Authenticity in cuisine?and in culture?is just a foolish dream. That?s a thought that I mull over even as I break into a delicious, oblong kibbeh, scoop up some hummus flavoured with sumac (the middle-eastern equivalent of zeera) with it and wash down the mezze with a strong cup of Turkish coffee. Considering that the meal is part of a showcasing of the ?flavours of Tigris? at The Park, New Delhi, a festival featuring foods from that cradle of civilisation that comprises modern-day Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria, a dash of arak (aniseed liquor, not to be confused with our own country liquor arrack) may have been apt too. But it is the middle of the afternoon and this is but a quick lunch grabbed between two appointments. Yet, there is enough food for thought.
When people clamour for authenticity and place it above inventiveness (and since this is a food column, we will stick to talking about only cuisines), it is with misplaced zeal. Reclaiming your past as part of national heritage may be alright, but to attribute to it a kind of cultural ?purity?, missing from our globalised world order of today, is downright foolish and shows that one has no notion of either history or geography. Food, after all, is a product of both and all the great cuisines of the world have been produced by cultures that were hardly insular. When we talk about Indian cuisines, this is a fact that repeatedly stares us in the face. From tomatoes to samosas, from kebabs to chillies and even curries, everything that we claim to be ours and ours alone is, in fact, a culmination of a centuries-long process of exchange and assimilation.
Tracing the journey of Indian cuisine?or north Indian cuisine in this case?is an exercise that makes you realise how much we need thank trade and politics of the past. The kibbeh that I am biting into, for instance, a staple of Levantine cuisine, and made from bulgur wheat and mince (sometimes deliciously stuffed with pinenuts) becomes the koofteh of the Persian kitchens. And it is these that no doubt took root in our own cooking in the sub-continent with the reign of the Mughal emperors. While the Mughals themselves claimed their ancestry from Timur, who belonged to the Transoxania region, a definite Persian influence crept into their culture (and cuisine) because of their wanderings and also because of the fact that many of the Mughal empresses (Noor Jehan, for one) themselves were Persian. The Persian empire was the dominant Muslim culture of the day and koftas apart, its influence can be seen even in dishes such as kheer (not to mention the much more prosaic meethe chawal); the rice pudding being a cousin of the Persian shir berenj (sweet rice). Equally, the nan bread, chay, many of the kebabs, not to mention the Iranian halva, all have famous counterparts in our Indian cooking with just a little tweaking of recipes. And, above all, the use of rich nuts and sweet raisins and apricots used in Mughlai food bear testimony to the close relationship between these two medieval worlds. But, clearly, there was a quid pro quo. Persian food, too, benefited from Indian spices and has flavourful curries today, thanks to the India connection.
Turkey is another country with which India has a strong culinary connection. If you recall your history, the medieval period in India started with the death of Harshavardhan and Turkish invasions, which eventually set the stage for Muslim rule in India for the first time. Politics aside, the kebab is perhaps an enduring legacy from those times. But while the travel of the kebab from the middle-east into Indian mainstream are well known, 11th century writings in India also record the royal love for samosas!
Today, an intrinsic part of Indian cuisine (while in India, this remains a street snack, made everywhere from Benares to Kolkata to Chennai and Pune, abroad, Indian restaurants have fancied this up and serve it either as a first course or as a dessert, including in the form of a chocolate samosa), the samosa has its roots in the sambusak of the Arabic world. At any rate, the Turkish tradition of presenting either minced meats or sweet nuts in a pastry shell took root in India quite firmly. While the original filling of minced meat (keema) is still retained in sundry samosas, Indianisation meant that a variety of cheaper and abundantly available vegetables and spices, not to mention dals, found their way into the shell, which began to be deep fried in oil instead of being baked.
But it is not just the samosa that has travelled so far?have you noticed the similarity between our own gujiya/karanji that we have on all our major festivals and Turkish sweets with a filo covering, of which the baklava is the most famous?
Tandir was (and is) the Turkish bread baked in a round oven?quite like a tandoor, corba is soup, its very name suggesting our own shorba, pilafs are cooked in butter and stock and derive their taste from that?quite similar to our own pulaos, that themselves are a lost art form, having been replaced by the much more plebian, but spiced-up biryani. The Mughlai parantha that was once a favourite street snack could be a version of the Ottoman omelette in which flour was used and so on. And finally, even paneer, that great vegetarian equaliser in north India today, may have the middle-eastern fresh cheeses to thank for its existence, because, after all, we know from the claims of food historians like KT Achaya (the only one really to document Indian food) that traditionally, there was an injunction against splitting milk in Hinduism. That is why India has never had a cheese-making tradition. But that?s another story.
?The writer is a food critic