Why has Indian food not become popular in USA ?
habshi
It's curry, but not as we know it
New wave Indian restaurateurs are eschewing the traditional image of
chicken tikka, lager and flock wallpaper in favour of stylish
interiors and posh cuisine. But one thing never changes - wherever you
eat your curry, you can be sure they've got nothing like it in
downtown Bombay. By Geraldine Bedell
Sunday May 12, 2002
In the last half-century, curry has become more traditionally English
than English breakfast. Robin Cook believes that chicken tikka masala
is now our national dish; there is a Koh-I-Noor or a Taj Mahal on just
about every High Street in the country. It was entirely fitting that
David Beckham celebrated scoring the goal that qualified England for
the World Cup at Manchester's Shimla Pinks, with what we are told is
'his favourite' chicken korma. Madonna, more and more the Anglophile,
has apparently taken to ordering the 'taxi curry takeout' from the
Noor Jahan restaurant near her London home in Westbourne Grove.
The most extraordinary thing about the Balti Houses and Rajput
Tandooris up and down the country is that each and every one of them
has the same menu. You can find more or less identical lamb pasandas
and chicken vindaloos in Bradford and Brick Lane, Alderley Edge and
Virginia Water. Indian food is a £3.2 billion industry in Britain,
accounting for two-thirds of all eating out. But until recently, all
the available dishes were based on a couple of sauces, alternatively
spiced up with chillies or cooled down with yoghurt or cream. The
resulting concoctions have only a tangential relationship with food as
eaten in India. The balti, for example, was invented in Britain,
probably in Birmingham. Various derivations of the word have been
offered - that it's a region between India and Pakistan, and, no less
mischievously, that it's a dialect word for a bucket. But no one
actually knows what it means.
The homogeneity of Indian restaurant food is even more surprising when
you consider that India is around the size of Europe and at least as
topographically varied: thousands of miles of coastline, vast arid
plains, marshy lowlands and extremely high mountains. Diet is also
determined by religion and caste. More than half the population is
vegetarian, the Parsees are influenced by the Persians, the southern
Muslims by the Malaysians; some southern Christians by Irish
missionaries; and the Jains don't eat anything that grows underground.
So talking about Indian food is scarcely more informative than talking
about European food when you actually mean Italian or Portuguese.
We all know why this has happened. More than 90 per cent of Indian
restaurants in Britain are owned and run by Bangladeshis. Initially,
it was next to impossible for them to reproduce their home cooking,
which involves a lot of seafood and vegetables that were difficult to
source here then at sensible prices, certainly in a sufficiently fresh
state. And, as restaurateur Iqbal Wahhab, himself a Bangladeshi,
points out, 'Bangladesh as a brand is associated with floods and
cyclones, whereas India is associated with romance, the Raj, the Taj
Mahal, mystique'.
Most of the would-be restaurateurs hadn't been cooks at home, so it
almost didn't matter what food they made. (There is a theory that if
the garment trade had remained more successful, there would have been
no Indian restaurant explosion.) And when a successful formula was
found, it spread like wildfire.
The hybrid Bangladeshi-Indian curry house is a much-loved institution,
but its cooking is scarcely inventive. And though the food may be
irresistible in its way, especially on a Saturday night after a few
pints, it's not exactly of the highest quality. As Pat Chapman, the
founder of the The Curry Club (an organisation that promotes Indian
food), explains, the classic curry gravy will include taste enhancers
such as 'factory-bottled curry paste, garam masala, asafoetida,
fenugreek seeds and even some chemicals. Monosodium glutamate enhances
taste and thickens sauces. The restaurateur achieves his bright
oranges, reds, yellows and brown colours using powdered food colouring
and then there's tinned tomatoes and tomato puree and ketchup, and
sweeteners such as sugar or even pureed mango chutney.' Still fancy
that chicken Madras?
In the last few years, something very different has been happening to
Indian food. Curry has got posh. Most strikingly, two London
restaurants, Tamarind and Zaika, have each been awarded a Michelin
star, and there are several other contenders - The Cinnamon Club, the
Red Fort - snapping at their heels. The British consumer, long
familiar with biryanis and bhunas and increasingly sophisticated about
spicy flavours, is ready to try something new. Waitrose has been
selling a Goan dish called Xacutti for about three years. You might
have found this in one of the very few restaurants specialising in
Goan food (such as Cyrus Todiwala's Cafe Spice Namaste at Aldgate East
and Battersea) but never in your local curry house.
Britain's growing discernment about Indian food has coincided with a
deepening appreciation of the country. India has ceased, in the
British mind, to be about the Raj and poverty-stricken villages, and
become the home of computer programmers, call centres serving British
companies and such striking films as Lagaan and Monsoon Wedding.
