India: Reena — The American Feast Collective

Reena welcomes me to her home as if I have been a friend for a lifetime. She is dressed in bright red, and as the light flows in from the tremendous windows around her, I can already feel her warmth.

We’re making butter chicken, a dish that isn’t near to her heart but is very common and something Reena says has become popular in many Indian homes. (We also make two other dishes resembling Aloo Matar Paneer and Chana Masala.)

We pull out a knife and a cutting board Reena uses only for chicken. Many Indians are strictly vegetarian, she tells me. There are people who would not even come to your house if they knew you prepared meat in it! (Talk about dedication.) But the way Reena explains vegetarianism is deeper than diet.

Reena explains families have been generationally vegetarian, passing the practice down through their bloodlines. Of course, as the secular world grows, parents open up and allow their kids to eat what they’d like. There’s a theme throughout our conversation of stricter beliefs being “loosened up” by newer generations of parents.

“I am Hindu by religion. Cow, they call her mother, because she is sacred. She gives us everything: milk, butter, you know? So we pray to cow, we treat her as a god.” Though, Reena lets her kids eat whatever they want. She doesn’t want to pressure them, but if they eat beef in front of her, “they know [she’ll] make a face.” She laughs. She can’t justify it, it’s drilled into her religiously. She smiles and shakes her head.

The chicken is cut up into cubes and we mix it with about half a cup of yogurt. Reena and I are talking so much, I sometimes forget I’m there to cook. We add some spices on top that speckle the bright white yogurt with a deep red: a blend of cumin, red chili powder, turmeric, masala, and salt. A squeeze of lime, mix it up, and let it marinate.

Reena compares Florida to her native coastal, tropical south of India. I like this comparison because it turns my foreign concept of India (which I truly don’t know much about) into a place I’ve been many times before. However, I know Reena is referring to the climate, foods (coconut, plantains, fish she says), and beautiful beaches, and not the other Floridian attributes like old people and Disney World.

Her husband is from the north of India. A very different culture with very different food. In their home, overtime, their cuisines have melded into one.

Reena asks me if I have a pressure cooker. She jokes the base of all Indian cooking is a pressure cooker. It’s the first gift you get when you get married. Reena has five pressure cookers (though she’s only been married once). It has a whistle so as you cook, you learn how many whistles you need for something to be done. I’ve always been afraid of pressure cookers, my only experience being with an industrial sized cooker in a commercial kitchen. Nothing scarier than cooking with something that looks like it could explode at any moment.

I ask Reena if she washes her meat. “In India, you’d usually go to the poultry guy and you’d point at the chicken and say, ‘okay that’s the one I want!’ and then you run away because the guy will take it in the back and wring its neck and pull out the feathers.” She sighs, “so you wash it. I’m glad I don’t have to do all that here.”

Reena and her husband came to the US in 1998. They’d been living in Singapore for a couple of years prior, and that’s when the IT boom happened. Her husband had a great opportunity for work here.

I ask Reena if she had ever wanted to move to the US. Reena is honest. “For me, my parents were pretty well off in India. I didn’t have the American dream type of thing.” Singapore was only a few hours flight away from India, and Reena could see her family much easier than she can now.

“Singapore was ultra, super-modern. Very clean, organized, no crime rate.” She and her husband landed in Newark, NJ on Christmas Eve. They stayed with her sister-in-law for a few months before finding their own place. “I was spoiled,” she notes, “we didn’t come as immigrants escaping anything. He had a good job. Money wasn’t a struggle.” I am moved by Reena’s self-awareness, not only in this moment, but throughout our entire day together. There’s a boldness in the way she speaks, so unabashedly herself. I admire her and her pride for India gleaming through at every moment.

We put the chicken on a baking tray. Each piece perfectly spaced out from the next, and slide it into the oven at 400 degrees. You can brown the chicken on the stove, but today Reena is making us a feast. We need the stove top space for other dishes, so we use the oven to keep it out of the way.

