Houston chef Anita Jaisinghani’s new cookbook explores delicious India

Disappointed that red-stained chicken (tandoori chicken, so they called it) and creamy frozen spinach (a sorry excuse for palak paneer) were America’s impression of Indian food, I had a gnawing urge to transform this sad portrayal of my homeland’s food. I was intuitively cooking foods I grew up with, sometimes in new and inventive ways, picking up ideas from frequent trips to India via Europe, using local seasonal ingredients, but I certainly was not bringing the cuisine of another culture into my fold.

recipe: Indika Cookies from ‘Masala’ by Anita Jaisinghani

It’s a gorgeous collection of 100 recipes inspired by her upbringing in India, with special nods to her hometown of Houston, too.

I opened my first restaurant, Indika, to multiple accolades in Houston in 2001, and it had a glorious 15-year run until we closed it in 2016. A few months after opening Indika, I patiently explained to a local food writer, “Asking me to cook Indian food in America without using local ingredients is like asking me to live here but not breathe the air.” Of course, I am going to use Brussels sprouts and asparagus and cook with local red snapper rather than trying to locate hilsa, a fish I grew up eating in India.

recipe: Kerala Crawfish Stew

Little did I understand that authenticity can be a myth, and almost all cuisines, in some way, have an element of fusion, whether it is a result of multiple influences of foreign invasions like in India, human migrations across continents for survival, primitive tribes exchanging valuable techniques, or specialties like spices and other exotics traveling in ships around the globe to faraway lands.

Take, for example, pasta, inspired by noodles brought into Italy during the 13th century by exploring Marco Polo from his travels to China. Cacio e pepe, considered one of Italy’s authentic pasta dishes, has copious amounts of black pepper, which grew native in the forests of Kerala.

recipe: Cacti Curry

Every country and region in the world has been influenced by trade, travel or migration. Given the wide-ranging confluences on India by the occupation of Greeks, Turks, Mongols, Portuguese and British combined with the local bounty of spices, India food may just be the ultimate fusion food — and, as a delicious consequence, one of the most exciting kitchens in the world.

Naans and samosas, two off the most popular foods in Indian restaurants, are Afghan and Persian imports, and without them, Indian food would not be what it is today. The Portuguese brought chiles to India less than 500 years ago, yet today it is impossible to imagine Indian food without chiles to balance the flavors. Even Ayurvedic physicians, who rarely incorporated foreign foods into the cosmic world of health and healing, embraced chiles wholeheartedly to help rekindle the digestive fire.

recipe: Grapefruit Chilli Chutney

Fast-forward to almost 20 years later, on the eve of the 10th anniversary of my second restaurant, Pondicheri, also in Houston, where I seek to highlight the street and home cooking of India, and I unabashedly borrow ideas from other cultures. When my Colombian friend Emmy introduced me to boronia, a delicious smoked plantain and eggplant dish, I immediately incorporated smoked plantains into our Punjabi smoked eggplant.

Good cooking is and should be a constant flow of evolving ideas with one eye on history and another on the future, constantly retouched by creative minds. Today, Indian food continues to be an evolving, freewheeling, unregimented cuisine, a cuisine in eternal flux — of which I hope to remain a permanent student — where almost nothing is sacrosanct yet all is held together by the magical use of spices.