Hi everyone. Welcome to Potluck Food Talks. Today we have a special guest, Furkan Mirza.
He's an Indian chef with Syrian heritage and he has worked in some of the best restaurants
in the world. And today we're going to talk about curry and how curry is interpreted outside
of India and what it actually is inside India.
Hi Eric. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me on the podcast.
Could you tell us a little bit about how Indians see Indian food abroad and how it compares
to Indian food in India?
Yeah, I mean, it's definitely not what they're eating in India for sure. It's not anywhere
close to it. I mean, it also depends abroad is quite broad again. But then again, if you
go to countries like, I mean, the British, wherever the British Empire was, what they
call the Commonwealth, these countries have a little better knowledge than for example,
if you come to Europe and you're eating it in Spain or in France, for example. I think
the biggest challenge is not just knowing about it or the want to be sincere, but it's
also the reason. The problem is that the people doing it, for example, in Spain right now,
the people cooking the Indian food will not be Indians in the most case. I can tell you
it could be Bangladeshis, it could be Pakistani, Sri Lankans with no offense. It's just that
I think they find a bigger platform in Indian food to be able to run a business, for example.
Yeah, I guess the same happens with Italian food. For instance, in Berlin, you will see
a lot of Italian restaurants run by Turkish people, for instance.
Exactly, exactly. And I think I don't blame this to anybody. It's just that first of all,
it's the problem of the talent if it's available, if there is the knowledge of how to cook it.
And the second biggest challenge, which is a lot with Italian food, is that you will
not find the best pizza flour, but you will find some flour close to it to make a pizza,
say in Japan. But then again, in India, there are so many ingredients which come down to
very small things which are only grown in India or they could not be transported because
even in today's day and age, because of the perishability or other components. So I think
that's also one more reason why you will not find really Indian food outside. And that
also causes the other problem, which is generalization. Because you don't find all the ingredients,
you boil it down to a few, which you find and then make a classic menu, which you will
see in every other Indian restaurant outside India. I would say my first contact with Indian
food as a kid in Venezuela was curry powder. And I don't know if this is something that
you that is standardized. I understand that curry. I mean, you said talking about abroad
is a very broad term, but even talking about India is a very broad term because it has
so many regions, so many cultures, languages, a super long history. And next year, it's
going to be the country with the largest population. In centuries, that is in first place instead
of China. I also wanted to ask you, do you think Indian food has been misunderstood in
foreign markets, particularly in the West? And what are some common misconceptions that
you have observed? I think the biggest one comes with the whole
terminology of curry because if you actually go to any Indian household, I mean, my generation
knows what is curry because we have traveled and we see TV and there's a lot of exchange
happening. But you find my grandparents or even my parents, they will not recognize what
is curry to start with, because this is a word which was coined not by everybody says
it's a British, but it's actually the Portuguese people, the first European settlers in India
who bought chili and potato and onions. But they also bought this generalization because
they asked the local population what they're eating. And there are similar words. There's
curry, there is kareel, which refers to either a spice or a leaf or some preparation specifically.
But as every European, it was very convenient to just make it a broad term, which is the
biggest misconception. And now it's also accepted by Indians. Curry is anything which is either
soupy or dry, has some kind of wheat and vegetables. And it's a warm preparation usually. This
stems to the other misconception that most Indian food has beaten it. Whereas you go
to India and I mean, I used to live in, I mean, I come from a Muslim family living with
20 non-Muslim Hindu families living in a building. And you're the only ones who eat meat, for
example. The difference is it's vast. 84% of them are Hindus who don't eat for various
reasons. So that is one misconception as well. The other one being spicy, as in like spicy
hot to spicy flavorful are two tangents of spicy. I think it all depends on how you use
it. The spice, it could end with you not having a great experience after eating an Indian
meal, which is again a huge misconception, I think, which also is because of the powders
that you mentioned. Curry powders are basically any spice blend, which every house has a different
one. The only difference in India, you cook those spices before. You will start with your
oil and then put some cumin seeds and some onions and then put this powder and then roast
it and you basically cook it through, which will then not cause you that uneasiness and
problems after eating a curry. And that's, I think, also your style of cooking of just
putting powders inside something liquid, which cannot be dissolved.
