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When India Speaks Through Its Food

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By JEFF HOUCK | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 28, 2007

TAMPA - Suvir Saran is wearing a soft, satisfied smile.

The chef and owner of the New York City restaurant Dévi is enjoying lunch at Cilantro on 56th Street North in Temple Terrace only a few hours before he has to drive south to give a demonstration at the Publix Apron's Cooking School in Sarasota.

Before him on a plate is a dosa, a long, thin, delicate rolled crepe native to southern India that is made with rice and urad bean batter. That explains the smile. Each bite for him is like a little visit home.

"This is what I crave," he says between bites. "Every few weeks, all I want is dosa."

That's not to say that he doesn't appreciate American cuisine. His second cookbook, "American Masala: 125 New Classics From My Home Kitchen," explores ways in which familiar American dishes can be rediscovered through introduction of spices and cooking techniques that are native to his home country.

Born in New Delhi, India, Saran began his professional career in art. After studying at the Sir J.J. School of Arts in Mumbai, he moved to New York City in 1993 to study at the School of Visual Arts and later became a buyer for Bergdorf Goodman. At night, he would cook elaborate meals for friends and food lovers who eventually urged him to teach classes and cater events.

In 1997, Saran joined the staff of New York University's Department of Food and Nutrition. In 1999, New York Magazine featured his Orange-Mango Souffle With Candied Mango Peel and Pomegranate Seeds on the cover. He also cooked the first Indian meal ever served at Carnegie Hall for a 1997 event honoring the 50th anniversary of India's independence.

That led to the 2004 opening of Dévi in Manhattan, which earned a one-star rating in the Michelin Guide New York City 2007 and a three-star rating from New York Magazine.

Merging the two country's culinary cultures is a constant theme in his cooking. During a recent visit to Tampa, Saran talked about how Americans are moving more toward India's focus on seasonal cooking while India is moving more toward America's junk-food diet.

You've talked before about how, even within your own family, you try to talk about traditional Indian food with your nephew and he leans more toward the American palate.

My nephew will eat what my sister will cook, but when you throw him vegetables and Indian food that is a bit spicy, he freezes. He'd rather have Chicken McNuggets and cheddar cheese sticks. It's frightening.

I think we need to banish the cookbooks that teach children to eat vegetables that are hidden in other foods. What are we doing? What are we teaching them, that we are hiding? The whole idea is that we should celebrate what you are feeding them. Let them be proud of what they are eating.

You have to teach them that there are certain things that if you cook them correctly and you eat them correctly, they can be appealing and not some sort of penance.

Of course. Anything with sugar isn't good for people who aren't exercising or have diabetes. I'm one of them. But if you make brownies with 99 percent cocoa and just a bit of sugar and keep the flour less than the typical American recipe has, you get what Julia Child called the Best-Ever Brownies. They're phenomenal. Gooey, luscious, chocolaty, velvety, moist. And they're better for you than any flaxseed, sugar-coated, 60 percent chocolate brownies. No matter how many flaxseeds you hide, they're still not better for you.

I think it's moderation, knowing what you should be eating and not denying yourself pleasure, but making things that are healthy pleasurable.

You've talked about how one of the favorite dishes you created came at, like, age 10.

Crispy okra, yeah.

You wouldn't think that a child would naturally gravitate toward okra, but it's something that if you approach it from the right direction and cook it properly, you can enjoy just about any food. Doesn't matter what age you are.

It's interesting you point to that recipe. I think it was either The New York Times or New York Magazine that said in its first review of the restaurant something to the effect that these crispy okra chips would replace french fries if McDonald's were to consider them.

I think it's what you said: If you approach things correctly, you can make them sinfully good. If you fry okra in a good, healthy oil, you get a vegetable matter that's good for you that you can actually eat.

Does it add to your calorie index at the end of the night? Everything does. But it's not bad for you, and that's the message I think we need to bring to you.

You also write in the book about how your mother is the condiment expert in her social circle in New Delhi. I wondered what you learned from her about spices.

[laughs] My mother is … you know, she went gray at age 30 and never dyed her hair.

She'll enjoy you broadcasting that.

[laughs] And I now at 35 am seeing five or six or 10 gray hairs, white hairs coming out, and I hope I can be her.

I am the biggest critic of everybody I love. I'm not just singing her praises for the sake of it. She was Calvin Klein before we knew Calvin Klein; very minimalist, very chic, very simple. She kept food clean, very crisp, very approachable for the kids and the chef in the home. In doing so, what she was saying was that if you wanted extra, extra, extra, you had these condiments, these chutneys and these jams and pickles and preserves. They were all about celebrating flavor in excess. Little pinches and bites of them would dance on your tongue that would give you sensory overload and joy but never rob the lentils or the vegetables or the rice of what they were all about.

I think from her I learned about balance and about being thrifty and never getting lost in the intricacies that weren't meaningful.

You've mentioned in your classes how the American expectation of Indian food has really been out of whack because Indians are cooking to a level of what they think Americans want, while true Indian home cooking is a whole different kind of cooking. Americans think of Indian food as a flamethrower experience, while authentic Indian home cooking is much more subtle and nuanced and balanced. How do you go about changing that perception?

With a Nazi voice. [laughs] Actually, the reason I got into this business was bad Indian food being served in restaurants that people loved. I was ashamed, as an Indian, of the horrible smells and the gloppy, cream-laden meals, of chicken or meat or fish lost in 20 feet of sauce. I had never grown up eating that. I grew up eating food that looked like what it said it should look like. An okra looked like an okra. A potato looked like a potato. A chicken looked like a chicken.

I think what I've done is I've opened a restaurant with the desire to give people good food. It should not be about India; it should be about good flavor and good food, clean dining. When people come and they taste … even the fried chicken has a fountain of flavor which bursts from it. It gives them a thought: "You know, I've never eaten fried chicken that had all this flavor coming out of the juice." That's when India speaks.

Keyword: Stew, to listen to more of this interview. Reporter Jeff Houck can be reached at (813) 259-7324 or jhouck@tampatrib.com.

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