Despite it publishing nearly a year ago, one of the cookbooks I continue to come back to over and over again is Priya Krishna’s Indian-ish: Recipes and Antics from a Modern American Family. The cookbook is essentially a love letter to Krishna’s mom, Ritu Krishna, who after coming to the United States from Uttar Pradesh, India in 1980, paid her way through college, worked as a software engineer, and eventually became a manager at an airline software company. When she emigrated from India, Ritu didn’t know how to cook and could only make roti. So while pursuing her education and career in the United States, Ritu taught herself to cook Indian food by trying to recollect the flavors and textures of her grandmother’s cooking and pairing those memories with ingredients and techniques she learned in the United States, all while raising a family and satisfying the demand of her two daughters. In Indian-ish you’ll find recipes for saag feta, roti pizza, and dahi toast. The recipes are purposefully and proudly inauthentic and instead reflect the eclectic and diverse life immigrants coming to the United States live.
I love this cookbook because, in so many ways, the experiences and stories resonate with my childhood. Growing up, my grandmother was my idol. I adored helping her pick out broken lentils before she made daal, de-string green beans for bhaji, or roll out chapatis and parathas. But my sister and I were persnickety kids who had Americanized taste. I loved the pizzeria a half block from where we grew up in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and I was so jealous of the kids who got to eat pizza for dinner. I remember as a kid demanding we eat pizza and asking my grandmother if she could just put tomato sauce and cheese on a chapati (roti pizza). She said yes, but unfortunately, our versions weren’t very good.
But Priya Krishna also opens up about the experience of being raised in the United States and having mostly white American childhood friends and at the same time coming home to an Indian household. Krishna describes how she tried to get her mom to assimilate aspects of her South Asian heritage. She begged her mom for PB&J sandwiches instead of the daal her mom packed for her daily, and eventually, her mom budged. But other features, like her dark curly hair or lack of a bat mitzvah, weren’t going away. This interstitial experience, sitting between a mother-culture maintained by memories, food, and shared cultural practices and a home-culture of where you physically reside, is what the children of immigrants are forced to grapple with. It’s like your cultural identity is in a dryer cycle, constantly tumbling between the demands and expectations of your family, friends, religious, scholastic, and cultural institutions. The ordeal can be disorienting.
Growing up, I’ve always wondered what culture I belong to. When I was a kid, I aggressively rejected my Indian heritage while in American spaces. I just wanted to fit in so badly, but it’s really hard to trade methi parathas and tandoori chicken for Fruit Roll-Ups and Gushers. I was disinterested in, and honestly intimidated by, the cooking my grandmother was doing and instead focused on learning about Western culinary traditions like French, Italian, and regional American foods. I tried drawing a sharp line between who I was in our Indian home and who I was in the American public. Sometimes it backfired: I remember when my sister and I were kids, our Pakistani nanny didn't really understand what American kids ate for lunch, so we showed up to school with ham-and-peanut-butter and cheese-and-jelly sandwiches.
But it’s only in the last few years that I’ve learned to take pride in and own my Indian heritage. It’s been a journey, but I’m trying to weave my Indian culture into the person I present, whether that’s at home, with friends, or at work. I want to honor my grandmother by carrying on the traditions she imparted us with. Since she passed away last year, I’ve tried to cook Indian food once a week and make a trip every month or so to the sole Indian grocery in Brooklyn. It’s not always easy, but I feel like I’m in good company with other immigrant kids who are also trying to answer what it means to be Indian, Chinese, Filipino, or Thai in America. Priya Krishna is one of those kids, and the cookbook Indian-ish her attempt to answer the question.
I love the metaphor of tumbling in the dryer between two cultures, and the rich texture of memory mixed with family and food serves up a beautiful and poignant memoir piece. Have you ever read Richard Rodriguez’ “The Hunger of Memory.” I think its themes resonate meaningfully with yours.
I love the metaphor of tumbling in the dryer between two cultures, and the rich texture of memory mixed with family and food serves up a beautiful and poignant memoir piece. Have you ever read Richard Rodriguez’ “The Hunger of Memory.” I think its themes resonate meaningfully with yours.
I have not! I’ll try to pick up a copy, and let’s talk about it when I see you next :)
Deal! I read it when it came out so maybe I need to reread it!