The Indian Movement -
Infusing an Ancient Cuisine with Modern Flair
By Carole Kotkin

On dusty Indian schoolyards during afternoon recess as a child, Madhur Jaffrey experienced the extraordinary diversity and potential of Indian cooking. Jaffrey, a cookbook author, fondly remembers sitting down with young friends to share all manner of lunches. Her Hindu family sent her to school with meals of quail and partridge seasoned with onions, ginger, cinnamon, black pepper and yogurt. Her Punjabi pal of Sikh faith lunched on wheat parathas filled with pomegranate seeds and eaten with a sweet and sour homemade turnip pickle. Her friend from Gujarat, a Jain who followed strict vegetarianism, dived into pancakes made from legumes called pooras. Her Muslim friend from Uttar Pradesh savored beef cooked with spinach and flavored with chiles, cardamom and cloves.

As the children passed small bites back and forth, they crossed culinary-cultural boundaries through their uniquely distinctive cuisines. Because of religion, geography and history, the food of India varies greatly from region to region.

American chefs have begun to explore this great diversity that so profoundly influenced Jaffrey, the author of Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking, in the schoolyards of her youth: the highly charged exotic flavors of India's complex and multi-faceted cuisine. Indeed, upscale, regional Indian restaurants and those featuring Indian-fusion themes are opening from New York to Los Angeles, introducing diners to stand-alone Indian specialties or traditional European or American foods transformed by Indian touches.

It's an expanding cuisine that is being cooked with greater authority and flair than ever before, and its cache of exotic ingredients - from coriander, chiles and fenugreek, to curry leaves and mustard seeds, to mango and coconut - are seducing the newly adventuresome American palate.

Before regaining its independence in 1947, the dauntingly vast sub-continent of India was divided into 600 semi-independent kingdoms ruled by maharajahs, as well as large tracts ruled directly by the British, and each developed its own cuisine. There are now approximately 25 different Indian states, (the number changes with the political wind) most with their own culinary traditions.

"Indian cuisine is probably one of the most ancient cuisines and likely one of the most complicated, but it's finally making its emergence in the West," says Neela Paniz, chef and co-owner of Bombay Café in West Los Angeles and author of Bombay Café Cookbook. "When people recognize that there is a lot more to Indian food than the jar of curry in their spice rack, then the acceptance is much more favorable."

For years, Indian restaurant food in this country was the antithesis of fine dining. It was cheap and filling, eaten in hole-in-the-wall curry joints in ethnic neighborhoods. Most of the food was based on northern Indian cuisine, but the scene is changing. Chefs are serving not only the now-familiar tandoori specialties and chicken tikka masala, but also have introduced the vibrant vegetarian dishes of southern India such as deftly seasoned vegetable curries or delicately flavored rice dishes.

In London, where traditional curry houses are as ubiquitous as pubs, authentic regional restaurants are springing up all over the city. Some have set the quality bar very high. At the newly opened Cinnamon Club, on the site of The Old Westminster Library, Chef Vivek Singh from the Rajvillas Hotel in Jaipur and consultant Eric Chavot of London's Capital Hotel are turning out dishes that both stretch and lighten the traditional repertoire, without losing the basic integrity of Indian cuisine. And at Zaika, the superb wine list and exceptional food of Chef Vineet Bhatia has London abuzz.

On this side of the Atlantic, where regional American cuisine is giving way to fusion cooking, it's finally India's turn in the sun. Some chefs are using Indian spices as a grace note to their own styles of cooking, while others are borrowing more liberally from India's spice box.

Those who are captivating the critics, however, are equally at home preparing fusion and traditional Indian fare. Among the pacesetters are Raji Jallepalli-Reiss, the chef-owner of Maison Raji in Memphis and executive chef at Tamarind in Manhattan, whom The New York Times cited as a "major player" in the haute Indian fusion movement. (Maison Raji, which opened in July, is a luxury guest house anchored by an Indian fusion restaurant called Raji.)

