INITIALLY, IT WAS just an experiment when 25-year-old Sarika Gowda, made a parantha and a raita for her husband with Zaatar. “Someone had brought us a half-kg packet and it had been lying there for over a month. When I googled it, I found it was mostly just a mix of some herbs like oregano and thyme and sesame seeds. I thought the best way to determine if we like the taste is to use it in something familiar”.
The ‘experiment’ was a great hit. Both Gowda and husband Rajendrakalyan liked the taste. Now they ask everyone returning from any country in West Asia to look for and bring back Zaatar for them.
“We did try it out on cheese toast and pasta too, but we both prefer it in paranthas with lots of green chillies,” said Gowda.
For Golf Links resident, Damini Vishwanathan Singh, it was a tin of coconut cream from South America. “I live with my husband’s parents and they are very conservative in their food tastes. The tin just kept lying around. It was one of those things that people get because they are inexpensive.” Malayali to the core, Damini, rustled up a Maambazha Kootaan (ripe mango curried in curd and coconut milk), using a tin of mango puree and some curry leaves.
“It was a revelation. And now, that has become my go-to party trick. All I need is some mango puree, coconut cream, a few pieces of cucumber or radish for texture, and a tempering with some mustard seeds. Every guest we’ve had in the last four years has loved it,” says she.
This sort of fusion cooking doesn’t really have a name. It isn’t discussed, or known, or even talked about much. In some cases, it is people like the Gowdas, who prefer to try new ingredients in familiar dishes. In others, it is because the ingredient was a gift.
Yet others bought expensive ingredients on a whim and then ended up using them in Indian dishes as the expiry date neared.
Shimla resident, Sheenu Chauhan, recalls, “I had gone on a very salad-heavy (pun not intended) diet prescribed by a Delhi dietician. And I’d bought a whole set of Western spices – Oregano, Thyme, Rosemary, Pasta herbs, Salad Spice…”
“The diet died the expected natural death and the pretty spice jars adorned a shelf at the back of a kitchen cabinet,” her brother Rohan says. “One day we had guests coming over and we ran out of some masala. My mother improvised some garam masala by throwing in a bit of this and a dash of that. That was the best dal we’ve had,” he added.
The icing on the cake is that mother Pushplata now regularly asks Sheena to get another set of the ‘Italian Spices’ from Delhi because they’ve given her gharelu dal, an altogether new flavour.
Bangalore architect, Suman Kumar, says his best friend is Pumpkin Pie Spice. “I am single, I live alone, and I don’t really like to cook. My sister sent me this spice mix, which I use whenever I need a dessert fix. I just microwave some cooked rice, milk, and sugar and add the spice mix. It’s a sort of kheer meets pie flavour. And the last time I went home to Bhubaneshwar, I made my mother try it too. She liked it and now uses it to flavour the halwa for bhog (offering to God),” he said.
Monisha Roberts has a similar tale to tell about Sumac. “I had asked my sister to get me some sumac because I wanted to know what it would taste like. After I got it, I realised it is sour like she said but it is a very mild sort of sour.” Now Roberts sprinkles it over dals, mixes it in chutneys, and even uses it as a substitute for Anaardana (pomegranate seed powder) or Aamchur (dried mango powder) - both are souring agents - in snacks like bhelpuri and paprichaat.
It was seeing Roberts’ experiment with Sumac that inspired her best friend Neera Badgaiyan to use a pack of Sriracha as an instant “achaar masala” when she needed to rustle up a large batch of “kaccha achaar” in a jiffy. “Kachcha Achaar is a mix of chillies, salt, spices, that we sauté in oil and pour over chopped vegetables. In my family recipe, it’s essentially cauliflower, carrots, turnip, and radish… a pickle that hasn’t soaked and marinated… an absolute must when the whole family gathers for any event. Everyone eats vast quantities of pickles with everything,” she said. Solution: “Easy-peasy, I simply mixed two packets of Sriracha (which I’d been wondering what to do with), in a bowl with hot oil, and poured it over the veggies and that was it.”
“The recipe was such a hit that I now only make the Kachcha Achaar with Sriracha and most of my younger cousins have started doing the same because this way it’s much easier than measuring out spices and cooking them in oil stirring the whole time.”
Law professor Afshaan Khan says she no longer remembers how to make “kadhi” the traditional way. “It started one rainy evening many years ago when we had guests and no time to rustle up a quick meal. I didn’t really know how to cook in those days, so I had no pre-set notions about what one can and can’t do. So when my husband told me the kadhi was not sour enough, I stirred in apple cider vinegar… and it is precisely because I didn’t know how to cook that I did that. A seasoned cook would never have added vinegar to a dish with curds or milk. It worked and since then that’s how I make it – always.” Husband Shahrukh Khan smiles and adds “but that’s not a kadhi which can be reheated if there are leftovers… we learnt that the hard way.”
These are just a few examples of how Indian families have begun incorporating the “foodie” gifts that people bring them, into wholesome Indian fare.
Catering student, and amateur food critic, Balbir Singh (“Balboa” is what my friends call me”), believes that this is merely a stage in culinary evolution.
“Tomatoes, chillies, and cauliflower weren’t native to India either, but try finding a North Indian family where they aren’t used. Many of today’s children don’t even realise that momos or chow mien or pasta weren’t Indian, to begin with. So it makes perfect sense that newer generations are introducing newer ingredients or flavours into familiar foods.