Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Abstract
In many ways the foods we eat define us, forming an important part of our identity. Most of
the foods we eat have taken a long and complex journey across continents to find their way
to our tables. This project tries to outline the role of the local taste preferences with respect
to which the introduced food-items slowly get transformed. Though culture, in contexts of
taste, is recognized as an influential parameter, it is often mentioned as the black-box,
leaving it open to determine exactly how cultures impact taste and food preferences,
making the taster acquiescent to various cuisines and culinary traditions. The paper cites
some such case studies where different cultural-taste preferences have affected in
transformation of cuisines in order to satisfy the local consumers.
Introduction
Food feeds the soul. To the extent that we all eat food, and we all have souls, food is
the single great unifier across cultures. But what feeds y
our soul?
For me, a first generation Delhi-born Marathi-Tamil, comfort food is Idli & coconut chutney,
or just plain Kande-Pohe (a marathi local recipe including flattened/beaten rice). Such
preferences are personally meaningful — and also culturally meaningful. Our comfort
foods map who we are, where we come from, and what happened to us along the way.
Reporter Jennifer 8. Lee (TED Talk) notes, “what you want to cook and eat is an
accumulation, a function of your experiences — the people you’ve met, things you’ve
learned, places you’ve been to. There may be inbound elements from other cultures, but
you’ll always eat things that mean something to you.”
Jennifer Berg, director of Graduate Food Studies at New York University, notes that food is
particularly important when you become part of a diaspora, separated from your mother
culture. “It’s the last vestige of culture that people shed,” says Berg. “There’s some aspects
of maternal culture that you’ll lose right away. First is how you dress, because if you want to
blend in or be part of a larger mainstream culture the things that are the most visible are
the ones that you let go. With food, it’s something you’re engaging in hopefully three times
a day, and so there are more opportunities to connect to memory and family and place. It’s
the hardest to give up.” (Choi S. Amy, 2014)
The food choices of different cultural groups are often connected to ethnic behaviors and
religious beliefs. P.G. Kittler, K.P. Sucher & Nelms (2012) addressed the influence of food
habits on an individual’s self-identity by stating, “Eating is a daily reaffirmation of [one’s]
cultural identity”. Many people affiliate mostly to the foods from their cultures, that marked
their childhood with warm, good feelings and memories. Food is part of who we are and
what we become. It ties us to our families and holds a special worth to a person. Foods
from our culture, from our family, often become the comfort foods we seek as adults in
times of frustration and stress.
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“Food is that aspect of culture which, because everyone necessarily participates in it
to some degree, is more egalitarian than, say, ballet, or opera, or even theatre. It’s
easier and less intimidating to join the fray and weigh in with an opinion”
Bourdieu states that “ordinary experience of the social world is a cognition” and is positive
about the fact that “the art of eating and drinking remains one of the few areas in which the
working classes explicitly challenge the legitimate art of living, in a “convivial indulgence”
marked by eating, and respectively, drinking together. He also agrees that taste is the
faculty of immediately and intuitively judging aesthetic values; it is the capacity to discern
the flavours of foods which implies a preference for some of them. Taste is also “the
propensity and capacity to materially and symbolically appropriate a given class of
classified and classifying objects and practices; it is the generative formula of lifestyle; it is a
unitary set of distinctive preferences which express the same expressive intention in the
specific logic of each of the symbolic sub-spaces (e.g. furniture, clothing, language)”.
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preferences are now inextricably linked to artistic design and media manipulation, as in
advertising and in creating social status and prestige to the extent of elevating some
individuals to a fashionable cult status who are presenters of cookery competition
programmes, food fashion writers and celebrity chefs.
Theorists consider that at the level of emotional affect, the sense of one’s national
belonging, is often inscribed in the “taken-for-granted practices of everyday life” (Morley
2000: 38) as national culture is most often understood as being “firmly rooted in what
appears trivial” on the one hand, and on the other hand, as being “continually reproduced
through the cultural practice of everyday life.” Hence, to explain more clearly here, the
transfer of food cultures to different areas and its acceptance in the culture, is not always
because the food’s taste is liked or accepted by the people. It may even be because of some
local change in the food ingredients to present it on a local level for it to be readily
accepted.
