Arnab Chakladar on Upcoming Book Contemporary Indian Cooking

The Joy of Cooking Podcast

In this episode of The Joy of Cooking Podcast, hosts Shannon Larson, Megan Scott, and John Becker sit down with Arnab Chakladar to discuss his upcoming

Key takeaways

• Arnab Chaklar's upcoming book, Contemporary Indian Cooking, focuses on a non-regional, adaptive style of cooking common in modern Indian households.
• The concept of 'contemporary' Indian cooking involves mixing ingredients from various traditions rather than adhering to strict regional boundaries.

Main topics

• Contemporary Indian Cooking
• Food Writing Pedagogy

Notable quotes

Culture is always mixed, is always hybrid, is always bastardized; that's how culture spreads.

Conclusion

The episode provides an insightful look at how personal experience and

Transcript preview

Speaker 5 (0:39) Welcome to the Joy of Cooking podcast. Each week we gather around the table to share recipes and stories from the authors of The Joy of Cooking, kitchen victories and mishaps, and what we're cooking and eating right now. We're glad you've joined us at the table today. I'm Shannon Larson, home cook, Joy of Cooking user and fan, and garlic scape enthusiast. Speaker 6 (0:57) I'm Megan Scott, co-author of the 2019 edition of The Joy of Cooking. I'm a food editor by day and avoider of dish duty by night, and kimchi stew will heal you if you just let it. Speaker 3 (1:07) I'm John Becker, fourth generation co-author and steward of The Joy of Cooking, America's oldest family-run cookbook. And when confronted with hot dogs, I turn to my griddle rather than my grill. Firm believer in splitting hot dogs and just browning the crap out of them on a griddle. I Speaker 5 (1:24) just like the idea of confrontational hot dogs. Speaker 3 (1:27) Well, you obviously live a different life than me. Speaker 6 (1:33) Thank you, John. And today we are joined by Urnab Chakladar. Urnab is a professor of post-colonial literature and culture in the English department at Carleton College. He was the founder of a now-defunct site on South Asian culture, another subcontinent, and has been active in the online food world since the early 2000s. He writes a food and whiskey blog called My Annoying Opinions and is the author of the forthcoming cookbook, Contemporary Indian Cooking. Welcome to the show. Speaker 2 (2:00) Thanks for having me. Speaker 6 (2:01) What has everyone been cooking and eating and enjoying this week? Shannon, start with you. Garlic scapes. What did Speaker 5 (2:07) you do? Grilled them on the blackstone flat top. They're just really good. And it's just like you get them for a very small period of time. And anything where you just have like a couple of weeks with something, I just think it's special. And they came from our garden, which makes it even more Speaker 6 (2:20) special. Speaker 5 (2:20) Oh, that's so nice. And then... I did. We had a friend over for dinner last night and I made a tomato peach strawberry basil burrata salad. That was really, really good. It was just like summer in a bowl and we almost all of it. It was a lot, though. I overdid it. And then the other thing I wanted to mention, because I have a question for you. I told my friend I would ask this very quickly. I was at a wedding this weekend and I'm sitting with my friend and he is convinced that wedding cake is a specific kind of cake. Okay. And then, of course, the entire wedding, he's like looking at his, not the Speaker 6 (2:55) actual like ceremony, but after that. He's not really committed to his opinion then if he's not. But Speaker 5 (3:01) he was looking at it like through the reception, like trying to look up online. He's like swears wedding cake is a specific kind of like dense white cake. Speaker 3 (3:09) I'm sure that there is a recipe out there that is entitled wedding cake. This person could point to. In general, it's just Speaker 6 (3:16) the wedding cake you want. Yeah, I do think that like old school classic wedding cake is that white, you know, white layer cake. Because the one in Joy, the wedding cake instructions uses the white cake recipe because it can be scaled up many times and not and still taste good. OK. But I would say people have been doing all kinds of cakes for their weddings. And I Speaker 3 (3:38) mean, you you made pound cakes