My first week in America, I poured half a bottle of hot sauce into my food.
“Wow,” said my dining companion, a girl from Connecticut who rode on the equestrian team. “I can tell you’re not from here.”
I laughed. “Because I like hot sauce?”
“No, but you just put so much of it into your food – I like my food much more delicately seasoned than that. That’s why I can’t handle curry. It’s just too much, it upsets my stomach.” She shuddered, as if reliving a bad dream.
I put the bottle down on the table, and stared down at my plate, covered in tell-tale red. I don’t tell her that curry is a Western construct, one that you wouldn’t find on any Indian menu. Instead, I feel ashamed, as though I’ve been caught with my hand in a cookie jar at midnight.
From now on, I vow, I will be much more discreet.
*
I grew up on spices.
In middle school, a boy teases me for being named after a famous Indian brand of pickle. Pickle in India connotes a mix of vegetables and fruits preserved in brine, bottled for convenience, served at every meal. He asks me if I like Priya Pickles. I laugh and tell him that yes, I love Priya‘s hot lime pickle. He blushes, unable to think of a comeback.
Every Indian kitchen has an extensive pantry of spices; a silver dabba, or container, holds the most commonly used spices. I’ve never been good at cooking, but I’ve been in the kitchen enough, peeked over my mother’s shoulder enough to know what each spice tastes like. There’s cinnamon, clove, coriander seeds, different types of cardamom that are each as fragrant as flowers. Fenugreek, fennel, nutmeg. Asafoetida so pungent that more than a sprinkle will ruin your dinner. Crushed chilli powder that is red as sindoor, the powder that new brides rub into their hairline. These are always dusted into the rice that my mother serves, always on the table as an accompaniment to whatever we eat. My favourite is the cumin seed, that I learn how to roast and mix into the iced yogurt drink we make every summer.
I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, though Indian sweets deserve their own hall of fame. For dessert, like, my father, I eat tender green mangoes with salt and chilli powder. The taste is mouth-puckeringly sour. Between the two of us, we polish off every mango in the freezer without so much as a stomach-ache to show for it. My mother sighs when I drown my food in spices to make it extra hot, a trick I picked up from him.
I’ve only ever lived in places where I could find my beloved spices: London and Delhi and the Middle East. Wherever I went, I found Indian grocery stores that stocked jars and jars of spices or dried whole chillies that I could take home and crush into my food. In London, I eat at little Indian restaurants when I’m homesick. In Delhi, I bite into the corn which the street vendors rub with their own concoction of rock salt and potent spices. In Muscat, I eat falafel and kebabs and hummus spicier than anything you’d find in a store.
In India, a man catcalls me on the street. He says: “You’re a real masala girl.” He means I’m hot, but I like to think of it as spicy.
*
In America, I go to college in a tiny town, and for the first time there is no Indian grocery store that I can raid to get my fix. I make do with the poorest of substitutes: a bottle of generically-labelled “Curry Powder”; extra jalapeño peppers on my pizza; bottles of Frank’s Red Hot.
When I order Chinese food with my friends, I get the hottest thing on the menu. It’s still not hot enough for me. But when my friends taste it, their eyes water, and they yell at me for not warning them.
“Really?” I say, spooning more into my mouth. “It doesn’t taste spicy at all.”
They scoff.
“You should try the ghost pepper,” they say, “the hottest spice in the world.”
“I’ve already tried it, ” I say. “It’s called the bhoot jolokia. It’s Indian.”
“Crazy girl,” they say, shaking their heads at me. “Crazy.”
*
Quickly, I learn the jokes that they use for Indian people: the jokes that are somehow always connected with our food.
Curry-eating Indians, they say. They hate Indian food, how the smell gets into everything. White people tell me they’ve been to India and lost, like, twenty pounds because they got diarrhoea.
I laugh awkwardly. I don’t eat Indian food in front of them. I leave the bottle of hot sauce unopened, and learn to eat meals that don’t taste like anything. The only seasoning I use is a dash of salt.
I forget what spices taste like.
I think to myself, White people conquered our country for spices that they don’t use. I am amused by the irony of it.
*
As I grow older, I meet different kinds of people. Not all of them are on the equestrian team.
I date a white boy, who takes me to dinner and asks whether I want to eat Indian food.
I raise my eyebrows at him.
“You like spicy food?”
“Sure,” he says.
I am skeptical. At dinner, I ask the waiter for food as spicy as possible. He is delighted to meet another Indian in our little town.
“Suno,” I say, summoning my bad Hindi to my aid, “bahut teekha, ji. Samjhe? Dhanyavaad.”