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Taste plays an important role in building a sense of belongingness, which in turn, are
central to defining one's identity or a place they can relate themselves with. Biologically
speaking, on one hand, it refers to the gustatory sense that makes people capable of
differentiating flavors, while on the other hand, it describes cultural preferences and eating
patterns in a community set up. Due to the increasing interactions between people from
different communities and across the physical space, and due to the escalating flow of
ideas and thoughts, we can see an evident flux in the food cultures all over the world. Food,
as a cultural entity, is constantly on the move. Just like people, foods from different places
interact with each other, sharing one or the other’s constituents. They get diffused from its
roots, often forming new hybrids when they come in contact with other food traditions in
some other place. Any new ‘variant’ in the food culture is accepted only if it suits the local
tastes and is appreciated by the people in that particular community.
A number of such incidences can be stated as examples here. One such case can be how
the famous fast-food chain and brand Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) attempts to pursue its
vegetarian customers in India. In what could be considered no less than a miraculous
consequence of intense competition among various restaurant businesses, KFC – which
celebrates chicken in its very name – came out with a segregated yet expansive vegetarian
menu.Taking its customer-centricity to the next level, KFC even keeps separate cooking
sections for vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes, while proactively informing this to their
customers through hoardings, posters, and similar advertisements. Many local restaurants
don’t – as a result of which, they pave way for their international rivals to leverage the
opportunity.
Likewise, a number of such fast-food chains and other global businesses adopt these
innovative practices as part of their social responsibility. They do so voluntarily, driven by a
need to successfully establish their food-items locally while also making a difference to the
already existing food-culture in the community. Hence in this project, I, as a student of
anthropology, want to explore more of such cases of food-transformation due to cultural
interactions, taking a note of the necessity of involvement of the local taste preference.
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Objectives
Contemporary food trends of avid foodies are not only about binge-eating on anything they
get their hands on, but also to find out stories behind the existing culinary traditions and
the histor(ies) of their interactions with other food traditions, the source and sustainability
of the foods, etc. Being a curious foodie myself, it is this trend that has prompted the
selection of this topic in the first place, which focuses to outline the role of local taste
preferences with respect to which the introduced food-items slowly get transformed.
The following are the major objectives that I wish to cover in the project:
2. To identify various foods that have undergone a transformation due to their
adjustments to the local taste preferences in India as a whole.
3. To explore the backgrounds of the “transformed cuisines” in order to understand
the process of transformation of cuisines in a better way.
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Methodology
“Another nice thing about methods is that disciplines cannot own them.”
The trajectory of multi-sited ethnography was defined by George Marcus (1995: 97) as
pursuing the “circulation of cultural meanings, objects and identities in diffused
time-space...that cannot be accounted for ethnographically by remaining focused on a
single site.” He proposed this method as a way to examine global processes and increasing
interconnectedness of all people through the process of globalisation. He says that due to
this whole globalisation idea, we are moving from a conventional ‘single-sited’ analysis to a
new ‘multi-sited’ observation and participation that includes the ‘local-global’ dichotomies
intersecting each other.
Using this multi-sited approach, which has been built upon Arjun Appadurai’s idea of
‘scapes’ (1990), I try to explore the routes through which these famous culinary traditions
entered the Indian-subcontinent and have transformed to the existing recipes that
everyone relish. I use follow the thing method here, trying my level best to trace the
cuisines back to where they entered the “Indian”-group of food culture.
The proposed project also involves insights from famous Indian food-historian Dr.
Pushpesh Pant (Prof. of History, JNU) and known food-critic Mrs. Meeta Sengupta (Sr.
Content-writer, Foodtalk India) on the transformation of the food items across the nation
and the most probable reason behind the same.
