Veg please, we are Indians!

You would probably laugh at me if we were to tell you that the lip-smacking samosa one frequently has is originally a non-vegetarian dish.

Decades ago, the non-veg stuff first got replaced with heavy to digest chole in the north and then with aloo in the rest of the country. And the triangular oily stuff is now ruling the roost as favourite tea snack nationwide in its current avatar.

Welcome to India, essentially a vegetarian country, where at times even consuming dairy products is considered non-vegetarian. Though Indian cuisine is one of the most evolved one, at the same time it has been one of the most accommodating ones also. As it was ruled by Mughals, Portugals and British for centuries, its cuisine too underwent significant changes. While some dishes were adopted into toto, some were Indianised to the hilt. Thus we have Veg Biryani, Veg Cutlets and over a period of time, now Chilly Paneer. The list of such dishes is very much like the space provided by Google, always growing.

Explaining the phenomenon, chef Paul Kinny said, “India today has a very large population which travels abroad extensively. There they come across various dishes which even they want to try it, but in the format they like. Today, we need to have a good veg menu, whether we like it or not.”

“Recently we had Thailand Food Festival. There is nothing veg in Thai menu. Basically it is something what monks have it. So we prepared dishes by substituting chicken stock with veg stock,” he said adding converting non-veg food into veg is a challenging task. We also had Chilean Sea Bass, with brinjal and people liked it, he added.

Chef Vishnu Manohar says one of the major reasons one gets attracted to any food item is its visual appeal. Once a person likes a dish, he wants to have it. “I recently made a German dish by substituting fish with tender coconut et al. It almost tastes the same,” he said.

However, chef Sumit Bahua had a different take on it. He sees the entire phenomenon as improvisation of international cuisine to suit more to the Indian palate. “Come what may we can not tamper with the authenticity of the cuisine.“First of all it is not India-specific phenomenon. It is just adopting various cuisines to suit more to the Indian palate. Interestingly, in the process, care has to be taken that the authenticity is retained. It is just attempting variation, improvisation,” he said.