Bollywood has also become cool, in a semi-ironic fashion, with Andrew
Lloyd Webber's Bombay Dreams about to provoke even more interest.
Meanwhile, the Asian British experience is a hot subject for books and
films (Bend It Like Beckham, Anita and Me, Goodness Gracious Me, The
Kumars at Number 42, Hari Kunzru's The Impressionist).
There's no longer a simple idea of India as a large hot country to
which we gave a civil service, and which, in return, gave us curry. (A
lot of 'us' are now Indian anyway.) Reflecting this heightened
interest, Selfridges has this month turned over its London and
Manchester stores to a Bollywood promotion. This week, the restaurant
in the London store will be offering food from India's coastal
regions: marinated, steamed and panfried claws to start perhaps,
seasoned with crushed peppers, garlic, and lemon juice; coated with
egg and tossed in coriander, mint and green chillies. And to follow
maybe Magalorean chicken curry cooked in red chilli, peppercorn, cumin
and coriander sauce, with onions, fenugreek and cumin, served with
coconut rice and spinach. For the following two weeks, the food will
be from the North-West Frontier, including, to start, fish tukra
baskets - batter-fried cubes of salmon tossed with onions, tomatoes
and peppers, served in a potato basket. To follow, there's dum ka kid
gosht: lamb shanks cooked in gravy in a sealed pot; or maybe Bombay
Brasserie lamb chops, cooked in the tandoor. (Taj Hotels are
collaborating on the food, flying over 20 chefs. In the UK, Taj own
the Bombay Brasserie, one of the first upmarket Indian restaurants
here, and the Keralan restaurant Quilon.)
Meanwhile, in the food hall, around 50 different dishes are on offer,
and there will be seven or eight stalls demonstrating street food:
roasted corn flavoured with salt and red chilli powder with limes cut
into it, or baida paratha - bread dipped with beaten egg, or puri, a
kind of biscuit made with chickpea flour and topped with potatoes,
yogurt, onions and coriander or perhaps with tamarind, or mint
chutney.
The poshing of Indian food has mainly taken place in the capital, but
it's inevitable that it will spread across the country. Italian food
escaped its checked tablecloth and giant pepperpot origins first in
London, but - not least through the efforts of Jamie Oliver, who is
not Italian at all - Northern Italian/River Cafe-influenced food is
now understood everywhere in Britain. Ironically enough, though, the
British love affair with the curry house actually creates a lot of
unwelcome baggage for the chefs and restaurateurs who are trying to
increase understanding of Indian food. Iqbal Wahhab, owner of the
Cinnamon Club in Westminster, complains that initial reviews all
compared it to a curry house. 'We don't want to be seen as an Indian
restaurant; we want to be seen as a London restaurant. I don't want
people to say, "Shall we go to Indian restaurant one or two, or the
Cinnamon Club?" but "Shall we go to Le Caprice or Nobu or the Cinnamon
Club?" We're not quite there yet. But that's where we aspire to be.'
The Cinnamon Club is located in a former Westminster library, and not
much about the coolly understated decor says 'Indian restaurant'. 'I
wanted to leave the identity of the building intact,' Wahhab says.
'It's such a fantastic structure. I wanted it simple, elegant; no
fancy tableware.' Everything, down to the £100-a-throw
cinnamon-coloured calfskin menus, expresses comfort, discretion and
affluence. Wahhab spent several years as a restaurant PR frustrated
that even those of his clients who were serving very good food were
insufficiently concerned about presentation and service - 'chutney
splats on the menu, waiters filling the wrong glass first'. But the
presence on the menu of dishes such as crab risotto and rump of beef
with sauce bordelaise (Wahhab involved the French Michelin-starred
chef, Eric Chavot) and a certain adventurousness on the part of Vivek
Singh, the Cinnamon Club's hugely talented executive chef, seem to
have left some people confused.
'Authenticity is a big bugbear for us, and for Indian cooking
generally,' Wahhab complains. 'In France, no one's conditioned by
Escoffier any more, so why are we so concerned that this is how a dish
was made 200 years ago by some old git who's been passing the recipe
down through one Lucknowi family? You hear this story everywhere: "My
chef's got the only recipe because his grandad gave it to him, and his
grandad gave it to him, and his father cooked for the king of
so-and-so."