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The longstanding vegetarianism within sections of India's Hindu, Buddhist and Jain
communities has exerted a strong influence over Indian cuisine. People who follow a strict
vegetarian diet make-up about 20–42 percent of the population in India, while less than 30
percent are regular meat-eaters. Before talking about tracing this particular food tradition
through the history of the cultural invasions and food transformations in the
Indian-subcontinent, I will briefly take the readers through the history of establishments of
various kingdoms and religions across the Indian-subcontinent, along with the most
relishing recipes that found dominance during those periods.
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classification system that categorized every item as ‘satvik’ (pure), ‘rajasik’ (active and
passionate) or ‘tamasik’ (heavy, dull, slow, gluttonous) developed in Ayurveda; each was
deemed to have a powerful effect on the body and the mind. (Saraswati 2001)
A blending of Mughlai and Hyderabadi (now Telangana) cuisines took place in the kitchens
of the Nizams, historic rulers of Hyderabad state, resulting in the creation of Hyderabadi
biryani and others, considered to be one of the finest of the main dishes in India.
Influence from Arab and Portuguese traders resulted in diversified subcontinental tastes
and meals. New-world vegetables such as tomato, chilies, squash, and potato, which were
introduced during the sixteenth century, that have become staples of Indian cuisine. The
British introduced European recipes and cooking techniques like baking. Similarly, a lot of
other travellers, traders and invaders brought in their cultural identities with them, which
have formed the diversity in the Indian-subcontinent as it is now.
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Observations
While having a talk with Dr. Pushpesh Pant in his office in the History Department, JNU,
over a cup of tea, I found that like many such meat-based preparations, biryani too made
its way into India from Central Asia. The word biryani, he says, is a Urdu word, and derives
its etymology from the Persian language. One interpretation states its origin from birinj (the
Persian word for rice). Another suggests that it is derived from the Parsi word biryan or
beriyan, which means to fry or roast. Well-known historian Sohail Nakhwi has traced this
dish’s origin back to more than 400 years ago in Central Asia. It was then, he wrote, that
people began adding meat to rice, thus resulting in a dish called pilaf or pulao, which he
believed was a precursor to b
iryani.
Dr. Pant talked about his knowledge of the ‘Nawabi Lucknowi Biryani’. “Travelling eastwards
via Iran, Afghanistan, Peshawar and Delhi, the majestic biryani found its ultimate home in
Lucknow”, were his words when he was just starting about it. The offsprings of this Awadhi
Biryani, according to him, had spread to different parts of the sub-continent - from Dhaka in
the East to Golconda in the South. Conceivably, “some of its cousins had taken a detour”,
said he, joking, to reach the Western coasts of India via land and sea.
Likewise, Mrs. Meeta Sengupta had said in her lectures that ‘the introduction of this
delicacy can be traced back to the ‘Muslim rulers’ who came to “Hindustan”. She mentioned
that this word ‘biryani’ can be found extensively in many pages of the legendary ‘Ain-i-Akbari’
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(1590), a book which has a plethora of such delicacies with their detailed recipes described
during the reign of Akbar. The fact that biryani was part of the Akbar’s banquets emphasize
the Mughal connection and concoctions in the dish. It is no secret that the Mughals
themselves were a Muslim dynasty who ruled a large part of India and had their roots in
Persia (acknowledging both Dr. Pant’s and Mrs. Sengupta’s theories).
It is amazing to know how this dish became quite popular from one place to another. It
went all over the country with different regions having their own versions of Biryani.
Indisputably, this is one dish people all over eat and devour. Across India there are
countless varieties of biryani that are prepared. Mughlai, Lucknowi, Chettinad and
Ambur-style, etc. are a few of the many varieties known.
