Spotted at the Jackson Heights location of Patel Brothers: a uniquely American pepper product (with an assist from Middle Eastern cuisine), known primarily for its status as a pizzeria staple, enters the Indian market. "Pizza Chill," meanwhile, whether a fortuitous spelling error or a mere consequence of an improperly snipped label, has permanently entered my personal food lexicon.
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It took over a year and more than a few trips to different Indian supermarkets, but I’ve finally (and inadvertently) found the answer to the Ching’s Secret Mystery. My original guess, that this was all some kind of reference to a Bollywood character that I was simply not grasping, ended up being not too far off. In fact, Steampunk Hat Man and the man seen below are variations on the same persona - Ranveer Ching - an invented spokesman (played, appropriately, by Bollywood star Ranveer Singh), who’s anchored a series of gigantic, cinematic commercials chronicling his gymnastic proclivity for Instant Indo-Chinese fusion. Ching’s latest outing (helmed by acclaimed director Rohit Shetty, and reputedly the most expensive advertisement in Indian history) finds him parading around a post-apocalyptic landscape as a Mad Max-esque hero, in such elaborate form that my Indian friend had assumed, from passing familiarity with the commercial, that it was a clip from a full-fledged movie. Look below for the blockbuster advertisement, as well as its predecessor, in which we’re finally able to glimpse the equally ridiculous hair-do hiding beneath that asinine hat. Chukku Kappi - It’s hard to find fresh coffee in India, even though bean production is a booming local industry in the south. More commonly served is what’s known as Filter Coffee (discussed more below), a decoction of (theoretically) freshly ground coffee powder which has its charms, but is often surreptitiously replaced by a lesser instant version, whose non-freshness is then masked with heaps of sugar. Thankfully there are other options in the field of hot caffeinated beverages. Filter Coffee is also known as “Kappi,” a corruption of the original English word, and its cousin Chukku Kappi (“Ginger Coffee”) is a brew of coffee powder supplemented with ginger. An iced cup was handed given to me upon entering a hotel on a hot day, and as with many so many Indian beverages, provided the dual pleasure of cooling refreshment with a nice spicy kick.
Chutney - Derived from the Hindi word for “lick,” chutney in India has a function similar to salsa in Mexico, describing any flavorful suspension of mashed, crushed or pulverized vegetables or fruits, often bolstered by the addition of hot or pickled peppers. Really, it denotes any type of sauce, with the essential focus that such sauces are either used for dipping or combining with a main dish, rice-based or otherwise. They generally fall into one of two different categories - sweet or pickled - although many straddle the line between the two. I wasn’t able to identify any discernible pattern in styles during my trip, although I did notice that this thin coconut version seemed to be the most common. It's worth noting that Indian Chutney is substantially different from the British iteration, which is actually just the adaptation of Indian pickling methods onto traditional English canning, and thus generally involves the use of native produce like the damson, the apple or the onion. I recently spent a little over two weeks in India. During this time I consumed untold quantities of rice and coconut milk, figured out how to passably eat curry with my hands (the right one, specifically), and learned the appropriate method of finishing off a banana leaf feast (the leaf should be folded toward you, not away, which is a sign of disrespect). Yet while the exact proportions of the ingredients consumed were not quantified, just about everything else was, as I obsessively documented everything I ate (and some things I didn’t) in order to create a rough food index for the parts of this country that I managed to visit. “Parts” is another key word, since India seems to only grow in complexity the more closely you examine it. Even minute sub-areas within one state vary wildly in terms of history and cuisine. This index is obviously wildly incomplete and rudimentary, an outsider’s perspective that hopefully contains a few insights nonetheless.
That said, the entries which will follow here involve a particular focus on Kerala, where I spent nearly two weeks, with a smaller pair of posts dedicated to Mumbai, where I only had 3.5 days, and thus got nowhere close to decoding its labyrinthine culinary system. It’s worth noting that each of these dishes/items/snacks could easily merit its own post. Befitting the hectic, vivid craziness of India, and in the interest of preserving my own sanity, I’m smashing them all together as one. For every modern food craze, there’s some sort of historical antecedent. So while slurping down almond milk seems like a decidedly contemporary (and possibly environmentally deleterious trend, the practice actually has a long history, stretching back to the dark, dairy-deprived days of the Middle Ages and beyond. In a time before refrigeration and canning, when you needed to own a cow or live in close proximity to one to enjoy the benefits of lactose, plant milks served more than a niche purpose.