'People say to me, "Is your food authentic?" And my response is, "Do
you mean good?" What does authenticity mean anyway? Flies in your
food, cholera, dysentery? It could mean any of those.' The truth is
that all the classy Indian chefs emphasise their authenticity when it
suits them, and ignore it when it doesn't. By definition, great chefs
are driven to experiment and create. So when Rajesh Suri, the general
manager of Tamarind, says: 'I believe very strongly that you can
present Indian food any way you want to, but you can't lose the
identity of the cuisine - a rogan josh has to be a rogan josh', and
adds severely: 'Certain people are trying to confuse', he is only
telling half the story. As he adds later: 'There aren't too many
traditional dishes, and while we do remain faithful to those, we have
to create our own as well. So we have a selection of traditional and
chef's own creations.'
Back at the Cinnamon Club, they do serve a rogan josh, for which they
import a spice called the rattan jyot, the bark of a tree that imparts
the dark red colour to the lamb curry. 'Nobody knows about it or has
seen it in this country,' Vivek Singh says. (Here, it's usually done
with tomatoes and paprika.) In common with other top-class Indian
restaurants, the Cinnamon Club imports many spices directly. 'A
Rajasthani dish with coriander grown in Kenya somehow doesn't taste
the same,' Vivek says. 'We might serve a Rajasthani lamb curry with
lemon rice from the south of India, but the Rajasthani lamb curry
itself must be authentic.'
Red chillies are brought in from Rajasthan; pepper, cinnamon and
cardamom from Kerala; mustard from Bengal; rattan jyot from Kashmir;
and rock moss from Hyderabad. This last ingredient, which looks
exactly as it sounds, doesn't taste of anything, but brings out the
favour of biryanis. 'A real biryani requires a high level of skill,'
Vivek explains, 'because the marinated meat is covered with rice that
is already two-thirds cooked. Then it is sealed and steamed so that
the raw meat cooks in the same time as the rice. It needs a large
quantity to work.' The point about experimentation, I suspect, is that
where it doesn't work it gets called fusion and where it does, it just
gets eaten. The real question is whether the ingredients, in Vivek's
words, 'are streamlined and disciplined, the flavours clean and clear
and headed in a particular direction'. (People setting off for Nobu
aren't worried that the food there isn't authentically Japanese, or
even Peruvian Japanese, if they even knew what that was; they're too
busy looking forward to the blackened cod. It seems likely that, as
ever, great new dishes will survive, and those that are merely
fashionable will fade away.)
Vineet Bhatia, the chef at Zaika, describes his food as 'modern
evolved Indian cuisine' - probably a definition to which all serious
Indian chefs would be happy to sign up. I doubt many people in India
today are sitting down to scallops poached in coconut milk flavoured
with mangoestein and with dry roasted and pureed spices, served with
chilli mash, which I ate at Zaika recently. But the scallops were
subtle and delicate - still recognisably scallopy but overlaid with
intriguing, smoky spice, and the chilli mash was piquant and
satisfying - the best flavoured mash I have ever had, in fact.
Certainly, you'd have to search hard to find this dish in a restaurant
in India, because there is virtually no independent restaurant
tradition there. According to Namita Panjabi, owner of Chutney Mary,
Masala Zone and Veeraswamy, 'until four or five years ago, five-star
hotels were the only places you could go out to eat'. The hotels
tended to serve versions of Mogul food, long seen on the subcontinent
as haute cuisine because it used expensive ingredients and was the
food of princes.
'The hotels made very commercial food - things like butter chicken.
Nobody ever cooks a butter chicken at home. I would say 90 per cent of
Indian hotels make three sauces. A red sauce, which is a tomato sauce,
a white sauce which is a cashew sauce and a brown onion sauce. And
then when the order comes they add the cooked meat or whatever.' In
this country, as a result, all sorts of adjustments have quietly to be
made for Western restaurant eating. 'Mealtimes in India have never
been a time to sit down and have a conversation,' says Namita Panjabi.
'Eating is a much more sombre kind of thing, traditionally. You sit in
the kitchen, on the floor, you eat quietly, for digestion, and then
you get up and do whatever you want.'
Nor do Indians drink beer, let alone wine, with food. Upmarket Indian
chefs all make a case for wine, not least, no doubt, for commercial
reasons (although most accept that not all wines work). Rajesh Suri,
general manager of Tamarind (the first Indian restaurant to have a
sommelier, and which has an award-winning wine list priced from £14.60
to £600) says he sells a lot of pinot noir and sauvignon at lunch, and
a tremendous amount of red Bordeaux in the evening, which starts at
£40. Sriram Ayur, executive chef of the Keralan restaurant Quilon,
says 'You need bolder wine with this food. White wine can get lost. I
tend to think new world red wines work best.