A microbiologist, author and a self-taught cook, Jallepalli-Reiss was brought up in an aristocratic home in the south of India, where her family, which employed two cooks, entertained regularly between frequent trips to Europe. Her personal history greatly influenced the classic Indian food served at Tamarind and the much-praised fusion food she serves at Maison Raji.

In the foreword to her newest book, Raji Cuisine: Indian Flavors, French Passion, Chef Charlie Trotter writes: "Hers becomes one cuisine - not a melding of two. It is completely natural, there is nothing contrived about it."

Jallepalli-Reiss takes her inspiration from her homeland, but borrows Western methodology and inventiveness. "The flavors are Indian," she says, "but the techniques are French - I love the discipline of French cooking - and the philosophy is Californian in its freshness and lightness.

"When I opened my first restaurant in Memphis 13 years ago , it was a straightforward Indian restaurant because I was not sure that customers were prepared for a fusion restaurant at that point," she explains. "I always felt that French food could benefit from a lift, a bit of spice, so slowly I introduced the fusion elements and, of course, now all we do is fusion," she says.

In fact, it was her love of wine that prompted Jallepalli-Reiss to rethink Indian cuisine, albeit with a French accent. "I cook for wine," she asserts. "It frustrates me when people say 'wine doesn't go with Indian food,'" she says. "When I found it was difficult to drink my favorite white Burgundies with traditional Indian food, I began making fusion dishes that would flatter the wine. If you're cooking for a Côtes-du-Rhône, you complement syrah's varietal characteristics, flavors like cloves and cinnamon, with the same spices in your food."

She has applied her laboratory training to such heady dishes as Dover sole with curry-leaf emulsion, chilled mango-saffron soup, snap beans with coriander-coconut crust and crab soup with sweet spices and ginger juice.

Along with Jallepalli-Reiss' Tamarind, Manhattan is home to the groundbreaking Tabla. Conceived by restaurateur Danny Meyer and Michael Romano, Meyer's executive chef and partner at Union Square Café, the restaurant opened in December 1998 and was considered the city's first haute Indian, fusion-style establishment.

"Indian cuisine is so vast, yet up until now, nobody had tapped its greatest potential," says Tabla Executive Chef Floyd Cardoz. "I always wanted to mix and match Indian with European food, but in India I was told it couldn't be done, that Indian spices were simply too strong for European food."

At Tabla, his "dream come true," he has proven the naysayers wrong. "I've been helping people feel at ease with Indian cooking by mixing Indian spices with Western foods such as tomatoes and apples. Suddenly the cuisine is not so intimidating," Cardoz says.

The Bombay-born chef trained in Indian kitchens and honed his craft in Switzerland. He came to New York ten years ago where he landed a job as executive sous-chef at Lespinasse, the tony, four-star restaurant that blithely breaks cultural culinary barriers, infusing classical French food with Asian flavors and the like. "When I arrived at Lespinasse, there were only four Indian spices in the cabinet," Cardoz recalls, "When I left, we had incorporated over 25."

In conceiving Tabla's menu, Cardoz accompanied Romano on a trip to India, where they observed, questioned, dined and learned as much as they could about the country's varied cuisines. Ultimately, they decided Tabla's menu would rely on fresh, seasonal American ingredients prepared with Indian seasonings and French technique. Cardoz takes basic American standards, such as crab cakes or grilled steak, and enlivens them with the addition of spices such as star anise, cumin, turmeric and tamarind. The resulting flavors are powerful and unexpected, with nothing of the familiar about any of his food.

In Ruth Reichl's three-star review of Tabla in The New York Times, she wrote: "This is American food, viewed through a kaleidoscope of Indian spices."