for our wedding. Yeah. Speaker 6 (3:41) You made our wedding cake, too. I Speaker 5 (3:43) did. But OK. I just needed to make that like. Clear, on air. I told him, I'm like, no, this is going out there into the universe. Speaker 6 (3:49) So thank you. Make him listen to the episode. I will. Speaker 5 (3:54) What Speaker 6 (3:54) about you, John? Speaker 3 (3:55) Well, I did have a hot dog confrontation that, you know, I mean, I managed to get through it. But aside from that. Speaker 6 (4:02) Wait, you, so you're advocating for cooking the hot dogs on a griddle, not a grill. Speaker 3 (4:07) That's correct. Okay. Unless your grandpa, Brian, is cooking the hot dogs, in which case the grill is. the preferred method because he has a special, I'm not even sure what his method is. I think his method is to just forget about the hot dogs and, you know, with a fairly low heat on his gas grill until they have concentrated and, you know, kind of raisined up a little bit. Speaker 6 (4:29) Yeah. It's, it sounds Speaker 3 (4:31) bad, but it's actually, I actually think Speaker 6 (4:33) it's the perfect way to cook hot dogs until they're a little bit blackened and kind of shrivelly because I don't know, it adds like a texture. Like they almost have a crunch, more of a snap when you bite it. And then they have more flavor because they're a little bit charred. But I don't think it's because he forgot about them. He's very he's worried them too much. You know what I mean? He like worries over Speaker 3 (4:52) it. I guess I figure it's just like inattention because, you know, the only time I ever had a hot dog quite like that before I met your grandpa was at this gas station where they would just leave it. On the rollers? It wasn't even a rollers. It was like this weird Ferris wheel of porky goodness. Like, you know, it's kind of looked like a toaster oven, but, you know, with this little spiky thing that they would just impale the hot dogs on. And yeah, they would just let them go for a long time. And at about, I think, if I remember correctly, it was around three o'clock, they hit peak snappy. Wow. Speaker 5 (5:27) Schedule down? Speaker 3 (5:28) I mean, you know. There wasn't a lot going on in my life at that point. Speaker 2 (5:34) Here's a hot dog confrontation for you, though. I'm a firm believer in ketchup on hot dogs. Speaker 3 (5:39) Actually, Speaker 6 (5:40) I don't have any problem with that. Do you? I Speaker 3 (5:43) really don't have a dog in this race. A dog in this race? Hot dogma. No hot dogma to apply here. Speaker 6 (5:55) Are you a just ketchup person or do you have other toppings? Speaker 2 (5:58) I'm a maximalist, so everything. Ketchup, mustard, relish, onions, whatever there is, I'm going to put it on it. Pickled jalapenos. I want it all. Do you know... I think it's one of the great American foodie shibboleths, though, the no ketchup on a hot dog. Yeah, Speaker 6 (6:12) I feel like every little region has its own hot dog toppings that they do. Because North Carolina has its own set of toppings. You do a no beans chili slaw, finely chopped slaw, not shredded. And then usually onions and mustard. Speaker 3 (6:27) And then there's like Chicago dogs and I don't know what all. New Mexico dogs. I'm on the maximalist side of things. All bets are off at a gas station. That's just like a lawless situation. Speaker 6 (6:37) Yeah, you can do whatever you want there. Speaker 3 (6:38) Yeah. Speaker 6 (6:39) There's no one to see you. What have you been cooking this week, Arnav? Speaker 2 (6:42) We've actually been eating a lot of last summer's tomato sauce. You know, I always, from our garden, I... I just make a lot of sauce and I calculate precisely how many times a week for the next 40 weeks we can eat the sauce before we run out, before the tomatoes get ripe again. And I always make way more sauce than we actually eat. So we now need to finish all the sauce in the freezer before the new tomatoes come online in a month or so. Speaker 3 (7:09) That's great. I actually plan on asking you about what your top recommended strategies are for dealing with bumper crops at the end of the summer, because I feel like I'm always seeing on your Instagram account, you have this just ridiculous amount of produce to put up. Speaker 2 (7:22) Well, mostly it's giving it away to various