'But beer with Indian food is a disaster. I love beer - I love
Kingfisher - but I think it should never be drunk with this food. The
gas is terrible because it reacts with all the spices, and the hops
make it bitter, and you're already having a melange of sweet, spicy
and sour, so why would you want this bitterness coming in? Everything
is wrong with it.' Like so much else connected with curry (even the
word itself, which does not occur in any Indian language, though
there's a cooking pot called a korai and a spice called a curry leaf)
the origins of lager-drinking with Indian food are mysterious. Namita
Panjabi has been told that in the early days of Veeraswamy in London's
West End, which was founded in 1927, the King of Denmark came whenever
he was in the country. Frustrated at not being able to drink Carlsberg
- which wasn't then available here - he shipped over a barrel, so that
when he came to eat it would be available for him. And so began a
great, or not so great, tradition.
Apocryphal, possibly, but a nice story. Veeraswamy wasn't the very
first Indian restaurant in Britain; in 1809, Sake Deen Mahomed, an
Indian who had married an Irishwoman, opened Deen Mahomed's Hindustani
Coffee House in London. (It doesn't seem to have caught on: by the
time he died in 1851 at the age of 101, the restaurant had closed and
bankrupted him.) But it is certainly the oldest surviving, and in its
early days, was distinctly upmarket. Edward VIII frequently dined
there when he was Prince of Wales, and, the night after the boats from
India berthed at the London docks, there was always an influx of
maharajahs. Namita Panjabi and her husband bought Veeraswamy in 1997
with the aim of restoring the then unfashionable restaurant to its
former glory. But where originally the decor had been exotic, all
tiger skins and light fittings from maharajahs' palaces, the new
owners opted for light, colour and freshness: plenty of blond wood,
walls washed in purple, green and gold, menus glowing pink and orange.
Panjabi's pitch, both at Chutney Mary and Veeraswamy, is that she
serves 'gourmet food of the home' because, she argues, that is where
the best and most interesting food is cooked.
'About 70 per cent of our dishes are pretty authentic, although we use
much less oil than, say, my grandmother's generation and the meat and
fish that are available here. And there's a much greater range than
you would find in India. If you lived in Delhi, for instance, you
wouldn't eat the food of Kerala unless you travelled there. And it
seems to me that there is such a wealth of different cuisines in India
that you don't need to mess about with individual dishes. The food of
the Brahmins is very light and vegetarian, and then there are the
Hindus who are not Brahmins, who will eat non-veg. Duck is eaten by
the Christians. Muslims don't use vinegar as a souring agent, so I
would never put it in a Muslim dish. There's no need.'
In common with other smart Indian restaurants, food at Veeraswamy
arrives already plated. 'If you come out for the evening to converse
and have a jolly time, you don't want to be stretching your arm across
people,' Panjabi says. 'In a family you would eat out of bowls, but
that would be because everything, the dahl, the vegetables, the bread,
has been designed to complement the main dish. If you eat one prawn
dish, one chicken and one lamb, it means that although the chef has
taken hours to cook it, you're eating an amalgam of everything, like
having coq au vin with boeuf bourginon.'
Desserts, like wine, present a trickier problem. There is no tradition
of parcelling food up into courses in India. Starters and main courses
can be separated out relatively easily for Western tastes, but Indian
sweetmeats are too heavy and sugary to work at the end of a
three-course meal. In India they are served for afternoon tea - as
Iqbal Wahhab says, 'it's like eating scones after roast beef'. But the
pressure to produce desserts that work for a British audience
(clearly, it's much more lucrative to sell three courses than two) has
produced some stunningly inventive combinations of fruits and spices.
The Cinnamon Club has tandoori pineapple marinated in honey and
saffron and grilled; or pastry stuffed with dates and cinnamon and
served with cinnamon ice cream; Quilon has tropical fruits infused in
honey, mint and lime, served with pepper ice cream. It seems likely
that, as consumers become more sophisticated, the number of
restaurants dedicated to regional cuisine will grow. The Rasa group,
under the guidance of Das Sreedharan, has five Keralan restaurants in
London. At Quilon, Sriram Aylur cooks Keralan food that is much
lighter and more delicate than the curries of the north: fish in
banana leaf; baby aubergine stuffed with coconut, red chillies, poppy
seeds and coriander seed; delicate lacy-edged rice pancakes.
'In India you would never use just one spice; there's nothing like
chicken with tarragon. A recipe might have 20 ingredients,' Sriram
says. 'Indian food is so interesting partly because it is so
scientific. In anybody's house, no matter in which part of India,
every single ingredient that goes in has a reason to be there. Chefs
make it sound like an art, so people believe it can't be done, but I
think you have to translate it into chemistry. For example, you have
to put the spices into hot oil, because the oils in the spices are
oil-solvent, and hot oil tends to penetrate and release their flavour
and aroma. You have to cook tomato on a low flame, because you want
the acid to evaporate, and if you cook it too high, the water
evaporates and leaves the acid behind.'
