That's Amore

I have made another important observation of Indian cuisine: it is efficient in both time and fuel. It contrasts starkly with typical American cooking, some of which requires long hours spent obsessing over a single serving of food. Think about Southern pulled pork, which is often cooked overnight and requires constant heat maintenance. Sure, it’s delicious, but is a two-hour tomato sauce really worth two hours? Depends on what Indian you ask.

It all started with snacks last week. Mrs. Sing, Harmit’s mother, invited me over her house on Holi for a few Indian sweets that she made herself, which were so much better than the same things I had bought in a shop. She went to university in the states and has studied a lot about food science, so she has a vast knowledge of food from several different cultures in her 40+ years of cooking experience. Stuffing my face with her delectable treats and discussing food was like heaven to me, so I was more than happy when she suggested that we should make some pasta dish together the following week.

Mrs. Singh wanted spaghetti and meatballs. I informed her that meatballs were typically made from beef. We decided to find a substitute, and she happened to have a box of Nutri lying around. Nutri is dried soy granules that are rehydrated in warm water and cooked any way you want, so why not roll them into balls with spices and onions and call them meatballs? The reason she was asking me is because she didn’t know how to make tomato sauce, and I happen to have a fantastic recipe for it.

I’ll let readers know right now that this sauce takes a very long time, even though it is the best tomato sauce recipe I have ever tasted anywhere. First you have to cut the tomatoes in half and remove the seeds and juice. Strain the seeds out of the juice, reserving the liquid and throwing away the seeds (if you cook seeds too long, it turns the whole mixture bitter). To the tomato juice, add some vinegar, honey, a bit more water, red wine, dried herbs, spices, and some sugar. Cook the liquid over high heat until it has reduced by about half and has become syrupy and smells way too strong. Reserve the mixture for later.

Dice two parts onion and one part each carrot and celery. Sweat the mixture over low heat with olive oil and salt for about 15-20 minutes in a big, tall pot, until the carrots have become almost soft and the onions and celery are translucent. Throw in a few crushed/chopped cloves of garlic and cook for a few more minutes. Then add the tomato flesh that you’ve seeded, strained, drained and chopped. Boost the heat to medium or medium-high and cook until the liquid left in the tomatoes has almost been cooked away and the flesh is soft and starting to stick to the sides of the pot.

Now you’re going to take all the vegetation that you’ve cooked for over a half hour and dump it into an oven-proof casserole dish or other wide, shallow container. Put it in the oven on the highest rack with the broiler on high, right under the heating coil. Leave it there, stirring it every few minutes. What you actually want to do is burn the tomatoes a bit. They’re done when there are bits of black edges throughout the mixture, but it’s not even close to being completely burnt yet. It will take 20-30 minutes.

When that’s finished, move the whole mess back into the big pot you’ve used to cook the onions/celery/carrots in the first place. Cook it on high until it’s very dry and the tomatoes are starting to really stick to the pot. Now it’s time to deglaze the browned bits on the bottom with some alcohol: red wine is best, white wine is good, rum is okay, and vodka will work in a pinch if that’s all you’ve got. Continue to mix it a bit until the bottom is no longer stuck with tomatoes. Kill the heat and add the syrup that you made from the reserved tomato juice, vinegar, wine, sugar and other stuff. Use a stick blender to puree the mixture to your liking and add salt and pepper to taste.

Number one, this recipe is awesome. Number two, it’s a lot of work. Hell, it took longer to type it than it would have taken to open up a can of diced tomatoes, heat it up and puree it. It also uses up a lot of time, energy and sometimes unnecessary ingredients, like alcohol, vinegar and honey. It can take an hour and a half to cook. And it’s just a sauce! The whole time I was making it at Mrs. Harmit’s house, I felt really guilty for using so much of their cooking fuel and ingredients. Shammi makes a delicious meal at least twice a day in less than a half hour, and that’s normal for all families here. Today was a special occasion, and Mrs. Singh encouraged me to cook as much as I want in her house, but I won’t be doing that recipe many more times. It’s wasteful and extravagant compared to the rest of the food here. I love cooking, and there are few things I consider to be more fun than spending three hours making a side dish or small snack that get’s eaten in two bites, but that’s just not what people do here. I hope to learn to be more efficient and less wasteful in my time here.

On another note, meatless meatballs are pretty damn good. A little tough and chewy, but they go great with two-hour tomato sauce and imported spaghetti. Also, I made kidney bean burgers for the hostel yesterday, and they looked exactly like beef burgers. What does it mean when Indians, who wouldn’t even dream of eating cows, love cow-imitation products so much?