Gori Girl

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:

ICR Review: Love’s revolution

Every so often you’ll be seeing an in-depth review from Gori Girl about an intercultural relationship resource that might be useful to you. Shorter reviews can be found on the comprehensive list of resources on the page “Intercultural Relationship Resources.”

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.