Ramzan food in India seeing an Arab Spring Jul 5, 2014, 12.32PM IST ET Bureau[ Vikram Doctor ] Ramzaan, or Ramadan as its known outside India, is a major way to spread foods both due to its predictability, which helps traders plan stock movements, and the need for feeding large numbers when the fast is broken. Ramzan during the rainy season may not tempt many to leave home to have a streetside iftar meal. But if you do venture out — and even many non-Muslims have started going out at least once in the season to sample the food — then you might notice a relatively new trend among the food stalls. Among the usual sellers of kebabs, tandoori chicken, mutton rolls, khichada or haleem and other specialties, a few now advertise themselves as Arab restaurants. This is particularly evident in South India, in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, but you find them in Mumbai as well. How Arab these restaurants really are is debatable — many of them take on the name with just a shawarma grill and a chicken rotisserie. At most, they might also add a vaguely hummus-like concoction of chickpeas and a yoghurt raita, renamed labneh sauce. Most of them have been started by Indians with connections in the Gulf, whose travels back and forth have led to the idea that there is a market for mostly grilled meat dishes that are well priced and convenient to order. But the Arab label still seems to be a draw, and it is a reminder of how Islam and the Arab world (not always the same thing) have been major routes to transmit trends, especially through its institutions of Ramzan and the Haj. This is easy to forget in a world dominated by European and American trends. We tend to think of fried chicken as KFC, soft drinks as Pepsi or Coke and Mexican food as Tex-Mex cuisine. European empires like the Portuguese or the British are credited with spreading foods like chillies and tea, while the great exchange of foods from the 16th century onwards between the Old and New Worlds is called the Columbian Exchange after the Italian explorer. Yet Islam was a route for culinary transitions from long before
Posted on: Sat, 05 Jul 2014 08:50:05 +0000
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