On her stove, there is a tiny copper-bottom pot filled with milk. Reena tells me she makes yogurt every day. I ask to taste it and she gets me a little bowl and warns it may be a bit sour for my taste. We add salt and mix it up. I taste the yogurt, and the tang is there but it’s smooth and the salt adds balance.

Reena says the culture from the yogurt was brought from India. “You won’t believe it, but it’s so important to us, the yogurt, that I bring it from India in a little bottle.” Since she makes it everyday, she uses the previous yogurt culture to start her new batch. You boil the milk on the stove and when it comes down to room temperature you add the culture and let it sit until firm. Reena checks the temperature by gently sticking her finger in and seeing how it feels to the touch. She laughs, but I know many cooks in the kitchen are elbow deep in all the food they make. That’s where the love comes from. She puts the little pot into an insulated casserole dish to keep it warm. Depending on the day, it could be done as quickly as 4 hours.

I start peeling and chopping onions. I ask if she always uses red onion. She says yes, in India she doesn’t see white onions. They always use red and they always buy a ten pound bag.

Basic gravy in India is onion and tomato and ginger garlic puree, Reena explains. Ginger garlic is a blend of the two put into a jar. She scoops it into everything we cook today. And wow, is it a genius invention because it saves a ton of time and packs a ton of flavor.

For the butter chicken, we slice two red onions. We add them to a pan with a hefty amount of butter and let them cook down until just softened so the raw flavor is gone. The butter has turned them into a beautiful creamy mixture of white and lavender. We set them aside to cool.

I ask Reena if the food she makes is Ayurvedic. She says it isn’t labeled, but traditional Indian cooking uses anti-inflammatory spices and other ingredients meant to be healing for the body. In America, she jokes, we make a big deal about Turmeric but for Indians it’s always been essential. “Grandma’s remedy, we call it” Reena says, “a glass of cold milk and a spoonful of turmeric.” This is what is prescribed if you’re sick, if you have a cold, anything.

I dig back into her life as an Indian woman in America. Reena tells me with her visa type she wasn’t able to work. I ask if it was upsetting to her, and she replies, “No! I was never a career woman. I didn’t feel like I needed to work or anything like that.” There is no fear of judgment in what she’s telling me. (This is another moment where I admire Reena’s honesty and self-awareness. Throughout our entire conversation she is so raw in her experience and so fully herself it is hard not to smile while she speaks.)

We’re focusing on the gravy for the chickpeas now. We heat up vegetable oil to put the chopped up red onions (about 1 onion, maybe a little less). Once they’ve softened, in goes the ginger garlic, coriander, and cumin.

Growing up, Reena moved around a lot between different military bases. Reena describes India as a very tolerant country with many religions. If you were Christian, you’d understand everyone is coming to your house for Christmas. And everyone would do the same for their festival or celebration. Reena is Hindu, and she names Diwali as one of the most widely celebrated. It’s become an international festival.

Reena adds chili powder and another-spice-I-can’t-recall to the simmering onion and spices. I love her spice jars, a little spoon in each so she never has to stop and look for one. She asks me to add crushed tomatoes and when I ask how much I should put she says it’s up to me. (My favorite style of cooking. A dish shifting and evolving depending on how you feel.) I add about a cup and a half to create the base of the gravy. Once it simmers a bit, we toss in the chickpeas.

Reena tells me it’s common for fifteen families to gather at once. Her Indian community is very active. When she arrived to the US, she didn’t know anyone. (She adds a little coriander to the chickpeas).The Indian Cultural Society helped her find a community in New York. They have picnics, social events, and parties. There’s even a parade every August. They always have something going on.

The refrigerator door is bare with the exception of a black and white photograph of a family. Reena comes over to me and points, “that’s me. That’s my sister.” Reena’s sister still lives in India.

She adds hot water to the chickpeas and gravy. We let it continue to cook down.

“I didn’t even cook until I got married. I didn’t even watch” Reena smiles. “You know, it’s funny. My mom used to say, you won’t know anything when you get married! And once I was married, I’d ask my mom, How many whistles for this type of lentil? And she’d say, ‘I told you already! You didn’t listen when I told you!’” We laugh.

