What the world can learn from the Indian kitchen – Cond Nast Traveller India

Brussels, the once- upon-hometown of Cheyenne Olivier, who is my friend and illustrator, is dotted with thousands of friteries. These are shops where you can only buy French fries, along with an option on dozens of dipping sauces. Among them is currysaus, distinguished by the unmistakable hue and fragrance of curry powder.

Indian spices

It is a commonplace that no one in India cooks with curry powder. But on the other hand, the idea of a masala, a blending of a number of contrasting spices, is fundamental to Indian cooking. The problem with curry powder, which it shares with chicken tikka masala and chai, is less the lack of authenticity than the fact that it turns an incredibly rich and diverse culinary landscape into a kind of a Golden Triangle of eating.

It is not surprising that every culinary tradition tries to find the simplest ways to incorporate other traditions into its cooking vocabulary this is currysaus, currywurst in Germany, katsu curry in Japan (but also gobi 65). What is unfortunate is that this is where, for a vast majority of the worlds cooks, Indian food seems stuck, despite the fact that most eating cultures seem to be groping towards a more vegetarian diet, and the sheer splendour of what India has to offer by way of cooking vegetables. There are thousands of Indian restaurants across the world serving undifferentiated over-spiced glop, millions of packaged tikka masalas get sold every year, and varieties of curry powder show up in almost every kitchen, but relatively few non-desi chefs, other than a small global elite, many of them British, seem to be exploring how they could transform their cooking using everyday ideas from Indian cooks.

What really excites me is not the exotic or the baroque, not the early spring asparagus flown across the high seas to be served with posto-bata (poppy seed paste) in Kolkata, nor even the possibility of serving a freshly made burrata with a perfect Alphonso somewhere in the boot of Italy (much as I would love that), but the pairing of everyday flavours from across the world. The genius of Indian cooking is precisely the ability to figure out ways to use spices to lift the most mundane ingredients to a state of grace think lauki with poppy seeds, or lotus stems in a hing and fennel flavoured yogurt gravy. In a world in which eating the seasonal and local (as our forefathers did) is increasingly an imperative, this idea of using alliums, herbs and spices to make magic out of whatever is available has the potential to do its bit towards saving the world.

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What the world can learn from the Indian kitchen - Cond Nast Traveller India