Should Indian Food Be “Easy?”

In the video we watched in class, Anjum Anand emphasizes the fact that Indian food is “easy” to make/replicate quiet often. I believe what Anjum means is that the cookbook steps one must follow to make Indian food are simple, or in other words, easy/straightforward to follow/replicate. Personally, I think it takes a lot of practice and experience to replicate a dish. One must be familiar with every ingredient. In addition, especially for Indian food, the chef must know exactly what each ingredient contributes. I say this especially for Indian food because there are so many spices involved, one who is not knowledgable on the different spices might say, “Hey, they’re all spices, it doesn’t make a difference which one we use”. Some cookbooks are very good in the sense that they explain the purpose of each ingredient and step of the process; however, other cookbooks are not as good and only state the bare minimum (for example, 1/4 cup of flour).

The production and use of Indian cookbooks help guide people to cook Indian food. Indian cookbooks lay down the foundation for how to cook traditional Indian food; however, as we saw in Anjum’s video, recipes can be altered to better suit the preferences of those who are eating it. Madhur Jaffrey has written many cookbooks on Indian food and offers her insight on how to cook it. Even though Madhur is praised for her expertise, she admits that there is so much she doesn’t know about cooking Indian food. This makes me think that there is way more to cooking traditional Indian food than what lies in the cookbook.

I think a similarity between Anjum and Madhur is that both women look beyond the basics for opinions on how to cook. When she was younger, Madhur often turned to her mom for recipes and instruction for how to cook a certain dish. Similarly, Anjum goes around and asks different chefs how they prepare their dishes and gains inspiration through their recipes. A difference I noticed between the two female chefs is that Anjum alters traditional Indian food to make it more healthy, which raises the question, “Is the food still traditional after it has been altered to be healthier?” I noticed that in the video, Anjum put a food in the oven instead of deep frying it to make it healthier for the consumers. Madhur, on the other hand, does not change traditional Indian dishes to be healthy. Instead, Madhur is very experienced with merging British food and Indian food.

Overall, both women have been influential to how to cook Indian food. Both women also stress the importance of a cookbook. By now, Anjum and Madhur most certainly have many recipes memorized; however, when they were learning how to cook their traditional Indian food, they relied on recipes and wrote their own cookbooks. Sometimes it is good to approach people and ask them how they cook a specific meal they enjoy, because different people have different ways of cooking the same food, and all the different ways to cook one dish may not be in a single cookbook. It is important to think about why cookbooks are written. They are written to spread knowledge on how to cook dishes that certain cultures enjoy. I definitely agree with Matthew in the sense that I too never knew that a cookbook was so important and involved. I think because I have never really seen my mom use a cookbook to cook traditional Greek food, I didn’t think cookbooks were very necessary. But now, I realize that the recipes my mom knows came from somewhere. They came from my grandma. And my grandma learned these recipes from cookbooks and relatives. Cookbooks are just as important as any other historical document or piece of great literature because they are necessary and provide people with cultural knowledge on how to cook food. Even though we might not think much about what we are eating because we eat food to survive, it is important we know what we are eating. I also think that if someone really enjoys a certain dish, one should learn how to cook it, or what is in it. This is a scenario where a cookbook would be very helpful.

Should Indian food be “easy?” Because of the subjectivity of the word “easy,” this is a difficult question to answer. In our class last Friday, we discussed the attempts to make Indian food easy in the video we watched. I mentioned during our discussion, that because of the different spices in what little I know of Indian cooking, I didn’t think “easy” was the right word to use, as Indian cooking uses very specific spices with unique flavors.

Anjum, in her videos, makes changes to the recipes she has grown up with to increase accessibility, as well as make dishes healthier than the original. As seen in the linked video, her motto is centered around creating a sense of ease when thinking of Indian cooking. In contrast, Madhur, in her article, reflects on how she lamented the changes made to Indian cuisine in England. She sought to bring her own sense of authentic cooking to the country, with the hope that she could create a piece of India abroad with more traditional influences.