Reena mentions Indians used to only be in specific industries, like being doctors or in IT. Recent generations have been more accepting of different types of intelligence and interests, and so Indians are blending into every industry. It wasn’t always that way. But now the culture is spreading and people are more open-minded. At Reena’s job, people were really interested in learning more about her culture. Her coworkers wanted to try new things. She would bring in foods they were more familiar with. “Like chickpeas!” Reena exclaims, “Everyone loves chickpeas. But if I bring something to the table, people might be afraid to try because they’d think, ‘Oh, curries are hot!’ So I wouldn’t put a drop of chili powder.” Once they’d try it, they’d like it and be more open to trying other things she’d bring in.

We take the chicken out of the oven and flip it over. It goes back into the oven for another 20 minutes or so. We turn off the heat under the chickpeas and set them aside.

Reena and I dive into conversation. Some of our topics are deep (Hinduism and the stories She loves) and others are sticky and political (poverty in India). When we touch on my small knowledge of Hinduism, Reena lights up. The kitchen stands still as she tells me one of her favorite stories.

She is excited to share her culture with me. And none of my questions are stupid ones. I feel comfortable asking what I’m confused about and questioning a little where I want to learn more. She’s excited to let me in.

I chop up some cilantro and then peel the potatoes. They are pre-boiled but not too soft. I pull the skin off with a paper towel. When I ask how long she cooked them for, she says “one whistle.” I’m confused, but then I remember — we’re talking pressure cookers again. The potatoes will get put into a mixture with paneer (an Indian cheese curd) and peas.

As we prepare the rice to boil, I ask if she does anything to it. She says, “no, I just cook it. You have so many other dishes.” The rice is only a supporting act — no need to cloud up the flavor.

We take out a large Indian blender. There’s a lifetime warranty and it looks like it may have already existed forever. Reena pours in the onions we softened in butter earlier. As they blend, they become a creamy, bright purple puree. I’m in awe of the color — a pastel you only see during springtime and easter. The mixture looks like lavender ricotta cheese. But it isn’t. It’s onion.

The puree goes into a pan with a little bit of vegetable oil. We’re going to add ginger garlic, and then we add butter. We slowly add spices into the onion — Kashmiri chili powder (I comment on how bright it is in color), a little bit of masala (a butter chicken one), and finally, fenugreek leaves.

“Oh my god,” I gasp, “the color changed!” It’s magical. Suddenly the lavender onion mixture becomes a bright pinkish-red. Reena explains it’s from the Kashmiri chili powder, which isn’t spicy but adds color. I ask how we’ll thin it out. I am very unaware the copious amounts of cream coming next.

We add a tablespoon of ketchup to the sauce. She says sometimes she’ll put sugar instead. We start to pour in the cream. Eventually, the stream of cream stops and I ask to taste the butter chicken sauce. Reena asks if she should put more cream or anything, and I say no. It’s delicious. She smiles slyly and adds a little more anyway. We add in our roasted chicken, cover it, and let it cook down slightly.

We move onto puri while the chicken simmers. Reena has a simple dough of whole wheat flour and water already made. Puri is quickly fried in oil, she tells me, while roti is healthier and pressed on a griddle. As the oil heats up, we roll the dough into small balls in our palms. Turns out all my balls are way too big. Reena fixes them. I’m glad and happy to learn about the unspoken size rule. Her hands find the right size. Then we roll them out into circles together.

The oil is hot and I watch as Reena adds the first puri. It immediately puffs up and we press it gently with a slotted spoon. Once it’s slightly brown, we flip it and let it brown a bit more in the oil. There is a precipice moment where we must remove the puri otherwise it gets too brown. I learn quickly and help finish the rest of the batch.

Reena and I have been cooking for hours! The puri joins the rest of our dishes on the table. We sit down with her family to eat.

To make Reena’s butter chicken, check out the recipe here!