On Adapting. And Creating

Gobi Manchurian

So the idea for today’s post came from this picture that was posted in one of the WhatsApp groups I belong to, and is an ad for a new restaurant. Called FaceBhook.

I delighted at seeing it, because this is what I have spent years studying – Englishes that have diversified across the world; how English has evolved because of its explosive spread and become incredibly multi-faceted. How different cultures and contexts have adopted and adapted the language to suit their needs. And I think what thrills me the most about studying World Englishes is recognizing the creativity involved in making a foreign tongue one’s own. And then in punning in the language.

And has this ever happened in India. Indian English is the most widely-studied international variety of English. World Englishes studies first started gaining recognition in the 1960s, and over the past five decades, have proliferated tremendously. At the heart of WE studies has always been the push to understand the natural transformation of the language, the push to recognize, celebrate, and legitimize the many forms of English that exist today, to move away from the simplistic native/non-native dichotomy. And to recognize the tremendous creativity involved in the evolution of a language to suit a different linguistic and cultural context.

In India, English has been, and continues to be, a symbol of modernization, a key to success, to mobility. A knowledge of English was equated to the possession of the famed Aladdin’s lamp by Braj Kachru, a very early proponent of the World Englishes movement, because of the power it affords its speakers. Now this power is hardly equally available to all of India’s 1.3 billion citizens; nope, it has widened the huge gap between the haves and the have nots. While it is easy for India’s middle and upper classes to access this language of power, it remains inaccessible to a huge proportion of the population.

But this hasn’t stopped them from using it however they can. The creativity of those in India who don’t have easy access to the language, yet have found incredibly creative ways to make it theirs, to make it work for them, is truly, to me, mind boggling.

So back to the WhatsApp picture I got.

“Bhook” is a Hindi word meaning “hunger.” Now, it isn’t clear whether the creator of the sign/name of the restaurant realized the play with the words face and hunger – in advertising this restaurant as one where one can “face” one’s “bhook,” or whether they simply played with book in English and bhook in Hindi being phonologically close enough to indulge in word play. I have no idea, nor does it matter. Because what it is, is creative. And this is what Indians who use English, however little they may have access to, have continued to do. As a sociolinguist, I absolutely thrill at seeing the inventiveness apparent in signs that frequently punctuate my surroundings when I am in India. Naturally, many, many of these make it to some social media post and spread – possibly more as a source of humor than a source of pride or wonder. For me, it is the latter. Creative linguistic adaptation at its best.

Here’s another example. Probably won’t take my children here. But hats off to the creator of the sign.

Adjusting, accommodating, or adapting in India is hardly just about language. It is a way of life: adjusting to very happily serve several unexpected dinner guests (happened ALL the time when I was growing up, my mum never broke a sweat, literal or figurative); the family all sleeping higgledy-piggledy on makeshift sheet-beds on the floor, bumping into the furniture pushed out of the way. Because we had four unexpected guests who wanted to stay the night/several nights descend upon us (this was always fun, if somewhat uncomfortable. I would give a lot for my kids to experience such impromptu slumber parties); or snuggling up to strangers in a train or on a crowded bus, or in a long line in a small store. We adjust and accommodate. 

I am far less accommodating today than either of my parents is. I have, instead, accommodated to a more western way of life. And this fact is a source of some angst.

And culinary accommodation? Well the culinary landscape of India is incredibly multifaceted thanks largely to being colonized at various times during out history.  From Central Asian invaders to the Mughals to the British, everyone has left their mark on India. And India adapts. Even gastronomically.

So with all this culinary adaption, I cannot not give you a recipe for a dish that is so quintessentially Indian today, but one that has adapted and adopted elements of Chinese cuisine. Indian-Chinese Gobi Manchurian. Gobi is cauliflower in Hindi. Why Manchurian? I have absolutely no idea. A dish of battered and fried cauliflower coated in a delicious sauce with copious amounts of garlic, chilli, ginger, and cilantro. It bears little resemblance to Chinese cuisine from any Chinese province that I have been fortunate enough to experience. Well, maybe some resemblance. It does use soy, and relies on a combination of flavors, sweet, spicy, sour, and salty. But how it combines these elements of taste are entirely Indian.

