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So similar are the menus in area Indian
restaurants that it's jokingly been said that a few well
placed underground kitchens scurry food to all of them.
Of course an exaggeration, but if you frequent the Indian
dinning rooms in the Hub, you'll notice how many of these
restaurant share the same menu items. "In Boston," says
Sham Sahni, reiterating the obvious, "the menus in
the Indian restaurants do tend to be the same. But in
India," he notes, "chefs create new dishes all
the time."
The owner-chef of
New Mother India in Waltham, Sahni gestures to
Moody
Street where he says, "within walking distance of
this restaurant are four other Indian restaurants. To stand out, we had to do
something to distinguish ourselves."As
the first area Indian restaurant to introduce the Tandoor
oven (in 1986) and, later, fruit ice creams, New Mother
India understood the value of change. "I read a lot
about the food trends," says Sahni "so that I
can understand what is going on in the food
industry."
Despite dealing with
a food culture that's 5,000 years in the making,
"This isn't a stagnant business."
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Beginning in the winter of 1992, he decided
that New Mother India would gradually add new dishes to
the menu. All with strong Indian roots, Sahni wouldn't be
intimidated by introducing a hybrid dish or two. "I
played with different sauce, herb and spice
combinations," he says, "until I came up with a
new taste. But," he adds, "there must be a
feeling that the taste, even if it was new, is still
distinctly Indian."
And to Sahni,
"distinctly Indian" means cooking the meat,
fish or vegetables in the sauce.
"True
Indian cooking," he says, "always finds the main part of the
dish cooking in the sauce that comes
with it. Meats and vegetables all stand up to spices differently. If
you add the sauce to the meat after it's cooked, it affects the flavor
and texture differently than if it were cooked directly in the
sauce."
Typical of how Sahni arrived
at a
new dish is the restaurant’s version of chicken goa.
"Even though the dish is
cooked in coconut milk, I wanted this to be a mild dish
that wasn’t sweet. When I served it to my
wife’s best friend, she thought it would be
interesting to see if you could make it hot dish."
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Adding fresh green
chilies and garlic to the coconut milk resulted in the
final version. Other new menu items include lentil garlic
soup, Bombay chicken with mango and broccoli, as well as
two veal dishes and an appetizer, Kashmiri mushrooms that can be cooked
with white wine.
Addressing these anomalies,
Sahni says, "Veal is never used in India and no Indian would ever
cook with wine. But for this restaurant, it all comes down to a matter
of giving people choices." The menu states that you can order
Kashmiri mushrooms without wine and the veal (including a spicy pan
roasted version with a melange of vegetables called jalfrezi) is, of
course, an option. But these dishes keep evolving.
"You or
I," says Sahni, "can have chicken saag anywhere, but you can
only eat veal jalfrezi at New Mother India."
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