undeserving people. Speaker 2 (7:28) That's how it goes. Speaker 6 (7:30) But you freeze your sauce, you don't can it. Speaker 2 (7:33) Yeah, I don't can it. And this is partly because, you know, I used to once upon a time make a lot of jam as well. And so all my canning energy would go to the go to the jam at our old house. I just didn't have enough time and space to do both. So I put the sauce in Ziploc bags, you know, lay them flat, freeze them and then just stack them up. It takes a very little space. Speaker 6 (7:51) That's kind of nice, too, because I think usually if you're canning the sauce, you have to go buy a. prescribed recipe because you have to make sure it's acidic enough, but then freezing, you can do whatever you want. Yeah. Speaker 2 (8:01) Yeah. I don't like the lemon juice and tomato sauce. Yeah. Speaker 6 (8:04) I've started just Speaker 5 (8:04) freezing my whole tomatoes at the end of the year and putting those in my deep freezer and then using them throughout for different things too. And that seems to work well. The skins go off like Speaker 3 (8:12) easily. It's great. You seem to get a lot at once, but I don't know. I feel like we always get like maybe half a dozen good tomatoes at once. And so, you know, it's good to like just kind of store them up in the freezer until we could actually. Yeah, Speaker 6 (8:25) we don't have the bumper crop problem, which is sad. And no one needs to take tomato growing advice from me. Like cooking, sure, but I just can't seem to get tomatoes to grow well. And I don't know what I'm doing wrong. And it makes me a little upset. I started using fish emulsion and even that isn't really doing it. So I don't know what. Speaker 2 (8:44) I recommend, and this is for all forms of urine, benign neglect. So, you know, I put them in the ground and... Every once in a while, I remember to water them and prune them. This year, I haven't even pruned them. And they do better than in the years when I fuss over them. But mostly, I guess that you guys, unlike me, grow a reasonable amount of tomatoes. I mean, we're a family of four, and I usually have like 32 plants. Oh, wow. So I'm averaging it out on volume. Wow. Not maximizing the yield from every plant. Speaker 5 (9:14) Oh, my gosh, 32 tomato plants. How many different varieties? Speaker 2 (9:18) So I usually, so this year, this year I have fewer because we were out of town in the high point of the planting season. So this year there's only 26 of the 26, six Amish pastes and six San Marzano's I want to say. So those are my 12 sauce tomatoes. And then two cherry tomatoes, chocolate cherry, which is my partner's favorite. And Brad's atomic grape, which is, you know, crazy name, looks like a crazy tomato, but really, really tasty. And then a whole bunch of larger slicers, brand new wines Speaker 1 (9:49) and big rainbows and black crimps. I Speaker 2 (9:52) like to grow a couple of new ones each year. They don't always work out, but it keeps things interesting. Speaker 6 (9:59) Have you ever grown pineapple? I mean, the tomato called pineapple. Speaker 2 (10:02) Oh, yeah, yeah. It's one of my favorites. But for whatever reason, our nursery in town hasn't had it in in years. Last year, I grew something called a pineapple pig, which was attractive. prolific producer, but not very tasty, I don't think. And this year I'm growing, well, last year as well, I grew it. I liked it a lot last year. Ananas Noir, which is a, I think is a hybrid of pineapple and some black variety. You know, it's a greenish, blackish, yellowish tomato. Speaker 6 (10:32) Nice. Okay, well, benign neglect is my strategy for next year. It's too late this year, but I'll do it next year. Speaker 4 (10:39) Irma Rombauer believed that cooking should be joyful, and that philosophy changed the way America eats. Speaker 6 (10:45) Her great-nephew, Kerner, carried that same joy and generosity to Napa Valley, founding Rombauer Vineyards in 1980. The winery was built on the same belief that made the cookbook a classic, that good food and wine should bring people together. And just as the joy of cooking has been in American kitchens for nearly a century, today Rombauer is one of California's most celebrated wineries and the perfect pairing for every meal you cook from the book. Your next favorite pairing is waiting