I hate country music. My dad looks absurd in a cowboy hat. Nobody in my family owns cowboy boots, or has a gun to go hunting with, and none of us speak with a Southern accent. We do not even drive pickup trucks. In elementary school, I was probably the only 5th grader not wearing boots for Western Day, and I got death stares as if I had done something wrong. We may be the most atypical Texans you will ever meet, but one part of Texas culture that is deeply rooted in our family culture is barbecue. Barbecue is something we do just as much as other Texans, but of course we do add our Indian spice to it. Growing up with white, wealthy, land owning southern friends, I got a large dose of the typical Texas culture. All of my friends look at me strangely as I cringe in the back seat while they all sing their hearts out to country music; however, I do love the barbecue parties that they host. The smell of steak, hamburgers, or hot dogs cooking on the grill is probably the most Texas thing about me, and although the rest of my family was even less Texan than me, we all had taste buds that jumped at the smell of barbecue. We do not cook the hamburgers and hot dogs though; we grill Tandoori Chicken. For us, tandoori chicken has become a staple of our picnics and family backyard get-togethers. If it is a nice spring day, and the weather is nice, we are probably at the river, or in our backyard grilling some chicken; however, barbecuing tandoori chicken is not how my parents grew up eating it, so how did it become such an accepted tradition in my family? I believe that the reason we barbecue our tandoori chicken, is because we live in San Antonio, where the culture of barbecue is very rich. The combination of Texas culture and our strong Indian heritage resulted in the transformation of how we eat some of our foods, specifically tandoori chicken, to take advantage of our food and the environment that has accompanied barbecue for hundreds of years. It is also interesting to see how gender roles play a role in how the chicken is prepared and who actually grills the chicken.
The environment surrounding our family barbecues is just as fulfilling as the food that ends up our stomachs. We usually do not have these barbecues in my family with less than 20 people, so one can imagine how much chicken is being cooked. A day that we decide to do this begins with my mom going to the grocery store to pick up the chicken while the other women arrive at my house. When my mom comes back, they have to make the marinade that is used to marinate the chicken. After the chicken has been marinating for three to four house it is ready to cook, and we either use our grill if we are staying at my house, or put it in the coolers and take it to the river. What usually happens at this point is that all the kids in the family either go to the pool, or play football or Frisbee, while the dads are grilling the chicken, or rent some tubes and tube down the river. By the time we are finished, the chicken is usually ready, and we are starving, so it works out perfectly. Then we all sit down together, and eat. It is an amazing time with the whole family, and it reminds me every time why I have loved growing up in such a large family. Everyone is talking and laughing, and the problems that everyone is dealing with at the time seem to disappear in the midst of a beautiful day with the entire family and delicious food. This tradition is one of my favorites in my family, but it makes me wonder how it came to be, if barbecuing in India is almost non-existent. That culture does not exist and in modern day India, tandoori chicken is really only eaten at restaurants, because most families do not have the means to cook it at home.  |
| Dhabba |
My dad grew up in a very rural part of India, so his encounter with tandoori chicken was very different from my mother’s experience. I assumed that because he lived on farms and traveled a lot as a teenager, he would have had a very limited interaction with tandoori chicken, because I thought it was mainly served in restaurants; however, after interviewing my dad, I found out a lot about the history of tandoori chicken that I did not know. I asked my dad how and when he ate tandoori chicken as a teenager, and he said that it was, “a chicken that is available mainly on the highways for the truck drivers, and it started becoming a fashion”. In a book titled Food Culture in India, Colleen Taylor Sen describes tandoori chicken as, “a common method of preparing chicken and goat was to roast pieces of meat with very little spicing on skewers over hot coals in a tandoor or tanoor, a large clay oven buried in the ground that originated in Iran or Central Asia” (134). My dad explained it in the exact same way. He said that while he was driving around India, “vendors on the side of the road would be grilling chicken on clay pits dug in the ground”. Tandoori refers to the style of cooking, while the meat that is being cooked with depends on personal preference or regional differences. When I asked him how it became such a popular dish in restaurants, he retraces the history and said that it started formally becoming a dish when it was served at “dhabbas”. He described a dhabba as, “kind of a small, roadside restaurant that only truckers stopped at”. Tandoori chicken started as a low class food that was really only available to the truck drivers that were traveling around India. The progression of tandoori chicken is also very interesting because, my dad said, “the tandoori chicken was available in only high end restaurants, and then it started becoming the common people food”. After tandoori chicken was being served in the dhabba’s and it became more popular, the upper class people adopted it as a fashion of their own before it become popular among the rest of the population again. This history that my dad experienced shows tandoori chicken’s progression from a common roadside dish to a dish served in high-end restaurants, and his experiences with this food growing up. He never mentioned eating tandoori chicken with family, or in the setting that we use it in today, so this tradition was not inherent in my father’s upbringing.
