An etymological venture into the hot elements of Indian cuisine

One of the two things common people in the outside world identify India cuisine with is heat; the other being curry.

When it comes to introduce heat in Indian food, chili peppers are most often the choice across the subcontinent. However, chili peppers were introduced rather recently in our cuisine.

Let us look at some of the words used to describe chili peppers in India

1. Chili

2. Chili pepper

3. Mirch/Mirchi/Morich

4. Lonka (West Bengal)

We will come to the Bengali usages in the later part of the post.

Let us start with the word chili. The word comes directly from the Aztec language Nahuatl which points towards the geographic origin of the ingredient: South America. 

Why is it also called chili pepper then? Where does the word pepper come from? Turns out it has an Indian/Sanskrit origin: pippali. Before chilis were introduced to India, India gave the non-American world the supply of heat in their food. There were three main hot ingredients in Indian cuisine: 

1. Long pepper (pipul/pippali)

2. Black/white pepper

3. Piper chaba (The Latin name for chui-jhaal/choi-jhaal, and ingredient that was more prevalent in Bengal, North East and some of the far eastern countries. This ingredient is still in use both Bengals' rural cuisine)

When the Spanish invaders came across another hot ingredient, they just likened it to the already known one and called it chili pepper.

If you look at the words for pepper in European languages, you can see that the it comes from the same word: poivre (French), pfeffer (German), pepe (Italian), piper (Latin).

Now, let us look at the word cluster: mirch/mirchi/morich. That group of words have a very colorful history. To summarize, it comes from the name of the major port in present day Kerala from where it was exported. There are records of pepper trade from India since almost the beginning of common era. The main port was at the estuary of river Periyar called Musiri. The accepted opinion of linguists seem that it declined in the following path: Musiri>Murisi>Murichi>Mirchi. I was trying to find out where did the name of the port Musiri come from. I am indebted to Mr. Vijayan, father of one of my ex-colleague, who is an expert in ancient Tamil. Here is the explanation I learned from him:

The river Periyar bifurcates near the sea giving an image of a cleft lip. In Tamil a smile of a person with cleft lip is referred to as a three lipped smile. Muna means three, siri means smile. There is a conjunction of words similar to madhyapadalopi karmadharay that gives rise to the word munasiri which got shortened to Musiri.

Now, let us try to get to the Bengal scene of the peppers. In West Bengal the chilies are referred to as lonka and in Bangladesh it is more common to use the word morich. There are some usages that point to the fact that the original phrase was lonka morich and two sets of people selected two differents parts from it. The nomenclature lonka morich comes from the fact that primary import route of chili into Bengal was via Lanka (now Srilanka). Srilanka used to be the last port before the stuff came into Chattagram and Saptagram via Portuguese.

We as a species have been extremely global for a very long time. It is evident in our linguistic and culinary discourses. Just pick an ingredient and it will tell you a fascinating story of our past as a species.

Where is the malai in malaikari?

If you make a list of dishes that Bengalis would swear by, prawn malaikari would definitely be near the top of the list. It might even be at the very top if your participants are Ghotis. It is almost a matter of racial pride that goes with that dish. Die hard fans of Mohun Bagan would make it a point to celebrate with that dish whenever they would beat East Bengal. It is almost synonymous to some people's culinary racial identity.

Having observed all the pride and tradition associated with that dish, let us ask a few simple questions:

1. Where is the malai in the malaikari?

The word malai  means cream in Bengali. However, there is no malai added to this fabled dish. One can argue that coconut milk is added to it and milk and cream are related. Another argument could be the creamy texture of the dish that it is supposed to have. However, both seem quite far fetched and become even more improbable when we look them together with the second point.

2. Why kari/curry?

Despite the existence of opinion that relates curry to the french verb  cuire (to cook) and some early mention of the word with a different meaning and context, it is safe to assume that the word originates from the Tamil word kari, especially when you look at the usage of the word in culinary verbiage. Now, let us ask if there is a single other dish in Bengali cuisine that is called kari. Other than some mentally and linguistically challenged people who take pride in anglicizing their diction, no self-respecting Bengali calls any other dish a curry. The only usage is a conglomerate tarkari which is a possibly combination of  Persian tarah and Tamil kari. And the usage is limited to mean vegetables or nondescript preparations of vegetables. Preparations that are adored are things like jhaal, jhol, ghonto, daalna, chorchori, chhenchki, and so on and so forth. 

3. Is there any other Bengali dish that has a construction similar to the dish in question?

In my limited exposure, I have not come across another Bengali dish that is similar to malaikari. 