Traditional charcoal-lined ovens, known as tandoors, are employed at Tabla, and, with interior temperatures reaching 900 degrees, are especially suited to roasting meats and baking bread. One such oven is in the kitchen of the balcony level, where elaborate, prix fixe seasonal menus are offered. In dishes such as braised lamb shoulder with lamb loin accompanied by green baby artichokes, fennel, black pepper and cardamom sauce, Cardoz' subtle use of spices shatters the notion that Indian food is always exceedingly spicy.

Two more tandoors are located in the main level Bread Bar at Tabla where hot, fresh flat breads (naan) and casual, home-style foods are featured.

Tabla's 300-bottle wine list offers ten sparkling wines and evenly divides the balance of the listings between youthful, forward whites and reds that harmonize well with the spicy aromas and flavors of Cardoz's food. "Older wines are too subtle and would be wasted on my food," Cardoz explains. If newly minted wines are not to one's taste, the pragmatic chef suggests drinking Champagne throughout the meal. "Champagne is effervescent and crisp, making it a good match with many of my spice blends."

Like Cardoz, Neela Paniz also grew up in Bombay. As a child, she was exposed to the marvelous dishes prepared by her family's cook, whom Paniz considers to be one of the best in all of India. After moving to Los Angeles almost 30 years ago, she grew homesick for real Indian food. On trips back to Bombay for visits, she learned to re-create the dishes she yearned for from her family's cook.

When Paniz opened the 75-seat Bombay Café in West Los Angeles twelve years ago, she began to break the rules of Indian cooking and create her own exciting style. She has taken full advantage of ingredients not readily available in the India of her childhood - fresh seafood and vegetables such as lettuce and broccoli - to craft an Indian-Californian innovation.

Although Bombay Café does a range of tandoori and vegetarian dishes, Paniz has introduced her customers to Indian "street food" as well, including such dishes as chat, which features dollar-sized crisp crackers, flat or puffed (sev puri) topped with potatoes, onions, contrasting chutneys and sev, a crisp, chickpea flour noodle. They are served much like mini tostados and offer many tastes and textures.

In addition, there is pani puri, a puffed puri with a hole broken on the top filled with sprouted mung beans, chutney and cumin-mint water. "You can pop those into your mouth, and it's a shot of fabulous flavors," Paniz says. "These are foods that are easy to dispense from a cart and don't require much refrigeration, because there is no meat involved. The flavors come from a variety of chutneys."

Patrons may order more traditional beverages such as ginger brew, Taj Majal Indian beer and iced tea spiced with cardamom and mint, but Paniz prefers Gewürztraminer, which she says makes an ideal foil for many of her dishes.

At The Bombay Club in Washington, D.C., New Delhi-born Ashok Bajaj gives wine a central role. "Wine has been an integral part of Indian food since ancient times," Bajaj says. "They are even growing wine grapes [today] in the Western part of India." The Bombay Club's wine list includes French, Italian and American selections.

A wine connoisseur who enjoys educating his patrons about those varietals that he says best complement his menu - "Gewürztraminers, Rieslings, Rhônes and Pinots" - Bajaj opened the legendary Bombay Club in 1988 just a few blocks from the White House. His take on Indian fusion? "Some would like to see authentic Indian; others would like touches of it. It's America - there's room for both. It's like Italian or French nouvelle cuisine. You develop, you learn, you borrow ideas."

The menu at The Bombay Club is a veritable culinary trip through India. Bajaj says his restaurant was the first in the U.S. to do "sophisticated, classic, regional Indian cuisine," which remains central to his present-day philosophy.

It's a formula that works. Much favored over the years by presidents, senators and dignitaries, patrons must usually wait at the bar (preferably armed with a glass of chilled Riesling) for one of Bajaj's highly sought after tables.

A characteristic meal at The Bombay Club would include a balance between sweet and sour (chutney and pickles) and include fresh vegetables, lentils, yogurt, rice chapati, and perhaps meat. For example, Bajaj says one of The Bombay Club's most popular dishes is salmon rubbed with sweet Indian spices, marinated in yogurt and roasted in the tandoor oven until crisp on the outside and lusciously moist inside. It is served with lentil dumplings and potatoes smothered with yogurt and chutney. The lavish combination of deep, intense flavors play off each other enticingly.

