Khojana: Exploring Indian Food

But Why? How?

“So, how does this Armenian/German kid get off writing about Indian food?” you might be asking yourself. “What could he possibly know about the subtleties and intricacies of this cuisine?” No amma to learn from, not a single day in culinary school, and no restaurant experience. Never even been to India.

The answer is simple: this site is about my adventures, my exploration, my appreciation, my journey to learn, understand, enjoy and ultimately cook the food from the Indian subcontinent. It comes from a deep obsession and a strong will to learn more about the varied, complicated and subtle flavors that make up this incredible cuisine.

To be sure, many of us here in the west have a deep misunderstanding about the food. We spend way too much time indulging in the repertoire at our local Indian restaurants, which until relatively recently, offered a very limited selection of India’s “greatest hits.” Or we attempt to recreate dishes with supermarket-bought “curry powders,” strongly perfumed by fenugreek. I must confess, I started out the same way. But these impressions do a disservice to a cuisine which is much much wider, diverse and way more individual than anything you will find in most restaurants in the United States. And, so we get things straight: curry powder that we use in the west as a one-spice-fits-all doesn’t exist in India. Garam masala, yes. But then you need to specify which of the approximately 3,496 versions of garam masala you are referring to. (The actual number is impossible to know, though is undoubtably much higher.)

Like many others, I started by craving the kormas, “curries,” and “masalas” served by local restaurants. OK, I still do, but… Even back then, I suspected that there was more than just the dozen or so dishes served at the local restaurants. I had grown up in a family with an adventurous palate and we prepared a few Indian dishes from cookbooks, which tipped me off that there was more to this party than what I was seeing on the menus. I just didn’t know how much more.

Even after years of exploring restaurants, cooking, reading, videos and research, I still find new surprises. I remember a birthday dinner, where I ordered a chickoo shake. I had never even heard of chickoo before; it turns out to be a tropical fruit. The shake was like a Lassi and tasted really good!

As I started to cook more seriously, I began to discover many of the unknown dishes and run into problems. My wish, at the time was to recreate the restaurant curries, but even with fairly simple recipes my version was falling short. And that began my my quest, my khojana, to cook these dishes. I stared out with many misconceptions, and incomplete information, but that turned out to be a motivator, and I continued to work at — search for — the answer.

Books have been a valuable asset on this trip, and not only for recipes. Many cookbooks include informative sections that cover techniques; the regions or history of India; the origin of many dishes and pitfalls to avoid when cooking. Reading the flowery prose only adds to the mystique for me, and I can almost taste the food as I’m reading. In some books authors write about complex recipes that require dozens of spices to create a dish; others enumerate infinite ways to make dal while more down-to-earth books simply include family recipes. It was mind boggling at first because all the techniques and ingredients were new to me, not to mention the wide variety of dishes that I had never heard of. The intrigue grew.

Beyond the introductory books, cookbooks and websites that focus on regional dishes offer a more in depth look, and at first, I found myself over my head. Looking at regional specialties can often be confusing. Not only are there different dishes, but in some cases different names, languages or ways to prepare otherwise recognizable dishes. A partial list from the site Indian Food Forever illustrates this quite nicely: Chakli, Khandvi, Khichu, Kakdi Nu Raitu, Khajoor Na Ghugra, Osaman, Ringan Nu Oloo, Sukavni, Tindora Nu Shaak, Chhundo, Gunda. How may of these dishes are in your local restaurant? All this just added fuel to the fire.