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Hi everyone. Welcome to Potluck Food Talks. Today we have a special guest, Furkan Mirza.

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He's an Indian chef with Syrian heritage and he has worked in some of the best restaurants

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in the world. And today we're going to talk about curry and how curry is interpreted outside

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of India and what it actually is inside India.

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Hi Eric. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me on the podcast.

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Could you tell us a little bit about how Indians see Indian food abroad and how it compares

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to Indian food in India?

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Yeah, I mean, it's definitely not what they're eating in India for sure. It's not anywhere

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close to it. I mean, it also depends abroad is quite broad again. But then again, if you

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go to countries like, I mean, the British, wherever the British Empire was, what they

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call the Commonwealth, these countries have a little better knowledge than for example,

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if you come to Europe and you're eating it in Spain or in France, for example. I think

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the biggest challenge is not just knowing about it or the want to be sincere, but it's

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also the reason. The problem is that the people doing it, for example, in Spain right now,

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the people cooking the Indian food will not be Indians in the most case. I can tell you

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it could be Bangladeshis, it could be Pakistani, Sri Lankans with no offense. It's just that

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I think they find a bigger platform in Indian food to be able to run a business, for example.

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Yeah, I guess the same happens with Italian food. For instance, in Berlin, you will see

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a lot of Italian restaurants run by Turkish people, for instance.

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Exactly, exactly. And I think I don't blame this to anybody. It's just that first of all,

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it's the problem of the talent if it's available, if there is the knowledge of how to cook it.

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And the second biggest challenge, which is a lot with Italian food, is that you will

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not find the best pizza flour, but you will find some flour close to it to make a pizza,

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say in Japan. But then again, in India, there are so many ingredients which come down to

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very small things which are only grown in India or they could not be transported because

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even in today's day and age, because of the perishability or other components. So I think

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that's also one more reason why you will not find really Indian food outside. And that

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also causes the other problem, which is generalization. Because you don't find all the ingredients,

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you boil it down to a few, which you find and then make a classic menu, which you will

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see in every other Indian restaurant outside India. I would say my first contact with Indian

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food as a kid in Venezuela was curry powder. And I don't know if this is something that

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you that is standardized. I understand that curry. I mean, you said talking about abroad

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is a very broad term, but even talking about India is a very broad term because it has

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so many regions, so many cultures, languages, a super long history. And next year, it's

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going to be the country with the largest population. In centuries, that is in first place instead

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of China. I also wanted to ask you, do you think Indian food has been misunderstood in

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foreign markets, particularly in the West? And what are some common misconceptions that

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you have observed? I think the biggest one comes with the whole

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terminology of curry because if you actually go to any Indian household, I mean, my generation

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knows what is curry because we have traveled and we see TV and there's a lot of exchange

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happening. But you find my grandparents or even my parents, they will not recognize what

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is curry to start with, because this is a word which was coined not by everybody says

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it's a British, but it's actually the Portuguese people, the first European settlers in India

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who bought chili and potato and onions. But they also bought this generalization because

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they asked the local population what they're eating. And there are similar words. There's

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curry, there is kareel, which refers to either a spice or a leaf or some preparation specifically.

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But as every European, it was very convenient to just make it a broad term, which is the

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biggest misconception. And now it's also accepted by Indians. Curry is anything which is either

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soupy or dry, has some kind of wheat and vegetables. And it's a warm preparation usually. This

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stems to the other misconception that most Indian food has beaten it. Whereas you go

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to India and I mean, I used to live in, I mean, I come from a Muslim family living with

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20 non-Muslim Hindu families living in a building. And you're the only ones who eat meat, for

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example. The difference is it's vast. 84% of them are Hindus who don't eat for various

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reasons. So that is one misconception as well. The other one being spicy, as in like spicy

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hot to spicy flavorful are two tangents of spicy. I think it all depends on how you use

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it. The spice, it could end with you not having a great experience after eating an Indian

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meal, which is again a huge misconception, I think, which also is because of the powders

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that you mentioned. Curry powders are basically any spice blend, which every house has a different

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one. The only difference in India, you cook those spices before. You will start with your

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oil and then put some cumin seeds and some onions and then put this powder and then roast

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it and you basically cook it through, which will then not cause you that uneasiness and

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problems after eating a curry. And that's, I think, also your style of cooking of just

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putting powders inside something liquid, which cannot be dissolved.

