Indian Chinese cuisine

Indian Chinese cuisine, Indo-Chinese cuisine, Desi-Chinese cuisine, Sino-Indian cuisine, or Chindi cuisine is a distinct culinary style which combines aspects of both Indian and Chinese foods and flavors. Though the cuisines have mixed throughout history both through trade and geographical influence, the most popular origin story of the fusion food resides with the original Chinese ethnic community of Kolkata, who immigrated to India looking for better prospects and a better life around 250 years ago.[1] Opening restaurant businesses in the area, these early Chinese immigrants adapted their culinary styles to suit the tastes of their Indian patrons.[1]

Shanghai fried noodles. Oily, saucy flavors, enhanced by MSG and starches.

Chinese Indian food is generally characterized by its ingredients: Indian vegetables and spices are used, along with a heavy amount of pungent Chinese sauces, thickening agents, and oil.[2] Stir-fried in a wok, Indo-Chinese food takes Chinese culinary styles and adds spices and flavors familiar to the Indian tongue.[2] This idea of flavorful, saucy Chinese food cooked with Indian spices and vegetables has become integral to the mainstream culinary scenes of both India and Bangladesh, and its diffusion to nations like America, Great Britain, and Canada has shaped and altered the global view of Chinese, Indian, and Asian cuisines.[3]

Origins

Chinese New Year celebration in Kolkata. (2014)

Tiretti Bazaar in Kolkata, India's only Chinatown (2013).

Chinese in India

The most popularized theory for the origins of Indian Chinese food is centered around Chinese immigrants settling in Calcutta (now Kolkata). Calcutta was the capital of British-ruled India when it was governed by the East India Trading Company (from 1757 to 1858).[4] The city's relation to the British crown made it a great place for material prospects and opportunity, which drew businessmen and immigrant workers from surrounding areas.[2] Located in the Northeastern region of India, Calcutta was the most accessible metropolitan area of the country by land from China; thus, this city harbored the very first Chinese settler, a southern Chinese man named Tong Atchew (also referred to as Yang Dazhao or Yang Tai Chow).[2] In 1778, Atchew settled 20 miles southwest of Kolkata (then Calcutta), founding a sugar mill along with five dozen or so Chinese laborers.[1] Following Atchew's footsteps, waves of immigrants from the Guangdong province of China fled to India due to civil war, famine, poverty, and conflict, searching for safety and prosperity.[1] Hakka Chinese found their niche as cobblers and tanners, while the Cantonese settled majorly as carpenters and the Hubeinese as dentists; however, an occupation popular among all groups, especially of wives supporting their laboring husbands, was a restaurateur.[1]

From these first early settlers, communities of Chinese influence sprung up throughout the area, neighborhoods of immigrants cooking and eating foods from their homeland. These Canton cuisines, known in China to be light and fresh in flavor, began to adapt and evolve into the new area. One reason is due to the availability of ingredients and spices being different from those in Guangdong, therefore forcing the flavors to naturally Indianize; additionally, Chinese businesses began to cater their foods to the tastes of their Indian patrons to increase sales, utilizing more spices and heavier douses of sauce and oil than their traditional techniques required.[5] Recognized as one of the first Indo-Chinese restaurants in the country, the still-standing corner eatery of Eau Chew gained its popularity by using the fashionable pull of exotic Chinese foods combined with non-threatening familiar flavors of chili, curry, and corn starch, to attract and keep-on customers.[2][5] Kolkata today boasts the only Chinatown in the country, a neighborhood known as the Tiretti Bazaar.[1] This being said, nearly every city in India has these adapted "Chinese" foods, whether found in restaurants or hawked by roadside venders, as the greasy, spicy, stir-fried food has become wildly popular throughout the country.[5] It is important also to note those Chinese returning from India to their homelands in China's south, for they often brought their new culinary practices and flavors with them, working to Indianize the taste of Cantonese-style foods in southern coastal cities such as Hong Kong.[5]

Additional Origin Points

As Indian historian Pushpesh Pant once noted, Indian Chinese food is "the result of several isolated encounters."[5] These encounters, in addition to the Kolkata story, include influences of the Silk Road, historical ties, and geography. Each of these aspects has worked in some way to tie the culinary practices and flavors of the two countries together, marking other possible origin points for the Indian Chinese culinary tradition.

Silk Road routes connecting the (near and far) East with the West.