My mom, on the other hand, had a very different experience in her family with tandoori chicken. The environment surrounding tandoori chicken in my mother’s family is much more similar to our family gatherings around barbecue. She said, “it’s a delicious dish when somebody comes in, when some guests come to our house, and we make them eat tandoori chicken that makes like a special dish for them”. For my mother’s family, it was served on special occasions when guests or family come together. This, although very different from how my dad ate the dish as a child, is very similar to how we cook tandoori chicken today. They did not use it in the barbecue fashion that we do here in San Antonio, but the environment surrounding this dish was similar. This also makes me think that, maybe the reason why we use tandoori chicken for special occasions here, is because my mom, who is the one responsible for preparing the chicken, also prepared it the same way back home and for the same reasons. This may be where the culture around this dish was transferred from my mom’s family back in India, to our family here in San Antonio. Many times, the preparer of the dish has influence on when it is served, and although both my parents were exposed to barbecue at relatively the same times, it may have been my mother’s background that made it become our traditional family dish when we have guests at our house.
When reading about how barbecue originated, it is very similar to how it is used in modern day Texas and in our family, as a food that is usually served in the presence of guests or other family. In an article titled “The Story of Barbecue” by Dixon C. Hollingsworth Jr., he says, “The Indians, he said, ‘made us very welcome with fat barbacu’d Venison’” (392). This was an account from John Lawson, a South Carolina explorer, written in 1701. This shows that even 300 years later, barbecue retains its culture as a dish to be served in the presence of others. My dad said that the first time he had an Indian style barbecue was when his friends invited him to a backyard party, where he saw tandoori chicken being cooked as barbecue meat. Whether it was the Indians who were welcoming an explorer, or my parents attending a party, the style of cooking was very similar even after so long.
This custom that has survived many years of history, began in Europe. There are some differences that set apart southern barbecue from European barbecue but the basic foundation of cooking on a pit or grill, over fire, started in Europe. The Oxford English Dictionary of American Food and Drink describes the origins of barbecue and its evolution once it was brought over to the New World. Its says, “Europeans had of course been cooking meat over fires for thousands of years. It was the low heat of the coals and the consequent slowness of the process that set the New World method apart”. When this style of cooking was brought of from Europe, the immigrants altered a little so that it was cooked over a longer period of time over coals. Barbecue also became fashionable to cook in groups in Virginia and North Carolina. The Oxford English Dictionary of Food and Drink in America goes onto to say, “The barbecue as a social occasion has been well documented. It was and is popular for community or church get-togethers or fund-raisers, and it has been used by politicians ever since George Washington as a means of drawing voters, initially in the South, then nationally”. Even politicians began having barbecues and the reason for that is barbecue for so many years has been accompanied by the sense of community. Barbecue gives my family a reason to come together and to spend an entire day together. After moving to America, all of our relatives have their own lives in their own homes, so for all of us to spend time together is a very important facet of our family. It is sad that we need a specific reason to spend so much time together, but in a world where life is so fast paced, barbecue serves as a type of glue that keeps our lives intertwined. My parents grew up living in an apartment that housed maybe 10 people. Living with extended family was a cultural norm, so for them, it was strange living a nuclear family setting, and barbecue is a way for them to relive a day in which everyone was eating and cooking together like they had experienced as children.
Another facet of barbecue is the roles that men and women play surrounding the cooking of the meat. Barbecue is a very manly activity where men and meat are very strongly connected. I seldom see women grilling the meat in our family or any barbecue I have been to. The idea of grilling is an activity that facilitates male bonding while women are free from cooking during barbecues. In an article titled “A Way to a Man’s Heart: Gender Roles, Domestic Ideology, and Cookbooks in the 1950s”, Jessaymyn Neuhaus says, “Addler suggests that backyard barbecues established a new masculine culinary sphere, but that sphere was extremely limited: it was fire and meat and nothing else” (Neuhaus 542). This description is especially accurate in my family where the men do the cooking, while the women do most of the hard part, which are the hours that it takes to prepare the chicken before it can be cooked in the grill. When I asked my mom, how she felt about having to prepare the chicken, without being able to cook it she said, “It is kind of a lot of work, but the thing is that if there is no flavor, the barbecue is not going to be good, so to get the good flavor, and all the flavor is in the masala, so we feel as a women, we are good at cooking, so we make sure that part is done by us”. This is a very interesting perspective of the woman’s role in the barbecuing process in my family. I did not expect that answer, but the impression that I took from that is the women feel that it is their responsibility for the chicken tasting good, even if they are not doing the grilling. This stems from my mother’s background in India. Women, in India, are seen as housewives and cooking is a very large part of their role. Although preparing the chicken for the barbecue is a lot of hard work, my mom does not view it as a hassle, but instead as her duty as a cook and as a woman of the family.
