Seems like a certain song was just made for flash mobs – and now, Houston’s desis have stepped up to own it. A couple weekends ago, a group of desis gathered in the plaza of Sugar Land’s town square and danced their hearts out:

Kudos to the diverse crowd of individual dancers, organizations, and cohorts to make it happen! Need a translation of the lyrics, as well as the original music video? This aahsome blog has it!

Top image courtesy of Ajay Sarpeshkar

Houston has some amazing programming through the local library systems – most recently, many of the area libraries, book stores, schools and councils have come together to form Gulf Coast Reads. Back in August, I attended one of their events to hear one of Houston’s own desi authors read from her most recent work.

As a consequence, I ended up meeting Raj Patel, a medical resident based in Houston. Raj had a booth at Gulf Coast Reads promoting an aspect of the culture that he’s passionate about: the inherent healthiness of the traditional desi diets. Along with Anuja Balasubramanian and Hetal Janna of the internet channel “Show Me the Curry“, Raj has co-authored “The Healthy Indian Diet: How Traditional Foods of South Asia Help Prevent Heart Disease, Diabetes, and Cancer.”

If you’re a young desi and trying to convince your roomates, spouse, parents or family friends to try healthier versions of the foods they grew up enjoying, then this is an important book for you to read. If you’ve tried Indian foods in Hillcroft, and would like to learn to make your own, healthy version of dishes you’ve tried, then read this book.

Most books focusing on a regional and specialty cuisines offer up recipes based on nostalgia and taste, without necessarily taking kilos and cholesterol into account. It’s rare for traditional recipes to be curated with an attention to health – and if so, usually either taste is sacrificed.

“The Healthy Indian Diet” is different: it focuses as much on the science behind why traditional diets of all cultures are more healthy than their modernized counterparts that have substituted refined grains, flours, and fast foods in place of nourishing, traditional options. Perhaps the most compelling excerpt of the book is where Dr. Patel shifts the reader’s paradigm for the term “diet.” It’s not a distinct, fad effort to lose weight – rather, a “pattern of foods” consumed daily by a culture.

In this book – and unlike most cookbooks – the science of food and diets are backed up by figures and scientific studies, cited in endnotes. Leveraging his medical training, Dr. Patel has researched and documented the epidemic and sources of chronic disease, explains basic food science, and outlines the elements of a healthy Indian diet.

Sandwiched in between the science and supporting data is a spread of desi recipes from all over the subcontinent – some adjusted to take into account ingredients available in American markets, and many improved in their nutritional value, without sacrificing taste or texture. Dr. Patel makes the case for keeping ghee (clarified butter) in moderation in the diet, as well as for phasing out white rice in favor of brown.

It’s rare to find an Indian cookbook containing recipes from all over the subcontinent, both vegetarian and non-vegetarian. This book does – and it also gives a nod to American palates by including dishes such as (spiced) asparagus subji and quinoa pulao (pilaf), as well as the very traditional doi maach (Bengali fish curry) and kumro chokka (squash with black chickpeas), two of my regional Bengali favorites. Kudos to the co-authors for their thoughtful recipe choices.

The books reads easily: Dr. Patel presents facts and figures in a voice that is matter of fact yet engaging, without preaching or lapsing solely into medical jargon. It’s accessible to readers with varying levels of experience with Indian foods: those who to whom cooking and eating their desi diets is second nature, those who eat enjoy their cuisine and want to learn how to make the recipes, as well as those who are connected to desi food and culture out of appreciation – and wish to learn how to cook various dishes.

Most importantly, this book offers those who love their traditional diets a perspective on how to keep enjoying their food, while updating their recipes’ ingredients choices. This isn’t a cookbook, or a diet guide – this is a book for health, and for life.

Top image “market life, kerala” by eenar_6

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In the midst of thousands racing for a cure to cure breast cancer this weekend, I glimpsed this group sporting T-shirts with the slogan “Rajinder’s Angels.”

Led by Jatinder Kaur Cheema, “Rajinder’s Angels” have walked every year for the past four years in memory of her mother, Rajinder Kaur Cheema. Of her mother, Jatinder says:

…she lived from September 4, 1957 to July 3, 2009. She was diagnosed with lung cancer which spread through her whole body. We have no family history [of cancer]. She never smoked. She was a stay at home mom.

