There was a time when Sunday afternoons, for me, meant a long drive — with five people squeezed into a Maruti 800 — to the outskirts of Delhi for a hearty Italian meal. The capital those days was still insular when it came to food. So when a small eatery serving home-cooked pasta and fresh sauces opened up just outside Delhi, it opened up our minds and our palates as well.
When I see the array of Italian restaurants in every nook and corner of every Indian metro these days, I find it difficult to imagine those days when few could tell their pasta from their pesto. But today, Italian food is arguably the most popular among all global cuisines in India. You get everything — from Japanese and Vietnamese to Ethiopian and Peruvian — but if there is one cuisine that occupies the throne, it’s Italian. And I wonder if that is because there are similarities between the foods of the two countries.
No surprise
That Italian strikes a chord among Indians is something that restaurateur and chef Ritu Dalmia often emphasises. Not surprisingly, she has a book called Italian Khana , where she writes about the food from different parts of Italy cooked for different occasions, and the similarities she finds with Indian food. She recalls her first taste of the slightly bitter marzipan in Sicily and how it reminded her of the Indian badam barfi. She writes about eating farinata di ceci in a trattoria in Sarzana in Liguria, and thinking it was quite like the besan pooda.
“It would be wrong to say that Italian and Indian are very similar in taste, but there is something about both cuisines which is able to fill that hole in our stomach. It’s the simplicity of the Italian kitchen, its warmth and heartiness that really connects with our taste buds,” she writes.
The cuisines are vastly different, no doubt, but there is a common thread. It has been pointed out that like the ladle-wielding Indian grandmother, the Italian Mamma has a pivotal role to play in the kitchen. The food differs from region to region in India, just as it does in Italy. Vegetables are cooked in different ways, while fish, seafood and meats occupy the high table. And carbs or the main staples — pasta and risotto there, rice and roti here — have an important role in every meal. They may be cooked in diverse ways, but have to be there.
Italian baingan bharta
She cites the example of chillies, pointing out that these are an important ingredient in Italy. “All over Italy you will find chillies being used in stews, pasta, even in soups… It has also been used as a preserving agent for meats like salami and pancetta, and often shows up on the table as a part of antipasti. In the south, oil flavoured with chillies, known as olio santo, is a very common condiment used at the drop of a hat. In fact in Calabria they even have a yearly peperoncino festival,” she writes.
It’s my go-to book for all dishes Italian. And I enjoy the little titbits that come up every now and then as Dalmia mentions the similarities between the cuisines. About panelle or chickpea chips, she writes: “When I ate these for the first time in the sleepy little Sicilian town of Erice, I was amazed at their similarity to paapri”. And while giving the recipe for Purea di melanzane or puree of roasted eggplant, she writes, “When I tasted this dish for the first time as a part of a large antipasti buffet, it seemed like a cross between baingan bharta and the Lebanese baba ganoush…”
The book — like the food of Italy — tells me that the world is a village.
The writer likes reading and writing about food as much as he does cooking and eating it. Well, almost.