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While trying to know about the different varieties of this delicacy, I came across a history
student named Suchismita. Actually, she helped me get my directions right on my way to
meet Dr. Pant in JNU. While returning back, I met her again, and we had a small chat on our
way out on the topic I was researching about. She had said something in return which got
imprinted on my mind:
“History toh almost sabko pata hai (most of us know the history) from 1500 to
1900. During Mughal empire, Lucknow was known as Awadh, giving rise to the
Awadhi Biryani. 1856 mein (in 1856) British overthrew Nawab Wajid-Ali-Shah
(from Awadh) in Calcutta, giving rise to the Calcutta Biryani. Then came
Aurangzeb, and installed Nizam-ul-mulk of the Asaf-Jahi dynasty as the ruler of
Hyderabad, as well as a 'Nawab-of-Arcot' to oversee Aaru-Kaadu region (Six
Forests) in south of Hyderabad. This led to rise of Hyderabadi Biryani and Arcot
Biryani. This Biryani spread to Mysore by Tipu Sultan of Carnatic. Needless to say
it was a royal dish for Nawabs and Nizams. They hired vegetarian Hindus as
bookkeepers leading to the development of Vegetarian or as you say it ‘Tahiri’
Biryani.”
In less than two minutes, she had suggested me a probable trail of biryani through the
history that we all know. I realized that in a similar manner, different people will have their
own such routes that they believe b
iryani h
as travelled.
The exact origin of the dish is, however, uncertain. In North India, different varieties of
biryani developed in the Muslim centers of Delhi (Mughlai cuisine), Lucknow (Awadhi cuisine)
and other small principalities, while in South, where rice is more widely used as a staple
food, several distinct varieties of biryani emerged from Hyderabad, Tamil Nadu, and the
Malabar region of Kerala and Karnataka, where minority Muslim communities were
present. Dr. Pant says that Andhra is the only region of South India that does not have
many native varieties of biryani.
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According to historian Lizzie Collingham, the modern biryani developed in the Mughal royal
kitchen, as a confluence of the native spicy rice dishes of India and the Persian pilaf. Indian
restaurateur Kris Dhillon believes that the dish originated in Persia and was brought to India
by the Mughals. However, another theory claims that the dish was known in India before
the first Mughal emperor Babur came to India. The 16th century text of Ain-i-Akbari makes
no distinction between biryani and pilaf (or pulao). It states that the word "biryani" is of
older usage in India. A similar theory, Dr. Pant says, that biryani came to India with Timur's
invasion, appears to be incorrect, because there is no record of biryani having existed in his
native land during that period.
According to Pratibha Karan, the biryani is of South Indian origin, derived from pilaf varieties
brought to South Asia by the Arab traders. She speculates that the pulao (or pilaf) was an
army dish in medieval India; the theory goes like - the armies, unable to cook elaborate
meals, would prepare a one-pot dish where they cooked rice with whichever meat was
available. Over time, the dish became today’s biryani due to different methods of cooking,
with the distinction between "pulao" and "biryani" being arbitrary. (Pratibha 2012)
According to Vishwanath Shenoy, the owner
of a biryani restaurant chain in India, “one
branch of biryani comes from the Mughals,
while another was brought by the Arab
traders to Malabar in South India.” While the
‘Middle-Eastern’ and ‘Middle-Asian’ versions
of biryani and pulao are made on the
tandoor (Middle-Eastern style oven), biryani
in South-Asia is made in a large metal
handi-like (pot) dish with a narrow mouth
called degh (image on the right). (Sangeeta
1997) However, some say the dish originated in West Asia where the ‘Nomads’ buried an
earthen pot full of meat, rice and spices in a pit and eventually the pot was dug up
containing ‘Biryani’. Similarly, there are tons of legends that associate themselves to the
origin of b
iryani a
nd it’s travel-story to India.
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Besides the historical facts regarding the origin of the dish, there are a lot of legends that
are associated with the origin of biryani, due to which tracing the origins of this dish
becomes more hazy. While it is largely believed Biryani originated in Persia and came this
way through the Mughals, other possibilities and theories about the arrival of Biryani in
India also exist.
● One legend has it that Amir Timur, the Turco-Mongol conqueror, brought this dish
from Kazakhstan via Afghanistan to Northern India. There is also historical evidence
to support that there were similar rice dishes prior to the Mughal invasion.