A cookbook influences productivity in ways that may, as discussed, make the re-production of a food easier. A good cookbook can lead the way in a journey through a different cuisine, making the process of discovery much easier than if someone were to sit down, reflect on something they ate, and try to guess what made the food taste the way it did. In that sense, the answer to the prompt question may be “yes.” In the case of a cookbook, the recipe for any dish should flow well enough that attempting the dish is “easy” for the average reader (with exceptions, of course).

Personally, I’m not sure how important a cookbook is for those exploring the cuisine of their own culture. They are, however, a wonderful tool for someone diving into another culture. My opinion stems from my experiences with how people learn to cook in Jamaican culture. In Jamaican culture, a child is supposed to be in the kitchen when the mother (or whoever) is cooking so that child can watch and learn the proper ways to cook Jamaican food. The recipes and traditions are passed down orally and through observation (and re-creation). My mother watched her mother. My grandmother watched her mother. I watched my mother. We all learned to cook without a cookbook’s aid (Jamaican food, that is). I have, however, used cookbooks to help me learn to cook food from other cuisines!

To answer the question, it’s not definite if Indian food should or should not be easy. However, those who appreciate Indian food outside of the culture may appreciate these ease authors such as Anjum seem to bring to Indian cooking.

To answer the header question, “should Indian food be easy to make/replicate”? I answer, Yes. Indian food is result of thousands of years of cultural interactions and influence from societies all over Asia and Europe and it has become to be a complex yet varied cosine with a rich history. This cuisine with a rich history is hard for an ordinary people to make because they need to understand the cultural roots behind the food. Cookbooks make it easy for ordinary people like us to get a glimpse of the cultural influence that shape the food and make it easy for us capture the rich flavors of the Indian cuisine by explaining the method of traditional preparation of food and the ingredients that give the food the rich flavors. I Think cookbooks are especially important in this day because I believe they preserve the years of recipes in their pages. Whether it is traditional curry recipe from a specific region of India or a person’s ancestral curry recipe, a cookbook can preserve these cultural treasure sin its pages and pass the knowledge of eth recipe through generations and places. For example, an Indian cookbook at Barnes and Nobles might contain a Dehli grandma’s authentic halva recipe that she used to make at birthday parties that I can learn about a and replicate in my kitchen in New York. Cookbooks connect people through time and space by preserving the cultural history and influence of a recipe. Another reason I think that cookbooks are a great way to making Indian food easy is because they focus on a specific topic and explain the topic in its pages. India is a big country (the second most populous in the world) with many different cultures. Therefore, the food in India varies significantly as one travels through different region. One dish can have hundreds of variation since the dish is interpreted differently in different regions of India and all the interpretations are authentic to the region because the dish in the region has a specific history and cultural influence that shaped it. Cookbooks focus on one region of region and focus on bringing its cuisine to life in its pages. It focuses on eth one region and explains the cultural significance of the dish in the region as well as the specific ingredients that go into the dish and why. By focusing on one variation of a dish or one specific cuisine of India, cookbooks make Indian food easy to replicate.

I think anyone with a culinary skill-set can easily replicate a cuisine. However, that does not mean they are properly making authentic food that carries the history of its respective ethnicity. The food may taste good and seem simple, but that, in my opinion, says nothing about its authenticity. So when asked if Indian food should be “easy” to make/replicate, I think the answer could go both ways. Yes, it should/can be easy to replicate—you just follow the recipe, and that’s about it. On the other hand, no—unless you have a solid, genuine grasp of the cuisine’s culture and the history of its peoples, making authentic Indian food will not and should not be easy, as you are missing that deeper aspect of the cooking.
I also agree that Matthew hit the nail on the head when he mentioned that he never knew a cookbook could be so important/involved. I used to think a cookbook was just a collection of recipes with some pictures and maybe some words as part of a biography. Little did I know that they, as Appadurai stated, “tell unusual cultural tales” and “appear in literate civilizations where the display of class hierarchies is essential to their maintenance, and where cooking is seen as a communicable variety of expert knowledge.” However, as I was going through Krishnendu Ray’s The Ethnic Restaurateur, I noticed something that reminded me of my own family’s culture. My mom’s side of the family doesn’t seem to think much of the history behind food—it’s just food. They also don’t think there even is much culture/history behind Chinese dishes. As I stated in my research paper, Kung Pao Chicken is part of the small percentage of Chinese dishes that actually has a meaning behind its name, although the origins are disputed. In his book, Ray cited an example, saying that “although the Chinese have dominated the feeding and cleaning occupations from the middle of the nineteenth century, we do not get a book-length treatment of their perspective…” Now that I think about it, I don’t recall ever hearing of or seeing a Chinese cookbook. A lot of the Chinese people I know either don’t really care or are too busy to go into detail about the history behind the cuisine. If it had not been for my dad’s connections, I probably wouldn’t have been able to find a Chinese restaurant owner willing to take the time to show me around and explain, in depth, his story.
As for comparisons and contrasts of Madhur Jaffrey and Anjum Anand, I find myself appreciating Madhur’s seemingly modest approach to introducing the West to Indian cuisines. “There is a sense in me that I don’t know India…and actually, nobody does. I know a lot, but there is so much more to learn.” I totally agree with this statement—no matter how much you know, there is always something more. I also find it kind of ironic that Madhur was an Indian actress who ended up in an ‘accidental’ cooking career. On the other hand, Anjum, for some reason, reminds me of just another one of those TV chefs who try to make everything “easy.” As she cooks for a British audience, I can understand why she would take this approach. However, I think that by calling the preparation of Indian food “easy,” she is sort of doing away with the rich background of those cuisines.

