Suvir Saran
Suvir Saran is the proprietor of Devi restaurant in New York City and the author of Indian Home Cooking (Clarkson Potter). Critics have praised Devi for moving beyond the clichéd Indian repertoire and offering authentic dishes from all over India. Let's meet Suvir Saran and hear more about his restaurant.
What should American chefs know before they travel to India?
When you think of India, you have to think north, south, east, west. In the north, you have New Delhi, which has amazing vegetarian food. In the south, you have Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and they each have cities that have glorious food. Pork and beef get cooked in southern India, as there are Christian and Muslim communities that eat meats Hindus don't eat. In western India, you have Bombay, which has amazing seafood, like lobsters with butter and garlic sauce; and Bengal where fish is cooked with mustard oil. Within each of these regions, you have Hindu, Brahmin, Jain, Christian and Muslim cuisines, so in each state there are subcuisines. When you think of India, you have to think of a country with 18 languages and millions of dialects.
The one thing Indians can teach a non-Indian chef is the magic of spices. In south India we have mustard seed, curry leaf, fenugreek seeds and chilies, all bloomed in oil to bring out their essential flavors. In the north we have garam masala with cumin, coriander, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg and mace, so the spices are warmer. The temperature is much cooler in the north, so the spice mixes change.
How does the Indian chef's use of spices differ from the Western chef's use of spices? What are some Indian spicing techniques that could be adapted in the Western kitchen?
The difference is night and day. Often in the west, we take a spice and throw it into cream or a dessert without realizing that the spice has essential oils that only come out when it's been toasted, ground or fried. If you have panna cotta with cardamom seeds in it but the seeds haven't been ground, you get nothing but crunch. You have to grind the cardamom and put it in the cream, and then make the panna cotta.
Indians put spices in at different stages of cooking. Some go in whole at the beginning or ground at the end. Some go in as toasted powder at the end. Western chefs can use these techniques. Infusing thyme and rosemary into your butter before making white sauce for macaroni and cheese—it takes an extra minute, but macaroni and cheese becomes so much better.
Why do you think Indian restaurateurs in this country are not more willing—as you have been at Devi—to present a broader picture of Indian cooking?
When I think of what I miss of India, it is the sameness of food that excites me. For millennia, these moms and grandmothers have cooked wondrous, magical, light foods that are healthful and tasty. For me, sharing the magic of these recipes that come from centuries of people having mastered them, I love doing it. Indian restaurateurs in the U.S. tell me that white people love cream so they add cream, but I wonder how many white people they interviewed before making their menu. For me, pleasure lies in bringing (to Americans) the comfort foods of my family. I'm doing something so old that to many it seems new.
When Western chefs try to cook Indian or Indian-inspired food, what gets "lost in translation?"
I've had better food cooked by non-Indians than at the terrible Indian restaurants in New York. [San Francisco chef] Gary Danko has fed me some of the best Indian food I've ever eaten in my life. What often gets lost is respect for cultures, for ingredients. If I'm making a caprese salad, I study how the Italians do it. Then I give it my Indian touch. When I'm making the basil/olive oil vinaigrette, I'll take a little oil and fry the herbs and then let it cool. That's the Indian in me. The important thing is to study what we (Indians) do with care and depth, and once you know it, there's no rule that can't be broken.
Would you talk about dal—what it is, how and when it's eaten? It seems like a very healthful part of the Indian diet.
In India, dal is the generic word for legumes. In my New York kitchen, which is Indian and yet very American, I never forget legumes, like beans and lentils. I make a soup, a simple roasted vegetable soup, with all the little vegetables left at the end of the week: the three florets of cauliflower and two peppers that are dying to be used, an onion, a tomato bursting with juices, and I put them all in a roasting pan with oil and herbs and roast them. I add one or two tablespoons of French lentils as a thickening agent, add a little water and puree with a blender and you get this creamy soup that any French chef is going to think you put 20 sticks of butter and two gallons of cream in. And the lentils have given it that thickness, that creaminess.
Everything can do so much more than what we think it does. We make plain lentil soup, called dal, that we eat with rice. All dal needs is water, turmeric and asafetida, which is nature's own Beano. You toss in some oil flavored with cumin and red chili and cook the lentils soften up. Then reduce to whatever thickness you want and eat it with rice and pita bread, and in one meal you get every nutritive element you need.
Instead of hummus with tahini—fat, fat, fat—you can make a garbanzo bean curry to eat with whole wheat pita bread. You fry onions until caramel brown, add chick peas, tomatoes, cumin, coriander and mango powder, then cook to the thickness you like and you get a curry that's amazingly nutritive. There's so much you can do with dal. Your imagination and your knowledge of spices can either inhibit you or make you a master.