Indian Chinese cuisine
Indian Chinese cuisine, Sino-Indian cuisine, Indo-Chinese cuisine, Chinese Indian cuisine, Chindian cuisine, Hakka Indian or Desi-Chinese cuisine is a distinct style of Chinese cuisine adapted to Indian tastes and spices. Though Asian cuisines have been mixed throughout history all over Asia, the most popular origin story of the fusion food resides with Chinese immigrants to British-ruled India at places like Calcutta. Opening restaurant businesses in the area, these early Chinese food sellers adapted their culinary styles to suit Indian tastes.
Chinese Indian food is differentiated from traditional Indian cuisines by its distinct blend of Chinese and Indian influences: Indian vegetables and spices are used, along with much Chinese sauces, thickening agents, and oil. Stir-fried in a wok, Sino-Indian food adds Indian sensibilities regarding spices and tastes when adapting Chinese culinary styles to the Indian palate. The cuisine has become integral to the mainstream culinary scenes of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan, and its diffusion to nations like the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and the Caribbean such as Jamaica and Martinique, have shaped and altered the global view of Chinese, Indian, and Asian cuisines like in most Southeast Asian countries of Indonesia and Thailand.
Origins
Chinese in India
The most popular theory for the origins of Chinese Indian food was during the British Rule of India. Kolkata was the capital of British-ruled India when it was governed by the East India Trading Company. The city's relation to the British crown made it a great place for material prospects and opportunity, which drew businessmen and immigrant workers from surrounding areas. The city was the most accessible metropolitan area of the country by land from China; thus, it became home to the very first Chinese settler, a southern Chinese man named Tong Atchew. In 1778, Atchew settled 20 miles southwest of Kolkata, founding a sugar mill along with five dozen or so Chinese immigrants. Following Atchew's footsteps, waves of Cantonese immigrants from Guangdong province of China fled to India due to civil war, famine, poverty, and conflict, searching for safety and prosperity. Hakka Chinese found their niche as cobblers and tanners, while the Cantonese settled mostly as carpenters and the Hubei people as dentists. However, an occupation popular among all groups, especially of wives supporting their husbands' work, was a restaurateur.From these first early settlers, communities of Chinese influence sprung up throughout the area, neighbourhoods of immigrants cooking and eating foods from their homeland. These Canton cuisines, known in China to be light and fresh in flavour, began to adapt and evolve into the new area. One reason is due to the availability of ingredients and spices being different from those in Guangdong, therefore forcing the flavour to naturally Indianize; additionally, Chinese businesses began to cater their foods to the tastes of their Indian patrons to increase sales, utilizing more spices and heavier douses of sauce and oil than their traditional techniques required. Recognized as one of the first Indo-Chinese restaurants in the country, the still-standing corner eatery of Eau Chew gained its popularity by using the fashionable pull of exotic Chinese foods combined with non-threatening familiar flavours of chili, curry, and corn starch, to attract and keep-on customers. Kolkata today boasts the only Chinatown in the country, a neighbourhood known as the Tiretti Bazaar. This being said, nearly every city in India has these adapted "Chinese" foods, whether found in restaurants or hawked by roadside vendors, as the greasy, spicy, stir-fried food that has become wildly popular throughout the country. It is also important to note those Chinese returning from India to their homelands in China's south, for they often brought their new culinary practices and flavours with them, working to Indianize the taste of Cantonese-style foods in southern coastal cities such as Hong Kong.