It is not only noteworthy Indian chefs who are elevating this ancient ethnic cuisine. Several prominent American chefs have been adding the flavors of India to their menus for some time.

The French-trained Rocco DiSpirito of Union Pacific in New York accents classical European preparations with vivid, unconventional Indian flavors. "Fusion is a style," DiSpirito says. "It's not cooking; classic French technique is cooking."

DiSpirito seduces diners with traditional foods that benefit from an Indian sensibility, dishes such as scallops drizzled with Bengali mustard oil, lobster with coriander and chicken with turmeric marmalade.

Lydia Shire of Boston's Biba is so enthralled with Indian cuisine that she installed an authentic tandoor clay oven in her restaurant, using it for roasting a variety of meats and seafood.

Florida chefs and fellow "Mango Gang" members Norman Van Aken, of Norman's in Coral Gables, and Allen Susser, of Chef Allen's in Aventura, are also proponents of the Indian spice box.

For Van Aken, experimenting with Indian spices has long been an important element in his cooking. "We have done an entire tasting menu on Indian cuisine. It's a natural with the balmy climate we enjoy here," he says. Among his signature dishes is roasted squab with yogurt and Indian spices.

Susser is particularly fond of applying Indian spices to regional ingredients; among his standard-bearers are Bahamian lobster-crab cakes with mango chutney and red snapper served with orange raita, a cooling yogurt sauce used as a counterpoint to a spicy dish.

India's exotic palette

Indians have been the acknowledged masters in the use of spices for more than 2,000 years, and the creative blending and deft use of indigenous spices is at the heart of Indian cooking. Indeed, the range of spices and condiments employed in each region is enough to boggle the mind of a Western cook.

Bombay Café's Paniz says, "Almost every spice you can name goes into an Indian dish - cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, bay leaves, fennel, ginger, turmeric, cumin seeds, nutmeg and mace, either ground or used whole and more delicate, complicated flavors also are emerging, including mustard seeds and curry leaves."

"Mastering Indian flavors is no small feat," Tabla's Cardoz says. "One must develop an innate sense of how much of each spice should be used and then how those spices should be combined."

The Bombay Club's Bajaj abides by the centuries-old Ayurvedic traditions concerning food combinations and blending of spices, believed to both promote good health and to heal the infirm. He says that Indian dishes tend to present a number of distinct, equally strong flavors - some sweet, some hot, some sour, some salty - so that the combination will provide flavors that will harmonize.

Food trends, such as the Indian movement, naturally make their way from restaurant menus to the home kitchen. Those among us with a penchant for lively and piquant flavors would do well to become familiar with such ingredients as cardamom, coriander and turmeric. They will surely play roles in Passage to India - the next chapter in America's evolving culinary repertoire.

Food Editor Carole Kotkin is a Miami-based cooking instructor and consultant who co-authored Mmmmiami - Tempting Tropical Tastes for Home Cooks Everywhere.

Wine-Friendly RECIPES

The recipes that follow were featured in Raji Cuisine: Indian Flavors, French Passion by Raji Jallepalli-Reiss. Because Raji "cooks for wine," her preparations cater to the wine lover.

Vegetable Purses with Cumin-Scented Tomatoes

Chef's notes: This might be considered a fusion version of the traditional Indian samosa. The crisp vegetable filling has just a hint of heat and spice, creating an enticing introduction to an aromatic meal.


1 tablespoon, plus 2 teaspoons peanut oil
1/4 teaspoon minced garlic
1/4 teaspoon minced serrano chile
1/2 cup finely chopped cabbage
1/4 cup finely chopped carrot
1/4 cup finely chopped zucchini
Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1 cup peeled, cored and seeded very ripe yellow tomatoes, diced 1/4"
1/4 teaspoon freshly crushed toasted cumin seeds
6 sheets phyllo dough
1/4 cup ghee (see recipe that follows)
1/4 pound mixed baby salad greens, well washed and dried
6 nasturtium or chive flowers, well washed and dried
Line a low-sided baking sheet with parchment paper. Set aside.