at rombauer.com slash joy. Use code JOYPOD, that's J-O-Y-P-O-D, all caps, for 15 % off your order. That's R-O-M-B-A-U-E-R dot com slash joy. And use code JOYPOD at checkout. Speaker 1 (11:27) Must be 21 to enjoy. Speaker 6 (11:29) So we ask all of our guests, what's your relationship to the joy of cooking? Speaker 2 (11:34) Well, you know. For one thing, as I've said before, I think to you guys, during the pandemic years, various editions of Joy of Cooking were on my laptop stand. Right now, my laptop is sitting on the latest edition of the Joy of Cooking. Very useful for that. In a very literal sense, the Joy of Cooking supports my daily life. But for me, not being American, not having grown up in American kitchens, I feel a great deal of affection for the book, largely because of its origins as a... Speaker 2 (12:02) as a home cooking book and its sort of continuity. To me, it's a great resource to check on things, right? So there are very few cookbooks I ever cook from, you know, in any direct kind of way. But the joy of cooking for me is, you know, is a place where I go to check for making bread to sort of check on, well, what could I be doing instead? Is there some other way of doing this? It's a very handy resource. You know, I was looking at the sauces earlier, right? When you have a barbecue coming up as we do this weekend. Look at, you know, get some ideas, real quick ideas for things you could throw together on the fly. I did want to give a shout out as well to some other Indian cookbooks. Go Speaker 6 (12:40) for it. I Speaker 2 (12:41) want to give a big shout out, for example, to a great cookbook that came out last year. The authors, I think, were guests on your podcast before, well before me, Jyoti and Ayan Mukherjee's Heartland Masala, which I think is just a fabulous Indian American cookbook, you know, which brings together recipes from. from many different parts of many different parts of India and has just has this great voice and so on and and despite you know I don't want to give the wrong impression either about about my relationship with Mother Joffrey I think Mother Joffrey's cookbooks are you know are all each and every one of them is is just fabulous and and you will never make something that comes out bad if you follow one of her recipes but beyond that I mostly cook from Or look at Indian cookbooks that are published in India, various regional cookbooks, and so on. Speaker 6 (13:30) Before we move further in the podcast, I wanted to talk about our Joy Scouts recipe of the week from the past week, which was Megan's Avocado Club Sandwich on page 137, which we didn't make. And my excuse is that we're not in full-on tomato season yet, at least not at our house. So I feel like you need the good slicing tomato to make a good... club sandwich. I'm just now Speaker 5 (13:55) seeing the little cherry tomatoes in the market that look pretty good and still not, we're not at slicer time yet. So, uh, Speaker 3 (14:02) that's a good excuse. Speaker 2 (14:03) But in Minnesota, we're still waiting for the ground to thaw. So, you know, tomatoes are still, still a while away. Speaker 6 (14:09) We're having juniary over here too. It's been kind of cold, which I'm not going to complain, but if you make Megan's avocado club sandwich on page 137, uh, please tag us on Instagram at the joy of cooking. We would love to see what you make. All right. So the tables have turned, Arnab, because usually we are the ones being interrogated by your classes. Can you talk a little bit about your food writing class and how that came to be? Speaker 2 (14:35) Yeah, sure. So as you know, you introduced me in the way I think my department would like me to be introduced as a professor of postcolonial literature. I think they are a little, well, I shouldn't speak for all of them, but I think at least some of them are a little bit nonplussed by my food writing avatar. But after having done food writing of a very informal kind for a long time on forums and then on my blog and so on, I decided to start teaching it. And so the class that I've been teaching now for some five years is, you know, essentially it's American food writing. So it's a hybrid kind of class. What we do is we read various kinds of American food writing all the way from A.J. Liebling and M.F.K. Fisher on down. to