Italian/Indian or Indian/Italian?

"Arguably, two of the most loved foods of all time, combined."

Devinder/East West Pizza"

If you think about it, Italian and Indian cuisines are more similar than expected: rich comfort foods with generous use of tomato, garlic, and onion." clicksngiggles/reddit

The photograph is of pizzas on offer from the East West Pizza cafe in East London that Devinder with his wife Manpreet run. In 2021 in a competition run by the BBC for the best pizza takeaway in Britain it was voted as the best. So they must be doing something right. Which says something. And there is indeed something both Italian and Indian in the pizzas shown here. So unbritishly British if you know what I mean.

Yesterday's post was all about what I could do with the remains in a jar of Patak's Chicken Tikka Paste - the beginning of a challenge to do things with all those ignored tins and packets and jars hiding in my kitchen. Today I'm adding to that with some further thoughts about fusing those two massively important cuisines. It's been interesting, not least because of the love/hate thing that results - although, I have to say, mostly love, in spite of this writer - Julie Bindel, writing in The Spectator, saying:

"Culinary innovation is one thing. Spaghetti with chicken tikka masala is quite another abomination. Fusion is a crime against food."

This is my first very humble try at using up that paste - a fusilli pasta dish - never to be repeated because of all the previous leftovers that went into it - some ricotta/fetta/veg filo pastry filling, Ottolenghi's Lime and poppy seed slaw with curry leaf oil - the unique ingredients - plus some sliced red onion, sliced green beans, two sliced chorizo sausages, half a sliced red capsicum, some cream and some more lime juice, garnished with some chopped coriander. I think that was it, but there might have been something else in there. It doesn't look that beautiful - more like the dog's breakfast I intimated that it would be I know -but it did taste pretty good. Which is just as well, because as you can see I made far too much. There will be leftovers next week, maybe even leftovers of leftovers.

I did not put a lot of the curry paste in - I was a bit nervous about the whole thing - maybe a dessert spoon or so - to three handfuls of the dry pasta. You could just taste it in the background, but probably most of the heat - not a lot - came from the chorizo. Now that I think of it I guess that adds a touch of Spanish as well. I had a lot of fun making it anyway.

Yesterday's post was all about using up curry pastes - well any kind of paste I suppose, but mostly curry pastes and so I included curry pastes from the rest of Asia. Today I'm looking at the basic concept of Indian/Italian - or is it Italian/Indian? And if you say Italian/Indian does that mean it's fundamentally an Italian dish with an Indian touch - like my pasta and those pizzas - or does the dominantly Indian toppings for the pizza make it Indian/Italian?

In the same way Pasta samosas (NDTV Food) shown above are an Indian idea but the filling is very Italian. Indian dough - made with Maida flour in this recipe but can be made with plain flour, Indian shaping and cooking but the filling is fundmentally a pasta dish with tomato and cheese and veg. I tried to find Italian versions of things like Chicken butter cream and Roghan Josh but nothing popped up and it doesn't really work does it?

Besides when you say Indian/Italian does that mean an Indian dish with an Italian touch or is it the other way round. A matter of personal interpretation I suspect.

And why is this particular cultural fusion becoming a thing? There are heaps of restaurants, cafés and takeaways presenting such things and all the social media sites have heaps of examples. How does any kind of fusion cuisine begin and then grow into it's own cuisine? One theory comes from a writer called Vir Sanghvi:

"The trend started in America, where Italian immigrants first tried serving the food they ate at home and then abandoned that to give Americans something that suited their tastes more."

I suspect - indeed I know that it all began a long way before that - every time a dominant culture, took over another one. Sometimes as in the case of TexMex it's two geographically close cuisines, borrowing from each other; sometimes it dates back to colonial times, when the colonists fell in love with the food of the countries they conquered and kind of took it back home, adapting it to their own tastes in the process. Occasionally, but less so, the reverse process happened with the conquered adopting their coloniser's food - think French baguettes and pastries in Vietnam. Luke Nguyen - one Vietnamese chef - has certainly adopted/adapted various aspects of French cooking.

But how do Italian and Indian cuisines fit into any of those concepts? There is no logical connection. Devinder - the British pizza man tells us that on the one hand:

"There are a huge number of similarities in Indian and Italian culture. The way community is essential for us, the way we are not afraid to express emotions, the familial ties, the warmth and relaxed nature of the people, the climate and the architecture."