She was a really courageous individual, and while she was undergoing her treatments, she never let anyone feel that she was diagnosed. She would tell everyone there was nothing wrong with her. She always told us she was going to take the cancer out of her body. But unfortunately that didn’t happen.

We have been walking in her remembrance for 4 years. I never realized how many people are effected by this disease until I personally went through it.

The team walks in other 5Ks in remembrance of Rajinder, and encourages everyone to join them in honoring the strength and memories of their loved ones who battle various cancers.

Shunya Theatre’s run of six performances of “The Prophet and the Poet” by Vijay Padaki begins tonight.

It’s worth your while to take in a performance: Shunya focuses on bringing alive Padaki’s portrayal of Gandhi and Tagore’s ideals and points of view – often diverging – written in letters to each other over the course of 25 years. Padaki will join in the “talk back” that director Yaksha Bhatt, the cast and crew will engage the audience in following tonight’s performance. The playwright is in Houston this week, guiding the troupe through their final dress rehearsals and attending the premiere.

I was invited to sit in on last night’s dress rehearsal – and once again, I’m awed by how a non-profit theater company with a desi focus has sustained itself in Houston, nearly a decade since its inception. As I’ve mentioned before, the artists of Shunya Theatre value and nurture their creativity.

It’s a true labor of love.

***

In an age when the art of letter writing has been supplanted by emails and texts, the cast and crew make current a relationship sustained through hand-written letters. AbhiRoy Cheema and Aurko Dutt act the roles of scholars examining Gandhi and Tagore’s letters, respectively. Anjana Menon weaves their correspondence together and offers historical insights, as the omniscient narrator.

The prophet and the poet’s correspondence stands on its own as the main character of the play. Padaki removes focus from Gandhi and Tagore’s renowned personalities with a number of devices: rather than their names, oblique references to Gandhi and Tagore’s historical socio-political roles in the play’s title, and writing parts not for the venerables themselves, but rather for scholars of their letters.

***

With gently-shared insights and a wealth of knowledge and nuances of history, the playwright shared some final thoughts at last night’s dress rehearsal for making a solid show exquisite – then proceeded to invite the troupe to perform outside of Houston. The cast and crew’s eyes lit up with delight and purpose, squaring their shoulders to take on the challenge.

I’m not surprised. With a minimal set, understated staging, subtle lighting and understated music, Gandhi and Tagore’s correspondence remains the focus – just enough, and as it should be.

I was mesmerized. Even the steady rain drumming against Barnvelder‘s roof receded from my notice – and that’s no mean feat, given how sweet it is to hear rainfall after months of drought.

History is often presented as a dry collection of dates and facts – here’s your opportunity to find yourself present in the past through the beauty of art. It’s my hope that the Houston audience enjoys “The Prophet and the Poet” and actively supports Shunya Theatre continue in “providing a voice to the South Asian American experience through the visual and performing arts” as they take the show on the road.

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Tickets are available through Shunya Theatre‘s website.

Top image by Lynn Ghose Cabrera

It’s raining – at long last, it’s really raining in Houston. After a dearth of precipitation during the spring and summer, and an alarming number of wildfires (some quite close to the metro area), it’s a welcome respite from the season’s heat.

If you find yourself in the vicinity of Memorial Drive today, or the Meenakshi Temple, in Pearland – see if you can catch a glimpse of a peacock’s celebration. A glorious site – nearly as refreshing as the rain itself.

Top image by rejectreality.

From our Flickr pool and elsewhere, images of and by American and diasporic desis. Today, I celebrate all of us who are desi and American – and Houston, my home.

Happy Birthday, America!

The Rockets red glare: Dhol Beat International performing at a Houston Rockets game earlier this year. YouTube video by Mjevtha.

Bright Stars: Somehow, this picture by Mitali Mooerjee reminds me of the stars on the stars and stripes:

I’m so envious of anyone getting rain right now – the drought in Houston and our environs is no joking matter. But these blue monsoon clouds in in Kuntal Gupta’s photograph are a balm to my spirit.

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Top Image: Beautiful Sari, by abbyladybug.

I dreamed about India again last night.

