Last time I was in India I tried to like the kind of food which is currently most popular in Varanasi. This was a mistake – their food is unhealthy and not suitable to my tastes. Furthermore, I do not believe that it is even traditional and assert that despite what locals say, they have not been choosing to eat the food they do for very long.
What is traditional food in eastern Uttar Pradesh? The typical meal is vegetarian. It begins with a metal tray with rice and roti (circular pan-cooked flatbread, much like a Mexican tortilla). Either one or two vegetables are also on the tray. The protocol is to tear a strip of the bread apart from the whole, then use that bread to protect the cleanliness of ones fingers while one grabs vegetables. Then one flicks the bread containing the vegetable into one’s mouth. The etiquette is that one should not get any food on the lower fingertips or palm (“Devils eat with their whole hand”) and prevent touching fingers to mouth. All of this is done with the left hand not touching food; if there is a drink, one grasps the drink with the left hand.
Food in the region, even food which is created by people who have lots of experience working with foreigners, often contains hot peppers. The type of pepper which is popular there is tasteless to me but contains a lot of pepper-hotness. I grew up in Southeast Texas in America and our food was known for using jalapenos, which I consider to be mildly hot and flavorful, and I will eat those even though I generally do not like too many of them. I feel like I am not in natural opposition to pepper hotness, but even when people try to be nice they put chili peppers in food. I have told people “I do not want any peppers in my food” and then they just cut back on the amount of peppers they put in, because the pepper hotness is something like salt to them and they refuse food which does not contain it. I cannot peaceably eat food seasoned with a single pepper, and I have never met any foreign person in India who enjoys them. Most people tolerate them for a few bites to be nice, I and used to do that, but I am done even trying.
There is another problem with food. “Spicy” in English means both pepper-hot and flavored with various seeds and sometimes dried herbs. There is an equivalent word for both of these unrelated concepts in Hindi, so since neither English speakers nor Hindi speakers think about the difference between the two, a complaint about “spicy food” often raises concern among Indian hosts about what I would consider to be harmless and tasty spicy spices rather than the harmful and bland spicy peppers. Among the things which cause both Indians and Americans to use the word spicy are the following: cumin, mustard seed, black pepper, basil, garlic, ginger, nutmeg, and cinnamon. I love all of these things, but when I say that food is spicy (whether I say it in English or Hindi), this foreign concept directs Indians to first think that I have a problem with these things and that they should leave them out and make up for the omission by adding more chili peppers.
And chili peppers are not native to India – the British brought them to India from America, along with potatoes and tomatoes. Indians have a concept of calling “potato” a vegetable, when I as an American would be more likely to call it a starch or carbohydrate. So sometimes the meal in India is bread with rice and potatoes, which I find completely unsatisfying as well as unhealthy due to it being three sources of carbohydrate with no protein, vitamins, or minerals.
With almost any vegetable, a sauce is made and the vegetable is boiled until it becomes formless and the taste throughout the food is homogeneous. As an American, I like my vegetables minimally steamed and my personal preference is to have things on the raw side, although most people prefer their carrots, broccoli, green beans, and the rest cooked completely but not cooked to the point of losing flavor to the sauce.
I expect protein and mostly vegetables at every meal. At the time Attila and Dora and Allen were also staying with Nandan. Attila and Dora were eating out or cooking at home exclusively, and Allen was eating the food but complaining. I ate at home a little to see if it was the same, and although the food had improved, if I am eating vegetarian then I expect red beans (rajma) or garbanzo (chana) or soybeans (soya) with every meal, and probably also either cheese (paneer) or yogurt. Besides that I want a huge pile of vegetables, and the bread or rice is a smaller part of the meal.
After Pradeep had been staying with me just a couple of days and I found how how he cooks Marathi food I said goodbye forever to UP food and we started cooking a lot in the kitchen. Pradeep was a little heavy on the oil to start with; many Indian people use a lot of oil just as American restaurants do. But we worked it out and ate well and enjoyed the process immensely.