FINALLY!
Interesting article I wanted to share with my readers.
By Ann Levin, Associated PressPosted: 01/06/2010 12:00:00 AM PST
Indian food in America is having its "Slumdog Millionaire" moment.Supermarket shelves are lined with chutneys, pickles and sauces and all manner of boxed heat-and-serve Indian meals. The quality and number of Indian restaurants has soared, offering an alternative to cheap all-you-can-eat buffets. And a flurry of new cookbooks is introducing home cooks to subtle regional differences in Indian cuisine shaped by climate, geography, religion and caste.
The growing awareness of Indian culture and cuisine is due to the big influx of immigrants from South Asia since 1965, when national origin quotas favoring Europeans were abolished.
Since then, the United States has witnessed a remarkable flowering of Indian talent, energy and drive as well as a seemingly insatiable appetite for all things Indian, including bhangra music, Bollywood films and yoga. Perhaps nothing expresses America's fascination with that giant emerging economy more than the runaway success of the British film "Slumdog Millionaire," a rags-to-riches tale, based in the Mumbai slums, that won eight Academy Awards in 2009.
The growing Indian presence also comes at a time when the popularity of cooking shows — including Bravo's "Top Chef," hosted by Indian actress and model Padma Lakshmi — and an increase in foreign travel have made Americans more adventurous eaters.
"The American palate is no longer bland," says Andrew F. Smith, editor of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink of America, who predicts that Indian food will take off in the next decade the way sushi bars did in the 1980s and Thai food did in the '90s.
New York, the dining capital of the nation, has seen an explosion in the number of Indian restaurants in recent years. New York University sociologist and food studies scholar Krishnendu Ray counts some 350 Indian restaurants today compared to the 19 listed in the 1978 edition of a restaurant guide.
But while Indians are among the fastest growing ethnic groups in this country, notes Ray, the population of 2.7 million is still a tiny presence in a nation of more than 300 million people. Also, the bulk of the Indian immigrant population simply hasn't been here that long.
Chicken Marsala and focaccia may be household words today for tens of millions of Americans but Italians have been in the U.S. in large numbers since the late 19th century, became assimilated and moved up the social and economic ladder.
Whether ground fenugreek and coriander become flavors as familiar to Americans as basil and oregano depends in large part on whether Indians can do the same thing, according to Ray.
"In 2065, Indian may be in the same place as Italian food," he says.