One of the women I grew up with is getting married next May, so in my dream I was tagging along with Varsha and her mom, winding our way through sari shops, assessing fabric with the flip of two fingers, taking cups of tea before talking prices, sweating in the sunshine, drowsing in the car ride home. I woke up wishing it had been real.

It’s been five years since I was in India, and everything about my life has changed since then.

Five years ago, I was riding to the Agra train station in a hot car with my parents, full sun beating down on the battered roof of the old vehicle. A day spent in wonder: my first look at the Taj Mahal, an entire afternoon touring Fatepur Sikri, my mom translating the Urdu of our nearly-toothless guide for my father and me. Five years ago, a daily parade of salwar kameez and cups of chai and afternoon naps with the sounds of Mumbai in the background. Dreaming in Hindi and devouring the kind of mangoes you just can’t get here in the States.

We flew to Jaipur and baked ourselves sightseeing in the pink city. We spent half a day in the art museum in Delhi. We ambled through the poorer parts of Amristar, visiting the neighborhood where my father grew up, standing in the very room where he was born. I bought books from sidewalk vendors. I ate the best garlic pickle of my life. I cried when we visited the Golden Temple at dusk. I drank Kingfisher and ate masala potato chips, discussing politics with my uncle. I wrote voraciously, the whole time.

That trip was my first visit to India in over a decade and my first time there with both of my parents since I was a baby. My first time traveling with my parents as an adult.

Ironically, the logistics of the trip rendered me something of a child again—dependent, latched to Mom and Dad, phone-less, computer-less, out of my element and feeling conspicuously foreign. I am first-generation and consider myself American first: Southern-born and still in possession of an accent. My parents taught me English first, so my Hindi is poor. At the time my hair was short—chin-length—and my ears were, gasp!, unpierced; plus, by Indian standards, I’m considered tall—5’7’—so I kind of, literally, stand out.

But instead of reverting to adolescent ways, those unmitigated hours in India with my parents built a new way of being between us, one that acknowledged my adulthood without minimizing our family unit. It was the most time we had spent together since I was a kid, even passing some nights all piled into the same bed. We talked and talked and talked; I had so many questions for them, about everything I saw. It was, as if, for the first time, I considered the possibility that my parents had had lives before me, before each other even, and that they had stories to tell. And that I wanted to listen.

A month to the day that we got back from India, my father called his doctor, complaining of chest pains and shortness of breath. His doctor sent him to the
emergency room of a nearby hospital, where he would die less than three weeks later. He was sixty-four years old.

What nobody tells you about grief is that, when someone dies, they take things with them. There is collateral damage of sorts, the remnants of things left behind, tainted in a way by their association with the dead. The restaurant it’s hard to go to without him. The hair you will feel guilty keeping short, because he always preferred it long. The literal and metaphorical ocean that will open up between you and the subcontinent where your last memories of your father lie. That you will, on some level, resent the hell out of Father’s Day for the rest of your life.

~

My earliest memory is vague, as I suppose early memories often are. I see the old rotary-dial phone from my parents bedroom, with the fancy carved handle and golden finger-holds. I see my mother in the polyester turquoise nightgown she wore in the wintertime, which had a top zipper and quilted front. And I see my father, crying over the news of his own father’s death.

I was too young then, just three, to do much more than be scared, to inadvertently make a movie in my brain, to wet the bed despite having been potty trained for over a year. Now I feel retrograde compassion for my father, marbled with ironic strands of empathy. Since time and space are jumbled in memory, as they are in dreams, I experience the irrepressible urge to go back and comfort him, to tell him, “Papa, I know how you feel.”

~

After five years, grief is a deep, deep bruise that the person whom you adore is no longer in the world. You may have grown your hair long and pierced your ears for him, you may have learned to make his favorite foods (including rajma chowal & gajar achar), you may well think you are doing him proud, but you cannot see him smile or hear him sing or call him while he works a night shift, like you used to. You are still living your life, changing and delighting and hurting every day, but your father is frozen in time, his life is done, and more than anything, that breaks your heart.

Top image “Know your DAD” by Ragesh Vasudevan

Imagine this: You are far from anything familiar and dear to you, in a new city you will learn to love, and eventually call ‘home.’ The heat and humidity is much like the place you left, where your family still lives.

