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MANGOES AND CURRY LEAVES
Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid
Random House, 380 pp.
There is more to Indian cuisine than tandoori chicken, alu gobi and matar paneer. The new travel cookbook Mangoes and Curry Leaves opens up a treasure chest of recipes, complete with photos of mouth-watering dishes from the subcontinent. Authors Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid invite you to try something different and, best of all, to experiment in the comfort of your own kitchen.
Alford and Duguid have already done the legwork. Their sense of adventure and curiosity has drawn them to South Asia many times. In their numerous travels through Nepal, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, they collected recipes and talked to the locals to verify their authenticity.
The end result is a gorgeous coffee-table publication that takes a kaleidoscopic look at the geography of the countries, the history of the people and the foods they eat.
"I haven’t actually ever seen a book about the entire subcontinent," says Alford. "In fact, 90 per cent of the books are coming out of a very small region. It drives me nuts how food of the region gets represented as this little tiny deli Punjab. This is such a disservice." All foods get equal treatment in Mangoes and Curry Leaves.
Alford and Duguid approached their book project as outsiders looking in. They kept their eyes and ears open, absorbing every experience and capturing interesting activities on film. "You write about what you know," says Alford. "What I know about is being a foreigner in the subcontinent."
The book ranges from simple everyday fare, such as spiced and tender chopped bhindi (okra), sambar and fish in broth, to party favourites like cashew-coconut meatballs, ginger-lamb coconut milk curry and star fruit chutney. For items unavailable in Canada, there is a suggested substitute.
Each staple – bread, daal and rice – has its own section. Love rice? Now you can have it for breakfast, lunch and supper. The same grain in different forms is used to prepare delicious, healthy meals. For breakfast, try poha, or rice flakes, cooked with spices and onions. Or simply soak the flakes in water, drain, then toss in yogurt, sliced fruit and sugar.
"The subcontinent is a rice-eater’s paradise," write Alford and Duguid. True. Most Canadians know the long, slender basmati, but its close cousin, the tiny kalijira rice, is also fit for sophisticated taste buds.
"We’re rice eaters," says Alford, 51, who grew up in Wyoming and settled in Toronto after marrying Duguid. Among the pair’s previous works was the 1998 travel-cookbook Seductions of Rice. One of Alford’s favourite rice dishes is the South Indian specialty pitu, which is made of steamed rice flour and coconut. Not only are such dishes delicious, they’re also good for you. "Every one of those meals in South India is going to have combined amino acids," says Alford. "People have a clear notion of the relationship between health and food."
Mangoes and Curry Leaves doesn’t just focus on food. The book also prepares potential travellers with tips on bargaining – a handy thing to know if you want to avoid being ripped off by opportunistic vendors.
There are other perils to travelling in India, such as rats. There’s no real trick to avoiding the pesky varmints. Alford was in Agra train station, dozing on a bench, when he woke up to discover a rat was chewing his shoelaces. However, he and Duguid find that rats, dengue fever, giardiasis and the like are minor problems that aren’t enough to drive them away.
"We come home feeling more alive," he says in the preface to the book.
When travelling, Alford makes friends with rickshaw drivers, waiters, bank tellers – almost anyone he sees on a regular basis. That’s because South Asians and North Americans have some commonalities, he says.
"I somehow think it has to do with style. What you like in life. What you laugh at – a willingness to engage, a willingness to disagree."
Alford and Duguid are freelance veterans with four award-winning travel cookbooks to their credit. But they know their latest work will likely provoke criticism.
After all, says Alford, this is India they’re presuming to write about. "We’re going to have some people who are just going to give us hell and we love that." |
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