I have occasionally wondered how this fascination developed. I don’t think there was one earth shaking event that grabbed my attention. But more likely a series of experiences that gradually piqued my curiosity until mild interest led to utter immersion. Certainly my upbringing in a multi-cultural family with diverse and adventurous tastes set the stage. While many of my friends were eating at McDonald’s, our family would often take trips to Boston’s Chinatown to dine at a small restaurant named Yee Hong Guey, which I think was located on Oxford street. Dinners here were quite different from Golden Star, the local Chinese restaurant we frequented. The lobster sauce and wonton soup in particular were radically different than the versions we were accustomed to. Peering into the grocery stores in Chinatown was a window to a world far removed from the middle-class suburb I was growing up in. Impressions…

At home my mother had several international cookbooks and a green file card box filled with recipes from many different sources: my grandmother; possibly my aunts; friends; and one family favorite, Chicken Imperial, which had been discovered on the bulletin board at our local supermarket. Among the books were two Indian cookbooks; a few Chinese cookbooks; The Joy of Cooking; one by James Beard and a few others. While I remember seeing the book Treasured Armenian Recipes on the shelf, Armenian recipes generally resided in the file card box. From that box, my grandmother’s recipe for hamburgs with little bits of onion, tomato and mint; a combination that seemed unique to us kids, but they were delicious!

Between the cookbooks and the green box, recipes from many countries were represented: Armenia, Burma, China, Germany, Japan, Thailand and more. One interesting dish from Indonesia, with the improbable name Nasi Goreng was found in Myra Waldo’s book, The Complete Book of Oriental Cooking. I kind of shook my head a few times when I first saw the recipe, it was too close to a notorious historical figure’s name. Thankfully the dish predates the 20th century, and it refers to “fried rice” in Indonesian. We prepared its cousin Bahmi Goreng (fried noodles) next to which my mother wrote “Superb” and although there are no comments, I think we made Nasi Goreng as well. My parents tried several other recipes from this book, including some from India. The corners of a few pages were folded, notes were written next to several recipes and something had been spilled on the book while cooking. It appears this book was used often.

From a different book, came Satay, a recipe we prepared often in the summer; grilling marinated chicken outside on a hibachi. The sauce was prepared from peanut butter and a good dose of chili powder. An early exposure to an important ingredient.

Then there was the rice pilaf. This is a very basic rice dish that our family still makes every holiday. It is a recipe my grandmother prepared, and she made it the best. (You knew that was coming, right?) No matter who has tried to make it since, it has not quite matched up. I think we got close a few years ago though. The recipe is not too complicated, but there are a few ingredients that are essential. If they are substituted or omitted the outcome is adversely affected. In the 1970s, we as a family, began to shy away from butter in favor of margarine. We never seemed to have lamb stock around. These are the two key ingredients to her recipe. And while neither are particularly healthy additions to rice, my brother’s dictum “fat equals flavor” is particularly apt here.

The Myra Waldo book is also the source of one of my first home-cooked Indian dishes. Keema Korma Curry (ground lamb curry), another family favorite, seems like it might have been adapted for western kitchens. It was different from the keema I would eventually make or the recipe generally followed by restaurants. We adjusted the ingredients when we prepared it: substituting beef for lamb, and green beans for peas. This recipe was fairly easy to make and became an early influence for my future cooking adventures. I recently noticed that I also made some adjustments in the book — doubling the quantity of a few of the spices.

Another dish our family often enjoyed was Murgh-i-Mussallum (spicy baked chicken) that we found in the Horizon Cookbook. We used to refer to this dish as Tandoori or Pakistani chicken because the recipe was actually from Pakistan. We baked it in a regular oven rather than a tandoor, so I am not sure why we called it Tandoori Chicken. Not that this 12-year old would have had any inkling of what a tandoor was. I guess the chicken could have been cooked outside if we wanted to, though it might have been a bit messy to clean the hibachi. Besides, we would have lost all the marinade that caramelized at the bottom of the baking dish when cooked in the oven. And to us kids, that was gold! I still remember the aroma of the yogurt, garlic and spice marinade from this recipe. So different from Chicken Imperial.

A version of muligatawny would often appear after Thanksgiving. Prepared with leftover turkey, rice (I think), black peppercorns and store-bought curry powder, it was a spiced turkey soup. This recipe might have been from the file card box or one of our cookbooks, though I am not sure. But it became my reference point later on when muligatawny began popping up on restaurant menus. Mind you, ours was completely different than the restaurant versions that I tried. Mulligatawny at restaurants did not contain any turkey or rice and actually appeared to be a fancy name for a thin dal “soup.” It varied by restaurant and even could be different from day to day at the same restaurant.

I would often look for a recipe for muligatawny in books and online in the years ahead. In Raghavan Iyer’s book, 660 Curries, he describes the origins of what we call mulligatawny as a modified version of south India’s molagha tanni (literally pepper water). This spicy broth, with toned down spices, was more palatable for the British as they set up shop in India. Over the years, it has spawned multiple variations becoming more of a soup.¹ His version seems similar to how I remember our post-Thanksgiving turkey soup.

Even if our muligatawny was not “authentic,” it was interesting nonetheless, and pretty aggressively spiced for our tastes at the time. Around Thanksgiving time, my mother would also occasionally prepare a dry “curry” with leftover turkey that included raisins and the store-bought curry powder. I liked this one a lot. I am not sure where this recipe came from; it might have been her own creation.

One that didn’t go over so well with me was a fish biryani. I think the recipe existed only on an index card that my mother had written down. In any event, she would buy one pound boxes of frozen fish from the market and use that to make the biryani. I don’t really remember the spices, but I think it was pretty mild. I am pretty sure this is where my dislike of fish began. This was also a far cry from the biryanis that I would enjoy later on.

Curiously, while I generally didn’t have problems with spices as a kid, for some reason, I did not like the whole cloves that my mother used when making ham. It was a pretty standard recipe: pineapple affixed to the ham with whole cloves. Although I really like pineapple, I don’t really care for it on ham. Though in this recipe, I think it might have been the cloves that bothered me. They might have been too “strong.” Luckily, I outgrew that aversion.

Footnotes

1. Raghavan Iyer, 660 Curries, (Workman Publishing Company, 2008), 649–651 [↖︎]