In a corner of the city, you discover a place where merchants are selling the food and flavors you grew up eating, the food that nourished you in your childhood. Shop windows display clothing of every imaginable vibrant hue, adorned with the most delicate beading and embroidery – fit for a wedding, perhaps even royalty.

It’s a street lined with silk and sequins, dripping with diamonds and gold, redolent of spices and incense.

For Houston’s South Asians, it’s the Mahatma Gandhi District – an area primarily defined by the establishments located along Hillcroft and Harwin Streets, between Westpark Tollway to the north, and U.S. 59 to the south. Those who have lived in Houston longer than the district’s designation still refer to the area simply as “Hillcroft.”

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Growing up and coming of age in America’s heartland, such a place was unimaginable to me. A large concentration of desi establishments – where my family could go shop on the weekends for groceries, clothing, a meal, even jewelry – was simply a dream. My father had told me stories of shopping on Devon Street in Chicago, and I vaguely knew that New York City had such streets of establishments for distinct regions and states of India – not just a single, pan-desi district.
Still, I yearned for the community that a whole group of desi establishments implied.

My earliest memories are of the little city in northern Missouri that my family moved to, when I was still in preschool. My family was one of the few in town of Indian origin: there was a Gujarati family, a Kannadiga family, and us – the Bengali family.

Like most American families, we shopped for basics at the local supermarket: eggs and dairy, fruit and vegetables, and poultry. That’s where the similarity of my family’s grocery shopping began and ended with our neighbors’.

I remember my mother carefully reviewing advertisements mailed to her by a desi grocer located in Chicago, checking prices for ingredients that simply weren’t stocked by local grocers. She would list the items that the family had to purchase in bulk periodically in order to complete satisfying, nutritious meals she’d learned from her own mother: dals, spices, whole wheat and chic pea flours. She’d sigh over the sales on imported fish and traditional sweets and savories made fresh weekly in New York and flown into Chicago, leaving these perishables off the list. Then she would mail her order to the store. When a package arrived by mail a couple weeks later, I would watch her refill huge jars with several months’ stock of staples.

Watching her organize our bounty, I felt a bit like the Ingalls family and other settlers of the Midwestern prairie – like them, we too had to carefully plan and buy in bulk. It is unfathomable to me today, here in Houston, in the new millennium, when all things desi are pervasive and popular – but in that time and place, there were no niche grocery stores catering to South Asians within easy driving distance, as there are today in Hillcroft as well as many of Houston’s suburbs. Most immigrant desi families stuffed suitcases with provisions as they moved between continents, carrying enough for themselves, relatives and friends who beseeched them to bring the more elusive, expensive spices.

**********

As my had mother assumed the role was to managing our family’s stock of staples, my father took it upon himself to hunt down more ephemeral essentials – every week, unflagging in his quest.
There were some foods and ingredients that we did without or substituted the best we could – or, made ourselves: specialty freshwater fish found only among the Ganges’ tributaries, and certain snacks and sweets traditionally made by bhujiawalas and confectioners.

I remember weekend jaunts to the riverfront with my father, scouting out the day’s freshest catch from the local fisherman. The Missouri River’s yield of very mild-flavored species, appropriately cooked into a curry, kept my parents’ yearning for fish at bay. But as my own fondness for fish grew, I realized that my parents missed the distinct flavors of the fish that could only be found half-way across the world: hilsa, koi, catla, chital.

Vegetables were less of a problem to source: what we couldn’t find at the grocery store or find a substitute, my father grew in the garden. In spite of combating the ravages of wild rabbits, his yield of okra, chili peppers and bitter gourd flourished. He also grew yellow crookneck squash, for their yield of gourds as well their delicate blossoms. Gently coated with a spiced chick pea flour batter, then deep fried, the squash blossoms were a wondrous accompaniment to a meal of khichuri, blackened eggplant, and fried fish.

Snacks and sweets were again my mother’s specialty. She made my dad’s favorites, and in the process tasting them, I became a confirmed bhojan bilashi – a foodie. Kucho nimki, labongo latika, tel muri and malpua are just some of the tastes of traditional Bengali savories for which I was lucky enough to develop a taste at a young age.