Silk Road Cultural Exchange

The Silk Road (or Silk Routes) was a network of trading posts and pathways on land and sea utilized from 130 BCE to 1453 CE spanning from China and the Indonesian islands through India and the Middle East, all the way to northeastern Africa and Italy.[6] The significance of this route to ancient history is undeniable, the exchange of goods, diseases, and ideas from the East to West and vice versa has had a lasting impact upon the human story. Chinese and Indian merchants would carry their goods across the borders separating the two neighboring countries: silks, rice, and crockery coming from China, with a plethora of influential spices sprouting from India.[6] Another exchange between China and India was religion, with Buddhism coming to China from India via the Silk Road as well; moreover, as aspects of Indian culture, practices, and beliefs melded with Chinese traditions, the Mahayana Buddhist religion was formed.[7] Just as the Chinese adapted Buddhist practices to their own beliefs, the two cultures adopted certain aspects of the other throughout their historical interactions and exchanges. Rice dishes cooked in Indianized Chinese woks can be found in the nation's south, and there are spices of ginger, cinnamon, and black pepper present in various Chinese culinary styles; in this way, it can be seen how the Silk Road was vital in bringing characteristics of the two cultures together.[8] Indian and Chinese food aspects collided hundreds of years ago to form culinary traditions now inextricable with these nations; in this way, the Indo-Chinese fusion cuisine could be said to have appeared long before the first Chinese settlers in Kolkata.

Expansion of Buddhism throughout Asia.

Thai red curry: the red chilies give it color and spice.

Influences on Southeast Asian Cuisine

Geographically, India and China are neighbors; historically, the two nations are ancient empires. Two of the most populous countries in the world today, both India and China boast lengthy histories. Since the second century CE, Hindu rulers presided over Southeast Asian countries and Chinese regimes ruled the more eastern regions, such as Cambodia.[9][10] Similarly, Asia's southeast was historically populated by immigrants from both China and India, namely the Han and Tamil ethnic groups who joined scattered aboriginal societies.[8] The influences of China and India can be detected in the cuisines of Southeast Asia, where the two culinary practices have been combined, adapted, and developed by generations of people. For example, the Chinese practice of rice cultivation was introduced to the regions of Southeast Asia and Nepal in the thirtieth century BC, where it has existed as an irreplaceable and undeniable staple ever since.[11] Furthermore, now completely embedded within Southeast Asian culinary practices, Chinese cooking and eating implements such as spoons, chopsticks, and woks were other products which were introduced to the region.[12] Evidence of Indian influence, in addition to religious philosophies and ancient architecture, can be found in the spices and flavors of Southeast Asian cooking.[9] Curries—meat, fish, or vegetables cooked in a spiced sauce accompanied by rice or bread—originated on the Indian subcontinent, but have since diffused throughout Asia.[13] Spices such as turmeric, coriander, pepper, brown mustard, and ginger are present in curries throughout Southeast Asia, though each country has adapted the practice to utilize their own regional ingredients as well; most notably, Indonesian, Malaysian, Thai, and Cambodian cuisines all have strong ties to Indian-style curry flavors.[13] These aspects of both Chinese and Indian culinary practices and traditions have combined to create the origins of what is now a rich and diverse culinary scene making up Asia's southeastern region. Thus, with the joined influence of the two cultures, Southeast Asian cuisine itself is another example of Indian Chinese food origins.

Tibet, Nepal, and Myanmar; bordered by India and China.

Momo dumplings; found in Nepal, Tibet, and Northeastern India.

Culinary Diffusion Across Borders

In addition to Southeast Asia, China has been influenced by Indian spices as well, especially in the autonomous region of Tibet, with Nepal also possessing culinary practices hailing from both its Chinese and Indian neighbors.[8] Therefore, another origin point of Indian Chinese food can be traced to the cultures of Nepalese and Tibetan peoples, whose lands are mostly encompassed by the two nations (India and China). Although not aligned with the greasy and pungent flavors of the culinary traditions which evolved in Kolkata, the simple foods of Nepal are often accompanied by rice, and consist of curries or spiced vegetables stir-fried or boiled in an Indian-style wok called a karahi.[14] Tibetan food, in addition to high altitude and harsh climates, is geographically influenced by the flavors of the countries surrounding it: notably Nepal, India, and China. Tibet is a nation heavily influenced by Indian Buddhist values (first brought in the fifth century AD), and with beliefs and ideas travels culture and food as well.[9] Noodles and teas from China (vital in making the tsampa eaten with every meal), brown mustard from India, and even a "momo" dumpling dish shared with Nepal are all significant constituents to and dishes of Tibetan cuisine.[15] With the diffusion of ingredients, culinary styles, and flavors across borders, the regions of Nepal and Tibet (as well as Bhutan) which touch both India and China inadvertently developed cuisines mixing both Chinese and Indian styles and tastes, creating yet another Indo-Chinese food origin.