● Another interesting Biryani story from the Mughal era is when Mumtaz Mahal once
made a surprise visit to the army barracks and discovered the men were
undernourished. She asked the palace chef to cook a dish with rice, meat and spices
which would be a complete meal providing balanced nutrition to the warriors. This
became the origin of Biryani. This story in timeline can also be considered factually
correct after Timur's invasion.
● Yet, there are some others who say the dish was actually originated in West Asia,
where the nomads in the area would bury an earthen pot full of meat, rice and
spices in a pit, eventually the pot was dug up and that was the B
iryani.
● There is mention about a rice dish known as ‘Oon Soru’ in Tamil literatures as early
as the year 2 A.D. The dish was said to be composed of rice, ghee, meat, turmeric,
coriander, pepper, and bay leaf, and was used to feed military warriors. (Pant 2006)
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The Persian cooks let the rice sit in salted water for several hours so it would shimmer like
crystals, and expected the rice to plump to perfection in the boiling stock.
Centuries later, Tavernier, a French traveller and cultural anthropologist, observed that the
best rice suited to make vegetarian tahiri and meat pulao was cultivated southwest of Agra.
It plumped to perfection, with each grain separate and fluffy.
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Legends say that when Babur arrived in the subcontinent, he hated the cuisine. He was
used to a hearty, meat-based nomadic shepherd's diet, and hailing from Central Asia, the
meat pulao was a fundamental repertoire to any Central Asian kitchen.
The cultural mesh of Persia, Central Asia and India gave birth to an offshoot of the pulao,
the wonderful biryani. It was in the Mughal kitchens that the elegantly subtle pulao was
introduced to the Indian spices, giving birth to the delightfully fiery biryani, which, in
essence, evolved to vegetarian biryani in the kitchens of Uttar Pradesh. The chefs in
Lucknow took pride in making the fragrant tahiri and maintained that the sophistication of
the dish was in its subtlety of meatless flavour, where the floral essence of the rice and
fragrance of the vegetables enhanced the taste.
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2. “We Have a Little China in India” - Indianised Chinese Foods.
Chilli Chicken, Chowmein, Fried Rice with Manchurian, the list goes on… And as our mouth
waters, we wonder are these scrumptious creations Chinese or Indian? Truth be told, this
newfangled cuisine, coined as ‘Indian-Chinese’, actually exists, to which Mrs. Sengupta says,
“Desi Chinese actually dates back to a few hundred years ago created by the small Chinese
community from the Hakka region that settled in Kolkata in the late 19th century. And
before you knew it, this version of “Chinese” food had tickled the taste buds of people all
over India adopting it in their own way, from Chinese Bhel Puri to Chinese Idli, spring rolls in
canteens to m
omos on the streets.
Chinese food is the most popular foreign cuisine in India surpassing Italian or Thai. This is
why a majority of restaurants dedicate a section of their menu to Chinese food. And this is
not just the case in India, people across the world, especially in Malaysia, Singapore and
North America, surprisingly, relish this cuisine to no end.
“Most desi Chinese favourites do not exist in Chinese cuisine”
Whenever immigrant communities bring their native cuisine to a new country, there are the
inevitable adaptations made to suit the local palate. However, when it comes to Chinese
food in India, things have evolved so much that most dishes considered Chinese staples
here are actually unheard of in China. If you were to ask a Chinese native about
‘Manchurian’, he would probably talk about the Manchurian people living in north-eastern
China! The Indian-Chinese staple of Manchurian is actually closer to the Persian kofta than
it is to anything in the Chinese cuisine.
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When one of my Chinese friends, Echo Zhang, visited me last year, I took her on a kind-of
“Indian Street-Food walk” in Delhi. While on the food-tour, we came across a number of
Indo-Chinese menu eveywhere. Her reaction was something which I had never expected
coming from a Chinese person. She said the foods here are nowhere near the actual
Chinese foods that exist. The preparations, dressing, ingredients, all are different than what
is available here. She said that the Chinese hot & sour soup, which is easily the most
popular way to start any Chinese meal in India, can never be considered a starter in China.
Their soups have a much thinner consistency and are generally served with a bowl of
rice/noodles. Those are so heavy that they are considered complete meals in themselves.