Listen, sir, I’d like it very hot. Know what I mean? Thanks.
My date scrunches up his face a little when he tastes the chicken. The waiter has, indeed, been generous with the spices. I bite my lip.
“This is good,” he says. “Very good. The real deal.”
Manfully, he chokes it down. His cheeks are a vivid shade of red, and he drinks his glass of water in one go and asks for another. I burst out laughing, and he joins me.
*
Little by little, I reclaim my love of spicy food.
I grow feisty as the spices, rebellious as the taste of pepper on your tongue. Whenever I come across someone who doesn’t like Indian food, I tell them it’s their stomach that’s weak, not my taste buds that are too strong. I tell people that Indian food is no less crude than European cuisine merely because it’s more flavorful.
I eat food in combinations that only a pregnant woman would think of. I order Bloody Marys and dirty martinis when I go out, because I like my drinks to be as delicious as my food. I make friends with people who love the same kind of food I do, the kind of people who rush out and buy sriracha when they hear there might be a shortage.
I move to a big city, where I can have Indian food whenever I crave it, which isn’t often anymore. Usually, I’m happy with a bottle of Frank’s Red Hot. I keep bottles of it in my kitchen in plain sight, unashamed.
Tags: culture, food, priya alika elias
I loved this! You pain a very vivid picture of how much our identity and sense of self ties into our food traditions. Eating is such a communal thing and our tastes really can set the foundation for interpersonal relationships.
I’ve never once backed down from someone warning me that something is too spicy. That’s an invitation I will take 100000% of the time. Mostly because I love spicy foods, but also because even when something is too hot to be enjoyable (read: anything with capsaicin extract rather than actual chilies), I enjoy the sensation. It’s a fun pain. A good pain.
^^^ THIS. My husband can’t take spicy at all. Like, put pepper on his food and it’s too spicy. I on the other hand will eat anything as spicy as it goes just for the sensation. I love it when you can feel the spice all the way up into your eye sockets and no matter how many times I explain it, he doesn’t get it.
This is fantastic. I wasn’t much of a spicy-food person until I started living with my college roommate, who is Indian. She would bring back piles of food when she went to visit her parents a couple hours away and it was all AMAZING and I continue to crave it years later.
I only buy the biggest bottle of Frank’s because I use it so often. Spicy-food lovers, unite and be unashamed!
Wow I am the polar opposite taste wise! But have also been shamed for my *inability* to eat even mildly spicy foods! Can’t win. Fuck everyone else, eat what makes YOU happy. Being different just means you don’t have to share yours 😉
and of course of course we must acknowledge that there is quite often, maybe even always that nasty element of racism in critiquing the strong flavors / smells of Indian and or non-Western European foods, whereas when I get criticized it’s about me personally not like, the culture of my people & country of origin.
The mater used Tobasco sauce on the tongue as punishment for a variety of perceived misbehaviors, so it’s taken me years to be able to handle any level of spice. Working on it, though!
A friend of mine gets nosebleeds from spicy food. On our first friend-date she took me to an Indian restaurant (her choice), and she had to run from the table, even though everything she ordered was at mild, white-person levels of spiciness. It makes her very sad.
This was lovely! I absolutely love Indian food, but I am a spice wimp. I like it spicy enough to feel it, but not spicy enough to cry.
I think my husband secretly hates one of my picky-eater friends because she “doesn’t like strong flavors.” I have to admit, it’s pretty rough going out to eat with the girl.
So your friend only likes weak flavors? Like…gruel?
She likes sandwiches? Like she really loves Subway. This girl has trouble eating Chinese food. Though strangely she likes Thai food, which is not known for its blandness.
I have a friend like this! Her exact words, actually, were “I don’t like flavor.” FLAVOR.
Yeah…I don’t get it. It’s like, “I hate good things!”
A friend hates onions. It’s immensely inconvenient.
Little by little, I reclaim my love of spicy food.
I grow feisty as the spices, rebellious as the taste of pepper on your tongue.
This buoyed my heart for you, hurray!
Whenever I come across someone who doesn’t like Indian food, I tell them it’s their stomach that’s weak, not my taste buds that are too strong.
For some people, this is the literal truth, something I only figured out last year. In the wake of a minor medical problem, I had to stop eating spices. All spices. For weeks, I lived on the equivalent of baby food: steamed peas or squash, applesauce, the only additions a sprinkle of salt. It was tedious and bland and weirdly lonely: not only was my food dull, but I couldn’t accept invitations or join friends in restaurants.
