News Flash: The creamy intestinal discomfort-inducing food that is commonly served at Indian restaurants across US is not Indian food. At least, no proper "Sari-wearing Indian people" think it is.
Indian food outside India has taken on a life of its own. The 'Indian' food that is generally available includes a crimson red chicken dish and an overtly creamy generic curry dish with paneer and creamy spinach. All of the curry dishes seem to be made from one generic pre-packaged powder, whose assault on the tongue is only moderated by the handsome amount of cream.
Of course the debasement, or rather bastardization, of Indian food hasn't stopped there. Indian restaurateurs, in their effort to cater to Western palette, have created entirely new dishes that cannot be found anywhere in India. And then of course there is the cross-fertilization with other cuisines. “When McDonald's, Pizza Hut, KFC, Italian eateries and the famous ‘Hooters’ restaurant can find its place in India, who am I to complain when naan gets wrapped around a kabob, becomes "Naan Burrito" and finds its way into western palate," says Rajiv Anand of Khana Khazana.
For a country that is as vast and diverse as India, 'Indian cuisine' has come to mean some uncertain version of cuisine from a specific part of North India. Of course a few restaurants have opened in New York and parts of West Coast that are taking back the 'Indian cuisine' from the vile hands of cheap third-rate restaurants manned by $5/hr kitchens busy annihilating flavor and subtlety with MDH (an off-the shelf spice brand) and cream and then, if that wasn't enough, abysmal service.
Of course that leaves the question of the innumerable amount of western gourmands who swear by the crispy samosas filled with spicy potatoes and peas, and the scarlet-red chunks of chicken breast from the tandoori oven. It always leaves me in splits how the truly ignoramus food critics spend time listing down the ingredients of these foreign-sounding dishes ("Traditional Roti”, which is whole-wheat dough flattened into a disk and plastered against the side of the tandoori oven to cook) while doling out their pointless remarks about the "crispiness of the samosa" or the merits of the 'balance' in the curry, while of course there is no such thing to be found. Samosas, as a rule, are limp and soggy and still dripping in oil in most Indian restaurants.
Article comments
1 - Victor Plenty
I've eaten genuine Indian food. It was delicious, and it also nearly burned off the top of my head. I'm not sure how I could ever become accustomed to eating food that spicy. For all its flaws, Westernized Indian-derived cuisine has the great advantage of being something I'm capable of eating.
Even if it's probably not as healthy for me as real Indian food would be.
2 - Nancy
Whenever an ethnic food gets popular elsewhere, it gets dumbed down to the tastes of the general population. Most Americans can't handle very hot foods, so the chilis are turned 'way down; that's happened with Spanish/Mexican as well as Szechuan/Hunan Chinese as well as the Indian.
I learned to cook "Indian" - my version, anyway - because I loved the flavors but could neither afford to eat out as much as I would like, nor could I handle the hotness of the chilis, even when they obligingly made the dish what THEY considered 'mild'. Mild, my incinerated tongue! Some ethnic foods should be used as weapons, IMO, since the heat doesn't start until after the gulled diner has already got it well in the mouth with maximum exposure to the capascin searing all the unfortunate tissues! And then drinking water trying to kill the burn just makes it worse .... Oh, my! But that initial burst of flavor before the tongue falls off is SO nice ....
I think what intimidates most people (it did me) is the incredibly LONG list of spices & ingredients used in most Indian cooking. I found out eventually it only looks long, and none of it is carved in stone: if you're supposed to use fenugreek & you hate fenugreek then don't use it. If you love cumin, by all means, ditch the fenugreek & load up the cumin. In this respect, Indian food is the most versatile & forgiving of cuisines. I make Beghan Bharta (sp? sorry) with cinnamon in addition to double cumin seeds, because that's how I like it. So it isn't as authentic as someone's Aunt Parvati's; in India, that's no sin, either.
Good stuff. Glad it's getting popular, in any form!