Bitter it is not. But the beer that should accompany it sure is.

Stories of the origin of Gobi Manchurian are as varied as recipes for the dish itself. And it is ubiquitous in India; while high-end establishments pooh-pooh it today, it appears on the menus of most er…regular restaurants and bars across the country; it is also a street food, commonly available on street carts – which advertise it as anything from Gopi Menchuri to Kopi Menjoori, with the specific phonemes in the two words giving away the linguistic background of the vendor. More evidence of adaptation.

I make it a point of eating it everywhere I go when I am in India. Bit of a joke with my family.

So what I am giving you here is my version;  this recipe, more than any other I have given you so far, is one you can play with. My combination of salt, sweet, hot, and sour come from tomato paste, soy sauce, honey, green chillies, and a wee bit of vinegar. Instead of tomato paste, honey and vinegar, you could certainly use ketchup. I am giving you what I like. In the theme of today’s post, adjust it to suit your palate.

Gobi Manchurian

Ingredients (serves 6 as a snack; vegetarian; vegan)

1.      500g of cauliflower cut up into small bite-sized florets. This is about 4 cups of cauliflower

2.     4 Tbsp finely chopped garlic

3.     3 scallions, chopped, both the green and the white parts

4.     3-4 green chillies chopped (more or less, adjusted to your palate)

5.     2-3 Tbsp finely chopped ginger. In this recipe, please don’t use dry ground ginger. It simply won’t taste the same

6.     1 cup chopped onion

7.     3 cups of vegetable oil to fry the cauliflower

8.     ½ cup of chopped cilantro

9.     2 Tbsp oil to sauté garlic, ginger, chillies, and onions

For the sauce:

10.  2 Tbsp tomato paste

11.  3 Tbsp honey

12.  3 Tbsp soy sauce

13.  1 Tbsp vinegar

14.  1-2 Tbsp water

This should yield about half a cup of sauce. If you’d like to use tomato ketchup to provide the sweet, tomato, and sour components, replace the tomato paste, honey, and vinegar with 5 Tbsp of tomato ketchup.

For the batter:

15.  ¾ cup of all purpose flour

16.  ½ cup corn starch

17.  1 tsp salt

18.  2 tsp Kashmiri chilli powder – for color and flavor, but no heat

19.  1 cup water

Method

1.     Heat the oil in a heavy-bottomed pot while you are making the sauce and batter.

2.     Make the sauce by mixing all the ingredients for the sauce together. Keep aside.

3.     Make the batter by whisking all the ingredients for the batter together. It should be a fairly thick batter to coat the cauliflower florets.

4.     Coat the cauliflower in the batter and fry in batches on medium heat.  Depending on the size of your florets, it should take 3-4 minutes to fry each batch. For the last minute of frying, increase the heat to high to allow the cauliflower to crisp. Be sure to reduce the heat again before putting the next batch of cauliflower in so it doesn’t brown too quickly. Put the fried cauliflower aside for a few minutes while you get the rest of the ingredients ready. Could you eat the fried cauliflower just like this? Absolutely, but trust me, it will taste so much better in a few minutes.

5.     Heat 2 Tbsp of oil (you can use the same oil you fried the cauli in) in a wok if you have one. If you don’t, a skillet will do just fine.

6.     Put in all the chopped garlic, ginger, chillies, and scallion whites. Saute for about 2-3 minutes on high heat.

7.     Now put in the sauce, cook for an additional 2-3 minutes, also on high heat. This allows some of the flavors to marry and the sauce to thicken slightly.

8.     Now put in the fried cauliflower, scallion greens, chopped cilantro, stir together for a minute and serve piping hot. With a mug of beer.