Even now, I can only eat a fraction of the hot spice that I used to crave, and I haven’t yet been brave enough to return to my favorite Indian restaurant, the one treasured regular treat in our small budget. The food they served me was never as lavishly spiced as you describe, because I’m me and not you, but it was rich and flavorful and spiked with heat. I want the flavor so much but I know my belly is too weak to take it, and my spirit is too weak to order it with the luscious seasoning tamped down.
I’m seeing a gastroenterologist this afternoon, and I am 90% certain and 100% terrified that the diagnosis I’m going to receive will severely limit my ability to eat spicy foods. Even knowing what it’s doing to me, I think I’ll be tempted. I bask in spiciness. What good is a functioning digestive system if I can’t nuke it with chili napalm?
Ugh, I hope all goes well and you get good news.
I comforted myself with the thought (true in my case) that I could be grateful the problem was so minor: just eat pablum for a month and recover. And once my palate adjusted, there was the occasional pleasure in those unaltered flavors. Plain butternut squash has a depth and richness even without anything but a few grains of salt. After a week without sugar or soda or sweet, applesauce was as sweet as candy. After giving up coffee cold-turkey and staying off it for months, my first (and so far only) small cup of coffee affected me like the drug it really is, making me all flushed and blushing and quick of heartbeat.
And now I can eat some of my long-missed seasonings again: ginger in stir-fry, lemon juice on my vegetables, pepper or paprika or chili powder in my stews. I can eat garlic and onions and vinegar-y salad dressings. I can even eat peppers or curry, just not as hot as I used to and not in anything like the quantities I prefer. But I know how lucky I am!
If food does not cause pain, it is improperly seasoned.
YES. This is so good.
So many conversations about food dislikes venture into culturally insensitive–if not downright racist–territory.
Yes. Can we just put a moratorium on commenting on anybody else’s eating habits, full stop? I’ll allow “Hey, that looks/smells delicious” but anything else can be kept to yourself, thanks.
I’ve seen that summed up somewhere as “Don’t ‘yuck’ someone else’s ‘yum,'” a pithy if not especially graceful construction that makes perfect sense to me.
Yes! If someone offers me something I don’t want to try, I simply say no thanks, politely. People eat stuff all around the world, including in my own country, that I find unpalatable (looking at you, Spam, you just smell weird to me all fried), and I assume that they feel the same way about some of the food that I eat. There’s no need to make a fuss about your food dislikes!
OK, but I’m still going to side-eye anyone who eats fake maple syrup.
Idk that tends to be a class thing.
I live in a part of the US where maple syrup is horrendously expensive and hard to find. I don’t think I’ve ever had genuine maple syrup, just the sugar-water flavored substitute. It’s something like nine or ten dollars for a tiny bottle.
Yeah… this unfortunately reminded me of an incident during an internship where we interns went out to lunch at an Indian buffet and one of the fellow interns hated everything and said a dal looked like “dog vomit,” while we were still in the restaurant. I had no idea what to say to the very nice waitress who asked if she’d enjoyed her food.
“I enjoyed the food, but not so much the company [*pointed look at fellow intern*].”
ughhhhh jesus
Agreed, food shaming is icky in all kinds of ways.
I will fight you for proclaiming the supremacy of lime achar over mango achar. Lime is, like, 5th (mango, ginger, chili, the one that’s all mixed up with the lotus stems in it, lime).
Death glares to anyone who thinks “curry powder” is any sort of anything.
This was wonderful.
Glad you found a way to enjoy your food heritage. It’s super upsetting when folks with boring palettes give those of us with taste for spice, flavor, or offal a hard time. I keep a bottle (or two) of habañero sauce around always, and have been known to bring it with me to restaurants (just in case).
“Whenever I come across someone who doesn’t like Indian food, I tell them it’s their stomach that’s weak, not my taste buds that are too strong.” *clapping* yep.
Lovely. I wanted a second page (and even went back to double-check that there really wasn’t one).
Same!
Confession: I use “curry powder.” But not for actual cooking – it’s really good to mix with tuna or chicken salad to make it taste less… mayonnaise-y
You’ve discovered the only acceptable use of curry powder! That’s ok!
It’s also tasty to add a pinch to salad dressing or the base of a soup or a marinade. I wouldn’t use curry powder on its own to make a specific Indian or Japanese dish, but I think of it like any other seasoning mix you might use to hint at a flavor.
Wait, so using curry powder in cooking is bad?
It depends what you’re making, they’re just often bland. If you have cumin, coriander, turmeric and red chili pepper you can mix your own “curry powder” right there and it’ll be 100 times more flavorful.