The dish malaikari  nonetheless should be familiar to people who have been exposed to the global cuisine. Have you noticed that star anise, although not used commonly, fits perfectly if added to a malaikari? Where else do we see such dishes? Curries made with onion, ginger, garlic, coconut cream, cinnamon, star anise? Of course, the peninsula of Malay! 

Don't feel too heartbroken if your racial culinary pride is hurt. That is the glory of human civilization and culture. The continuous mixing, the adaptations, the reincarnations of one's tradition in another land. 

Acknowledgment: Devapriya Chattopadhyay

The possibly not so Mughal (hi)story of Mughlai Parota

Disclaimer: This post does not claim to be a research article. This is just an attempt to analyze the facts that we know and connect the dots.




Mughlai Parota or Moglai Parota is one of fabled snacks of Kolkata. The word Mughlai evidently declines to Moglai owing the the Bengali accent. Hence, one of the first and obvious guesses about the origin of Moglai Parota leads us to the Mughals whose rich cuisine have had deep and penetrating impact on the Indian cuisine.

I did a simple experiment. I searched for Mughlai paratha in a few traditional Mughal strongholds, using Google of course.

Let us analyze the results that omniscient Google returned.

For Delhi, the first set of results point us to the CR Park area which is an area populated by Bengali migrants. The results do not lead to any traditional Mughal joints.

For Lucknow, the results seem to point towards the "ulte tawa ki paratha" or the thin parathas cooked on top of a inverted kaRhai and not what Bengalis or Calcuttans call Moglai Parota.

Agra does not take us anywhere near the Calcutta Moglai Parota either.

Now let us look at Calcutta. Every other person will have a favorite joint of their own for this dish, and you will observe that none of these favorite places that people swear on for their Moglai Parota fix are Mughal cuisine joints. If it is an older joints, most likely it will be a so called "cabin" where the other dishes on the menu would be variants of breaded deep fried stuff, some stews, etc., stuff that are predominantly influenced by Continental cuisine. If it is a relatively younger establishment, chances are that it would be one of the places serve kati rolls, griddle tossed noodles, etc. But in any case, it would not be a Mughal restaurant. None of the Mughal restaurants in Calcutta, the likes of Shiraz, Arsalan, etc. serve this dish.

Let us now take a closer look at the architecture and anatomy of the Moglai Parota. It is a made out a dough that is rich in oil. The dough ball is then stretched by swirling while holding while holding it at one end. It is not rolled out. The stretching is a result of centrifugal force acting on the glutinous dough. The filling is then poured on (usually a mixture of egg, minced meat, onion, and spices). The four sides are folded over the filling to make a square parcel. The parcel is the shallow fried on a thick iron griddle. I have not come across this cooking technique in Mughal cuisine in my limited experience.

Bengali Moglai Parota before frying. Photo sourced from internet

We should now look around a bit beyond our geography. There are eerily similar dishes that are  popular and mainstay of a large and populous part of the world. I am talking about South-East Asia. Specifically, I mean the area starting from Arakan coast of Burma (just south of Chittagong) to the Malay Peninsula. The dishes that you get there have various names. In Arakan it is called Palotta, Murtabak, and Roti Canai (and other variations of Roti Prata) in Malay Peninsula. The similarity between these and the Moglai Parota is rather striking. From the construction to the anatomy and the cooking technique is exactly the same. Some variants do not have the stuffing, but they still fold it into a square parcel. The fillings are varied as well, from savory to sweet. But, at the fundamental level, these guys are all the same.

Here is a video of a Burmese joint in New York: Burmese Palata in New York

Roti telur. Photo sourced from internet

Murtabak. Photo sourced from internet

Now, to end this rambling and let your imagination get to work, let me add a couple of interesting facts. Portuguese influence on Bengali cuisine (a story for another day) is undeniable and irrevocable. Portuguese have long been involved with the people from Arakan coast in trading slaves. Calcutta was one of the main centers of that trade. And, many of you already are aware that the inhabitants of the Arakan coast are called the Mog.

So, the Moglai Parota could possibly be Mog-lai, and not Mughlai after all.

Oeufs à la diable de Bengale (ডিমের ডেভিল): A tale of mixing cultures

It has been more than two and a half years since I wrote something on this blog. I would blame that on being busy on the professional front, arrival of a new member in the family, and my sheer talent at being lazy.