Heat 1 tablespoon of the peanut oil in a large sauté pan over medium heat. Add the garlic and chile and sauté for 1 minute. Stir in the cabbage, carrot and zucchini and sauté for about 3 minutes or just until the vegetables have wilted slightly. Season with salt and pepper. Remove from the heat and set aside.

Heat the remaining 2 teaspoons of peanut oil in a medium sauté pan over medium heat. Add the tomatoes, cumin and salt, and sauté for about 3 minutes, or until tomatoes are quite soft. Remove from the heat and purée in a blender. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 450°. Cover the phyllo sheets with a slightly dampened kitchen towel. Using a pastry brush, lightly coat a sheet with ghee. Fold the ghee-covered sheet in half and lightly coat the top of the folded sheet with more ghee. Place about 3 tablespoons of the vegetable mixture in the center of the sheet. Fold over the 2 long sides to cover the vegetable mixture. Fold over the shorter sides to make a neat roll. Place the folded edges on the bottom. You should now have a neat bundle that resembles a Chinese egg roll.

Using the pastry brush, carefully coat the entire package with ghee. Place the finished package on the prepared baking sheet and continue making packages as above until you have 6 wrapped packages.

Bake the packages for 10 minutes, or until golden brown.

Spoon about 3 tablespoons of the cumin-scented tomato sauce into the center of each of 6 luncheon plates. Cut the vegetable rolls in half, on the diagonal. Place the 2 halves, standing upright, in the center of the plate, with a handful of baby greens and an edible flower nestled into them. Serve warm.

Serves 6

Note: The purses can be made early in the day and stored, covered and refrigerated. Bake just before serving. For smaller, cocktail-size tidbits, cut the phyllo sheets in half.

Wine suggestion: A crisp Sauvignon Blanc makes a perfect partner, highlighting the spiced vegetable filling of these purses.

Ghee

Slowly melt 1 pound of unsalted butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over very low heat. Bring it to a low boil and allow it to simmer for about 20 minutes, or until the white milk particles separate from the fat and begin to turn a golden brown. Remove from the heat and strain the fat through a triple layer of cheesecloth into a sterile container. Cover and store at room temperature. Ghee can be kept at least a week.

Chilled Cucumber Soup with Dill and Mustard Seeds

Chef's notes: The best thing about this cooling soup, which has its roots in a classic Indian raita, is that it tastes better the next day.


2 tablespoons canola oil
1/4 teaspoon mustard seeds
2 large cucumbers
4 cups buttermilk
1/4 cup chopped fresh dill
Coarse salt, to taste
Heat the oil in a small sauté pan over medium heat. Add the mustard seeds and sauté for about 2 minutes, or until the seeds begin to take on some color and are very aromatic. Remove from the heat and allow to cool.

Peel and seed the cucumbers. Cut into 1/4" dice and place in a large, nonreactive container. Stir in the buttermilk, dill and salt.

Stir the mustard seeds into the cucumber mixture. Cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours, until chilled. When ready to serve, pour an equal portion into each of 6 shallow soup bowls and serve.

Serves 6







Article first published in The Wine News

 

Food Editor Carole Kotkin is a Miami-based cooking instructor and consultant who co-authored Mmmmiami - Tempting Tropical Tastes for Home Cooks Everywhere. It provides clear, simple directions for 150 dishes, from the simple (good old Key Lime Pie) to the sublime (Coconut Mahi-Mahi with Passion Fruit Sauce). The wide array of flavors is especially wonderful and startling to those used to monocultural cooking; Miami cuisine is the product of many generations of interbreeding and hybrid vigor. Click on the link below for more details or to order.

Mmmmiami : Tempting Tropical Tastes for Cooks Everywhere