Chill Indian cooking

August 7, 2016 5:14 AM

Indian cooking doesn't get any more genuine than this guy cooking all kinds of delicious dishes in his village: chicken kulambu, prawns, fish kulambu, octopus kulambu , duck. There's also these street food videos on nendran chips, making biryani for 500 people, egg noodles for 40 people.
posted by Foci for Analysis (19 comments total)

Thanks for posting this. I love content like this. Manjula, one of my regular go-tos, is great but she's getting awfully polished and this a nice counterpoint.
posted by werkzeuger at 7:05 AM on August 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

This looks a little like the South Indian equivalent of dhaba food.
posted by splitpeasoup at 7:17 AM on August 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

Thanks for posting these videos! They were awesome.

(Also, Indian cooking isn't a zero sum thing? Both Manjula's recipes and these amazing videos are equally authentic parts of an amazing heterogenous cooking tradition.)
posted by orangutan at 8:18 AM on August 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'd go one further and say there is no such thing as "Indian cooking?"
posted by werkzeuger at 9:43 AM on August 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

Or no such thing as "cooking?"
posted by iamck at 10:47 AM on August 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

There is no cooking, only Zuul.
posted by tobascodagama at 10:53 AM on August 7, 2016 [7 favorites]

I like that it seems so real. Like a tail-gate party or a bbq. No fancy techniques or knife cuts...no plates even! Just good food and good company. Reinforces my belief that much of fine dining cuisine is entitled bullshit...
posted by Dhertiiboi at 11:08 AM on August 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

that chicken video is nearly meditative. chill indeed!
posted by supermedusa at 2:10 PM on August 7, 2016

I've never been to India. is food prep generally a gendered role? I see only men in the videos (so far) do men often cook? I assume it might vary by region of course.
posted by supermedusa at 2:13 PM on August 7, 2016

I think cooking special food and bulk food is often a male job, as in its fine for these guys to be cooking a gigantic fish or biryani for 500, but at home it's almost certainly women that are making the day to day meals. Similar to how men in the west will always take the cooking role when it comes to the grill but wouldn't be caught dead making the kids lunches.

In NZ/OZ commercial cooking is an easy path to residency so I've worked with a lot of Indian chefs. They're completely comfortable cooking and doing the dishes in a commercial setting, and also in the all male group houses that they tend to live in. As soon as their families start arranging a marriage for them they start talking about how they will never cook or clean at home once they're married. I think it's sad and tell them not to be dicks, but I also wonder how much of it is bravado, these guys are in their early twenties and most of them have never had a girlfriend, and they're about to be married to a women that at best they're had some limited social media/whatsapp contact with.

From what I've seen most of these guys change substantially to accommodate their wives, I know one chef that moved from nights to mornings because his wife was afraid of being alone at night. Whether that accommodation means that these guys cook and clean at home I'm not sure, it may just be a thing that neither party expects. The only chef that I knew that took a hardline and refused to change for his wife was divorced by her within a year and the indian chef community mocks him.

I'm curious about the "Korean Water" in the biryani video, I assume it's a translation error and was meant to be rose water or something similar, can anyone work it out?
posted by fido~depravo at 3:14 PM on August 7, 2016 [10 favorites]

Watching more now, and some of the camera work is really beautiful. The shot occasionally tilts up away from the cooking as if to take its bearings on the horizon. Then, back to kids cleaning prawns or whatever. Someone upthread called it meditative, they're right. These are a nice find, thanks Foci for Analysis.
posted by werkzeuger at 5:45 PM on August 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm curious about the "Korean Water" in the biryani video, I assume it's a translation error and was meant to be rose water or something similar, can anyone work it out?

The label on the bottle says it's keora water, which is apparently distilled from pandanus flowers.
posted by Lexica at 5:58 PM on August 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

aka Screwpine
posted by werkzeuger at 6:11 PM on August 7, 2016

This is wonderful! From the titles of the dishes and what people are speaking, this was shot in Tamil Nadu, my home state. Besides the cooking itself, I'm enjoying the random commentary from all the people around ("No, no don't put in more salt. We can always add more salt later. If we put in too much now, it will be spoilt." etc. etc.). Also, doesn't the Full chicken kulambu chicken and vegetable washer know there's a drought on?
posted by peacheater at 6:58 PM on August 7, 2016 [10 favorites]

I wish I could catch more of the color commentary. But, I really liked watching these. I love collaborative cooking in all it's forms.
posted by RustyBrooks at 7:00 PM on August 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

I loved the chicken video.
posted by Oyéah at 7:30 PM on August 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

How do I get a hold of one of those giant woks from the chicken video!
posted by bigstace at 11:15 AM on August 8, 2016

These are great, I must have watched a couple hours last night. It's fascinating to see that huge scale cooking from start to finish in the biryani videos, the nendran chip mandolins make me wince, and I never knew about coconut apples before!
posted by lucidium at 4:01 PM on August 8, 2016

Omg omg omg the street food! When I was young and foolish and travelled all over I was afraid of the street vendor food, and now it seems like the best reason in the world to travel for. Oh if only I could go tell my younger self to go eat that! Eat it all!
posted by eggkeeper at 5:46 PM on August 8, 2016 [3 favorites]