In authentic Chinese fare, the vegetables used extensively include broccoli, watercress,
water chestnuts, and bok choy. Meanwhile, in the Indian versions of these dishes, you will
find a predominance of local veggies like potatoes, cabbages, baby corn, carrots, and
capsicums. Seeing a menu board of a claiming-Chinese restaurant: chicken drumsticks
smothered in fire-engine red “Szechuan” sauce; paneer chilli; Triple Szechuan – a
ridiculously delicious jumble of fried rice, noodles and crispy noodles, topped with gravy,
Echo exclaimed that if a Chinese person were to try it without being told what it was called,
they’d probably not realise it was India’s own iteration of their country’s cuisine. Even the
way we prefer to eat it is different – Indians love to pair rice and noodle dishes with Chinese
gravies, as opposed to say, a stand-alone noodle bowl. It has been adapted, refashioned,
bastardised – whatever you might want to call it – and well, we love it.
Authentic Chinese food (especially Cantonese cuisine) can be quite bland. Dishes have one
main ingredient as the hero, while condiments like dried chilli paste, sweet chillies, pickled
chillies, etc., are served separately (as many Indians who visit China discover to their
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dismay). Desi Chinese food lovers prefer deep fried, spicy, oily stuff with loads of spring
onions and red chillies as garnish. Different states in India use different kinds of masalas
depending on the local taste buds. In China, a bit of meat or some fish sauce is added to
almost every dish to impart flavour. In India though, there are ample choices of Chinese
dishes for vegetarians.
Desi Chinese food is a far cry from the traditional version. But with all its differences,
Chinese food in India is much loved, and we aren’t going the more authentic route anytime
soon.
“Chinese traders had been sailing to India’s shores since as early as the 13th century”, SM
Edwards, in The Bombay Gazetteer, traces the origin of the Chinese influence on Indian
palate. Large number of people had begun moving here from the early 1800s, settling
mainly in the port cities of Mumbai (Bombay) and Kolkata (Calcutta). They started working as
beauticians, dock workers, shoemakers, dentists and hotel staffers.
“Names like Shaolin and Waimai flowed as easily off the Indian tongues as Mariza and
Murtuza.” The community put down firm roots in their new home, even as they tried to
recreate old familiars. Food, like with all migrant communities, was the most popular
means to this end.
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It was at these restaurants, over sweet corn chicken soup, Hakka noodles and mixed fried
rice, that Indians first made their acquaintance with Chinese food. It was exotic but not too
much – the taste was somehow comfortingly familiar. “It was the food that Arun picked to
impress Prabha, in Chhoti Si Baat – one of my favourite Hindi movies from the 1970s”, says
my uncle while telling me about it. “They dine out at Flora, where Arun shows off his
chopsticks skills, leaving his rival Nagesh to flounder, red-faced”.
May be, this was the first wave of the Chinese influence.
Food writer Vir Sanghvi tried to break down that quintessential taste in a feature for
Hindustan Times Brunch magazine: “It is the soya sauce (light, not dark) that gives the dish its
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Chinese character. And tomato ketchup provides the red colour and sweetness that makes
it look like Indian-Chinese. To this basic combo, you add chilli to taste. And suddenly, you
have an Indian-Chinese dish.”
Chinese pakoras, stuffed with cabbage and spring onion, listened to which Echo laughed
out loud, were my mama’s (uncle) favourite after-school snack. “A street-vendor right next
to Godbole Hospital sold it,” he recalled. “Conveniently located”, my mother exclaimed
jokingly.
Manchow soup, with fried noodles floating on top, was another popular snack. A tiny stall
named ‘Peking’ near my uncle’s school sold it. For those who wanted to try making it at
home, community cookbooks like Annapurna, which my mum still has a moth-eaten copy
of, featured recipes for Hakka noodles, fried rice and sweet corn soup. In the 1980s and
’90s, many soon-to-be brides signed up for pre-matrimony cooking classes that provided a
crash course in preparing “Continental” dishes (anything vaguely European) as well as
“Chinese” dishes.
