Identity and food are closely linked and it is only natural that food flavour the fiction of the Indian diaspora.
Naben Ruthnum explores issues that spice such writings:
Naben Ruthnum explores issues that spice such writings:
he criticizes the overreliance of South Asian food writing on domesticity, authenticity and nostalgia while simultaneously recounting his own experiences learning to cook Mauritian food – careful to explain that he did it out of "self-sufficiency," not some misguided attempt to understand his culture.
Issues of Identity in Food and Fiction
While I've not read The Mistress of Spices, given my experience with another novel of hers, I'd imagine it will serve as an example of Ruthnam's line of thought. It does sound appetising, though:
“Each spice has a special day to it. For turmeric it is Sunday, when light drips fat and butter-colored into the bins to be soaked up glowing, when you pray to the nine planets for love and luck.”
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Mistress of Spices
This quote is abundant on the Net. As for the rest, one particular review of the book seems to dominate to the exclusion of others:
Tilo, an immigrant from India, runs an Indian spice shop in Oakland, California. While she dispenses the classic ingredients for curries and kormas, she also helps her customers to gain a more precious commodity: whatever they most desire. For Tilo is a Mistress of Spices, a priestess of the secret, magical powers of spices.Goodreads Description
This blogger's tastes apart, it is a popular novel and even has a film to its credit.
Featured on the menu today, we also have a novel by Indian-Canadian Jaspreet Singh:
Chef Kishen proves to be a culinary guide with an unexpected spiritual dimension. “Before cooking he would ask: Fish, what you like to become? Basil, where did you lose your heart? Lemon: it is not who you touch, but how you touch.” Unfortunately, the mentor-apprentice friendship is more lovingly described than the culinary atmosphere. Despite an elaborate array of ingredients, techniques and dishes, the associated sensory phenomena fail to be translated into evocative prose. “Chef” is a cold meal, with Kip at its gelid center.
Another review raves:
"there is a fantastic recipe for Rogan Josh on page 226".
Serendipity brings Mango and Masala: Food in the Immigrant Novel into my purview as I wonder what to do with a mango that is still rather sour but not unripe enough for use in a raw mango dish:
featuring food in order to perpetuate themes of “otherness,” exoticism, racial marginalization, or even nostalgia, should perhaps have limits. Critics, like Asian American cultural commentator Frank Chin, have panned writers who indulge in “food porn” and “who deliberately use a culinary idiom to anchor depictions of racialized life for Asian Americans.” Also, immigrant authors of South Asian origin have been charged with appealing to marketers and Western readers by using food clichés, like the mention of mango. Trying to lure readers with appetizing images and scenes of mango under the pretext of exuding South Asian authenticity might meet Chin’s criteria.The article mentions only a few novels and Pastries: A Novel of Desserts and Discoveries was the only one of which I knew nothing.
The reviews are enticing:
Sunya Malhotra, seemingly average in all ways, shines in one area — baking. She is a pastry chef and owns Pastries Café, located in the Wallingford district of Seattle, Washington."Sunya Cake is tasty, beautiful, hypnotic, and lyrical. It’s an accomplishment perhaps only my mother could match. But my mother doesn’t have the secret recipe. Only Sunya Malhotra has it — and she isn’t telling."Sunya has succeeded in creating a unique and innovative chocolate cake. "I orchestrated the usual items along with a few unexpected ones and flew into a creative frenzy," Sunya explains. "Thus was born … my signature creation: tender, multitiered, a subtle melding of complementary flavors and chili heat, graced with a silken bittersweet chocolate skin, more delicate than a regular chocolate cake but taller."
Roger Yahura, her recently estranged Japanese fashion-designer-turned- political-activist boyfriend, describes the dessert as "a transcendental experience." And a gossipy, meat-and-potatoes food critic, Donald J. Smith, writes:
And now for dessert - The Settler's Cookbook appears to live up to promise:
Here you'll discover how shepherd's pie is much enhanced by sprinkling in some chilli, Victoria sponge can be enlivened by saffron and lime, and the addition of ketchup to a curry can be life-changing ...
The same link provides an excerpt as well. And, to go by another brief review, this is a tongue tickling read:
Alibhai-Brown intersperses the unvarnished story of her life with 100 recipes.
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