Additional origin points
As Indian historian Pushpesh Pant once noted, Indian Chinese food is "the result of several isolated encounters." These encounters, in addition to the Kolkata story, include influences of the Silk Road, historical ties, and geography. Each of these aspects has worked in some way to tie the culinary practices and flavours of the two countries together, marking other possible origin points for the Indian Chinese culinary tradition.Silk Road cultural exchange
The Silk Road was a network of trading posts and pathways on land and sea utilized from 130 BCE to 1453 CE spanning from China and the Indonesian islands through India and the Middle East, all the way to northeastern Africa and Italy. The significance of this route to ancient history is undeniable, the exchange of goods, diseases, and ideas from the East to West and vice versa has had a lasting impact upon the human story. Chinese and Indian merchants would carry their goods across the borders separating the two neighbouring countries: silks, rice, and crockery coming from China, with a plethora of influential spices sprouting from India. Another exchange between China and India was religion, with Buddhism coming to China from India via the Silk Road as well. Moreover, as aspects of Indian culture, practices, and beliefs melded with Chinese traditions, the Mahayana Buddhist religion was formed. Just as the Chinese adapted Buddhist practices to their own beliefs, the two cultures adopted certain aspects of the other throughout their historical interactions and exchanges. Rice dishes cooked in Indianized Chinese woks can be found in the nation's south, and there are spices of ginger, cinnamon, and black pepper present in various Chinese culinary styles. In this way, it can be seen how the Silk Road was vital in bringing characteristics of the two cultures together. Indian and Chinese food aspects collided hundreds of years ago to form culinary traditions now inextricable with these nations. In this way, the Indo-Chinese fusion cuisine could be said to have appeared long before the first Chinese settlers in Kolkata.Influences on Southeast Asian cuisine
Geographically, India and China are neighbours; historically, the two nations are ancient empires. Two of the most populous countries in the world today, both India and China boast lengthy histories. Since the second century CE, Hindu rulers presided over Southeast Asian countries and Chinese regimes ruled the more eastern regions, such as Vietnam. Similarly, Asia's southeast was historically populated by immigrants from both China and India, namely the Han and Tamil ethnic groups who joined scattered aboriginal societies. The influences of China and India can be detected in the cuisines of Southeast Asia, where the two culinary practices have been combined, adapted, and developed by generations of people. For example, the Chinese practice of rice cultivation was introduced to the regions of Southeast Asia and Nepal in the thirtieth century BC, where it has existed as an irreplaceable and undeniable staple ever since. Furthermore, now completely embedded within Southeast Asian culinary practices, Chinese cooking and eating implements such as spoons, chopsticks, and woks were other products which were introduced to the region. Evidence of Indian influence, in addition to religious philosophies and ancient architecture, can be found in the spices and flavours of Southeast Asian cooking. Curries—meat, fish, or vegetables cooked in a spiced sauce accompanied by rice or bread—originated on the Indian subcontinent, but have since diffused throughout Asia. Spices such as turmeric, coriander, pepper, brown mustard, and ginger are present in curries throughout Southeast Asia, though each country has adapted the practice to utilize their own regional ingredients as well. Most notably, Indonesian, Malaysian, Thai, Filipino, and Cambodian cuisines all have strong ties to Indian-style curry flavours. These aspects of both Chinese and Indian culinary practices and traditions have combined to create the origins of what is now a rich and diverse culinary scene making up Asia's southeastern region. Thus, with the joined influence of the two cultures, Southeast Asian cuisine itself is another example of Indian Chinese food origins.Culinary diffusion across borders
In addition to Southeast Asia, China has been influenced by Indian spices as well, especially in the autonomous region of Tibet, with Nepal also possessing culinary practices hailing from both its Chinese and Indian neighbours. Therefore, another origin point of Indian Chinese food can be traced to the cultures of Nepalese and Tibetan peoples, whose lands are mostly encompassed by the two nations. Although not aligned with the greasy and pungent flavors of the culinary traditions which evolved in Kolkata, the simple foods of Nepal are often accompanied by rice, and consist of curries or spiced vegetables stir-fried or boiled in an Indian-style wok called a karahi. Tibetan food, in addition to high altitude and harsh climates, is geographically influenced by the flavours of the countries surrounding it: notably Nepal, India, and China. Tibet is a nation heavily influenced by Indian Buddhist values, and with beliefs and ideas, travels culture and food as well. Noodles and teas from China, brown mustard from India, and even a "momo" dumpling dish shared with Nepal are all significant constituents to dishes of Tibetan cuisine. With the diffusion of ingredients, culinary styles, and flavours across borders, the regions of Nepal and Tibet which touch both India and China inadvertently developed cuisines mixing both Chinese and Indian styles and tastes, creating yet another Indo-Chinese food origin.Features
Foods tend to be flavoured with spices such as cumin, coriander seeds, and turmeric, which with a few regional exceptions, such as Xinjiang, are traditionally not associated with much of Chinese cuisine. Hot chilli, ginger, garlic, sesame seeds, dry red chillis, black pepper corns and yoghurt are also frequently used in dishes. This makes Indian Chinese food similar in taste to many ethnic dishes in Southeast Asian countries such as Singapore and Malaysia, which have strong Chinese and Indian cultural influences.Non-staple dishes are by default served with generous helpings of gravy, although they can also be ordered "dry" or "without gravy". Culinary styles often seen in Indian Chinese fare include "Chilli", "Manchurian", and "Schezwan" .