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I remember as a kid, I used to think that curry was like a single spice. And actually

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the curry you find in the West in the supermarket, they have like a similar flavor profile. While

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I guess that's not the case if you go to different families in India. And when I started in culinary

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school, one of the first things I did was making my own curry. This is like a super

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nice experience to make your own spice blends, add some cardamom, add stuff that is normal.

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You know, the curry you find in the supermarket with a coffee grinder and you get your own

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powder and it's something super fun to do.

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Yeah, I think it's just, I mean, depending on where you are, the British, for example,

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they like the color of the curry. For example, if you go to India, the curry powders is also

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available. There is curry powders in India. They're called garam masalas or some kind

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of masala. It's the word for spice blend. But none of them are yellow, for example.

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The British had some fascination with the color yellow and they put turmeric in every

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curry like the Madras curry blend and all of them are yellow or orangey of some sorts,

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which is not the truth in India. In India, you use, I mean, there's a lot of concept

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of Ayurveda. So turmeric is important, but in a very small proportion, also at the right

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time of the day with the right composition. So these things are just like things which

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have been bastardized, like Starbucks selling turmeric latte or the golden milk and making

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it famous, which we've been drinking as Indians as young, small kids. So I think it's a lot

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of un-understanding, not really putting in the effort to understand what everything comes

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from.

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Yeah. I also remember seeing in like in a culinary magazine, there was this map of different

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curries, not only in India, but in all of Southeast Asia. And there were some variations with,

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I mean, with coconut powder and things that you usually don't associate with the curry

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powder.

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Yeah. I mean, it's something very, it's all stemming from the colonization. A lot of it

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is stemming from colonization. I mean, Japan, not really a big part of the British colony,

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but also has their, many of them claim the national dish to be curry rice, which is just

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Japanese curry with rice or the Thai have a curry, whereas they just blend the ingredients

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together. Whereas we cook every spice. So I think it's a lot of various interpretations

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of this curry generalized terms. But I mean, studying Indian cuisine is just like studying

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the whole of Europe together.

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Yeah. It's huge.

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It's 28 states. And funnily enough has 22 official languages. If you take a wild rupee note, it

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has 22 official languages. None of them have the word curry, but Indians and also curry

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for some funny reason.

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That's very funny. You told me a story once that you met like an Indian guy or someone

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told you, ah, look, he's from India. You can talk in your own language. And the only

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common language you had was English.

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Exactly. Yeah. This was what happened at a local research center or doing some research

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with the brain language part of it with the restaurant Mugarritz. And the researchers

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not only in Spain, everywhere happened to be Indian. I think it seems I'm the rare one

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who's a chef. Most of them are engineers or informatics or scientists. And this girl was

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from Kerala, which is down south of India. I'm from Bombay, which is somewhere in the

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west. So we had, I speak English, Hindi, Marathi and Urdu. And she speaks Kannada, Malayalam.

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And both of them are not even not, not just not similar, but are written differently.

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So Urdu you write from right to the left. She writes a different

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Ah, different alphabet as well. Wow.

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Exactly. The script is different. I speak three languages, which all of them are the

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English script is different to Devnagari, which is Hindi script and then Arabs script,

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which is Urdu. And it's, it's normal. It's not like I'm special. I think everybody in

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India is the same, which also, I mean, comes to the other. I mean, this is also beautiful

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at once, but also creates problems and barriers and things get lost in translation, which

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is why Indian food has not been able to, it's catchy and famous, but still it's not the

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true version of it, which is getting, because it's tough to, I mean, tough to communicate

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every piece.

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So in your opinion, what are some of the factors that have contributed to the misunderstandings

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and misrepresentations of Indian food abroad in foreign markets, especially in Europe and

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in the States?

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I think, I mean, these are two different cases. For example, you just see a menu of a, of

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a European Indian restaurant will have more chicken, Tikka masala and butter chicken and

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tandoori chicken, whereas, and we also have a lot of South Indian, South Indian dishes

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in Europe, but you go to America, it's more the North Indian, Chennai masala or things

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like this. It all stems from how the Indian settlers came into, came into England in the

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first place. So when British colony was, British colony started not as a colony, but as an

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East India company, they started trade because Portuguese and Dutch had got, had parts of

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India and British wanted a bigger part of India. So it was a very proud thing to have

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Indian food in England. It was a royal, royal food at that point, because all these people

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who went to, to India as bureaucrats from the British government, they bought back this

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cuisine. So the common people in England didn't know it. England was in the middle of war