My mom’s shingaras are what I love best. Enjoying them has never prevented me from eating the less complex samosas that are ubiquitous today, whether offered by a desi grocer or a mainstream eatery. But they should: filled with spiced cauliflower, potatoes and peas, with a delicate home-made dough, they are far superior to any other samosa I have tasted.

**********

A family friend in Kansas City gave us momentous news: a desi grocer was opening in his neighborhood. And so, the semi-annual mailed order from our Chicago grocer was supplanted by a trip every few months to visit friends and the desi grocery.

By this still-young age, I had visited my grandparents and extended family exactly once – and of all that made an impression on me, it was the sights, sounds and smells of typical open-air desi markets that I remembered vividly. I marveled that the same sights and smells of those markets were compacted into this minute desi grocery store in the middle of America. The aroma of spices and incense permeating the store was also oddly reminiscent of my mother’s cooking – only magnified, and more complex, with the spices of many desi cuisines meeting, mingling.

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Just as I entered my teens, my family moved to Oklahoma. We were delighted to discover not just one, but three desi grocers in our new city – all within half an hour’s driving distance of each other and our new home. One grocer even sold our family’s favorite hilsa fish, flash-frozen at the source and shipped immediately to various communities in the diaspora.

Our city was also large enough to support an Indian restaurant, with offerings one will find at many Indian restaurant buffets: onion and spinach pakoras, saag paneer, a tandoori or curried chicken, served with rice and naan, and gulab jamuns for dessert.

Three desi groceries and a restaurant: that implied a sizable desi community. And indeed there was a small, tight-knit community, consisting of people from across entire subcontinent. In short order, we met and became friends with a sizable community of Bengalis. For the first time, I had classmates from all over the subcontinent: these kids parents had emigrated from all over India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.

An established community meant cultural and religious gatherings – and always, food. The lone Indian restaurant couldn’t cater every occasion – not that my mother and other accomplished cooks of the community would allow it. After all, their cooking was best, and most authentic – their food was made with the freshest of ingredients, without cutting corners – and with love.

Whether it was an official pan-Indian celebration of Holi or Republic Day, or a simply a few families getting together for dinner, my desi palate broadened as I came of age in Oklahoma. At home in America, or visiting my relatives in India, we typically ate what we knew – the recipes handed down through our family, across generations. It’s as I came of age in Oklahoma that I first sampled and grew to love the diversity of Indian cuisine: our Tamil friends’ idlis with sambar, Punjabi nan khatai, and Assamese masar tenga.

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Going away to college brought perspective to my desi palate. The dorm’s cafeteria devoted a section to offering the world’s cuisines for both the aspiring bon vivants and homesick international students. I lived for the day of the week when they offered Indian food – which happened to include a creditable version of chola dal. The same section of the cafeteria was occasionally transformed into a self-serve stir fry line . Rather than making an Asian-style stir fry, I’d make my mother’s chicken or shrimp curry with a side of spiced vegetables, just as she’d taught me.

There’s always at least one international grocer located by university campuses – ours was within walking distance of the dorms. To my surprise, it wasn’t just the foreign and ethnic students I’d find wandering the aisles pursuing their home country’s flavors: many of my mainstream classmates could be found exploring the aisles, experimenting with flavors. Those who had grown up in major American cities, where mainstream and ethnic cultures had already met, intersected and melded, missed the variety of food they grew up with – and were doing their best to replicate those dishes. We were all homesick for the same foods and flavors. It was the first time in my young adult life I discovered that perhaps the cuisine one grew up with could be appreciated by people other than who claimed the cuisine automatically, by virtue of heritage.

I had my first taste of fusion desi flavors at an Indian bistro located some distance from campus. By the time my I was a senior, a now-defunct hole-in-the-wall opened up directly across the street from my apartment complex, offering several desi-inspired dishes on their vegan menu. With little time and inclination to cook during my capstone semester, I made many a meal of my favorite item – their samosas.

Graduation and my first professional job found me moving next door to NASA, where I discovered I discovered a clutch of desi establishments on Highway 3. There were two desi groceries (selling samosas every day!), a salon offering threading, and a shop selling salwars and saris. I’d cheerfully drive over most weekends just to munch on samosas — I hadn’t given up the habit from college, and revel in the novelty of so many desi establishments within a few yards of each other.