Ahhhh, ok. I have the curry powder from Penzeys that isn’t bland, but I use it in conjunction with other spices once in a great while. I haven’t got many recipes for that kind of cooking yet – I’m still learning cooking, period.
I have one curry powder from Whole Foods that I use for certain things, and I’m a pretty accomplished cook! You do you and your own tastebuds, bud 🙂
I use it too, sometimes! what can I say, it comes in handy for some things… (like masking that horrible mayonnaise taste.)
There’s also a branch of curry powder cooking in Japan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_curry). My Taiwanese grandma taught me to make a few things. (The whole history of Japanese curry foods and how it came to Taiwan is a colonial-on-colonial epic unto itself.)
I use (greek) yogurt! I also don’t like the taste of mayonnaise, and, as long as you like the taste of yogurt, I think it’s a mighty fine substitute. But I also like the idea of spicing it up.
Curry powder: also great on popcorn! And in any 1950’s cream of mushroom soup-based “let’s wear and apron and play housewife” cookery. Sorry, I’m kinky that way.
Works in deviled eggs too.
Yes! The first time I had this, I was in London, and had chicken salad with curry powder…and I never went back!
I like to throw a spoonful of whole grain mustard in (okay, and half an herb garden). Will have to try curry powder!
I use a bunch of mustard and vinegar and olive oil, and the barest possible amount of mayo. It works for me!
zomg, if you can get creole mustard, but that in your tuna salad! it’s completely wonderful.
this is great! I love flavorful, well-spiced food, but unfortunately I just can’t handle super spicY food. Which is tough when you love Indian food! “Medium” is as high as I can go when eating out, but even that’s pushing it, depending on the restaurant. I’d like to build up my spice tolerance but I don’t think I’ll ever get to the level of my other family members (my dad literally has a shaker of cayenne by his plate at almost every meal).
…nothing weird about ordering a Bloody Mary (preferably with tequila!).
Give me Caesar or give me death…
I absolutely loved this and I absolutely love Indian food although I generally order it mild which probably means flavorless to the spice lovers among us…
I grew up putting Tabasco on my Spaghetti-O’s… not because of my ethnic background, but because my dad is a clean-living dude and hot sauce is the only way in which he proves his masculinity, “lives on the edge,” etc.
These days I’m not into super-hot peppers and hot sauces, but I love basically every other kind of spice and flavoring. Having recently learned how to make a tarka, I now want to tarka everything, including omelettes and peanut butter sandwiches.
It just pains me so much that you felt you had to rein in your appetite to avoid negative attention for it, ugh. I wonder if more of us would have similar stories if our early morning eating habits were known, breakfast seems to be a thing that people have OPINIONS about that they share with thoughtless vehemence.
At school it was uncool to the point of being taboo to eat breakfast at all. Delicate wee flowers would sigh about how they couldn’t possible bear anything at that hour, how frightfully brutish. Also, calories, which, you are 14 and made entirely of limbs shut up.
The amount of flak I have gotten in my life for enjoying ketchup on my eggs is astounding.
Being pregnant has made me realize how much spicy food I eat and love. Before this I had never experienced heartburn, and when I mentioned it to my doctor, she asked, “Well, what do you eat?” Answer: everything I eat causes heartburn. But it’s worth it.
Hahahaha. Yeah, that part sucked. My pregnancy basically went:
“I have heartburn.”
“What did you eat”
“Drunken noodles with extra hot sauce and orange juice.”
“Here are some Tums, stop complaining, you brought this on yourself.”
I started getting heartburn in the last year (not from pregnancy, just from adulthood I guess?) and the first suggestion I got was “Try to avoid eating onions, tomatoes, spicy foods, alcohol, coffee, garlic, mint, and citrus fruits”. I asked for a second suggestion, because she had just summarized the entirety of my diet.
Great piece! I’m at best a medium-hot on the Scoville meter, and once absently doused a piece of KFC with stuff I found in my aunt’s refrigerator that turned out to be a joke gift to my uncle (“Jackass Sauce,” basically pure capsicum with a little ketchup to make it purty). I actually thought it ate through my lower lip and chin and that my jaw was just going to fall off like Gabbo for a good half hour. Love Sriracha, but I’m much more careful now.
My boyfriend TOTALLY ran out to buy extra Sriracha when they talked about the shortage. We put it on pizza. *grin*
Also, trader Joe’s has a jalapeno sauce that is really deliciously spicy and smoky, and I drown my extra cheesy macaroni & cheese with it. *drooooool*
Oh man. I want those limes!