This piece would be about an observation about how cuisines interact, sometimes far far way from their homelands. But the definition of homeland changes. Just like humans migrated and still migrate all over the world, cuisine and language have flown all over the world. A deeper dive into something as commonplace and trivial as deviled eggs revives one's conviction that the world is indeed one place, and we all humans are indeed part of one family. Cuisines and languages carry memories of history and human interactions.

The goal is not to establish any historical facts or postulates. Instead, we make simple anecdotal  observations, take note of observations made by researchers, and stand and bask in the glory and awe of  global cultural fabric that those observations hint at.

Our journey starts with taking a careful look at an everyday snack in Bengal, especially Calcutta. It is called ডিমের ডেভিল, loosely translated as deviled eggs.

It is a hard boiled chicken/duck egg, halved and the complimented with a meat (usually mutton), breadcrumbs, and spiced potato mixture and brought back into an whole egg shape, breaded, and deep fried. Here is a picture that would describe the anatomy of a ডিমের ডেভিল, or "Oeufs à la diable de Bengale" as one would call it in French just to sound pretentious.

The picture above is taken from the blog of Jayeeta Basu.
(https://jayeetacha.wordpress.com/2014/03/20/egg-devil-or-dimer-chop/)

Now, one cannot help but notice the similarity of the Bengali nomenclature with that of a class of egg dishes called "deviled eggs".

Deviled eggs generally refers to a class of stuffed egg dishes. Most generic description of its anatomy would be: Hard boiled eggs, halved, yolks removed, mixed with spices, stuffed back into the the hollowed egg white half shells. Here is an example of a typical deviled eggs.

Deviled eggs. Chef: Your's truly

The history of stuffed eggs goes back at least as early as first century Rome. Satyricon written by Petronius in first century A.D. has references to stuffed peahen eggs featuring in a menu. By the middle of previous millennium stuffed eggs had spread almost all over Europe. 

In late eighteenth century, the mention of devil appears for the first time in the culinary context. The word devil was alluding to the heat of spices involved and the serving temperature. The allusion is obviously motivated by the heat of hell which is often associated with devil. 

Within the next few decades, the word devil becomes verb and the word deviling starts to mean the process of heavily spicing something up.

If we now compare that with the Bengal version of the deviled eggs, the similarity ends at halving a boiled egg and the spicy part of it. The breading and frying part is not common to most deviled eggs that we see in continental Europe today.

Now, we look at another popular dish called Scotch egg to join rest of the dots. About five decades before the word devil was being introduced in the culinary context, London supermarket Fortnum and Mason starts selling Scotch eggs.

Anatomically, a Scotch egg is a soft boiled egg wrapped in spicy sausage, breaded and deep fried. When done eight, the yolk still remains soft and creamy. Here is a depiction of the anatomy of a Scotch egg.

Chef: Heston Blumenthal
(http://www.sbs.com.au/food/recipes/heston-blumenthals-scotch-eggs)

Now that we have observed some possible influences and origins of Oeufs à la diable de Bengale, let us take a few steps back in history. One cannot help but observe that the Scotch egg bears an striking resemblance with Nargisi kebab/kofta, which is essentially a kebab that is constituted with minced meat wrapped around a boiled egg. Nargisi kofta has much older history than that of a Scotch egg.

Chef: Varun Inamdar
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY3HlJs_e0I)

Now we come to the nomenclature of nargisi kofta. A properly cooked nargisi kofta, when cut open, should look like the petals of daffodil: white petals with a yellow center. Daffodil is also known as the Narcissus (Nargis is Arabic) flower, named after the Greek mythological character. 

Source: https://www.theflowerexpert.com/content/mostpopularflowers/morepopularflowers/daffodil

The congee confusion

It was the year 2002 when I left India for my studies and the restaurant chain selling overpriced, mediocre, toned-down, localized, and yet self-proclaimed Chinese food had not gained as much popularity, and was not affordable for a poor student. Hence, I left India unscathed by the bastardized food. If you are reading this blog, I am sure you are smart enough to guess which particular big-name restaurant chain I am talking about.

Forward to 2006, I just moved to Michigan with my then girlfriend and started to indulge in our culinary inclinations. It was one late summer evening in Ann Arbor, MI, that we ended up at a cheap Chinese take out joint somewhere in the Packard Street or its vicinity. It is one of those very common neighborhood joints which sells $5 lunch specials and has a huge one-page menu printed in red.

My girlfriend got excited seeing a particular item on the menu and readily ordered it. The elderly lady behind the counter looked very surprised by the choice and tried her best in her limited English skills to convince us that it was not really a good idea, and if we were really, really sure that we wanted it. The dish was "CONGEE".