I remember as a kid, I used to think that curry was like a single spice. And actually
the curry you find in the West in the supermarket, they have like a similar flavor profile. While
I guess that's not the case if you go to different families in India. And when I started in culinary
school, one of the first things I did was making my own curry. This is like a super
nice experience to make your own spice blends, add some cardamom, add stuff that is normal.
You know, the curry you find in the supermarket with a coffee grinder and you get your own
powder and it's something super fun to do.
Yeah, I think it's just, I mean, depending on where you are, the British, for example,
they like the color of the curry. For example, if you go to India, the curry powders is also
available. There is curry powders in India. They're called garam masalas or some kind
of masala. It's the word for spice blend. But none of them are yellow, for example.
The British had some fascination with the color yellow and they put turmeric in every
curry like the Madras curry blend and all of them are yellow or orangey of some sorts,
which is not the truth in India. In India, you use, I mean, there's a lot of concept
of Ayurveda. So turmeric is important, but in a very small proportion, also at the right
time of the day with the right composition. So these things are just like things which
have been bastardized, like Starbucks selling turmeric latte or the golden milk and making
it famous, which we've been drinking as Indians as young, small kids. So I think it's a lot
of un-understanding, not really putting in the effort to understand what everything comes
from.
Yeah. I also remember seeing in like in a culinary magazine, there was this map of different
curries, not only in India, but in all of Southeast Asia. And there were some variations with,
I mean, with coconut powder and things that you usually don't associate with the curry
powder.
Yeah. I mean, it's something very, it's all stemming from the colonization. A lot of it
is stemming from colonization. I mean, Japan, not really a big part of the British colony,
but also has their, many of them claim the national dish to be curry rice, which is just
Japanese curry with rice or the Thai have a curry, whereas they just blend the ingredients
together. Whereas we cook every spice. So I think it's a lot of various interpretations
of this curry generalized terms. But I mean, studying Indian cuisine is just like studying
the whole of Europe together.
Yeah. It's huge.
It's 28 states. And funnily enough has 22 official languages. If you take a wild rupee note, it
has 22 official languages. None of them have the word curry, but Indians and also curry
for some funny reason.
That's very funny. You told me a story once that you met like an Indian guy or someone
told you, ah, look, he's from India. You can talk in your own language. And the only
common language you had was English.
Exactly. Yeah. This was what happened at a local research center or doing some research
with the brain language part of it with the restaurant Mugarritz. And the researchers
not only in Spain, everywhere happened to be Indian. I think it seems I'm the rare one
who's a chef. Most of them are engineers or informatics or scientists. And this girl was
from Kerala, which is down south of India. I'm from Bombay, which is somewhere in the
west. So we had, I speak English, Hindi, Marathi and Urdu. And she speaks Kannada, Malayalam.
And both of them are not even not, not just not similar, but are written differently.
So Urdu you write from right to the left. She writes a different
Ah, different alphabet as well. Wow.
Exactly. The script is different. I speak three languages, which all of them are the
English script is different to Devnagari, which is Hindi script and then Arabs script,
which is Urdu. And it's, it's normal. It's not like I'm special. I think everybody in
India is the same, which also, I mean, comes to the other. I mean, this is also beautiful
at once, but also creates problems and barriers and things get lost in translation, which
is why Indian food has not been able to, it's catchy and famous, but still it's not the
true version of it, which is getting, because it's tough to, I mean, tough to communicate
every piece.
So in your opinion, what are some of the factors that have contributed to the misunderstandings
and misrepresentations of Indian food abroad in foreign markets, especially in Europe and
in the States?
