Eat This Podcast
Talking about anything around food

Rachel Roddy: An A–Z of Pasta Twenty-one letters, fifty shapes, unlimited possibilities

25 October 2021 Filed under: Tags:

Rachel Roddy had no intention of producing an encyclopaedia of pasta. Her book is more informative than that, and more readable.

Carton of mixed pasta

Rachel Roddy is a marvellous conduit between the many cultures and kitchens of her adopted homeland and a world that simply cannot get enough of Italy. Her latest book is all about pasta, although she wisely recognised that there was little point in trying to be encyclopaedic. Instead, she chose 50 shapes on which to hang history, culture, personal stories and, of course, recipes and suggestions.

We met just in time for me to get this episode ready for World Pasta Day, today. We talked about the book, obviously, and also about many other aspects of pasta and Italian life. She did divulge what she is thinking of making to celebrate World Pasta Day. I won’t spoil the secret; you’ll just have to listen. What will you be making?

Notes

  1. An A-Z of Pasta: Stories, Shapes, Sauces, Recipes is widely available.
  2. So is A Short History of Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce, by Massimo Montanari.
  3. And Oretta Zanini De Vita’s Encyclopedia of Pasta.
  4. After my confession about using up bits of leftover mixed pasta, I looked closely in the shops, and discovered that more than one brand actually sells boxes of mixed pasta. What’s more, they cost exactly the same as whole pasta. I don’t understand.
  5. Transcripts are a bit delayed right now, but there will be one soon.

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Midnight’s chicken: Indian food evolution Insights into new recipes and new ingredients

11 October 2021 Filed under: Tags: ,

A dish that is today an icon of Indian food dates back only to 1947, using an ingredient that became widespread only in the 1920s

Sign above the door of original Moti Mahal restaurant in New Delhi

Podcast cover artworkAfter the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, a chef brought the tandoor oven and his tandoori chicken from Peshawar to a new restaurant he opened in Delhi, the Moti Mahal. There, he created makkhani murghi, butter chicken; tandoori chicken in a sauce that combines tomatoes, butter and cream. Seventy years later, the internet was overrun by a recipe for an “easy, authentic, creamy, spicy, and delicious” version of the “traditional Indian restaurant dish”. Urvashi Pitre, who created that recipe, shot to fame and a book deal as the Butter Chicken Lady.

The rise of the Butter Chicken Lady fascinated Sucharita Kanjilal, a PhD student at UCLA. Butter chicken is comparatively recent. Tomatoes, a key ingredient in the dish, were adopted very late in India. And the whole notion of recipes is also a relatively recent phenomenon in India. What, she wondered, could tomatoes in Indian recipes say about how new tastes are created.

Notes

  1. Sucharita Kanjilal’s paper — Beyond Bourdieu: What Tomatoes in Indian Recipes Tell Us about “Taste” — is published in Gastronomica (2021) 21(3) 1–12. There is a lot more in the paper than we were able to cover here.
  2. Here is the transcript.

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