Food Before Humans
Preface: This essay/study/thought was presented me as my final assignment for graduating with my associates degree in culinary arts at Johnson & Wales University. I beg this piece inspires you to think of where regional food and cuisine truly comes from.
I find myself for the first time being told to stick to a specified region of cuisine. I don’t follow suit well in any aspect of life, much less cooking. Which perhaps isn’t the best, considering I have years of practice before I master the ‘now’ of cooking. If I had the knowledge and tech of today, but only the animals/produce/spices/herbs of indigenous India, what would I do? What would I make? If I ignored religious restrictions and the impact of traditional Indian dishes, how would it change what I create? And I think of India, because I believe it to be, in its modern state, a hodgepodge of a million different timelines. It is history in the flesh, written into the food and etched along its people’s interactions.
To Illustrate, there are parts of India still stuck in slavery. In the year 2016 there were 18.3 million people living in modern slavery in India. For the majority of the US, slavery is something only taught out of history books. The type of poverty India sees is almost unfathomable to us. Infant mortality rates in India are 40:1000 live births. In America, we assume our child makes it into adulthood, and even our homeless have access to clean drinking water. 12.5% of the Indian population has no access to clean drinking water. To put it in perspective that’s roughly 163 million people, or 1,690 Flint Michigan’s.
But, there are also centers of great wealth and technological advancement in India. Take Bollywood for example, Shah Rukh Kahn, Bollywood’s richest actor’s net worth is $600 million, that’s $30 million more than Hollywood’s Tom Cruise, who’s net worth is $570 million. In America the top 1% earners own 40% of the nation’s wealth, but in India the top 1% owns approximately 73% of the country’s wealth. Being born and raised as a privileged-white American, it is almost impossible to imagine living in a world like India.
There are polarities greater than the ones in our own backyard, more war than we’d see in a lifetime, drought & famine, natural disasters, and cruel government. And all of this, is a screenshot of what built Indian cuisine. That timeline is what makes Indian cuisine. That timeline is what made India vastly vegetarian, the biggest supplier of spice in the world. That timeline introduces potato and mustard to Indian cuisine and builds ground for curries, naan, vindaloo, and tandoori. And what if we ignored all that? What would India be, then? Without the history & religions, and cultures & beliefs, what would India be? Without trade routes, and slavery, and British rule, what would India be? What is left of India, then?
All that would remain is the natural environment. Just the land and its garnishes. The animals, and plants, herbs and spices. So what are they?
anise
areca nuts
fennel
bananas & plantains
cinnamon
cloves
coconuts
cucumbers
coriander
eggplants
grapefruit
mangoes & mangosteens
melons
millets
nutmeg and mace
okra
pears
plums
rice
sugarcane
taro
tea
turmeric
yams
The first domesticated animals in India include; cattle, water buffalo, sheep, goat, pig (rarely eaten in India due to the Islamic and Hindu/Buddhist religion), horse and donkey. As far as fish go, the Arabian Sea is responsible for tuna, sardine and billfish. What’s left of India after you remove the people and their history and their cultures, is this grocery list of uninspired ingredients. What makes Indian cuisine, Indian cuisine is the innovation of these ingredients and the history and culture that molds them into staples over centuries of slow and steady evolution. It isn’t just recipes handed down from generation to generation. These dishes were made on the backs of slaves and heavily impoverished citizens. So where does the cuisine go next? How does it evolve from here? As the rich get richer and poor get poorer in modern India, will we begin to see a divide in the way we think about Indian food? I don’t think so.
I believe it to be very difficult to change what people view as home cooking. Home cooking is what your mom made you every day for the first 18 years of your life, and your moms home cooking was just your grandmas home cooking, and before that, her mom’s cooking. Its nostalgic and heartwarming, and things like that don’t change, and they shouldn’t. It’s what makes culture and community.
But there’s no stopping what happens next in restaurant and recipe innovation. The world is begging for diversity and innovation in food, we’re sick of trying to be inspired by the kitchen of Auguste Escoffier. It’s time to open new ideas from regions that otherwise don’t hold a big voice in the culinary industry. For a place that supplies the world with its spices, it’s heartbreaking to see Indian cuisine being over shadowed throughout the world, especially the western world. The western world, or America rather, prides itself on being a melting pot of cultures, but it’s not. While we use spices and ingredients native to India on a daily basis, we’re the last ones to suggest going out for curry. So the next step for Indian cuisine probably isn’t how to innovate the food. But how to change the rest of the world to find a home inside Indian cuisine. The cuisine will marry to its new home’s history and through that exchange, it will naturally evolve. The food is the people and the people are the food.
Works Cited:
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