Although on the other:

"when it comes to food, there is nothing similar. Indian food is a mix of multiple ingredients and spices all very delicately balanced. Italian food is simplicity itself, focusing on a few key ingredients. It really shouldn't work, but somehow we found a balance."

There are very few Indian restaurants in Italy I think, and I don't remember seeing very many Indian migrants there. Moreover I do not really see the Italians including other cuisines' ingredients and techniques into their very protective attitudes to their classic dishes. Italy did not have a presence in India - I could be wrong - other than trade relationships. Italian food however, has gone everywhere in the world. So let's put it down to globalisation. It seems to be the food that everyone loves. Although maybe the prize should go to America - at the junk food end of the spectrum anyway. India seems to be one of those countries that has adopted pizza and pasta into their own cuisines - but Vir Sanghvi who seems to be a bit of a purist when it comes to mixing cuisines asks"

"why is so much of the Italian food in India so bad? The more I thought about it, the more clear it seemed to be. It is hard to get authentic Italian food in India not because it is difficult to cook. It is because Indians don’t really want authentic Italian food. They want to eat Indian-Italian. The restaurants serve what the market desires. The chefs don’t bother to learn to make the real thing."

The crunch of the matter, the fusion instigator, seems to be cheese and tomatoes. Yes, Indians use tomatoes - but he tells us that they used to just used chopped tomatoes in their dishes - now they use tomato sauces, tins and pastes.

"Just three decades ago, who would have thought that the basic ingredients of pizza and of many pastas—cheese and tomatoes—would come to dominate many of the newer dishes that are being created on the street and at snack bars? The creators of these new dishes just purloin Italian flavours and ingredients and place them in an Indian context."

But isn't that what fusion is all about?

I actually found an Italian chef - Michelin starred no less - called Francesco Apreda, who now has a couple of fusion restaurants in India. He tells us that:

"I always think about Italian food when I discover a new Indian spice, and always research how it’s traditionally used before developing a new dish centred around Italian traditions."

And what does a Michelin starred Italian/Indian fusion look like? Well here are two examples: Sfogliatelle samosas with green tea ice cream and berry sauce which the Great Italian Chefs website tells us "incorporates the traditional ricotta filling of Sfogliatelle, the shell-shaped Italian pastries often known as 'lobster tails', into a simple samosa pastry" and Tandoori duck breast with duck croquettes, apricots and pak choi

So much for the high end of fusion. At the everyday, ordinary person end I found an interesting discussion on reddit - Indian-Italian fusion which included a few pertinent observations and suggestions:

"I'd be curious to see how Italian cured meats (Cappicola, Salami, Prosciutto) would work." fromkentucky/reddit - indeed - I'm not sure I can see that working at all.

"you can twist any Indian dish by adding oregano, parsley, basil, or fennel seeds; they make great substitutions or additions to kasoori methi (fenugreek leaves), cilantro, and cumin seeds. To make an Italian dish more Indian, add ginger, garam masala, substitute ghee for olive oil, coconut milk for cream" clicksngiggle/reddit

I wonder about that first suggestion - adding to what? If there are lots of other spices in the dish I suspect those European herbs might disappear. A couple of other suggestions - substitute meatballs in spaghetti and meatballs - in itself an American/Italian dish - with kofta or for palak paneer substitute mozzarella for the paneer. Both of those might work, as no one of the two cuisines would dominate.

A similar dish that might work are these Gnocchi alla Korma from Kevin All Over/YouTube, which are basic potato gnocchi, topped with sage fried in brown butter, but served with a puréed korma sauce containing cashews. Two classics combined.

I don't think a new fusion classic such as spaghetti and meatballs has yet emerged but maybe Indian pizza and curried pasta are getting there.

I leave the final, somewhat depressing and critical comment from another reddit commenter - oujsquared - "It wasn't bad, but it wasn't good either." I'm not sure that he/she is right. Only time will tell.

YEARS GONE BY

July 3

2025 - Rambling again - a pasta dish - you just can't get away from pasta can you?

2024 - A decor book

2023 - Bargain hunting dilemmas - it's class isn't it?

2022 - Sundries

2021 - Missing

2020 - Missing

2019 - A quote

2018 - Salt as an essential ingredient

2017 - On holiday