Salads & Cold Food with Jerome Gomes

Appears in
top 1000Prashad: Cooking with Indian Masters
Prashad

By J. Inder Singh Kalra

Published 1990

  • About
There are many things that a number of Indians are loath to accept. The concept of cold food, for example, is still anathema. The reason has everything to do with the fact that until recently refrigerators were not considered a necessity. Our climate leads to instant degeneration of food. Besides, habits formed over the centuries are hard to change and an indication of this is our continuing mistrust of frozen foods.

What surprised the author was that many chefs were reluctant to even discuss the subject of Indian garde manger. Why, many laughed—to my face—when I proposed that they at least try out some of the salads and cold cuts I had in mind. The more they rejected the idea, the more determined I became to see it succeed. After innumerable rejections, the concept of the Indian ‘cold kitchen’ became a fixation. The result is this humble contribution to Indian cuisine—with a lot of help from my ‘co-authors’ for this section.