The dads of the family do adopt the typical role of a man during barbecues. They do all the grilling of the chicken once the chicken has been marinating for 3-4 hours. My dad explains the feeling behind it. He said, “For the men to just stand around the barbecue pit and talk, we get a very good vibes, very good bonding done, while cooking the chicken, so that is a very important thing that happens”. In India, most of the men in the family are involved in the same business, so they are forced to spend time together while at the store, but after moving to America, that dynamic changed very quickly. After moving to San Antonio, most of the men found their own stores and businesses to look after, so our lives diverged somewhat, and barbecue was a time to put all of that on the side and reconnect with everyone there. My dad goes on to say, “Barbecue chicken is the reason we bond with the family also”. The assimilation of cultures works for us to produce a very rich tradition in my family. That is often the case when two different cultures collide and sometimes it can produce negative effects, but many times they combine to produce a third culture, that may not be exactly the same as either of the two that it was formed from. We have taken barbecue and altered it to satisfy our needs. Normally, Texas barbecue is cooked with beef, but part of the reason we chose to barbecue with tandoori chicken is because of the culture that all of the adults of our family grew up in. In India, cows are revered and are definitely not cooked and eaten like they are here, so barbecuing beef would have been very contradictory to how they were brought up. That is another reason that chicken took the form of our barbecue meat, but it also shows that we were able to take part of a culture and make it our own.
For my family, preserving our Indian heritage is also very important. My parents are well aware that with my generation, which is becoming “Americanized” faster than they expected, much of our culture will be lost in my children. For example, I cannot speak Hindi, our native language, nearly as well as my sister, who is only four years older than me. Although it is unfortunate, Hindi may be a facet of our parents’ culture that will fade in future generations. There are other ways though that we can preserve our culture, and one of those ways is through cooking. We know that moving to America affected a lot of our family dynamics, but we also believe that we can take the great things about the American culture and incorporate it into our own. That is great thing about assimilating into a new culture and for us, it has produced one of our most enjoyable family traditions.
Recipe for Tandoori Chicken:
Ingredients:
1 Chicken
For Marinade:
3 tsp lemon juice
2 tsp red chilli power
1 Cup Yogurt
1 tsp garlic paste
1 tsp ginger Paste
1 tsp Green chilli paste
1/2 tsp garam masala powder
1 tbsp Tandoori Paste chicken masala
oil (for brushing)
Salt (according to Taste)
few drops of edible red colour
Method
1. Wash the chicken and make diagonal incisions all over it .
2. Mix all ingredients of the marinade. Add the Chicken pieces and refrigerate for 1-2 hours.
3. Put the chicken into the high rack on non-stick tawa or rotisserie or Microwave safe flat dish on combination 3 for 9-10 Mins. Now brush with oil and grill for 15-20 mins. Reposition frequently.
4. Sprinkle with chat masala.
5. Serve hot with onion slices and lemon wedges.
Works Cited
Hollingsworth, Dixon G. "The Story of Barbecue." The Georgia Historical Quarterly 63.3 (1979): 391-95. JSTOR. Web. 4 Dec. 2011.
Neuhaus, Jessamyn. "The Way to a Man's Heart: Gender Roles, Domestic Ideology, and Cookbooks in the 1950s." Journal of Social History 32.3 (1999): 529-55. JSTOR. Web. 5 Dec. 2011.
Sarfani, Laila. Personal interview. 27 Nov. 2011.
Sarfani, Sadruddin. Personal interview. 24 Nov. 2011.
Sen, Colleen Taylor. Food Culture in India. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2004. Print.
Sylvia Lovegren "Barbecue" The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America. Ed. Andrew F. Smith. Copyright © Oxford University Press, Inc 2004, 2005. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America: (e-reference edition). Oxford University Press. Emory University. 5 December 2011 http://www.oxford-americanfoodanddrink.com/entry?entry=t170.e0039
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