Gori Girl

Taste of India

One of the things I’m looking forward to on our upcoming late winter trip to India (mid-February through early March) is being able to sample the regional food in the areas we’ll be traveling through. Aditya and I will be in India for about three weeks and in that time we’ll go through Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and West Bengal – so there will be lots of different types of local delicacies to try! A friend sent me this map she found to help me prepare for this culinary delight (and to make me salivate), and I thought I’d share it with you all

An Office Diwali Celebration

Ah, Diwali. Fesitval of lights. A celebration of good triumphing over evil. A time to bemuse your boss and win free dessert from your local Indian buffet. Right?

As I’ve mentioned previously, I happen to work in a very diverse office – and with a recent switch in teams, I now report to a South Indian manager. He’s a great boss, but, occasionally, well, I can’t help myself – I’ll mention a Hindu tradition or a Bollywood film just to see his reaction. You see, despite the fact that he knows I’m married to an Indian, he’s always so surprised when I show any knowledge of Indian culture. Shocked, almost.

So, of course, to celebrate Diwali this year I decided to wear a sari to work.

Indianfied Chicken Pot Pie

You may have noticed that, unlike many intercultural blogs, I don’t post any recipes of new Indian dishes I’ve learned to cook. Partially that’s because, well, I don’t cook much Indian food, really. And partially because I figure that all of you are intelligent to google your way to the thousands (or, at least, dozens) of cooking blogs that feature great recipes of traditional Indian dishes. There’s a few blogs I particularly like listed in the sidebar under Odds & Ends, if you haven’t seen this blogging niche before.

However, at least in the food blogs I follow, I’ve seen an untapped segment in the market – there aren’t any recipes of Indianfied traditional American dishes! This sort of fusion food, along with stir frys, is the majority of what I cook – just simple dishes that you ate growing up mixed with an Indian sense of spices. They’re the best of both worlds: quick, easy recipes that I know like the back of my hand adjusted so that Aditya won’t complain about “blandness” when we eat.

So, today I’ll share with you my recipe for Quick Indianfied Chicken Pot Pie. This is the dish that got amazed raves from Aditya’s parents when I served it to them. (I think that prior to my cooking it, they hadn’t realized I knew how to cook at all, so perhaps they were just glad I hadn’t accidentally poisoned them.) It’s a very simple, quick, filling dish, so even if you’re not much of a cook, you should be able to manage just fine. Besides the text below, I’ve loaded a bunch of images on my flickr site to show you how to do it step-by-step too.

Homecooked Indian Doesn’t Happen Much Here

A reader, Veronica, sent in the following question a couple of days ago:

My boyfriend is from Gondia and I wanted to learn to cook some food from that area of India. What kind of Indian food do you cook for your husband?

Heh, well, I guess it’s confession time here on Gori Girl: I can’t remember the last time I cooked real Indian food. Maggi? Sure. Ginger tea? It’s been known to happen. TastyBite or other yummy precooked packaged Indian meals? We’ve got a pantry full of ‘em. And we’ve got a kabob takeout place on speed dial.

But I don’t ever cook a full meal of real Indian food. I mean, I have in the past, but it’s not a regular thing at all. There’s a simple enough explanation for this – I’ve just never learned how to cook Indian food. When I grew up in California I had a lot of Chinese and Taiwanese friends and neighbors, so I can make a fair number of Chinese dishes. I’ve managed to pick up a few things from my Mexican, Japanese, and Korean relatives (yup, it’s a rainbow of colors at family reunions). But until I met Aditya I wasn’t close friends with anyone who could cook Indian food. Of course, given his limited repertoire in the kitchen, I still didn’t know anyone who could cook (much) Indian food after I met him either.

Nowadays, I mostly limit myself to adding Indian spices to change the taste of some of the dishes I already cook. Turmeric powder gets tossed into the stirfry, or garam masala is added to the sausage stew after it’s done. Actually, it’s a bit of a hazard for our friends who dine at our house without knowing this habit of mine – they’ll bite into the chicken pot pie, only to discover there’s a bunch of chicken curry masala in the sauce.

While this response might be a superficial answer to Veronica’s question (no Indian food is cooked for poor Aditya), it isn’t a particularly helpful answer for people looking to make some familiar food for their partners. This question actually comes at a particularly good time, as I’ve been thinking about trying my hand at real Indian cooking. So – how can you learn to cook Indian (or other, new-to-you) food? Let’s go through the difference resources available:

India’s Delicious Products – Or, Why Can’t We Get That Here?

Possibly the best thing about being in an intercultural relationship, at least for the curious mind, is the in-depth, nitty-gritty exposure you get to a different group’s culture. Be prepared for the flood of new customs, food, clothes, vocabulary, entertainment and so forth that’ll be coming your way. The only thing I can compare it to is living in a foreign country with a roommate or family from that country – of course, then you’re still in an intercultural relationship, just not a romantic one.

While a number of problems can arise from having two or more cultures operating in the same house, today’s focus is on the unadulterated good things that come from sharing a culture. The things that will remain perfect in my mind forever. Even if Aditya were to run off the squirrel that hangs out near the bedroom window (they were eying each other this morning) and break my heart, or declare a hatred for IKEA (and break my heart), I will appreciate our time together because of these three things:

Indian Survial Guide: How to Eat Indian Food (Part I)

During their travels in India, my uncle and mom really enjoyed eating with their hands, as you can see from the photo above. This is the traditional way of eating in India… but not all Indians are perfectly traditional. If you look closely at my husband, Aditya, pictured on the right, you’ll notice he has a fork on his plate, since he doesn’t care to eat rice with his hands. I, too, have a fork – you can just see it spearing some delicious chicken in the far right of the photo. I’m using a fork because when I try to eat rice with my hands, I end up with some on my lap, down my blouse, and somehow in my hair – it’s just not pretty.

The photo of my family chowing down demonstrates the two main things you need to know about eating Indian food: it’s traditionally done with your hands (mostly the right hand actually – more on that in a bit) AND it’s okay to not be traditional. If you’re uncomfortable eating with your hands, then don’t. No one will look down on you, or think less of you if you ask for silverware.

However, for those of you interested adventuring outside of Western-style table manners, I have a few hard-learned tips and tricks to help you chow down politely.