Can we Indians please recover from the onion-tomato-ginger-garlic sauce that we put into all the pieces we eat? Give it some thought. If Indian meals, and I imply meals from all geographical instructions – North, North-east, East, South and West – was to be outlined by a single curry, one thing also known as a “mom sauce” in Western culinary jargon, it might be the nice ol’ pink curry made with onions, tomatoes, ginger and garlic. This base sauce is typically turned orange by including cream to it and different occasions turned inexperienced by including some pureed spinach. Even lentils are tempered with the identical 4 components as a result of some other tempering usually turns the lentils into “hospital-type dal”.

Every thing Tastes The Identical

I am fairly positive that half the marketplace for Eno or Digene in India may be credited to this mom sauce as a result of our stomachs have actually grow to be allergic to it. We eat it day in and day trip. We even put it in our eggs within the morning. That well-known avenue aspect dish, ‘anda ghotala’, can be a variant of this concoction, blended with boiled eggs and served with fried eggs on prime. “Ghotala” actually interprets to rip-off, and such dishes certainly are a rip-off – and merchandise of sheer lack of creativeness.

There’s one thing to be mentioned right here in regards to the snob of all cuisines – French meals. A minimum of the French are inclined to glorify each ingredient utilizing sauces made with utterly totally different flavour compositions. So a beurre blanc (actually interprets to white butter) is an easy butter sauce emulsified with vinegar and wine, and boiled with shallots. In actual fact, every of the mom sauces of French delicacies — Béchamel, Velouté, Espagnole, Hollandaise and Sauce Tomat (Tomato) — is outlined by a definite profile that goes with numerous proteins and carbs. Whereas béchamel’s important star is milk, velouté’s star ingredient is rooster inventory thickened with a roux (all-purpose flour that is cooked with butter). Equally, velouté makes use of beef inventory with brown roux. Hollandaise makes use of uncooked eggs with lemon juice to create a fully divine, velvety texture and refreshing flavour, whereas Sauce Tomat clearly is an ode to tomatoes, that are cooked with herbs and diminished to a tasty thick consistency.

The derivatives of those sauces with a number of different components run into a whole lot of different variants, every distinct from the opposite. For instance, sauce Charcutière makes use of the mom sauce espagnole with dry mustard and onions. Sauce Mornay makes use of the mom sauce béchamel, with onions, cloves, Gruyère cheese and Parmesan.

Rescuing Indian Delicacies

It is not that Indian delicacies was at all times so monotonous. Not in in the slightest degree. It nonetheless is not. Solely, it is the on-the-go cooking (the “scammy” sort) that has made this onion-tomato-ginger-garlic concoction the mainstay of all “dishes”.  Issues weren’t speculated to be like this. The unique urad dal, also referred to as ‘kali dal’ and which is now served as ‘makhani dal’, was at all times slow-cooked to perfection with solely caramelised onions added for tempering. The well-known ‘junglee maas’ of Rajasthan was a glorification of the mighty Mathania chillies grown regionally in Jodhpur to raise sport meat hunted by the royals of yesteryears. The one different components on this dish have been ghee and garlic to take away the gamey odor of meat.

Even the opulent biryani didn’t look something prefer it does at the moment: layers of red-curried meat or rooster, once more with the identical mom sauce, served with white rice. There are two origin tales of biryani, and neither of them mentions the meats cooked to a curry with tomatoes, onions and ginger garlic. The ‘Birian’ that got here through Persian (a lot earlier than the Mughals) merchants was merely a one-pot dish made with rice, meat and spices, cooked underground in an earthen pot in a coal-lined pit. This spice-infused rice later grew to become ‘Biryani’ in India.

The opposite story of Biryani has its origins surprisingly in Sangam literature, which speaks of a dish referred to as ‘oonchoru’ courting again to 200 BCE-200 CE. This dish of Chera Kings was made with rice, ghee, meat, turmeric, pepper, coriander and bay leaf. Even when we have been to have a look at the Mughals for Biryani, the one recipe talked about in Mughal texts is from the time of Bahadur Shah Zafar, which once more spoke of rice infused with spices, with no point out of layering.

Northeast Stands Out

Why the mom sauce of India has peeved me a lot is as a result of the spectrum of flavours stays nearly equivalent. The sauce turns into pav bhaaji with the addition of greens, nevertheless it additionally doubles up as kadhai rooster, shahi paneer, and butter rooster, relying on what you add to it. All of them are, on the core, simply the identical.

The one area in India that appears past this type of cooking is the Northeast – and Southern India to some extent. Within the former, we discover a good diploma of experimentation with components, and fermentation processes are used to create umami flavours. Just like the Iromba of Manipur, by which fish is fermented after which flavoured with recent bay leaves, onion, cumin, chillies, and chives, or a Mui Borok of Tripura, by which the celebs of the curry are native herbs, bamboo and greens with simply fish inventory used as the bottom. However then once more, Assam’s Fish Tenga, and even the favored Thukpa from Tibet that is eaten in Sikkim and Darjeeling, return to the identical 4 components. Within the South too, nothing can escape the ‘Huge 4’, although one does discover dishes just like the yoghurt-based Moru curry often.

I feel we Indians clearly have to put our foot down and say “sufficient is sufficient” to this all-pervasive ‘mom sauce’. We should attempt going again to our roots, the place monotony was by no means the norm. 

(Zainab Sikander is a political analyst and columnist protecting Indian politics for the reason that final decade. She’s an avid traveller and a bona-fide foodie.)

Disclaimer: These are the private opinions of the creator