Indo-Canadian Fusion

When I had my own place and started cooking for someone else other than myself, I did not have any experience in cooking at all. My grandmother and my mother shielded me from spending time in fiery hot kitchen, and hoped ” Oh, she will learn when she gets married”. I eventually learned, but after shedding lots of tears, and after producing a lot of bland meals. My husband was very understanding about my cooking skills, he said, ” Oh, that tastes great!” At least he was getting some ready food! But I myself was not happy. I am the offspring of a family who takes pride in their culinary skills, I can not let them down! On the other hand, I had hard time eating the stuff I was spending so much time and energy for. So I promised myself to be a better chef, and started following some recipe-books and magazines. Many years ago I remember my neighbour used to subscribe a cookery magazine from South India, titled ” Indian Cookery”. I started borrowing that from her. I also had access to ” Femina” which had a cooking section. Internet was far away; I also used to ask the ladies next door who had a lot more experience than me, whenever I wanted to cook something special, but got stuck.

My one bitter experience was cooking chick peas. Still now people in India rarely use canned food. I knew, chick peas needed to be soaked in water overnight before boiling in the morning. Once I invited a friend and decided to cook Chick Peas curry North Indian style. I did not realize the importance of soaking overnight. I soaked for hours, and then started boiling for hours and hours. I got so frustrated, but the boiling for hours did not give me the right result, the chick peas stayed kind of hard. Nothing helped. In North America, people don’t face that kind of problems, because canned chickpeas and lentils and all kinds of beans sit on the shelves of grocery stores, people don’t care about soaking and boiling them for hours. But I still do it; I am still not attracted to canned food, unless the fresh is not available in the country. A tip for boiling chick-peas – add some baking soda.

The way I look at cooking, my Bengali-Canadian fusion would be making Bengali food, but saving time and simplifying the process by using all kinds of gadgets available in Canada.  Traditional Indian cooking used to be done mostly on stove-top – stir-frying, deep-frying, boiling, steaming, making sauces. The techniques which I am using in recent years, are baking, micro-waving, slow-cooking, and barbecuing. The coolest thing about the recent techniques are, you do not need to hover around the stove, you may leave the food get done without giving much attention..

What are the most popular dishes in Canada right now? Which cooking is the most favourite? Which restaurants are attracting the majority of the people, younger generation and the elderly?

Pizza might be  the most common and most popular food everywhere in the world right now. It is cheap, it is yummy, it is easy to make. The most favourite cuisine of my family is Thai; Chinese and Mexican come next. The best recipes for our taste in Thai are Pad Thai, Red Curry, Green Curry, Mango Salad. In Chinese we will choose Chicken ( could be other meat) Chow Mien, Sweet and Sour Chicken, Chilli Chicken or Chilli Fish. For Mexican, we recommend Burrito, Fish-Taco. Guacemoli is their authentic dip. I had been to Thailand, I had been to Mexico, I am planning to visit China. But, living in Canada, we get to experience almost all kinds of food from almost every country if you are open to food-experiences.

I have learnt to cook most of those exotic dishes, thanks to Food TV channel and Gusto TV network; my take on those dishes may not be perfect, but they taste well.

Baked Salmon 

Ingredients:

Fresh Salmon Pieces – 6

Tandoori Masala (available in all grocery-stores, and Indian speciality stores) – 2 tablespoons

Turmeric Powder – 2 tsps.

Chilli Powder – 1 tsps. (according to taste)

Salt – according to taste

Mango pieces from Mango chutney – 2 pieces ( This is my idea to soften the fish. To me, Salmon tastes a little rough. I got compliments with the dish by using this unique ingredient)

Oil ( I used Olive) – 2tbsps.

• Coat Salmon pieces with all the spices, salt, and with 1 tbsp. oil.
• I used a iron skillet and got it really hot on the stove.
• Pour 1tbsp. of oil in the skillet
• i had 2 pieces of Salmon at a time and shallow-fry them in the skillet
• Turn when one side is cooked
• Remove when done.
• Arrange the fishes in a baking tray and cover with foil.
• Put in the oven and bake at 350
• Enjoy!