I was content. I thought I’d discovered my cultural mecca. Mind you, I had just moved to the Houston area – I had not yet explored all that the metropolis had to offer.

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It’s entirely a quirk of fate that I found Hillcroft. It was during a weekend that I went exploring around the city, acquainting myself with more of it than just my neighborhood.

I remember taking the wrong exit as I attempted to return to Clear Lake, after exploring inner loop Houston – instead of ending up on the Gulf Freeway, I ended up driving south on the Eastex. It was the end of a long day – I was tired, hungry, and running low on gas. I was lost. I took the first exit that I could, intending to find a gas station – which I found, at the corner of Hillcroft. I filled up. My car was replete, but I was not. Hunger had blunted my innate sense of direction, and I took a wrong turn coming out of the station onto Hillcroft, traveling north of the Westpark Tollway.

As I drove that stretch of Hillcroft, my jaw dropped. From my car, as far as I could see were displays of saris, salwars and sherwanis. The names of a few other stores suggested offerings of diamonds and gold jewelry, and watches. I saw desi grocers and threading salons. And even though it was a Houston summer, my windows were rolled up and my radio had long been kaput, I know that I smelled the most fragrant curry emanating from the restaurants, and heard a bamboo flute playing a desi version of “Over the Rainbow.” I had pulled up in front of a restaurant, so I went in and ordered up a meal, and sat basking in the wonder of so much desiness on one street. It really could exist, this cultural nexus I had only imagined as a child, and doubted I’d ever experience in my corner of the world.

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It is not just for my own needs and wants that I am thankful that Hillcroft exists. If you ask them, my parents are likely to say that it was a pleasure to search for those elusive ingredients of our family’s heritage. They did it as much for their own enjoyment of food as they did for the education of their children’s palate. Because of Hillcroft, it is easier for desi Houstonians to do the same for their own young families than it was for my parents.

I’m glad – though my parents have always enjoyed their pursuit of food, preserving what they loved of our family’s heritage in places devoid of any desi infrastructure had its hardships. I remember it with fondness, but it had to be a lonely, relentless endeavor for them.

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We are far from the places dear to our ancestors, in a city we have learned to love, and now call home. The heat and humidity is much like the places we emigrated from, where our kinfolk still live.

In a corner of our city, we have our established niche: clothiers, restaurateurs, diamond merchants, gold jewelers, grocers, travel agents and beauticians. It’s where we eat food we grew up with, relax with a cup of chai, and buy groceries to make more. We sit there, reminiscing of our childhoods and imagining the lives of our family and forbears, halfway around the world. We talk of football, both soccer and American. We chat of our children’s achievements, our hopes for them – and of our own hopes for the future. We bring our non-desi friends here, and introduce them to the wonders of what we know and love.

It’s a street lined with silk and sequins, dripping with diamonds and gold, redolent of spices and incense.

It’s Hillcroft, Houston, U.S.A.

Top image: Five spice mix (panch phoron), by Kaberi Kar Gupta.

Spring in Houston usually brings unrelenting heat and humidity. We’ve been lucky so far this year: it’s been hot, to be sure, but without the accompanying humidity that’s thick enough to cut with a talwar.

We desis don’t let a little heat bother us. The weather was just hot and dry enough to still enjoy the outdoors the last few weekends, so I’ve been out and at every opportunity. A beautiful breeze blew among the trees during each festival I’ve been to lately, a sweet ribbon of cool air cutting through the first true heat of the season.

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If you stopped by the Houston International Festival (iFest), you may have seen the Network of Indian Professionals‘ (NetIP) fashion show and booth profiling India’s progress. (Full disclosure: I serve on the current board of NetIP Houston.)

Image courtesy of NetIP Houston

Also at iFest, Hybrid Rythms performed one of their high energy performances:

by Navin Mediwala

Of course, there were numerous performances and displays profiling desi culture at ifest, since their theme profiled the Silk Road countries this year. The crowning glory of the festival was Red Baraat‘s performance on the last night of iFest. It was a fitting culmination to two weekends’ festivities: they had the audience on their feet and dancing!

image courtesy of Julio Cabrera

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The fantastic weather continued this past weekend. A friend and I had a lovely browse through various midtown resale and antique shops, ending up at last at The Find Fashion Market, hosted by Boheme Care & Wine Bar. Imagine my delight when I spied a desi girl from Atlanta, Sarah David, representing for a good cause at one particular table: sales of the hand-crafted necklaces benefit Ugandan women through the non-profit Akola Project. Sarah’s just visiting this weekend, so I hope she had a great time here, and enjoyed the lovely weather. Come back and visit us again soon!

