It's almost as big as the entire San Francisco Bay Area, and you think it's an accomplishment to have "ALMOST all MAJOR cuisines?" I never found a French restaurant for goodness sake. French cuisine is the basis for *all* Western fine dining. Bangalore is missing entire continents worth of cusines. There is no South American cuisine as far as I can tell, and South America has quite a diversity of cuisines. Peruvian, Argentinian, Columbian, and Brazilian are very different one from another. I've found Brazilian Churrascarias all over the world but not in Bangalore. There is no African cuisine, what I wouldn't have done for a decent Moroccan, Algerian, or Ethiopian restaurant in Bangalore. There's no Australian - but that's not really a loss [ahem]. Is there any middle eastern food in Bangalore? Any Turkish, Lebanese, Israeli, Jordanian, or Syrian food? (The answer is yes actually and it's quite good. :) But what do you consider a "major" cuisine? German? Scandinavian? Spanish? There is *one* decent Japanese restaurant in all Bangalore, and even it cannot compare even to the neighborhood Japanese place just down the block from my house here. > Grocery stores also carry a wider range of cheeses (though very expensive) Wider than what? Yesterday I went to my local grocery and had a choice among six soft ripened blue cheeses. I also brought home a goat brie. The best cheese selection we found was at Aldi - and they had maybe two dozen cheeses. That includes all the generic cheddar, mozzarella, gouda, and swiss cheese. I wept for joy when I found a single example of a gorgonzola. I think you believe it's "wider" only because you lack a frame of reference. > as well as cured meats (again quite expensive). Again, charcuterie is, to a first approximation, the curing of pork. The things you think are examples of cured meats are a travesty. When I left Bangalore I believe there were two purveyors of cured pork products (other than bacon and ham) in all of Bangalore, and one had just launched. > I don't find many people other than expats at the delicatessen, Which serves to illustrate my point about adventurousness, no? > and the guy behind the counter invariably asks you to fill out > a survey because of how infrequent the visits are. I ask for thin slices and > they still haven't managed to get it thinner than 2mm. But we're getting > there. I certainly hope so, as I hope to come back some day. At least now I know where to get bacon and ham - assuming they're still in business in the same place when we come back... -- Charles