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The word “momo” comes from a Chinese loanword “momo” (馍馍) which translates to
“steamed bread”. When preparing momo, flour is filled, most commonly with ground water
buffalo meat. Often, ground lamb or chicken meats are used as alternate to water buffalo
meat. Finely chopped onion, minced garlic, fresh minced ginger, cumin powder, salt,
coriander/cilantro, etc. are added to meat for flavoring. Sauce made from cooked tomatoes
flavored with timur (Szechwan
pepper), minced red chilies is often
served along with momo.
Come to think of it, the momo has probably travelled the farthest of all foods. That, it is
now quite at home on the streets of Delhi, as it is comfortable at posh five-star eateries,
only confirms how these stuffed dumplings (either with meat of one’s choice or assorted
greens including paneer) have evolved over the years. And how India, which is not even its
place of origin, has adopted it like its very own is also an interesting twist.
Today, there are food entrepreneurs who prepare momos in bulk and supply them to
vendors and kiosks whose only job is to steam and sell them piping hot with hot sauce to
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hungry customers who never seem to get
enough of them. There was a time, not too
long ago, when people associated momos
with food from the Northeast. Far from it, it’s
not really a part of their traditional cuisine. For
instance, in Manipur's capital Imphal,
restaurants may now be awaking up to the
popularity of this food and including them in
their menu with passion, but they can never get it right simply because it is not a traditional
dish like fish and rice is, as in the case in Tripura or other states in the region, with of
course a few exceptions.
North-Eastern Momos
How momos are received in Sikkim is quite another story. Across the communities: Bhutias,
Lepchas and Nepalis, it is a comfort food which is very much a part of their diet. Their
aluminium momo steamer is always in use. The dumpling you get in Sikkim is a close
cousin of the Tibetan momo. The great exodus from their homeland in the 1960s scattered
Tibetans and their cuisine across India — several settled in Sikkim, Meghalaya, the hill
towns of Darjeeling and Kalimpong in Bengal, and Delhi.
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In Sikkim, the momo has pushed the state's traditional dish, hyontoen, off the plate.
Hyontoen is made of millet flour, rolled like momos, stuffed with cheese and steamed.
Today, few Sikkimese people remember it but they take pride in their ability to prepare
batches of delicious momos. At home and in some restaurants, it is served with radish or
cucumber salad. Beef and pork are traditional fillings; but chicken and vegetable momos
and cottage cheese of late, are gaining ground.
But the provenance of the Indian dumpling is a complicated one. Where and how did it
feature into our menu is interesting. Even though momo traces its roots to Nepal, Tibet and
Bhutan, it is similar to what the Chinese call baozi and jiaoz. Both are dumplings that are
stuffed with pork, beef, shrimp, vegetables or even tofu. Though these are integral to the
Chinese, it is commonly found in most parts of Asia. For the Chinese, special occasions like
their Lunar New Year means getting their kitchen stuffed with ingredients for jiaozi, which
is lovingly prepared in every home.
Momos have also made passionate inroads in Bhutan believed to be popularised by the
Tibetan communities. So, it’s interesting how my Bhutanese friends interpret their version.
They use all kinds of meat, mostly yak meat or beef, for the stuffing. As for the vegetarian
option, they stick to cabbage, mushroom,paneer, potatoes and spinach with loads of
onions, cheese, butter or oil and of course, salt to taste. For the sauce, it has to be that
deadly dalley chilles, locally called dalley khorsani. ‘Dalley’ in Nepali means round, and
‘khorsani’ is chilli. They would grind this chilli with sliced onion and tomatoes, mash it to
make a course paste, and finally garnish with minced onions and black pepper. Sometimes,
26
they also add in Bhutanese pepper, which tickles the tongue. The bones of any meat they
use are dunked in a pot and kept to boil for a clear soup.
So, what makes a delicious momo really depends on how it is prepared and what
ingredients are used. If the dough, for instance, is fresh and of fine quality, be sure that you
will get a good momo. Some people even use warm water when kneading the dough. The
stuffing, be it meat or vegetables, should be minced well and flavoured with ginger or
garlic.