The other area that seems ripe for expansion is street food. There may
not be many restaurants in India, but there is a legion of roadside
stalls. 'Street food is food you stop your car for, even if you're 20
minutes late, even if you're on your way to dinner,' says Namita
Panjabi. 'You can't control it, because you know this particular guy
is famous for this one thing, so you have to make a detour. It's like
an Indian tapas: hot, spicy, sour, sweet, all that complexity; and
then the seductiveness of yoghurt.' Impressed by the success of the
noodle-chain Wagamama, Panjabi wondered whether she could do something
at similar prices with Indian food. The result was Masala Zone which
opened in London's Marshall Street a year ago and now has 150 people
in for lunch every day, eating little plates of street food. It has
been a resounding success. One way and another, Indian food seems on
the brink of a revolution in this country. Britain may even be at the
cutting edge of Indian cooking. The curry house is not about to
disappear. But the very existence of Michelin-starred Indian
restaurants may signal the death knell of flock wall-paper, lager and
an onion bahji. Thank goodness for that.
Sweet potato cake
Serves 4
Potato mix
250g potatoes (desiree), peeled and diced into 2 mm cubes
75g sweet potato, diced into 2 mm cubes
50g celery, peeled and diced into 2 mm cubes
25g carrots
3g cumin
3g fennel seeds
50ml vegetable oil
50g coriander, chopped finely
25 g corn flour
Filling
100g roasted sweet potato
30g pounded ginger
10g fennel seeds
5 g pounded green chilli
2g salt
10g sugar
clarified butter to shallow fry
Take boiled potatoes which are cooled down to room temperature, peel
and grate. Peel and dice the carrot, raw sweet potato and celery in 2
mm dices. Heat oil, add cumin seeds and let them crackle, add fennel
seeds and saute the diced vegetables quickly. Season with salt. Let
the vegetables cool and mix with grated potatoes.
Add chopped green coriander, mix corn flour just to dry the mix, check
for seasoning and keep the mix aside. Divide the mix into 4 parts and
keep aside.
Roast one sweet potato with the skin in a slow oven (150-180c) until
the potato is soft. Peel and discard the skin, mash the flesh with a
fork. Pound the rest of the ingredients for the filling together in a
mortar and pestle until a coarse paste.
Mix together the spice mix with the mashed roasted sweet potato. Take
each ball of the potato mix and fill with the spicy sweet potato
filling. Once all the mix is filled, shape them like cakes and shallow
fry in vegetable oil or clarified butter until crisp and golden on
both sides.
May be served with tamarind chutney and yoghurt or any chutney of your
choice.
Executive chef Vivek Singh's recipe from his restaurant The Cinnamon
Club, London
Currying favour
· Scots eat 50,000 curries a night.
· In April 2001 Robin Cook pronounced chicken tikka masala Britain's
national dish.
· Britain's first curry house was the Hindustani Coffee House, opened
in 1809 in London's Portman Square. It had a hookah for customers to
smoke.
· Indian restaurants in Britain serve 2.5 million customers every
week.
· By 2002, we will spend £3.5billion a year on curry.
· It was once thought that too much spicy food could lead to ulcers.
There is now evidence that oils from chillies actually protect the
stomach lining.
· Basmati rice is from specific geographical areas and is difficult to
grow. DNA testing is used to make sure basmati coming into Britain is
the real thing.
· Chicken tikka masala was created in Glasgow, but the identity of the
inventor is an area of contention.
· If all the chicken tikka masala portions served in Britain in one
year were piled up, they would form a tower 2,770 times taller than
the Millennium Dome.
· Marks & Spencer sells 18 tonnes of chicken tikka masala a week.
Research by Caroline Palmer
Craig West
mention that most Americans have the option of Chinese or Mexican food
everywhere. In addition, I find most Americans are sensitive to spicy
food. As a result, apart from sophisticated customers in New York,
Chicago, or San Francisco, most Americans dont know the difference
between Chicken Tikka Masala and Chicken Korma. I have been to quite
a few Indian restaurants all over the US, and I must say that apart
from the curry houses of Jackson Heights or other such similar ethnic
enclaves, most of the Indian food served in restaurants is terrible,
not to mention overpriced. I still believe that there is a vast
untapped market for Indian food in the US. We need the likes of
"Bukhara" or "Copper Chimney" to showcase the best of Indian food. I
suppose a "Bukhara" in any of the fancy hotels in Vegas would be a
good idea.
hab...@anony.com (habshi) wrote in message news:<3d0345cf...@news.clara.net>...
Kunal Singh
much a heartattack waiting to happen!
SO IT WILL NEVER CATCH ON IN THE US! THANK GOD!