I think, I mean, these are two different cases. For example, you just see a menu of a, of
a European Indian restaurant will have more chicken, Tikka masala and butter chicken and
tandoori chicken, whereas, and we also have a lot of South Indian, South Indian dishes
in Europe, but you go to America, it's more the North Indian, Chennai masala or things
like this. It all stems from how the Indian settlers came into, came into England in the
first place. So when British colony was, British colony started not as a colony, but as an
East India company, they started trade because Portuguese and Dutch had got, had parts of
India and British wanted a bigger part of India. So it was a very proud thing to have
Indian food in England. It was a royal, royal food at that point, because all these people
who went to, to India as bureaucrats from the British government, they bought back this
cuisine. So the common people in England didn't know it. England was in the middle of war
and tough times in the Renaissance. And I think what happened there is they bought these
cooks with them. So they bought their cooks that they had, the private cooks in India,
they bought them back to, to, to England. And from there, all of this Indian food understanding
has come. So I think the misunderstanding has happened because people have tried to do
the same. Like if you want to make a mango chutney, but then mango in, in, in Victorian
times is not an easy ingredient to find. You switch with apple. So I think those were substitutes
made for that time. For example, tamarind is something very, very commonly found in
India and the, if the curry is the sourness comes from tamarind, they switched with lemon
juice at that point. So what looked like small, it's like a Chinese whisper. What I want to
see is like a small problem at once. The more it multiplies, it just becomes a bigger problem
because you have gone very far from the root, a sense of how the, so I think the, the problem
was Indian cuisine was not spread by a purpose, but by chance. Like Italian cuisine has, has
delegates of the Napoleon pizza. So they have a committee which decides what goes where,
which is not the case with, with, with Indian food, you know?
Yeah. I guess it also is because it's much wider and much wild. As you said, that there
are 22 different languages, like a super long history. Do you think so by, by what you're
saying, isn't like, like a specific evolution of Indian food in the UK and in England?
Yeah, I think it, it first came with the Victorian Victorian food. What they had was the Royal,
Royal food because they had the recipes which were Indian food, but made for non-Indians.
It was all milded down in terms of spice and other factors. And then I think came because
very famously just after the war, when the times were better and England was again starting
to bowl, the economy was becoming, becoming bigger. They wanted to celebrate the Commonwealth.
So England in many occasions, if you see the 20th century has organized these festivals
where in the middle of London, they used to bring the communities from India, from South
Africa to show the heritage of what the British Empire was. And people learned from there
about what their, what Indian food looks like. So that was one era when the common people
started learning what is Indian food. And then, then came the, the pub era. Today Indian
food is the pub food in, in England. Okay. It's because, because in north, another immigration
happened from Bangladesh because they had these team ships from Bangladesh, which used
to bring the silk route, carry out the whole silk route to England. And these people didn't
have a great life putting charcoal, putting charcoal inside the ship. So they just jumped
on the ship and stayed in England. So they bought with them a different kind of Bangladeshi
cuisine, which has more mustard oil and then, and fish powered cuisine. So I think it has
seen a lot of, a lot of phases. And right now we've stayed with the most convenient
of them all by generalizing the whole, the tons of things that came.
There are also like fine dining restaurants with Michelin stars and everything, right?
If I'm not wrong and London and also in the, the, the speech, uh, Bishaskana has Michelin
stars. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because Kana has had a three star Michelin once. Now he's more
into book writing and things, but there's, there's a bit Tabla was a famous Indian restaurant
in England. Most recently, the biggest name in Indian cuisine, although he's not very
Indian, but is Gagan. Gagan has been in the top five in the world's 50 best and number
one in Asia's Asia's 50 best. And Gagan does also a very, in his course, in his menu, there's
one course, which is, which is curry and curry and rice. But, uh, again, this has, uh, yeah,
it has come, it has come through because I think it's not only the heritage, but then
again, these people who have made it famous and who've made it big on the Western stage
have focused on one part of the Indian food, which I think is the trick. Because if you
get into being a traditional and authentic and sincere about all the parts of India,
it's very, it's very tough, I think. So many restaurants like these in Dubai, for example,
there are many, which is a closer platform to India in terms of getting open to the West.
There's a lot of new stuff happening. Yeah. Actually we just kind of has a restaurant
in the way. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good, it's a means a good platform because it's
a platform where these ideas are accepted. And there's also Indian population a lot in
all these countries. And I think it's, it's, I mean, it's, I see it to be received very
well because people going there know that they're not going to have their classic Indian
meal. And I think it's, it's beautiful how people are open to see what more is, is there
on this Lebanon Indian food. Also to mention about this chef, it's interesting that he
opened a museum with old artifacts and culinary utensils. And I think it has a collection
of over 10,000 culinary utensils from India, from all over the different regions, antiquities.
So that's to be something interesting to take a look at. Exactly. Yeah. I've not seen it
yet because I was already here in Europe, but I've heard about it in the Manipal University.