The idea of food being easy to make depends on the skill level of a person. For some, the recipe may be simple, but for others it may not be. The word easy means different things to many people, so it is not right for people to classify it as an easy recipe. In terms of a cookbook, the essential component of it is to pass down recipes and share it with others. Cookbooks allow recipes to be made and carried through history as it never dies. This is why many people still have ancestral recipes passed down from generations.

Going back to the question, “should indian food be easy to make/ replicate”, I think the answer lies within the intention of what the writer of the cookbook wants to accomplish. If the writer just wants to share a recipe for everyone, they make alter the steps to make it easier for people to follow. In this case, ingredients and steps might be cut out to reduce the difficulty. At the same time, authentic is not preserved because the recipe is not the same one as before. It has been changed to meet people’s standard. On the other hand, if a recipe is kept the same, the easiness will probably go away. There would be more steps involved and probably time consuming. However, this ensures the authenticity of the dish. As a result, both outcomes have to be weighed.

In the video, Anjum Anand broadcasts Indian food made easy through her seamless directions and steps provided. However, when she is making the dish, she explains how people can alter the taste and ingredients to fit their tastebuds. This idea takes out the authenticity of Indian food as a fundamental component of taste is being taken away. The dish is not the same before. Madhur Jaffrey idea of Indian food is preserved in her cookbooks as she intends to spread the love of indian food in London. Through the publication of her cookbooks, people are allowed to recreate some of the classical dishes she grew up eating. In a way, she has brought awareness to a type of cuisine not present in a society away from India. Both of these chefs share the common goal of making indian food easier to make and hassle free. They want people to love Indian food and experience the type of food they grew up eating. However, I think they are robbing people of the actual experiences they should be enjoying. They should try to preserve some actual recipes in their cookbook that were not altered.