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and tough times in the Renaissance. And I think what happened there is they bought these

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cooks with them. So they bought their cooks that they had, the private cooks in India,

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they bought them back to, to, to England. And from there, all of this Indian food understanding

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has come. So I think the misunderstanding has happened because people have tried to do

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the same. Like if you want to make a mango chutney, but then mango in, in, in Victorian

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times is not an easy ingredient to find. You switch with apple. So I think those were substitutes

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made for that time. For example, tamarind is something very, very commonly found in

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India and the, if the curry is the sourness comes from tamarind, they switched with lemon

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juice at that point. So what looked like small, it's like a Chinese whisper. What I want to

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see is like a small problem at once. The more it multiplies, it just becomes a bigger problem

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because you have gone very far from the root, a sense of how the, so I think the, the problem

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was Indian cuisine was not spread by a purpose, but by chance. Like Italian cuisine has, has

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delegates of the Napoleon pizza. So they have a committee which decides what goes where,

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which is not the case with, with, with Indian food, you know?

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Yeah. I guess it also is because it's much wider and much wild. As you said, that there

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are 22 different languages, like a super long history. Do you think so by, by what you're

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saying, isn't like, like a specific evolution of Indian food in the UK and in England?

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Yeah, I think it, it first came with the Victorian Victorian food. What they had was the Royal,

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Royal food because they had the recipes which were Indian food, but made for non-Indians.

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It was all milded down in terms of spice and other factors. And then I think came because

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very famously just after the war, when the times were better and England was again starting

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to bowl, the economy was becoming, becoming bigger. They wanted to celebrate the Commonwealth.

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So England in many occasions, if you see the 20th century has organized these festivals

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where in the middle of London, they used to bring the communities from India, from South

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Africa to show the heritage of what the British Empire was. And people learned from there

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about what their, what Indian food looks like. So that was one era when the common people

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started learning what is Indian food. And then, then came the, the pub era. Today Indian

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food is the pub food in, in England. Okay. It's because, because in north, another immigration

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happened from Bangladesh because they had these team ships from Bangladesh, which used

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to bring the silk route, carry out the whole silk route to England. And these people didn't

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have a great life putting charcoal, putting charcoal inside the ship. So they just jumped

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on the ship and stayed in England. So they bought with them a different kind of Bangladeshi

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cuisine, which has more mustard oil and then, and fish powered cuisine. So I think it has

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seen a lot of, a lot of phases. And right now we've stayed with the most convenient

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of them all by generalizing the whole, the tons of things that came.

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There are also like fine dining restaurants with Michelin stars and everything, right?

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If I'm not wrong and London and also in the, the, the speech, uh, Bishaskana has Michelin

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stars. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because Kana has had a three star Michelin once. Now he's more

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into book writing and things, but there's, there's a bit Tabla was a famous Indian restaurant

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in England. Most recently, the biggest name in Indian cuisine, although he's not very

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Indian, but is Gagan. Gagan has been in the top five in the world's 50 best and number

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one in Asia's Asia's 50 best. And Gagan does also a very, in his course, in his menu, there's

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one course, which is, which is curry and curry and rice. But, uh, again, this has, uh, yeah,

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it has come, it has come through because I think it's not only the heritage, but then

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again, these people who have made it famous and who've made it big on the Western stage

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have focused on one part of the Indian food, which I think is the trick. Because if you

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get into being a traditional and authentic and sincere about all the parts of India,

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it's very, it's very tough, I think. So many restaurants like these in Dubai, for example,

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there are many, which is a closer platform to India in terms of getting open to the West.

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There's a lot of new stuff happening. Yeah. Actually we just kind of has a restaurant

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in the way. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good, it's a means a good platform because it's

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a platform where these ideas are accepted. And there's also Indian population a lot in

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all these countries. And I think it's, it's, I mean, it's, I see it to be received very

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well because people going there know that they're not going to have their classic Indian

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meal. And I think it's, it's beautiful how people are open to see what more is, is there

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on this Lebanon Indian food. Also to mention about this chef, it's interesting that he

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opened a museum with old artifacts and culinary utensils. And I think it has a collection

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of over 10,000 culinary utensils from India, from all over the different regions, antiquities.

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So that's to be something interesting to take a look at. Exactly. Yeah. I've not seen it

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yet because I was already here in Europe, but I've heard about it in the Manipal University.