Last but not least – Houston’s first ever food truck festival, Haute Wheels, launched this weekend. Phuchka stands are to the desh what food trucks are to Houston – and lately, Houston’s food trucks have gone gourmet. At this weekend’s festival were more than a few sriricha-infused dishes that pleased my desi palate. But what truly caught my attention are the desi-inspired foods served up by It’s A Wrap!, a mobile bistro with offerings such as samosas and a chicken tikka masala wraps.

I wish I could comment on their food…the line for the truck was one of the consistently one of the longest, and it didn’t diminish at all during the time I was at the festival. I did pass several patrons who had purchased their food – and let me tell you, my mouth’s still watering, a day later! Kudos to Guli Essa, proprietor and chef, for keeping the line moving during the festival.

Have you been enjoying the great weather, too? Have pictures? Share them with us – we just might feature them!

Top image of NetIP Houston’s fashion show at the Houston International Festival by Kartik Subramanian.

It’s that time of the year! Pull out your bathing suits and BBQ grills, and indulge in the joys of summer! Every year I look forward to BBQ time not only because I love the smoky flavor and texture of BBQ meat and veggies, but also because it a wonderful time to spend with friends and family, sipping on a chilled beer or lemonade, on a lazy summer afternoon. But I must confess that I am a little disappointed with the lack of variety in the food cooked. You see the usual hot dogs and burgers being grilled, but it isn’t often you see a variation in the spices or the kind of meat grilled (and for the poor vegetarians in the group there isn’t much hope anyway). Being a spice lover (and not a heavy meat eater unless it is rich with spices), I feel obliged to make a post on the desi varieties of grilled meat and veggies we enjoy back in India.

Traditionally, meat is grilled in a Tandoor using charcoal. The flavor of the marinated meat combined with the smoky flavor of the coal gives tandoori food a unique flavor, almost impossible to replicate in an electric or gas oven. But, we here are lucky because we have our amazing bare bones charcoal grills that will give us the exact flavor (ok, almost) we are looking for  

So let’s get started with the basics and once you have that down, you’re well on your way to making some delectable tandoori meat/veggies. Let’s begin with a simple but popular chicken tikka. This dish is usually boneless, skinless chicken, marinated in yogurt and spices, and grilled in a tandoor. The marinade is made of yogurt, ginger and garlic paste, cumin powder, coriander powder, garam masala, salt, lemon, and red chilli powder or cayenne pepper. The chicken is marinated in this mixture (preferably overnight) and then you’re all set to grill it with a brush of butter for added flavor.

The fun part is that you can play with the kind of meat (lamb, beef, chicken, even fish tastes great tandoori style!), and the marinade, by changing the spice base to fresh herbs like mint and coriander, or adding some onion paste to the meat, etc. How you want your marinade to taste is entirely up to you. For instance, I use cream instead of yogurt for a malai kabab or fresh green herbs and green chillies (whatever I can get my hands on) for a haryali kabab. Kababs/tikkas are served hot with a dash of lemon and some sliced up onions on the side, or with a cool mint chutney. So, pick a day, pick a flavor, and get creative

Here is my recipe for chicken tikka:

1. 1 lb skinless, boneless chicken chunks
2. Yogurt- 1.5 cups
3. Ginger- garlic paste- 1.5 tbsp
4. Cumin powder- 1.5 tsp
5. Coriander powder- 1.5 tsp
6. Garam Masala- 1. 5 tsp
7. Red chilli powder – 2 tsp (more if you like it really spicy, less if you don’t)
8. Lemon juice- 2 tbsp
9. Salt- 1.5 tsp (or per your taste)

Mix the ingredients together and let sit overnight in the refrigerator, covered with plastic or aluminium wrap. Grill on a charcoal pit for best results until well done on all sides. Serve hot with a dash of lemon and mint chutney (store bought works great).

If you have a better recipe, I am all ears!