Features

Foods tend to be flavoured with spices such as cumin, coriander seeds, and turmeric, which with a few regional exceptions, such as Xinjiang, are traditionally not associated with much of Chinese cuisine. Hot chilli, ginger, garlic, sesame seeds, dry red chilis, black pepper corns and yogurt are also frequently used in dishes.[16] This makes Indian Chinese food similar in taste to many ethnic dishes in Southeast Asian countries such as Singapore and Malaysia, which have strong Chinese and Indian cultural influences.[13][12]

Non-staple dishes are by default served with generous helpings of gravy, although they can also be ordered "dry" or "without gravy". Culinary styles often seen in Indian Chinese fare include "Chili" (implying batter-fried items cooked with pieces of chili pepper), "Manchurian" (implying a sweet and salty brown sauce), and "Schezwan" (sic - see below) (implying a spicy red sauce).

Dishes

Main courses

Ubiquitous main courses, or entrees, include:

Chilli Paneer

• Chilli Chicken/Prawn/Fish/Mutton/Vegetables/Paneer, dry or gravy
• Garlic Chicken/Prawn/Fish/Mutton/Vegetables/Paneer
• Schezwan (sic) Chicken/Prawn/Fish/Mutton/Vegetables/Paneer - dishes with this name in fact usually bear very little resemblance to ones from China's Sichuan Province (although they sometimes contain Sichuan peppercorns). They instead center mainly around a sauce containing Indian red chilies and garlic. (The spelling of "Schezwan" is not a mis-print; this is indeed how the term tends to be spelled in the Indo-Chinese kitchen rather than "Sichuan", "Szechuan" or "Szechwan").
• Ginger Chicken/Prawn/Fish/Mutton/Vegetables/Paneer
• Manchurian Chicken/Prawn/Fish/Mutton/Vegetables/Paneer, generally consisting of a variety of meats or paneer with vegetables in a spicy brown sauce.[17] It is basically a creation of Chinese restaurants in India, and bears little resemblance to traditional Manchu cuisine or Chinese cuisine.[18] It is said to have been invented in 1975 by Nelson Wang; Wang described his invention process as starting from the basic ingredients of an Indian dish, namely chopped garlic, ginger, and green chilis, but next, instead of adding garam masala, he put in soy sauce, followed by cornstarch and the chicken itself.[19] A popular vegetarian variant replaces chicken with cauliflower,[17] and is commonly known as gobi manchurian. Other vegetarian variants include mushroom, baby corn, veggie ball Manchurian.
• Chow mein A popular dish combining noodles, vegetables, scrambled egg, ginger and garlic, soy sauce, green chili sauce, red chili sauce and vinegar
• Hong Kong Chicken
• Jalfrezi Chicken
• Lemon Chicken/Prawn/Fish
• Hunan Chicken
• Sweet and Sour Chicken (Different from the American Version of Sweet and Sour, but similar to General Tso's Chicken)
• Chop suey American style & Chinese Style (Crispy Noodles with a variety of vegetables, chicken or meat and sauces.)

Often the nomenclature is such that the main ingredient is mentioned first, followed by the entree style such as "Chicken Chilli."

Rice and noodles

Staple base options for an Indian Chinese meal include chicken, shrimp or vegetable variants of "Hakka" or "Schezwan" noodles popularly referred to as chow mein; and regular or "Schezwan" fried rice. American chop suey and sweet and sour dishes can be found at many restaurants. Some South Indian restaurants have also come up with spring rolls and "Schezwan" dosas.

Unique dishes

• Gobi manchurian Fried cauliflower
• Chicken lollipop Chicken hors d'œuvre
• Manchow soup Vegetable/chicken soup
• Chili Chicken Spicy Chicken with sauce

Sweets and desserts

Indian Chinese dessert options include ice cream on honey-fried noodles or date pancakes.

Availability

Indian Chinese food is readily available in major metropolitan areas of India such as Bhopal, Surat, Vadodara, Rajkot, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Kochi, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Delhi, Lucknow, Kolkata and Bangalore. It is also available in a number of towns and at dhabas (roadside stalls), also popularly referred to as "Fast food", adjacent to major Indian roads and highways. Many restaurants have a Chinese section in their menus, and some are even dedicated to serving Indian Chinese food. It can also be found in mobile kitchen carts (lari or rekdi) that ply the streets of cities, prepared in woks over a portable gas burner. Manchurian sauce, Schezwan sauce, soy sauce and Hakka noodles are available in many stores in cities across the country.