At first glance this guy - with his painted-on beard, faux-contemplative expression and ridiculous steampunk goggles / hat combo - looks like the douchiest corporate mascot this side of the dreaded Shock Top Man. A bit of research, however, yields the fact that he's less a mascot per se than the symbolic representation of the brand's Schezwan flavor. In short, he's spicy. Ching's Secret is a Mumbai-based outfit that, from a quick survey of its online advertising material, traffics a bit too freely in regressive Chinese stereotypes. I can't say with any authority how common this is in modern India, nor can I deny that America also has a long way to go in correcting this issue. I can say that the concept of 'Hakka Chinese' has something to do with the migratory status of the Hakka people, who've been instrumental in seeding mainland Chinese culture all over SE Asia. I can also say that there seems to be something up with that hat. Witness the TV spot below, which confirms either that this guy has some contemporary cultural cachet, or that both the commercial and the bag are referencing a previous bit of media (a Bollywood character, perhaps?) Certain Indian dishes get all the attention. Naan gets ordered with every meal. Tandoori and tikka masala hog the spotlight, with the downside that many fascinating foods don't seem to get any attention at all. In the last decade or so, a thaw has been occurring, with the growing interest in these congenial ambassador dishes granting chefs license to try new things. A few weeks back I had an exciting presentation of sliced duck breast in tamarind sauce (Magret de Canard Pulivaar) a relic of the longtime French occupation of Pudicherry, at Sunnyside’s Saffron Gardens. Branching out beyond the usual Indo-American fare, the meal also included curry spiked with the pan-Indian, Persian-derived mincemeat keema, Xacuti de Galinha (a Goan favorite, the name reflecting the region’s Portuguese history) and yengai, an eggplant, sesame and peanut dish hailing from Karnataka. My own childhood neighborhood, formerly a wasteland of diners, over-the-hill Italian joints and fast food franchises, has blossomed into a wonderland of new Indian options, many of them offering specialties from the southern states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, opening up a new world of parottas, moilees and kingfish fries. Another example is the above-mentioned Patra (aka Patrode), a complex Malvani/Gujarati preparation that employs the gram flour used in so many fritters as putty between a pinwheel bundle of taro leaves. Found at the fantastic Rahjbog, a sweet shop which also offers dosas, dhoklas, pav sandwiches and chai, a veritable roster of lesser-known items that will probably see their visibility increased in the coming years, as America's understanding of Indian cuisine becomes deeper and more nuanced.
Here I am imagining a feature which compares bags of chips to one another, which presumably will occur any time I buy two different, suitably interesting bags on the same shopping trip, and then have occasion to photograph them side by side before one is consumed. And so, welcome to the first (and last?) edition of Chip Comparison, featuring two East Asian offerings from the global Lays Empire. The Thai chips, pictured to the right, were purchased from Elmhurst snack emporium Sugar Club and labeled ‘seashell’, although the seafood pictured appears to be a scallop. I’ve admittedly had a hard time with nautical flavors since New Year’s Day 2014, when I left a half-eaten bag of Hwa Yuan’s ‘Oyster Omelet’ chips on a hot stove, suffusing my entire apartment with a sweet, oystery funk, but these were far from overwhelming. The seasoning was piquant and gently fishy in the style of many seafood chips, a market that the maritime sections of Asia appear to have cornered (Walker’s ‘Shrimp Cocktail’ style seems tame and ketchup-y by comparison). The Magic Masala, purchased from the Jackson Heights Patel Brothers, presents a much more familiar flavor profile, albeit one that’s also completely dissimilar from most American-market preparations. The main difference here is not the masala spice seasoning, which is only a few tweaks away from a BBQ or sour cream and onion, but how clearly the individual spices come across. The Indian market, I imagine, would not take kindly to chemical interpretations of flavors that can be easily conveyed via simple, natural powders. This brings us to the bag design; notice how both feature entire potatoes transmorphing into sliced ridgey shards, indicating the focus on freshness, which appears to be a company-wide concern. The Thai potato definitely looks a bit chunkier, a difference not reflected in the chips themselves.
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The coded language of snacks, sandwiches and seasonings, in NYC and beyond.
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