While our order was getting ready, my girlfriend told me how she had that dish in that "revered" restaurant's branch in Bombay and it was thinly sliced lambs fried and tossed with a spicy sauce. Our conversation was interrupted by the whirling sound of the mixer and we got suspicious. When the order was packed and delivered to us we were standing with a big translucent plastic can of semi-thick rice soup. Those of you who do not speak Bengali, please excuse me for the next sentence. The concoction we were given was a hybrid of "phena-bhaat" and "panta-bhaat". It was a quasi-bland blend of overcooked rice and water and that is how it exactly tasted like.

Dumbfounded we came back home and my girlfriend was visibly embarrassed and had to endure more than a fair share of focused and sharp teasing from me.

Google and other internet sources told us that what the what we had in the form or a rice soup is the congee, and not a lamb or chicken dish as she thought. I then also spoken to my thesis advisor, who is from China. He also confirmed that it is a bland rice soup mostly served to sick people as an easy to eat and digest food.

Years passed by. Around 2009 or so we found ourselves in one of the Calcutta branches of the same "authentic" Chinese restaurant. She was no longer only my girlfriend by then. And, not to much surprise, there was the dish "Konji crispy lamb". It can be guessed now that we did order the dish and was served a dish of crispy lamb and not even a trace of rice in the dish.

So, the theory that the konji crispy lamb was figment of my girlfriend's imagination or mistaken identification was no longer valid. As years passed by we had seen (not necessarily tasted) two versions of the congee. One in "authentic" and other Chinese restaurants in India which served lamb or chicken fried crispy and then tossed in a sauce. The other is a rice soup/porridge in Chinese restaurants and street food carts outside India. Anyone in India who is somewhat frequent to Chinese restaurants are quite familiar with the crispy protein dish.

So the confusion was never resolved. By confusion, I do not mean the definition of congee. It was obvious that it was the rice porridge. The confusion was as to why these "authentic" and other Chinese restaurants in India would serve something with the same name and that is so different.

So the confusion continued, until last week. We went on a food trip to Viet Nam. There will be other stories and articles that I will write in here in days/weeks to come. So we were staying that the Novotel Saigon Center in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). At the breakfast buffet they had quite a large spread which was a mix of European and Asian food.

When we went to check out the soup options, one of them was congee: a big black vessel filled with rice porridge, evidently bland looking. And next to it were a few toppings that you could take with the congee. And voila!!! there was crispy lamb.

And, no, we did not have the appetite for the congee-crispy lamb.

Potato salad with chorizo

On the evening of Valentine's day, I cooked dinner for my harshest critic. The entrée was a potato salad. In this post, I shall describe the dish, and discuss the flow of thought behind the architecture of the dish.

Construction: 

There are five layers in this dish, listed in ascending order:

1. Potato

2. Spiced mayonnaise

3. Minced red onion

4. Bits of chorizo 

5. Lime juice vinaigrette

Deconstruction:

In this section, I describe the preparation of each layer and its contribution to the dish.

1. Potato: Small potatoes are boiled for a few minutes, skinned, thickly sliced and then crisped on a frying pan with a little bit of extra virgin olive oil.

There are several points to be noted in the ingredient and method described above.

a. The size of the potato - small

If you use bigger potatoes, they will not get cooked evenly when boiled. The bigger the potatoes, the longer it will take for boiling, to cook them in the insides. And by the time the inside starts to get done, the outer layer would already be overcooked and mushy. You want to avoid that at all costs.

b. The potatoes are boiled skin on.

Boiling the potatoes skin on helps you retain the starch content of the potatoes thus making them creamier.

c. Potatoes are cooked twice - boiled and crisped

Crisping them will allow you to achieve a few things. You have the opportunity to season the potatoes now, which is almost impossible to do while boiling them. You can finish cooking the potatoes thoroughly and add a bit of texture to the dish by crisping them up. But, one does need to ensure that the potatoes are not overcooked. You can achieve this by using medium high heat and a short cooking time. Potatoes must be placed in a single layer so that there is no steam build up and the potatoes do not turn soggy.

d. They are thickly sliced 

Slicing them thickly ensures that the slices retain their shape through the crisping process and the assembly later on. Thicker slices will allow for easier manoeuvrability on the frying pan.