Craig West <craig_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:4f393d0.02060...@posting.google.com...
Nusrat Rizvi
wrote:
>I think its the colonial connection Britain has with India. Not to
>mention that most Americans have the option of Chinese or Mexican food
>everywhere. In addition, I find most Americans are sensitive to spicy
>food. As a result, apart from sophisticated customers in New York,
>Chicago, or San Francisco, most Americans dont know the difference
>between Chicken Tikka Masala and Chicken Korma. I have been to quite
>a few Indian restaurants all over the US, and I must say that apart
>from the curry houses of Jackson Heights or other such similar ethnic
>enclaves, most of the Indian food served in restaurants is terrible,
>not to mention overpriced. I still believe that there is a vast
>untapped market for Indian food in the US. We need the likes of
>"Bukhara" or "Copper Chimney" to showcase the best of Indian food. I
>suppose a "Bukhara" in any of the fancy hotels in Vegas would be a
>good idea.
When we first moved to Connecticut back in the early 70's landed
gentry sneered at us for letting our house smell of curry. Now you
have to make reservations at all decent Indian restaurants at least
2 days in advance.
Boy how times have changed.
Seeker
news:u258gu4fdvm1ekff0...@4ax.com...
I always wondered why you smelled so bad.
Seeker
news:ug84rkc...@corp.supernews.com...
> Indian restaurant food means Punjabi cuisine which is unhealthy and pretty
> much a heartattack waiting to happen!
> SO IT WILL NEVER CATCH ON IN THE US! THANK GOD!
The question is why is the real Indian food not served in America. Is it
that other more caste aware North Indians don't find it a suitable
profession to cook and serve food. We know that is the lower caste Indians
who do most the cooking. Except for in upper class households where the fear
of dirt or germs prevents people from letting anyone else do the cooking.
pitcairn
Abdul Hai
http://pitcairn1.tripod.com
Nusrat Rizvi <rizv...@optonline.net> wrote in message news:<u258gu4fdvm1ekff0...@4ax.com>...
higher & higher
news:3d0345cf...@news.clara.net
> Maybe you need a damp climate ?
>
> It's curry, but not as we know it
>
> New wave Indian restaurateurs are eschewing the traditional image of
> chicken tikka, lager and flock wallpaper in favour of stylish
indian food is india specific. after the 25 spice intake, do you expect
anyone to survive ?
iranian food is quite popular, even afghan restraunts are springing up
and not to mention ME places.Anything without spices will survive
and if you lessen the spices, its not indian food
--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG
Sauron
professions such as those. There is not allot of Indians who want to be a
chef in a restaurant, unless they get their own show. Just as much as a
Pakistanis want to fight.
"Seeker" <4not_listed_due_to_spam_bots_121101> wrote in message
news:ae1eiq$tos$1...@slb6.atl.mindspring.net...
Peace On Earth
with a vegetable oil and you have a pretty healthy fare.
Abother reason why Punjabi food has become "unhealthy" is Punjab has
always been a farmers community - working long and difficult hours
under a hot sun was commonplace. Working people used up a lot of
energy and replenished it with food - now the majority of people work
deskjobs but eat traditional food - naturally weight gain will occur
A lot of Muscle, Fitness and Bodybuilding magazines, which have a lot
of scientific data to back them up, count Desi food as a healthy
option in adding "variety" to your diet.
Peace Out
Riz
"Kunal Singh" <ksi...@speakeasy.net> wrote in message news:<ug84rkc...@corp.supernews.com>...
Craig West
> and not to mention ME places.Anything without spices will survive
> and if you lessen the spices, its not indian food
I'm just waiting for choots like Thoku123 or Seeker to tell us that
Indian (Punjabi) food and Paki food are not the same.
Seeker
news:f3aec3c6.02060...@posting.google.com...
> What do the neighbours now say
Neighbours: Can't wait 'till the old smelly coot moves out, but no one will
buy that house that smells like curry.
Nusrat Rizvi
<4not_listed_due_to_spam_bots_121101> wrote:
>"pitcairn" <pitc...@bvimailbox.com> wrote in message
>news:f3aec3c6.02060...@posting.google.com...
>> What do the neighbours now say
>
>
>Neighbours: Can't wait 'till the old smelly coot moves out, but no one will
>buy that house that smells like curry.
You really think my house smells as badly as your Burqua?
Seeker
Amman Naraaz ho gaye, Nusrat Mian. Why don't you have a party at your house
and have Eileen Bhabi cook for everyone. Hopefully, you can prove the point.
I heard you eat ham and cheese with great delight.
Aaadaab
Seeker
news:1992ab4229e675adbe3...@mygate.mailgate.org...