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It's a university which about culinary education as well. And he has helped to consolidate

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this museum. And it's, it's beautiful because a lot of, I mean, India happening to be so

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huge and having the beauty of being in the center of the spice road is it has attracted

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always trade, trade men and commercial activity. So all of them have passed their own culture.

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So I think Indian cuisine again is not, nobody can say it's authentic. Every, everything

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that is there in India today has come from somewhere in the world, but it's the beauty

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of how it's been accepted. And there is so many marks of history over it. To finish with,

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I wanted to ask you, I had recently the privilege to try your butter chicken, which was amazing.

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And I remember I was telling this to a friend. He's not like a culinary person, but he actually

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asked, Oh great. And what did he, did he had like a super good garam masala? And I remember

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while we were eating that some people also ask you, and aren't there any spices here?

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And like this prejudice that Indian food has to be full of spices all the time. Well, this

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is a good example of how it doesn't have to. And you mentioned you had like, you applied

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like many secrets and tricks to, to cook butter chicken. Could you share us some of those?

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Yeah, for sure. I mean, exactly. So this is also one classic example of how cuisine changes

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because what I made the other day for you and the other colleagues is again, not very

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authentic, but then it's, it's a fruit of what is available. So for example, I didn't

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have a tandoor, so I used the oven, but then again, to compensate for the, for the smoke

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or for this element of being in, in, in close to charcoal, I just used a very traditional

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method. Actually it's called dungar. It basically means smoke, to smoke something. And what

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you do there is you make your, I mean, however you make your curry or however you reach to

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the end of that and this can be actually applied to any, any dish. And you take an aluminum

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foil or classically people use onion skins. When sustainability didn't exist, people used

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onion skins and you take a burning carbon, you burn the carbon either with the, I used

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a blow torch because we don't have a fire in the kitchen or you burn it on fire and

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just put it inside that bowl or the aluminum foil or the, or the, or the onion skin with

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some spices burning. And what you do next is you put a small blow of butter inside that.

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So that would itself, the reaction of butter and something burning will create a smoke

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and then next thing is you cover it and try to trap that smoke inside. So that is one

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of the examples of how you can actually accustom yourself and adapt with, with, with what's

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going on. I think Indian food is not about just spicy or by ingredients. I think everything

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can be Indianized of sorts if you apply the principles. I think the basic principle to

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make any, say a vegetable curry, not even meat is everything starts with oil. It can

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be mostly it's the vegetable sunflower oil or groundnut oil, something neutral, but then

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there are parts of India which use mustard oil, which is again something, which is not

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used in, you know, but all which is delicious with something with fish, for example. Yeah.

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I've had mustard oil and it's amazing. It's beautiful. It has, I mean, it's also special.

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You can't use it by itself. You need to burn it first. You take it to a smoking point so

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it doesn't be so pungent on your throat at the end. So people burn it mostly in earthen

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pots and then use it. So you use the oil you put mostly people put either curry leaves

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or cumin powder or mustard seeds. The idea is to flavor the oil. You put something dry,

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which is a spice, where flavor and you put a bay leaf, something in the oil, it splatters.

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You put the onion, you roast it, you put the spice of your choice. If you have cumin powder,

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put cumin powder. If you have coriander, put coriander, but there is no such mix which

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will lead you to, I don't know the best level of, but if you have a spice bin, put it right

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there, roast it off and put whatever you want, the vegetable or the meat and put some water

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cover the lid. And whenever that thing cooks the chicken or the vegetable, you have a curry

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in front of you. It's actually very simple. It's not about sticking to specific bands

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or ingredients. It's just.

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Yeah. I guess curry is like, like an equivalent to say wok.

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Exactly.

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It's like a methodology that has some principles and you can do whatever you want inside of

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those principles and that would be a wok or a curry.

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Exactly. I mean, you need to be free and out of their own things that tie them up. I think

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it's a beauty because a lot of these things which seem like bastardized or bad or not

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really Indian have actually contributed a lot to Indian food today as well. The whole

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world is waking up now to millets are the future food and millets are amazing. But India

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used to have millets years ago, but thanks to the people waking up to millets, India

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has actually spoken to the UN and next year is going to be the year of millets, for example,

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which brings a lot of trade and business to India. So I think not only Indian cuisine,

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but every cuisine gets has been bastardized at some point and people have been upset.

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But I think just being accepting and seeing that version of things while knowing it's

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not the truest form of it and respecting each other. I think it's a beautiful way to continue.

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That's it for this week's episode of Potluck Food Talks. If you like what we're doing,

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