Have you seen Queen yet? The owner of an Italian restaurant gets really angry at an Indian tourist when she puts pepper all over her food. She tries to explain that chilies just make food taste better, but he insists that chilies are only for Indian food. (It’s a sweet movie, btw).
He must have been a northern Italian. Sicilians sprinkle ground hot peppers on their pizza, pasta, whatever.
Mmmmm… Priya pickles. I have two bottles in my kitchen right now.
I live in Europe where everyone loves Indian food and they want to go to Indian restaurants every time we go out to eat, but the food is terrible mostly. I miss good Indian food. And now I want raw mangoes with chilli powder and salt.
Ahh this is great! I remember as a kid being confused by the casual, hack-comedian assumption that gastrointestinal issues from spicy “ethnic” food were a universal problem. Like, I’m sitting here as a 6-year-old eating the very same food that you find great hilarity in blaming for sending you to the toilet for hours—maybe YOUR PUNY, FRAGILE TUMMY IS TO BLAME, WHITE BOY!
I am the whitest white person ever, but fortunately my parents used to cook food from all around the world when I was growing up. I also have always been very confused by the hack comedians’ jokes about spicy “ethnic” food. Like what did y’all grow up eating that you can’t handle stuff with flavors? I felt the same when I ordered from one of my favorite Indian restaurants, a restaurant with deliciously complex flavors in their dishes, and an ex boyfriend said all the food just tasted “like black pepper,” which probably wasn’t even an ingredient.
I will tell you, I didn’t know “curry” was a construct, and I would like to know more about this?
The wikipedia page on curry isn’t a bad place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry
Awesome post. I’m not Indian, but grew up eating Indian food every Sunday. It’s my favorite. I have a hard time getting a lot of restaurants to make my food as spicy as I want it, and I hate being doubted.
Whoa, hey, hello! I am also an Indian woman who used to live in Muscat and now lives in the US and used to be shamed for eating Indian (not necessarily spicy) food. The concept of “curry” qua “curry” enrages me enough as it is, but last week a co-worker told me she wouldn’t enjoy travelling in India because she “doesn’t like curries” (with obligatory nose-wrinkling) and I didn’t know how to react other than to look appalled. What does that mean??
Oh, girl, this was so well-written.
I do not understand the point of shaming anyone for their food choices–we’re *all* weird little buggers when it comes to taste and desire–it’s far more interesting to find out why someone likes or dislikes a certain food, instead of being all nose-wrinkly about it.
I will gladly give you all of the peppers that restaurants put on my food even though I ask them not to, and I will relieve you of all of the plain (delicious, chewy, fragrant) naan.
I love this article so much, it makes me so happy and I want to hold it and it’s so beautifully written. And I’m so thankful to you for having written it.
I’ve lived in cities and countries where my spices have had to be posted to me, and once every now and then I’d receive a beautiful package of wonderfulness, and I’d hoard it all and never share what I cooked with anyone, because I love to share but there were times when all I could think about was my mother’s kitchen and the way work colleagues and school friends in the past have made fun of the words they can’t say, and then I’d think, fuck you all as I scoffed it all down.
I love this article so much, it makes me so happy and I want to hold it and it's so beautifully written. And I'm so thankful to you for having written it.
I've lived in cities and countries where my spices have had to be posted to me, and once every now and then I'd receive a beautiful package of wonderfulness, and I'd hoard it all and never share what I cooked with anyone, because I love to share but there were times when all I could think about was my mother's kitchen and the way work colleagues and school friends in the past have made fun of the words they can't say, and then I'd think, fuck you all as I scoffed it all down.
I started salivating (profusely, obviously, perhaps even drooling a little bit) when I saw that jar of pickle, and then I came to the part about the author’s name being the same as the brand of pickles and boy howdy I seem to be a really creepy person, sorry.
The thing that drives me bananas is when people assume that “ethnic food” (usually Mexican or Indian) is going to make them like, immediately shit themselves. WHAT IS THAT ABOUT? Millions of people eat these cuisines every day and they are not immediately shitting themselves after every meal. Yes, if you are on the all-steak diet, you might notice some gastrointestinal effects after eating a bean burrito or chana masala. AFTER. Hours later. That’s how digestion works. It takes time. Your small intestine is a million miles long or something.
In conclusion, people should eat more fiber and be less racist, the end.
“people should eat more fiber and be less racist”
I’m living in trivandrum though i know these spicy pickle..am too much eager to eat these types of ‘ touchings’ with all types of foods.