The whole European civilization is built on a lust for Indian spices.
Seeker
Craigy, Indian food is derived from Pakistani food. Hare Hare.
Dick Jackson
Is that a troll? How about a reference? JPEG?
Dick J.
Dick Jackson
California. There are two quite good Indian restaurants. The staff
are, of course, native Indians, with standard issue, quasi-Welsh
accents.
When I go there I marvel at how these people travelled so far from
home and finished up with a restaurant in such an out-of-the-way
community? I am very curious about their stories, but am too shy to
ask.
They are showing eminently good sense, though, it's a nice place to
have a home.
Dick J.
PsYcHaDoZiEnThRaL
food is actually very good though!! Greek food is the best.
"Dick Jackson" <hc...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:ip6cguokub0b6npp1...@4ax.com...
Kaffir
place.
Does not say anything about
it's Paki origin. But it's not difficult to realize from the pictures painted on
the wall.
The items (like dal, kabob, spinach, chholay etc.)looked/tasted more like
immature/underdeveloped version
of Indian food.
M. Ranjit Mathews
I once traveled with an Indian restauranteur who wanted to know if I
knew of a small city with a promising market for an Indian restaurant;
he said that the competition was too stiff in big cities. So, the
reason why they are located in this small town is probably because
that's where they found a market without unbearably stiff competition.
Craig West
> > I'm just waiting for choots like Thoku123 or Seeker to tell us that
> > Indian (Punjabi) food and Paki food are not the same.
>
> Craigy, Indian food is derived from Pakistani food. Hare Hare.
Then why is it that even Pakistanis opening restaurants serve "Indian"
food. I have seen plenty of Indian restaurants, but I have never seen
"Pakistani" restaurants...unless ofcourse you are talking about those
dirty 2X4 joints in pakistani ghettos....food for poor pakis like
yourself.
habshi
Farouq Taj
Pakistani food is the same except it excludes pork.
Bearing in mind "Pakistani" didn't exist until 1948 (or thereabouts).
when the British Raj ended.
habshi
say Pathans and Biharis for comparison. Its time India moved to a
Pakistani based food style .
habshi
and grown , so its diet and not genetics
Peace On Earth
Pakistan is made by people who were migrants from India be they Urdu
speaking or Punjabis. The native people of the land, be it the
Baluchis, Sindhis, Punjabis or the Pakhtoons were into much less
sophisticated cuisine. So to say that Indian food is superior to
Pakistani food or vice versa is a stupid thing to say because they are
essentially the same thing.
I don't mean to stereotype but Indian entrepreneurs in the
entertainment/dining business tend to pay a lot more attention to
things such as appearance & presentation, and are more willing &
bolder integrating different cultural aspects into their own to cater
to the tastes of all and sundry. Hence, you have Indian restaurants
really flourishing all over the world
Peace Out
Riz
Kaf...@terroristslayer.com (Kaffir) wrote in message news:<oztN8.22154$15....@www.newsranger.com>...
Peace On Earth
the truth. I bet that most of those restaurant workers are working
illegally for cash compensation rather than a paycheck :-) This was
the owner gets away by paying less than minimum wage and these guys
don't pay taxes on their pachecks
Peace Out
Riz
Dick Jackson <hc...@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:<gs6cgukeginhm7tph...@4ax.com>...
M. Ranjit Mathews
> It is a well known fact that the best and most popular food in
> Pakistan is made by people who were migrants from India be they Urdu
> speaking or Punjabis. The native people of the land, be it the
> Baluchis, Sindhis, Punjabis or the Pakhtoons were into much less
> sophisticated cuisine. So to say that Indian food is superior to
> Pakistani food or vice versa is a stupid thing to say because they are
> essentially the same thing.
No. Indian Panjabi food and Pakistani Panjabi food might be roughly
the same, but those are not the only cuisines in India and Pakistan.
Seeker
news:oztN8.22154$15....@www.newsranger.com...
My dear friend Kaffir, this is a dilemma. Pakistanis don't like going into
restaurant business because they don't want to serve others (Indians
especially) as a result you don't find Pakistani restaurants at the same
rate as Indian restaurants. While an Indian has no problem going to college
for higher education and becoming a "berah." A Pakistani will hardly ever do
the same.
This my friend is your loss because you are missing on some very good
cuisine. BTW, Pakistani and Indian cooking is essentially the same. Even in
India you can see the influence of the Moguls and even Arab cooking.
Seeker
news:1d4c67e3.02061...@posting.google.com...
> my_...@yahoo.com (Peace On Earth) wrote ...