Many overseas Indian restaurants in the West and the Middle East also cater to the overseas Indians' nostalgic taste for Indian Chinese food.[20] The cuisine is also branching out into the mainstream in major cities of North America, such as New York City, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago, Toronto, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Phoenix and Vancouver. Chinese food in Nairobi, Kenya, also tends to be of this style. It is also available in Australia, especially in Sydney and Melbourne. In many of these places, the restaurants are labelled as Hakka Chinese, when in fact the cuisine itself has very little resemblance to authentic Hakka cuisine. "Hakka" label in these restaurants are usually referring to the owner's origins, and many Chinese restaurant owners in India were of Hakka origin.

Hakka cuisine has since, rapidly been popularized in the west, especially in Ontario, Canada in restaurants like Super Hakka, or Indian-Chinese Hamilton Hakka .

As of 2007, Chinese cuisine ranks as India's most favourite cuisine (after local food), growing at 9% annually. It is the most favoured option when young people go out to eat and the second favorite (after south Indian cuisine) when families dine out.[21] Inchin's Bamboo Garden is the biggest Indian Chinese chain in America.

Indian Chinese cuisine is also gaining popularity in the Kansai region of Japan.

See also

• Chindian people
• Pakistani Chinese cuisine

References

1. Ding, Emily (Spring 2019). "Sunday Market, Tiretti Bazaar". Virginia Quarterly Review. 95: 12–13 – via EBSCOhost.
2. Sanjiv Khamgaonkar. "Chinese food in India -- a fiery fusion of flavors". CNN. Retrieved 2020-10-16.
3. "Creation of Indian–Chinese cuisine: Chinese food in an Indian city". Journal of Ethnic Foods. 4 (4): 268–273. 2017-12-01. doi:10.1016/j.jef.2017.10.002. ISSN 2352-6181.
4. Johnson, Ben (2015). "The East India Company and its Role in Ruling India". Historic UK.
5. "Food for Thought in India-China Ties". Filipino Post. 30 July 2020.
6. "Silk Road". Ancient History Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2020-10-16.
7. "Buddhism in China | World History: A Comprehensive Reference Set - Credo Reference". Retrieved 2020-10-16.
8. "Asia". Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia. January 2018 – via EBSCOhost.
9. "Education - Indian influences on Asia". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2020-10-16.
10. Kenneth, Kiple (2000). V.B.2. Southeast Asia: Cambridge World History of Food. Cambridge Press.
11. "History of rice cultivation". Ricepedia. Retrieved 2020-10-16.
12. says, All Graduates | Japanese Translation Service (2015-05-05). "Chinese food culture: Influences from within and without". Asia Dialogue. Retrieved 2020-10-16.
13. "Curry | food". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2020-10-27.
14. Buchet, Jennifer (September 2019). "Momo, Yack and Dal Bhat--mmmm, How about That?". Faces. 36: 18 – via EBSCOhost.
15. Brooks, Iris (August 2008). "Food Fit for a Dalai Lama". Global Rhythm. 17: 18–19 – via EBSCOhost.
16. Deshpande, Shubada (October 25, 1999). "Fare for the Desi Dragon". Rediff.com. Retrieved 2009-02-22.
17. "Manchurian chicken". The Straits Times. 2007-06-03. p. 77 – via NewspaperSG, National Library Board.
    Thng, Lay Teen (2007-06-03). "Manchurian chicken". The Straits Times. Archived from the original on 2011-02-07. Retrieved 2010-04-21.
18. Mukherjee, Sipra; Gooptu, Sarvani. "The Chinese community of Calcutta". In Banerjee, Himadri (ed.). Calcutta Mosaic: Essays and Interviews on the Minority Communities of Calcutta. Anthem Press. pp. 131–142. ISBN 978-81-905835-5-8.
19. Bhagat, Rasheeda (2007-05-04). "Taste and disdain … A tour of the country's interesting eating habits with a roving journalist". The Hindu Businessline. Retrieved 2010-04-21.
20. Chopra, Sonia (September 3, 2001). "Chinese food, Indian-style". Rediff.com (US Edition). Retrieved 2009-02-22.
21. M, Raja (October 30, 2007). "India gets a taste for Chinese". Asia Times Online. Retrieved 2009-02-22.

External links

• The Hindu Business Line: The Chinese factor
• Wok that way