It was a regular Friday morning until industrialist Anand Mahindra tweeted a picture of idlis served on an ice cream stick at a Bengaluru restaurant. Some of the idlis were ‘dipped’ head first in a pool of sambaar and chutney. The restaurant called it innovation, pointing to the ease of chomping on an idli with the accompaniments served as dips.
Within minutes, though, all hell broke loose. Foodies all over the Internet were outraged over the "desecration" of the classic idli. Congress member of Parliament Shashi Tharoor jumped right in and said the idea was “absurd but practical”. A Twitter user responded with: “This single image has ruined idlis and ice creams for me. Let idlis be.”
So was this food innovation or a gimmicky blip? Will we see idlis served on sticks at fairs in Melbourne and London next? Or will the idea die, impaled ignominiously on the stick that was supposed to hold it up high. We asked chefs to weigh in.
Not the first
The idli popsicle is only the latest in a line of food ideas (remember the crazy pav bhaji fondue?) to divide online discourse, causing some of the more traditionally inclined to become upset.
Such is the power of Indian cuisine - and our feelings about it - that it almost always promotes division.
Around this time last year, netizens were tortured with a ghastly image of Rosogulla Biryani. The white blobs that looked like dehydrated rosogullas made most of us scream "my eyes, my eyes" Pheobe-style.
Another repugnant food combination that comes to mind is the mango dolly dabeli by a Vadodara street vendor who replaced the pav, boiled potatoes, sev, pomegranate and peanuts used in a traditional dabeli with sliced bread drenched in ketchup and drizzled with mango dolly ice-cream and loads of cheese.
Dosa is a favourite for food crimes. As if Chinese dosa (traditional, crispy, golden-brown dosa stuffed with stir-fried noodles), weren’t enough, we also have to endure a red pasta dosa! A 57-second video shared online shows a man putting the dosa batter on a pan and spreading it evenly. He then adds onion, tomato, capsicum, ketchup, mayonnaise, schezwan sauce, spices, butter and mixes them nicely on the dosa to make the red sauce for the pasta. He then adds the boiled pasta and some cream, and mixes it all together. Finally, he spreads the pasta on the dosa evenly and cuts the dosa into smaller pieces, leaving netizens vaguely hungry or nauseous - depending on their preferences.
History lesson
Food tampering is not progress or invention when it is history that you are meddling with, says author and chef Michael Swamy.
“Classics are there for a reason. They have stood the test of time. Putting an idli on a stick is not a reinvention. It's blasphemy. I do experiment with food and perfecting techniques. If I play with a classic and it turns out good, then I rename it completely. One can tweak a classic slightly but not much,” says Swamy.
Chef Rohan DSouza, culinary head – Silver Beach Hospitality, says it’s okay as long as you keep the integrity of the dish intact. “The ice-cream stick passing through the idli is just a technicality and it doesn’t matter as far as the idli stays soft and tastes great. At least it’s not massacred like our desi Chinese. It’s interesting till the time they don’t sprinkle gold dust on it!” he laughs.
The point is we don’t want our heirloom recipes to die with time. We want them to live on. And there’s nothing wrong with serving something in a different (perhaps more convenient for some) way, as long as the original survives.
No right or wrong
While purists may argue that food must be left in its traditional form, eminent food researcher and author of India: The Cookbook Pushpesh Pant reminds us that Indian food has been on a constant journey of evolution. “Our food has shades of Persian and Mughal influence and everything that we cook is not a standalone entity in itself but an amalgamation of different regions and cuisines. That is the beauty of food that it is not static.”
Chef Ranveer Brar concurs when he says: "If we delve deep, we would find that we are the pioneers of fusion and international. Not a lot of people know that our humble kitchens produce dishes that are akin to foreign cuisines. For instance, a prasad offered in temples in Tamil Nadu is, in fact, sweet risotto!"
So when exactly did it become trendy to take well-loved, traditional recipes and create "updated" versions of them?
It’s not a new phenomenon says chef and restaurateur Manu Chandra. “We have always appropriated food from across the world. We have spicy Chinese food - nothing like its original form in China. We have chicken tikka on pizza, something unheard of in Italy - so what’s wrong if we have idlis on popsicle sticks? Why is it so horrifying? It’s about convenience. If someone is being innovative, we must embrace it. Think about it, does idli taste any different just because it’s on an ice cream stick? I don’t think so. To reject it, just because it looks a little different is a defeatist attitude. Let’s embrace change whenever it is available,” says Chandra.
That should rest the case…or till the time we encounter another poorly conceived, badly executed abomination!
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