hybrid cuisines: Indian-Chinese

Monica Bhide who writes a great food blog called A Life of Spice wrote an interesting article for NPR about her favourite cuisine 'Indian-Chinese'.

If I had to pick my last meal, the dishes would all be Indian-Chinese: chicken Manchurian (batter-fried chicken served in a spicy chili-and-soy sauce), Sichuan paneer (Indian cheese with Chinese spices), Indian-Chinese fried rice, and a dried green chili chicken. These dishes don't come from a cuisine that I dreamed up, but from one very popular in India called Indian-Chinese. It is much spicier than the milder Cantonese Chinese food that most Americans are familiar with. Almost any menu in an everyday eatery in Delhi and Mumbai will list several Indian-Chinese dishes. On our family trips to Mumbai, the first meal we eat out is not traditional Indian, but Indian-Chinese.

Early settlers from southern China ... assimilated into the local culture, and their cooking took on local Indian flavors. The result is a satisfying hybrid cuisine, created from two very different communities and food cultures.

The Chinese have been residents of India for more than two centuries. India's largest Chinese population has historically been in Calcutta, a populous city in eastern India. The Hakka, early settlers from southern China, brought with them the traditional styles of Cantonese and Hakka cooking. They assimilated into the local culture, and their cooking took on local Indian flavors. The result is a satisfying hybrid cuisine, created from two very different communities and food cultures.

Bhide also described cooking techniques and provided recipes for her favourite dishes. Read more.

It is quite fascinating that over several hundred years, that the blended cuisine still resembles Cantonese food, albeit improved in taste. The question is, whether it is truly a hybrid cuisine or merely Chinese food slightly modified for the Indian palate, in much the same way that so called Chinese food in many countries would be unrecognisable in China itself.

In Singapore and parts of Malaysia and Indonesia, an 'indigenous' cuisine developed through the blending of Chinese (settlers) with local Malay so much that it ceased to be hybrid and became unique - known as Peranakan or Nonya.

Similarly, Lousiana Creole cuisine developed in Louisiana through a blending of many great influences.