Now of course, the question “Should Indian food be easy to make/replicate?” can’t be answered with a simple “yes” or “no”. Based off the little knowledge I have of Indian foods, I would answer yes for several reasons which I will discuss, however, it is important to note that someone with more expertise and a wider range of knowledge in cooking may answer otherwise.
In the article discussing Madhur Jaffrey’s life, there are some hints that may lead one to perceive that Indian food is “easy” to replicate. Madhur wrote to her mother for advice since she hated the food that was served in the canteen at college and the Indian restaurants near her were subpar. The article clearly points out that Madhur had little to no knowledge of cooking food, Indian food in particular- “she didn’t even know how to make the basics”. However, without any knowledge of how to go about making Indian cuisine, the recipes that her mother sent her were “easy” enough for her to replicate. One recipe that Madhur quickly mastered was a hard boiled egg curry. This is a clear support that replicating Indian dishes is in fact “easy” to replicate. If a helpless girl in college was able to master some recipes from back home then of course common people that actual contain some skill in the kitchen would be able to do so as well.
To add onto this idea, the article tells us that cooking the food wasn’t even the hard part for Madhur. Her struggle was to actually find something to eat the cooking WITH. The common choice would be rice, but Madhur didn’t even know how to make rice! She literally had to go to a Jewish bakery and buy pumpernickel bread to eat with her food as a substitute. She can make several Indian dishes but can’t even make rice! How much easier do things get than cooking rice?
Also, another support to why I am inclined to say that cooking Indian food is “easy” is because when Madhur was making her TV show called “Madhur Jaffrey’s Indian Cookery” in the 1980s, so many British people were able to follow her recipes and replicate them. She said that this was the first time that British people were actually cooking proper Indian meals in their own homes. Her recipes became so widespread that one time the city itself ran out of cilantro! Since she made a dish the day before of chicken cooked with cilantro, everyone went to get it. If so many people were making her Indian dishes then how hard could it really be?
My last reason to believe that replicating Indian cuisine is “easy” to do is because of Anjum Anand’s description of her Keralan fried chicken in the beginning of the video. She literally started off by saying that “it’s really simple” or in other words, really easy! She goes on explaining why it’s so simple- “everything is just sliced, thrown into the pan, brown the chicken, in goes the coconut”. Throughout the short clip, just based off her tone of voice and swiftness, I felt as if she was giving off the vibe that what she’s doing really isn’t too difficult for anyone to do.
Of course cookbooks are generally meant to making new dishes that one is unfamiliar with easy to make. Generally they’re used to learn about another culture’s cuisine, but they can even be used to learn about one’s own culture. This is where I would strongly disagree with @s.angus and agree with @j.butler. @s.angus seemed to imply that cookbooks aren’t necessary for your own culture and @j.butler said that really they can be- she learned how to make potato kugel, a food from our own Jewish culture, from a cookbook! I can also say the same thing about my mother. My mother has several Jewish cookbooks that contain tons of Kosher recipes. Every now and then she’ll look for something knew to make- a food from our own culture that she doesn’t know how to make. And this definitely stems back to what Matthew said in class “I never know a cookbook was so important and could be so involved”. Cookbooks are so vital and involved that they can even teach us things about our OWN culture that we hadn’t known beforehand. It’s like there is history about your past sitting in a book- so many things to learn from it and we may not even realize it!

It’s interesting to me how chefs feel the need to make their work ‘easy’ so that the public would be interested. Of course, there is a practical value involved with the concept. Mothers do not have the time to make elaborate dishes for families dinners… and then clean up all the pots and pans afterwards on top of that. Regardless, it saddens me a little bit that the culinary world has adopted efficiency as an important tenant of good cooking. To me, it is completely acceptable for food to take a while to prepare. There is so much complexity involved when it comes to incorporating flavors that not only go well together, but challenge the human palette. Why would we hold so much value to chefs like Gordon Ramsey and Michelin Star restaurants if cooking was meant to be easy?
To be completely honest, i don’t hold much value to cookbooks. Of course, they are necessary and i use recipes off of the internet all the time. However, the practice of following recipes in a cookbook verbatim kind of loses some of the magic of cooking for me. In many ways, it takes the skill out of cooking as well. Any one can follow a recipe. In fact, many people feel as if they need to follow instructions to a T for every dish because they are using a recipe. And while that may be the best option to produce the product that you want, it is not what cooking is all about.
The interview also brought up the concept of children and their relationship to food. This reminded me of my little cousins and how difficult it is to get them eat food sometimes. For children, it is difficult for them to try new things when it comes to food because they are comfortable with what they already know to be good. They associate things like smell and the way a dish looks to ow good it will probably taste. This causes an issue because most of the time, they are willing to eat the carbs of the meal since things like bread and pasta are familiar. However, meats and exotic foods often poses a problem. Of course, this is also a cultural thing- some children find it normal to eat pigs feet, while others are completely confused by the concept of ice cream!
Specifically, indian food appears complicated to make because of all the vibrant colors that their food contains. It can be very intimidating from the start, but the key is to take the dish one part at a time. when you boil it down
(hahaha, what a nice cooking pun Amber!)
cooking is just a combination of tasks like peeling, boiling, and frying. So long as you don’t burn anything [too badly] you have a pretty good chance at success.