Another time, it was at a Nepali friend, Manju’s home in Delhi. Painstakingly, she kneaded
the dough and prepared mutton, chicken and vegetable momos in her aluminium vessel.
She deboned the meat and dunked them into a pressure cooker. After a couple of whistles,
added sliced coriander and garlic. The aroma wafting all over her house was enough to rev
our appetite. Those juicy momos with a home-made sauce of tomato, green chillies and
garlic, along with a bowl of soup was soulful. To this day, I long for that. Momos, no matter
where they come from, they will always be my soul food.
27
28
Through the above three cases, we see transformation of major cuisines. Taste, as a
cultural entity, is based mostly on the cultural preferences of the individual rather than the
gustatory and biological taste. There are many do’s and don’ts associated in the Indian
context of foods - mainly due to the religious reasons or even may be just communit
preferences. Such preferences may limit the kinds of foreign cuisines and food cultures
that could penetrate the individual/community in order to get accepted or get established
(in case of a food-business). Hence transformations happen. The food cultures get altered
according to the local taste of the consumers for it to be establish its base. These changes
can be moderate (as the case of momos) or extreme (like that of the case of Chinese foods).
Biryani and its various variants give an example of a kind of balanced transformation,
keeping the native culinary tradition alive in the form of meat-gravy-rice combination.
Human societies across the globe have established closer contacts over many centuries,
but recently the pace has dramatically increased. The communications revolution, thanks to
its rapidity and outreach, has made the world a global village. The multi-national companies
have made the world one global market. Jet airplanes, cheap telephone service, email,
computers, huge oceangoing vessels, instant capital flows, all these have made the world
more interdependent than ever. However, there are also inter-ethnic, inter-cultural and
inter-religious conflicts in the world. People are searching for their cultural roots.
Globalization and cultural identity is hotly debated in the academics these days. Subaltern
groups and indigenous peoples are affirming and defending their cultural and social
identities in the new global era. It makes the situation about globalization and cultural
identity quite complex.
It will be helpful to look at it analytically. On the one hand, we should understand the
globalization more precisely; on the other hand, we also need to have a clear idea of
culture. Only then can we understand the impact of globalization on cultures. In the
process, it will also become clear to us how we should handle the dynamic of globalization.
When we view globalization in terms of science and technology, we’d better notice that
people are not passively accepting the influence of globalization. They have great
subjectivity and freedom to change and create culture. Science and technology make the
29
world globalized and globalization reflects somewhat of the theory of convergence, but in
deeper sense, it promotes cultural identity. With the development of science and
technology, people are closer than before. They become much more concerned about their
cultural identity. They are constantly searching for their cultural roots and defending them.
If we can respect the diversity of peoples and their cultures in this new era, it can lead to
global community marked by unity in pluralism. The cultures may no longer be local in the
traditional sense, but still different and plural. This will lead to a new kind of globalization
that will not be homogenizing.
Hence, due to this globalising world, and increasing interactions of different food cultures,
this world of culinary artists has a lot of ideas of mixing-matching the food traditions in
order to create something new and inventive, yet tasty. Taste is the one priority that is a
little impossible to leave behind, while exploring food cultures around. Taste preference
helps one identify themselves to a certain kind of ‘food culture’ and this taste helps people
get a sense of belongingness in places far from ‘home’.
30
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Contents
Abstract 0
Introduction 1
Objectives 6
Methodology 7
Observations 10
Biryani - The Satiating Mughlai Dish 10
Stories of Origins 12
Tahiri - To Satisfy the Vegetarian Indians 15
“We Have a Little China in India” - Indianised Chinese Foods. 18
“Most desi Chinese favourites do not exist in Chinese cuisine” 18
Stories of Origin 20
Momos - Traditionally Indian or an Indian Transformation ? 24
North-Eastern Momos 25
Momo or Something Else? 26
What Makes a Delicious Momo? 27
References 31
34