The culinary world is more powerful in some respects than politics. I recall in the bad old days when a certain mayor of Durban refused to allow his liberal minded daughter to invite her ‘non-white’ friends to her wedding, but was happy to serve Indian curry at the reception to an all white gathering. At various points in our political history Indian cuisine was better received than it’s people.

A frequent practice adopted to bribe custodians of a discriminatory regime was to hand around the “curry bowl”. The chilly was addictive and it worked like magic. In this way some desperate locals manoeuvred their way around a barrage of anti- Indian legislation. But the local Indians have also been accused of being very ethnocentric and chauvinistic in their food preferences isolating themselves from others through their restrictive eating habits. Whilst eager to share their cuisine they tend not to want to try out other foods. Dietary habits are restrictive. Muslims don’t eat pork and most Hindus abstain from beef or pork. Restaurants are few and not of a high standard and the best cuisine are still found in the home.

When the renowned TV personality and food specialist, Madhur Jaffery came to  Durban  to feature in Anant Singh’s new film “chutney and popcorn” and to study the food practices of our local Indian community for her forthcoming book she raised the question as to how had Indian South Africans survived and adapted their cooking styles over a century of living in  Africa?  .

A cooking legend of the ilk of Britain’s Floyd, Jaffery is known to elevate the humblest potato or even spinach to a royal status.

“When I go to the market and see a pile of crisp fresh green beans, dozens of possibilities start to buzz in my head. Should I cook then Szechuan style with garlic red pepper and soy sauce or stir-fry them with a mound of shallots and strips of pork the way I had them on a beach in Bali.

“I love aloo and pumpernickel bread she said”

Her eclecticism transcends food. She was born in Delhi, spent time in the UK and now calls New York home. A diminutive figure beautifully attired in salwar kameez with delicate manicured nails suggestive of an unhurried style and passion for perfection. She is very unlike our expectations of fat and happy cooks. I travel a lot she says and could be said to have eaten my way through the continents many times over.
On account of our long isolation from international influences Jaffery is not known widely in SA.

The BBC series Indian Cookery which features Jaffrey on canoes cruising down rivers or in markets engaging local people in cuisine and custom has made her a legend elsewhere.

I engaged her on a number of issues. How does she rate South African Indian Cuisine and what innovations make us unique from others in the Diaspora?  She found local fare here engaging and quite novel in many respects bearing little similarity to the mother country. South Africans have a dream of India, a fantasy of what they expect India to be like. They know things from a distance and tend to recreate and build on gaps in their collective memories. Mounds of so called ready mix curry powders dangerously rich with food colourants are unheard of in India. Instead each dish is distinct from the other by it’s special spices. So one may have ten or more different types of chicken, fish or vegetable dishes each called by their own name such as chicken kalya or chicken korma. There is no such thing as a curry as we commonly refer to in SA to describe Indian cuisine generally.  Life was hard for the majority of the indentured labourers who probably had little time to cook exotic meals and therefore tended to make one functional mixed masala to add to most dishes. By contrast the Gujerati and Muslim business class maintained regular contact with India and so their food patterns tended to be closer in style to the mother country. But innovations have occurred that add an African slant to our cooking. The popular mealie lagan, mealie meal roti, curried beans and samp, the bunny chow are all African inspiration.. Stopping short of curried mapona worms, fusion cooking has reached great heights on the African continent. Nowhere in the world is there the equivalent of the South African samoosa as fine and crispy as that found in Durban. But while South Africa cuisine has undergone great modifications in content and style Indian cooking maintains it’s regional distinctiveness. Jaffery notes that clothing styles have changed more easily than cooking. In Rajasthan she recalls the village women who used to be decked in 40-yard skirts with heavy headdresses have now all adopted the simple salwar kameez but the contents of the cooking pot remains unaltered. Geographical mobility is often the stimulus for culinary change.

Jaffery’s words of warning as she rushed to catch her flight “you all cook with too much oil and butter. Beware the cholesterol”.

Dr.Devi Rajab is a leading South African journalist and can be reached at:
rajab@cybertek.co.za