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| Sunanda K Datta-Ray: Empire strikes back | | Even the fish in fish-and-chips is more likely to be Vietnamese cobbler |
| Sunanda K Datta-Ray / New Delhi Jul 18, 2009, 00:08 IST |
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 Even the fish in fish-and-chips is more likely to be Vietnamese cobbler.
A Bangladeshi assistant in Tesco supermarket once told me that cod would one day cost more than salmon. That day has come. So much so that some of Britain’s 11,000 fish-and-chips shops are accused of passing off Vietnamese cobbler (one of 20 kinds of catfish also known as panga, basa or tra) as cod.
Not for nothing did Britain threaten war against Iceland over the North Sea’s cod beds. As Icelandic and Japanese trawlers harvested the seas for cod, the profusion of new countries, abundance of embassies and diplomats and consequent incremental increase in the demand for smoked salmon at ever-multiplying rounds of diplomatic receptions meant massive commercial salmon farming.
Fashion conspired with the law of supply and demand. What is expensive is in vogue. What is cheap never is. It seems unbelievable today that Samuel Johnson fed his dogs on oysters. Rejecting Ganga hilsa, Bengali palates crave for hilsa from the Padma which flows in a foreign land.
Food has replaced politics as the stuff of revolution in a Britain that has not known governmental upheaval since 1688. It is the herald and symbol of social change. An East Bengal lascar who lost his way in London’s East End in the 1920s reputedly asked a policeman to direct him to where other Indians lived. “I don’t know”, the constable replied, “you’d better go on till you smell curry.” Now, one has to sniff for pockets that smell of cabbage instead of curry to track down residual colonies of Englishmen lurking in England.
If the British National Party, which made history recently by sending two members to the European Parliament, were truly patriotic, it would make the consumption of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding three times a day compulsory. Sending back immigrants won’t help because it’s the natives who now munch samosas and sprinkle garam masala on lamb. The empire has struck back; Britain’s culinary conquest is nearly complete.
Birmingham once proudly (and profitably) manufactured the brassware that British tourists bought in Benares as souvenirs of India. Now, Birmingham demands proprietary rights over balti curry (usually abbreviated to balti) and calls the city’s Sparkbrook, Balsall Heath and Moseley areas the Balti Triangle. That’s where a restaurateur with the fine old British name of Mohammad Ajaib supposedly first cooked the dish in 1977 in a flat-bottomed two-handled iron pot. The pictures I have seen suggest a tawa or wok rather than a balti (bucket) but tawa or wok curry doesn’t sound as exotic. It doesn’t echo the wild romance of Baltistan.
The town council is now considering filing a legal claim for trademark protection. If it succeeds, woe betide the restaurant that dares to serve balti without acknowledging its debt to Birmingham.
Unorthodox origins are not unusual. The world owes chop suey to a thrifty and resourceful Chinese American cook who didn’t want to throw away the day’s leftovers. The Bengali sweet ledikenny was apparently an ingratiating confectioner’s tribute to the sweet tooth of the governor-general’s wife, Lady Canning. A hilarious pageant, England People Very Nice, now playing at London’s National Theatre, finds an equally ingenious explanation for what is said to be Britain’s favourite dish.
According to the play, chicken tikka masala was invented in Bethnal Green which Bombay-born Mancherjee Bhownaggree represented in the House of Commons as a Tory in 1895. When an indigenous customer at an Indian restaurant complains that the chicken is too dry, the proprietor pours just about every condiment he has into the dish and thinks up the name on the spur of the moment to uproarious applause from the audience.
We have it on ministerial authority that chicken tikka masala replaced fish and chips as Britain’s national dish. The fish in fish and chips used to be cod which costs £11.75 a kg; now, it’s likely to be cobbler (Pangasius hypothalmus) which is caught in the Mekong delta, frozen and exported to Britain where it sells for only £5 a kg. My Bangladeshi friend says Tesco sells three times more cobbler than it does sole fillets. Soused in salt and vinegar, it may not taste very different from cod.
But as aficionados know, food derives its flavour from accidental circumstance. Cairo’s Shepheard’s Hotel preferred chefs with hairy chests on which rissoles could be rolled. Bengali rossogollas are best when bound in the moira’s (sweetmaker’s) sweat. Similarly, the taste of fish and chips came not from fish, chips, salt or vinegar, but the grimy newspaper in which it was wrapped. Styrofoam boxes are tasteless.
sunandadr@yahoo.co.in
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