> > It is a well known fact that the best and most popular food in
> > Pakistan is made by people who were migrants from India be they Urdu
> > speaking or Punjabis. The native people of the land, be it the
> > Baluchis, Sindhis, Punjabis or the Pakhtoons were into much less
> > sophisticated cuisine. So to say that Indian food is superior to
> > Pakistani food or vice versa is a stupid thing to say because they are
> > essentially the same thing.
>
> No. Indian Panjabi food and Pakistani Panjabi food might be roughly
> the same, but those are not the only cuisines in India and Pakistan.
>
You missed his point. I general North Indian food is far more superior to
the South.
koolfire_ro
the truth is pakis are knee deep in pimping buissness, for their moms
and sisters in the night,chasing would be clients,dodgeing cops or
arrangeing payoffs, by allowing their moms/wifes/sisters to be shafted
at back seat of patrol car,they keep a look out for other squad
cars,fighting with drunk customers who dont pay commission etc...they
are dead tired,and are not able to work in daytime,this is pakis way
of serving indians.morever pakis are only taxi drivers,they never
study or dont know how to,they trvel overseas inside cargo
containers,the only successfull role models for pakis, are osam bin
laden,the pedophile mohammed,gulshan the ace pimp...how can such scum
do any buissness,madherchods grduate mainly as touts,tarts,thieves etc
habshi
shows what your brain is full of each day
On 13 Jun 2002 04:33:03 -0700, r_man...@hotmail.com (koolfire_ro)
wrote:
Nusrat Rizvi
I have to agee with Habshi, such out bursts only invite response of
similar nature and the discussion soon turns to morality of your Mom
Vs. mine.
Maybe you guys don't mind games of hurling abuses, I for one
am getting tired of it.
Is it asking much to keep the discussions from degenerating
into a shouting match of little consequences.
Peace On Earth
sophisticated, brigther, has a stronger taste and lot more variety.
Peace Out
Riz
"Seeker" <4not_listed_due_to_spam_bots_121101> wrote in message news:<ae94ui$s8c$1...@nntp9.atl.mindspring.net>...
> "M. Ranjit Mathews" <ranjit_...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:1d4c67e3.02061...@posting.google.com...
>
koolfire_ro
Mr,point noted,but dont push your luck too hard inbetween,and make a
mess of it,i am guided by my own convictions, or the lack of it.period
koolfire_ro
M. Ranjit Mathews
> "M. Ranjit Mathews" <ranjit_...@yahoo.com> wrote ...
> > my_...@yahoo.com (Peace On Earth) wrote ...
> > > It is a well known fact that the best and most popular food in
> > > Pakistan is made by people who were migrants from India be they Urdu
> > > speaking or Punjabis. The native people of the land, be it the
> > > Baluchis, Sindhis, Punjabis or the Pakhtoons were into much less
> > > sophisticated cuisine. So to say that Indian food is superior to
> > > Pakistani food or vice versa is a stupid thing to say because they are
> > > essentially the same thing.
> >
> > No. Indian Panjabi food and Pakistani Panjabi food might be roughly
> > the same, but those are not the only cuisines in India and Pakistan.
>
> the South.
How would you know this? Most southern dishes, especially
non-vegetarian ones, but even numerous vegetarian ones, are hard to
find in the US.
n o s p a m p l e a s e
> Pakistani food is less oily and much healthier , just look at
I have seen these bastards eat more oil than Indians.
--
n o s p a m p l e a s e
Please reply to newsgroup.
P.G.Gopal
restaurants hedge their bets, by stating that theirs is Pakistani,Indian
and Bangladeshi food in that order. If the Paki name comes first you can
take it to the bank that it is a Paki restaurant. If it is Indian, then
there is only mention of Indian cuisine, because nothing else needs to be
mentioned: it is all Indian food anyway.
Gopal
Ranchi
higher & higher wrote:
> "habshi" <hab...@anony.com> wrote in message
> news:3d0345cf...@news.clara.net
>
> > Maybe you need a damp climate ?
> >
> > It's curry, but not as we know it
> >
> > New wave Indian restaurateurs are eschewing the traditional image of
> > chicken tikka, lager and flock wallpaper in favour of stylish
>
> indian food is india specific. after the 25 spice intake, do you expect
> anyone to survive ?
>
> iranian food is quite popular, even afghan restraunts are springing up
> and not to mention ME places.Anything without spices will survive
> and if you lessen the spices, its not indian food
I think also that some of it has to do with public perception(and reality).
Amost every Indian restaurant that I have been to in the US has lacked
substantially in, shall we say, upkeep. There are the exceptions, but most are
seedy establishments that give a bad name to the cuisine.
chika...@gmail.com
http://www.chikanbarn.com/categories/Chikanbarn-Chikankari-For-All-Women-Women-Dress-Material/cid-CU00032591.aspx