The end product should be a layer of thick creamy, well-seasoned potatoes  with a thin crispy outside. This is the layer that is going to provide the volume of the dish

2. Spiced mayonnaise: This is the first layer of dressing of the salad. I used mayonnaise folded with sriracha chili sauce and red chili powder. 

a. The mayonnaise provides a creamy seasoned base for the dressing. It is an ingredient that coats the other elements on the dish very well, and helps other chunky elements like potatoes and chorizo come together in your mouth. Remember, this is the container of the flavor and taste of the dish, it needs to be bold and spreadable enough in your mouth so that it defines the baseline of the flavor profile. This is the dominant taste that will hit you.

b. The chili powder is added to spice it up from the "vanilla" mayonnaise, and the sriracha sauce adds a tang, a kick.

3. Minced red onions: This adds two components to the dish: pungency and crunch. Make sure to mince it finely, so that it only adds the crunch but not extra effort to chew them. The main component to chew should be the chorizo bits.

4. Chorizo bits: This is the protein element of the dish. I broke it up into small bits and then tossed it with some fennel seeds on high heat for less than a minute.

a. Chorizo is a spicy sausage with strong aroma and decisive flavor.

b. Small bits ensure that it takes a short time to cook and is easier to chew. Since the other components are soft and creamy, having large chunks would mean that it will stay back in the mouth due to its longer chewing time even after other parts are swallowed.

c. Tossing in a frying pan on high heat ensures a crispy outside without overcooking the meat and thus making it tough.

d. Fennel seeds add an extra layer of aroma that is well co-ordinated with the strong aroma of the sausage

5. Lime juice vinaigrette: Lime juice whisked with some extra virgin olive oil. The lime juice adds a bit of freshness to the salad and the extra acidity helps you cut through the elements with stronger personality like the chorizo. You can also use just lime juice without the olive oil. But, a good extra virgin olive oil takes you that last extra mile.

Finally, note that the whole dish is presented layered, and not mixed up. This ensures a little variation in each bite and allows you to savor each component when they all come together in your mouth.

Analytic gastronomy

My tryst with the culinary arts:

Growing up in a lower middle-class Bengali family in Kolkata, food had been quasi-magic to me. By quasi-magic, I mean that I had little idea about what happens before the food is served, as it had always been prepared by someone else.

Like most self-proclaimed foodies, I always had strong opinions about what is good and what is not. Looking around, it is difficult to find people who do not think of themselves as connoisseurs of food. For most people, the so-called 'personal' taste is nothing but a reflection of 'popular' taste and/or habit. Life, however, taught me that hard work and persistence is indispensable for developing a decent to good taste in food.

My conscious involvement with food started in 2001, when I moved to Bangalore for the final year of my master's degree. The food served in the hostel was appalling to say the least, prepared by salaried persons whose livelihood did not depend on the quality of food served. To make things better, we fought hard to start the practice of serving meat for lunch on Sundays. It goes without saying that the Sunday lunches did not go well, thanks to the culinary expertise (or lack, thereof) of the vegetarian cooks. So, I decided that I would rather be responsible for the bad food myself, if I do have to endure it. That way, there would at least be a slim chance of improving the quality of food.

In hindsight, starting my culinary journey with cooking mutton (goat meat) for a crowd of fifty, was one of the better ways of doing it, as red meat is perhaps one of the most forgiving ingredients one would ever come across. Preparing a large quantity of food also helped to fudge minor deviations.

My foray into the culinary arts, thus stimulated by the basic need for palatable food, evolved into a rich culinary and gastronomical experience during my long stay in the US and travels to other countries around the world. I should probably write a few lines about my own style of cooking and a generic overview of the kind of food I like. If I have to pick one cuisine, I am absolutely head over heels for, that would be the Japanese cuisine. South-East Asian and French cuisine follow that top preference not very far behind. As for my style of cooking, most of my ingredients are Bengali, South-East Asian, and some Continental, with style of execution that is deeply influenced by French cuisine. Carefully selected ingredients with cooking that is honest with the ingredients is my style.

Gastronomy analytique (Analytic gastronomy):

Most articles, blogs, or other similar writings on food, focus on recipes and techniques. Let me make an attempt to explain my approach to gastronomy in this blog, using an analogy: if I may compare gastronomy to literature, then I will focus less on the grammar, and try to explore the linguistics and comparative aspects of it. And I used French just to sound more intellectual and pretentious.

I might add, that this blog is not meant for those who:

1. Are just looking for a recipe.

2. Believe that the food they grew up having, is the best in the world.

3. Think that their mother is the best chef in the world (purely by the designation of being his/her mother, and not by her culinary skills).

4. Have religious and other prejudices towards food.