First, the title of his book flummoxes many. The East Indian Kitchen . Then the author’s name — Michael Swamy — sets off a guessing game, specially since his book comes with the tag “Enduring flavours of Maharastrian-Portuguese fusion cuisine”.
Curiosity pushes you from one page to the next. You discover that East Indians are early Christian converts along the north Konkan coast. Local communities of the islands of Mumbai converted to Christianity under Portuguese rule starting in the 1500s. They then christened themselves East Indians to distinguish themselves from other Christians, specially the Goans. This name stuck from 1887, writes Michael Swamy in his book, when the community swore allegiance to the Queen of England during Queen Victoria’s golden jubilee. “The community’s population runs into a few lakhs — it’s bigger than the Parsi community — mostly living around Mumbai and Vasai,” says Michael Swamy, who turned part historian to give a background of the community for his book. And the Swamy in his name? “Oh my dad is south Indian. He’s from some place near Madras with a long-winding name,” he dismisses it. A blogger’s meet brought him down to Bangalore recently.
The 44-year-old Michael, a Cordon Bleu chef and food stylist, was raised in his mother’s East Indian community. He started cooking when he was in his ninth grade, making ice-creams that his maternal grandmom taught. The secret of East Indian cooking, as he reveals in his book, lies in a bottle. Called ‘Bottle Masala’, Michael says “it’s a universal masala that goes with vegetables as well as meat”. Among the many ingredients listed are resham patti chillies, star anise, poppy seeds, mace, mustard, wheat grains, and sea lichen! These days you can buy it readymade. But ideally it was made at home, with pairs of women moving from home to home, hand-pounding it for each individual family. The masalas are very typically Maharashtrian, Michael points out, while the meat cooking techniques were brought in by the Portuguese.
The names of dishes too are loaded with fusion — foogath, frithad, pato sopa, kolbi aksal, pomfret bafad, fish amphade, fritada de gallinha, frango na pucara, apa de aroz, tongue guisad, khimad martini. In a country where one language and culture overflows into another, is it possible to call any food or recipe your own? “I don’t think so, because food and people are constantly evolving.” He gives the example of vindaloo. “Goans think the pork vindaloo is theirs, East Indians think it’s theirs. But many communities have a vindaloo recipe of their own, including in Mauritius and parts of Africa.” But even as he talks of this evolution, Michael pops a shocker by saying “Indian food has been stagnant in the last 400 years.” Why does he say that?! “Have we gone beyond our dal makhni ? You won’t try a lentil salad; you’ll always have dal-rice. You move on by way of presentation, texture, adding new flavours… people will do the same thing till they are shown something new. Moreover, food history is not well documented in India. Only if you know history will you evolve into the next stage.” He also rues that the world still does not see Indian food as global cuisine. “One still thinks of it as Punjabi food… there’s no refinement, or finesse.”
Going back to the East Indian community, he says: “Ours is a very closed community. They won’t talk about their food. They don’t want to change. If I use a pork vindaloo masala for lamb, they’ll be like ‘How can you do that!?’ You know, there is not one East Indian restaurant yet!” Why doesn’t he start one? “I don’t want to get into that nasty game,” he shakes his head vehemently and flashes a cherubic smile.
For the book, which won him the Gourmand Book Award (Paris) this year for Best Indian Cookbook, he asked families to part with their recipes (a daunting task, he admits). In his Foreword, he mentions how recipes are passed on word of mouth, and very rarely even to the daughter-in-law of the family. He later worked on standardising the recipes. Does standardising a recipe make sense, when cooking is all about instinct and individuality? “At some level you need standardisation — not of the recipe, but of the technique. You should know your technique. That’s why housewives always cook better than any chef.”
For a community steeped in its oxtail soup, sorpotel, boiled sheep’s tongue, mutton chops, meat ball curry, and beef croquettes, Michael says he’s now become “75 per cent vegetarian”. “I find it healthier,” is the amusing answer.
The East Indian Kitchen (Rs. 395) is published by Westland Books. Look up www.michaelswamy.com
