Looking to add some flair to your menu? Padma Lakshmi of Bravo's hit show "Top Chef" reveals delicious secrets in her new cookbook “Tangy, Tart, Hot and Sweet: A World of Recipes for Every Day.” Read an excerpt and discover sophisticated international cuisine that is easy to prepare:
Introduction
There is a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine is drunk. —M.F.K. Fisher
When I was a little girl, my mother worked full time and then went to classes several nights a week for her master’s degree. I would often help her in the kitchen when she got home. It was where we spent the most hours together. I graduated from shelling peanuts and breaking off the ends of beans to chopping vegetables and standing at the stove.
My mother, who is a great cook, was famous for being able to make an impromptu meal in half an hour with whatever she had in the kitchen at the time. She was known for being able to whip something up out of nothing. I learned at her elbow and watched. In those days it was harder to find black mustard seeds, fresh ginger, and coconut milk. But she’d use whatever she found, whatever she tasted in other peoples’ homes, and she’d bring home some strange flora from the farmer’s market that would find its way into a pot, bubbling away with a bit of seasoning. Before you knew it a whole meal was being placed hot and steaming on the table while you were just chatting by the stove. She had a gift for making everyone feel welcome, and everything so easy. You would want to drop in on her; she’d make you want to come back again and again. That’s what a good hostess does when you’re at her table.
Being a single mom gave my mother little opportunity to linger in the kitchen for hours, and so as I stood by her side I too learned to improvise and make things taste good in a rush. She was, and still is, great at simplifying all sorts of exotic dishes. In New York, where we’d moved to start a new life, there were immigrants like us from all over the world, and our kitchen was heavily influenced by them.
From Polish sausages to Vietnamese steamed fish, the world was right here on our island. I had a Peruvian babysitter named Elena who taught me how to make mashed potato empanadas. Otis, my mom's boyfriend at the time, was from Barbados.
Through him we experienced the tropical curries of the Caribbean. My playmates from one floor down were Filipino, and at their mother’s table I tasted the noodle dish pancit.
The dishes we tasted throughout the city, in restaurants, at other people’s houses, in the sharing of packed lunches at school and work — all made their way into our kitchen. We went to the Puerto Rican market in Spanish Harlem for sugarcane. We frequented Chinatown to buy salted plums and bok choy. My mother never missed an opportunity to introduce my young palate to new and surprising tastes.
When I was older, we moved to a suburb of Los Angeles, and I traveled to India for holidays. I used to stop along the way in Singapore and Tokyo. These trips broadened my culinary horizons even more. By the time I was in college I was trying different recipes from the international students who cooked in my dorm.
When I studied abroad in Spain, the first things I learned to say in Spanish were the names of the ingredients I needed to make the dishes that reminded me of home. Later I learned to duplicate in my own kitchen what I had tasted in Madrid’s vast array of restaurants and tapas bars. My career as a model took me around the globe, and I continued my gastronomical research every place I went. Living in Paris, I learned about European food traditions to which I had never been exposed. I learned that the Spanish, French, and Italian all use béchamel sauce in various dishes.
When I lived in Milan, I absorbed as much of the region’s gastronomy as I could. Then living and working in Rome taught me about southern Italian cuisine. I realized that French food was actually based on pre-Columbian Italian cuisine; Catherine de Medici married the future French king Henri II and took her Florentine culinary practices with her to France. It wasn’t until the tomato was introduced from the New World that Italian food became as different from its French counterpart as it now is.
Making movies took me to Cuba and Sri Lanka, where I began to see the connections between South American and Asian food. Mangoes and coconuts, cumin, coriander (cilantro),and tamarind were cropping up in all sorts of cuisines. The world of food seemed to be getting bigger and smaller at the same time. Eating and cooking is as much about our identity as about our mood. I believe the American palate is the most open and inviting audience for the world’s flavors. The best thing about an immigrant culture is the choice and variety of tastes and ingredients it offers. One would be a fool not to sample the myriad exotic (and now not so exotic) dishes there are to enjoy.
Most Americans can trace their roots to an Old World connection, and our grandmothers jealously guard their treasure troves of recipes from their particular ethnic ancestry. Add to those passed-down recipes a selection from one’s partner or spouse’s family, then mix those with dishes gathered from travel and recipes traded between friends, and it’s easy to see why you don’t have to be a world traveler to have an eclectic palate. The world now comes to you, on every street corner and in every food court.
When I look at how Americans eat today, I come to the conclusion that we are all a little bit Chinese, a little bit Mexican, a little bit Italian and French. No one I know eats one type of cuisine all the time. Our lives have all been touched by the many cultures that coexist among us. The way we eat now is a reflection of what America has become.
My identity can be very accurately traced through my fork. I grew up first in South India, and the roots of many of my recipes are there. Starting out with a few chilies, some mustard seeds, and ginger, I was able to learn the secrets of my grandmother’s kitchen. Most of my fondest early memories are of being with my mother, my aunts, and my grandmother in the kitchen. I came to equate cooking with celebration, and food with love.
What do we eat? All kinds of things. One day sushi, another Thai, a third Italian, and the fourth day ... maybe Mexican, or how about Moroccan? I cook the way I eat. I love fresh ingredients, clean flavors that stand out on their own, and healthy dashes of some unexpected spice that give a dish originality.
The only recipes I remember are ones that arouse passionate and emotional responses in me. I want to eat a rice dish that transports me to the paddies of Indonesia, a couscous dish to remind me of mysterious Marrakech, and a fiery curried broth to evoke my lost childhood in the deep lushness of the South Indian rain forest. Like most of us, I have been influenced by the people around me. A Peruvian babysitter, a Korean college roommate, an Italian lover, and a Swiss aunt have all affected my cooking, and I am grateful to them for making my life in the kitchen more robust and complicated. I can think of no better pleasure than to be near a hot stove and a chopping block full of things waiting to be made into something that can be gathered around, savored, and enjoyed with people I want to spend time with. That’s really why we cook — to make others happy, to share with them the most human, the most intimate function of life: to eat.
The recipes in this book reflect how my generation eats: a little of this and a little of that. It spans many ethnicities and food traditions because that’s who we are, today, as a culture. More than ever we are a nation of adventurers, at least with our forks. We are also a nation with very little time on our hands. But we do want to impress those we love with luscious flavors and sumptuous colors that cater to the senses and fill our bellies with happiness. We want simple recipes for complex flavors. These recipes meet those standards. I recommend doing all the chopping before starting so that all the ingredients are ready at hand. I also encourage the cook to taste the dish often and play with the recipes, tailoring them to his or her own palate. And most of all, remember to cook with your heart, because cooking is celebration, and food is love.
Excerpted from “Tangy, Tart, Hot and Sweet: A World of Recipes for Every Day” by Padma Lakshmi. Copyright 2008 Padma Lakshmi. Reprinted with permission from Weinstein Books. All rights reserved.