DECODING INDIAN CUISINE

                                                   DECODING INDIAN CUISINE

India is a country which has such a diverse history about the food, eating habits of India is influenced by their culture, geographic location and their religious belief. Yet there is much more to explore in Indian cuisine. The first thing that comes in mind of a foreigner who thinks about Indian food is ‘’curry’’. But that’s not the only thing that India has to offer in fact the madras curry powder which is so popular across the globe was invented during the rule of British in India. Even Indians are yet to discover what India has to offer because in India we lack of proper Indian restaurants. We have North Indian restaurant, South Indian, Gujrati restaurants but we don’t have much of Indian restaurant that would serve food from all the parts of the India from north to south. Even in India there are many cuisines of particular state or of particular community which are yet to be explored by us. For example cuisine from North East of India or cuisine of Bohri community (a Muslim community in Gujarat) or the East India community (a community in Mumbai).  Being such a big and vast country still there is only one Indian restaurant (Gaggan) in ‘‘the world’s best 50 restaurant list’’ and two restaurants (Gaggan and Indian Accent) in “Asia’s best 50 restaurant”.

 Today chefs are trying to break the myth that Indian cuisine means curry. Now chefs are trying to make Indian food which looks like some French masterpiece but it’s Indian at heart that’s what they call modern Indian food or the progressive Indian cuisine. Indian chefs across the globe are now using the molecular techniques to create a completely new experience for the diners.

 India was always a country of bawarchis, khalsas and rakabdars during the rule of Mughals. The emperors were very much fond of food and they used to hire many different bawarchis since then there was always a competing environment within the chefs everyone wanted to be better than the other. Due to that competing environment they improved their art so much that it resulted in many fantastic dishes such as “Benami Kheer” this dish was originated in nizam’s kitchen it is actually a kheer which is flavoured with garlic and the bawarchis would cook it so perfect that after cooking the garlic would taste like almonds. And so the name comes as “Benami Kheer”.

In Ancient India chefs were so particular about their dishes that they don’t even want to share their recipes they kept it so much secret that eventually the recipe got lost in history. That’s was the problem with Indian food and now so many of interesting recipes got lost and we don’t even know about that.

Now the culinary industry is getting aware about all this things and they are trying to find all this lost recipes they are trying to find more and more literature written on food. “nimmatnama-i-nasiruddin-shahi” is the first cook book written in India during the 15^thcentury it contains recipes and accompanying pictures illustrating preparation of recipe.

Now the whole scenario will be changed, now the world will know what India has to offer. We wake up late but we are fast we have capability to show the world that we can be as good as any cuisine in the world. We are having so many Indian chefs who are getting honoured by the Michelin Star.  The modern Indian cuisine is in right hands and we are sure that our government will also work on upliftment of our rich heritage cuisine.