Culinary Style

Today mouth watering images of Indian food - curries, baltis, tandooris - greet us at every street corner. In London alone there are well over a thousand Indian restaurants, with new ambitious eating houses springing up every other week across the nation. Supermarkets stock complete ready-made Indian meals and chicken tikka sandwiches are a huge-selling lunchtime favourite. The present day popularity of Indian food is unequivocal. However it is only the scale of this "spice explosion" that is a recent phenomenon. A taste for Indian food has existed in Britain since the 18C as one of the legacies of colonial times. The British who were posted in India for various assignments inevitably acquired a lasting addiction to Indian food. When they returned home they brought back recipes for curries, mulligatawny and chutneys, which were adapted and eventually assimilated into English cuisine. Queen Victoria is reputed to have had two Indian cooks, a rumour which testifies to a long standing desire for exotic food. One way or another, the British palate became accustomed to the taste of chillies, ginger and spices. And at the beginning of the 20C, the first Indian restaurants were starting to emerge in London.

To fully appreciate Indian and Sri Lankan food one really has to taste and see food in context. The food does, of course, exist in itself, offering a delicious variety of taste sensations. But it is greatly enhanced by an understanding of its relation to a cultural and religious backdrop. The vast majority of chefs at Indian restaurants in Britain hail from a particular part of the province of Bengal ; the Sylhet region. Even though the indigenous food of Bengal is undoubtedly specialised, the menus rarely highlight this regional aspect. On the contrary restaurateurs have been enterprising enough to stretch their range of products to include diverse cuisines, even to the extent of inventing menu combinations that may be considered unorthodox. Such menus have regrettably been adapted to suit the anglicised palate. Most patrons of Indian restaurants in Britain expect meat to form an essential component of their menu, and this expectation is not compromised. Traditional vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes are often mixed indiscriminately, and the food served in such restaurants bears little or no resemblance to what one would be served in India.

The preparation of authentic dishes is a central concern of this book, but what also emerges as important is a discovery of why the food is prepared and served in the way it is. The food of India is the result of the synthesis of land and climate with the religious, social and cultural life of the people who live there. All major world religions have a strong presence in the sub-continent, although the Hindus and Moslems are the most numerous. The Hindu veneration of the cow has led to beef taboos, as well as a variety of vegetarian traditions, the most austere of which are to be found amongst the Brahmin (priest caste) Tamils of South India and Sri Lanka. The Moslems, on the other hand, when they do not fast, indulge their senses more lavishly; although they shun pork as part of a religious taboo, they consume a variety of other meats prepared in the most exotic ways. It goes without saying that every single religious group in India has its own distinctive food style. Not only do they have their own particular food taboos, they have their celebratory dishes as well. It is precisely this diversity of religious and cultural traditions that has contributed to the richness and variety that is to be found in Indian food. The culinary differences between different regions of India are at least as great as those between say, France and Germany.

Despite its proximity to India, Sri Lanka cannot be considered simply as an extension of the neighbouring subcontinent. Culturally, geographically, climatically and indeed gastronomically, the differences are marked, although of course connecting threads to southern Indian regions do exist. The links with Kerala are particularly strong in regard to preparations such as "appam", "indiappam" (hoppers and string hoppers), and there are surviving culinary links with Sri Lanka's rich colonial history. Perhaps the most distinctive nature of Sri Lankan food is the use of Maldive fish (dried fish) which is added as a flavour enhancer to vegetable dishes. Coconut and chilli also form an integral part of most Sri Lankan dishes.

Throughout the India and Sri Lanka, European conquests have also influenced the food habits and culinary styles. Many a hybrid dish has come to be invented, often combining indigenous spices with culinary traditions of the West. For instance, in Goa a distinctly Portuguese influence is seen in the variety of pork dishes. The standard Goan sausage is a variation of the Spanish/Portuguese chorizo, a long coiled-up red sausage that is sometimes curried. The Portuguese liking of sweetened egg-yolk preparations is also seen in the Goan celebratory cake known as bibican, which combines coconut, egg and sugar. There is also a Sri Lankan version of Bibikkan as Sri Lanka was a Portuguese colony before it fell into the hands of the Dutch and then the British.

Across the vast Indian subcontinent from Northern India, Bangladesh and Pakistan to Sri Lanka in the south, the variations of climate and terrain are dramatic. A large part of this land mass is fertile and produces a wide range of crops. An innumerable variety of vegetables is found, ranging from distinctly tropical vegetables to those that grow in temperate climates. Vegetable dishes are prepared in a multitude of exciting ways form the major part of the Eastern diet. Meat and fish are for the most part a luxury, eaten by a comparatively affluent minority. Rice is the staple food in Bengal, Southern India and Sri Lanka, whereas wheat is the staple food in the North. The spices, which give Indian food its distinctive flavour and character, are grown throughout the entire subcontinent. Not only are the types of spices important in preparing particular dishes, but the blending of one spice with another is equally important and produces subtle differences in flavour.

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Last updated 24 March 2006