Celebrating Passion for Food
The most admirable and fascinating aspect of Indian cooking is its diversity. India, being such a vast country with phenomenal diversity, this diversity is widespread in almost every aspect of life. Food is no exception. For someone like me, born in North Indian family and married to a beautiful lady from Konkan, it becomes an obvious practice if my food preparations are more inclined towards these two regions of India.
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Patiala, a fourth largest city in Southeastern part of Punjab is popular in India for several noteworthy items. Its traditional turban, Patiala salwar (a female trouser), jutti (footwear) and the world famous Patiala peg (said to be roughly around 120ml). Patiala is also renowned for its rich gastronomic traditions. Food preparations like tandoori roti, maa ki daal, matar paneer, paranthas, aloo ki tikki, malai kulfi , makki ki roti and sarso da saag are part of the rich culinary list that Patiala can proudly boast about.
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Being an Indian my obvious choice of entertainment like millions of other Indians have been cricket and Bollywood. Let me talk about Bollywood here. While growing up national broadcaster Doordarshan was the only source of entertainment, and weekly they used to telecast some Bollywood movie that I would eagerly wait for. Sometimes they would telecast some serious meaningful cinema by directors like Guru Dutt, Shyam Benegal and I was ill-equipped back then to understand their movies and would go to sleep half way through.
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I love to sleep. In fact my husband is jealous of my sleep, more so when he is prone to even slightest of disturbances like neighbor’s barking dog. I agree barking dog could give many of you sleepless nights especially when other stray dogs decide to join the party and all these canines end up howling and whining entire night for no reason. I do not get disturbed by these unearthly howls and still manage to get sound sleep.
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Indian Cuisine is often described to be as vast as the European cuisine. Indian food has changed and enhanced over the period of centuries. It retains the food traditions of earliest Indians and has gracefully accepted the food habits and food items that were brought in the country by various means. Foreign invasions, trade relations and colonialism influenced our cuisine and played an important role in introducing various food products to the country. One such preparation that has evolved over the period of centuries ever since it was Indianised in the kitchen of Akbar is Korma.
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I was gifted with Rare Gems: A Non-Vegetarian Gourmet Collection from Maharashtra-By Aditya Mehendale on March 8th the international women’s day, a cookbook that I wanted on my shelves ever since it released and I saw it in Crossword. Pranay must have noticed me gawking at the appetizing images that this book had and must have decided to present me with a copy of this book.
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As per an old Swedish proverb “A life without love is like a year without summer”. I completely subscribe to the thought behind that lovely proverb, although I am not sure how many Indians would have that feeling for the summers. This month of May sun has been overbearing. As we crank up the air conditioning at home and offices to make it little cooler, I often see people become crankier in summers. As mercury raises so do our temper, which is why we witness increased level of honking in traffic and road rage incidents during summers.
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Growing up, we all have our personal likes and dislikes regarding food that influence our eating habits. I had developed aversion for lactose in my childhood and I shied away from milk, curd, paneer (cottage cheese), cream and other dairy products. Initially, mom used to cajole me into eating these dairy products, but later she gave up and I ended up not eating these for my entire childhood.
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India has been predominantly a vegetarian country. As per UN FAO statistics India has lowest rate of meat consumption in world. I have often come across people who are very surprised and wonder how vegetarians fulfill protein requirement of their body. There are actually quite a lot of options for vegetarians (lacto-vegetarians have much more considering dairy products are also a rich source of protein). Beans, lentils, leafy greens, tofu are some examples of protein sources in vegetarian world.
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Indian cuisine is so vast and diverse that I often wonder it would take a lifetime for me to experience this rich legacy of Indian food. Every state has its own rich food culture that warrants a separate cookbook. Having grown up in a North Indian family I had the privilege of enjoying North Indian food prepared by mom, but then there was a vast gamut of preparations that were unexplored.
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