It's a university which about culinary education as well. And he has helped to consolidate
this museum. And it's, it's beautiful because a lot of, I mean, India happening to be so
huge and having the beauty of being in the center of the spice road is it has attracted
always trade, trade men and commercial activity. So all of them have passed their own culture.
So I think Indian cuisine again is not, nobody can say it's authentic. Every, everything
that is there in India today has come from somewhere in the world, but it's the beauty
of how it's been accepted. And there is so many marks of history over it. To finish with,
I wanted to ask you, I had recently the privilege to try your butter chicken, which was amazing.
And I remember I was telling this to a friend. He's not like a culinary person, but he actually
asked, Oh great. And what did he, did he had like a super good garam masala? And I remember
while we were eating that some people also ask you, and aren't there any spices here?
And like this prejudice that Indian food has to be full of spices all the time. Well, this
is a good example of how it doesn't have to. And you mentioned you had like, you applied
like many secrets and tricks to, to cook butter chicken. Could you share us some of those?
Yeah, for sure. I mean, exactly. So this is also one classic example of how cuisine changes
because what I made the other day for you and the other colleagues is again, not very
authentic, but then it's, it's a fruit of what is available. So for example, I didn't
have a tandoor, so I used the oven, but then again, to compensate for the, for the smoke
or for this element of being in, in, in close to charcoal, I just used a very traditional
method. Actually it's called dungar. It basically means smoke, to smoke something. And what
you do there is you make your, I mean, however you make your curry or however you reach to
the end of that and this can be actually applied to any, any dish. And you take an aluminum
foil or classically people use onion skins. When sustainability didn't exist, people used
onion skins and you take a burning carbon, you burn the carbon either with the, I used
a blow torch because we don't have a fire in the kitchen or you burn it on fire and
just put it inside that bowl or the aluminum foil or the, or the, or the onion skin with
some spices burning. And what you do next is you put a small blow of butter inside that.
So that would itself, the reaction of butter and something burning will create a smoke
and then next thing is you cover it and try to trap that smoke inside. So that is one
of the examples of how you can actually accustom yourself and adapt with, with, with what's
going on. I think Indian food is not about just spicy or by ingredients. I think everything
can be Indianized of sorts if you apply the principles. I think the basic principle to
make any, say a vegetable curry, not even meat is everything starts with oil. It can
be mostly it's the vegetable sunflower oil or groundnut oil, something neutral, but then
there are parts of India which use mustard oil, which is again something, which is not
used in, you know, but all which is delicious with something with fish, for example. Yeah.
I've had mustard oil and it's amazing. It's beautiful. It has, I mean, it's also special.
You can't use it by itself. You need to burn it first. You take it to a smoking point so
it doesn't be so pungent on your throat at the end. So people burn it mostly in earthen
pots and then use it. So you use the oil you put mostly people put either curry leaves
or cumin powder or mustard seeds. The idea is to flavor the oil. You put something dry,
which is a spice, where flavor and you put a bay leaf, something in the oil, it splatters.
You put the onion, you roast it, you put the spice of your choice. If you have cumin powder,
put cumin powder. If you have coriander, put coriander, but there is no such mix which
will lead you to, I don't know the best level of, but if you have a spice bin, put it right
there, roast it off and put whatever you want, the vegetable or the meat and put some water
cover the lid. And whenever that thing cooks the chicken or the vegetable, you have a curry
in front of you. It's actually very simple. It's not about sticking to specific bands
or ingredients. It's just.
Yeah. I guess curry is like, like an equivalent to say wok.
Exactly.
It's like a methodology that has some principles and you can do whatever you want inside of
those principles and that would be a wok or a curry.
Exactly. I mean, you need to be free and out of their own things that tie them up. I think
it's a beauty because a lot of these things which seem like bastardized or bad or not
really Indian have actually contributed a lot to Indian food today as well. The whole
world is waking up now to millets are the future food and millets are amazing. But India
used to have millets years ago, but thanks to the people waking up to millets, India
has actually spoken to the UN and next year is going to be the year of millets, for example,
which brings a lot of trade and business to India. So I think not only Indian cuisine,
but every cuisine gets has been bastardized at some point and people have been upset.
But I think just being accepting and seeing that version of things while knowing it's
not the truest form of it and respecting each other. I think it's a beautiful way to continue.
That's it for this week's episode of Potluck Food Talks. If you like what we're doing,
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