TL;DR
Inspired by Mia Moss’s Breakfast Serial, I plan to write a fiction series that has an Indian-American fusion recipe with every episode. This needs to be set in the 1600s, or earlier, ideally. Here’s some research that went into checking for plot feasibility.
Culinary Fusion
My husband and I grew up eating completely different cuisines. He ate steak and burgers and tacos, and I stuck to food from the former Mysore kingdom, which is endless combinations of rice, lentils, and vegetables. Marriage made me look at my food with new eyes, and called into question everything I took for granted about my diet. After a point, I wondered if it made any sense for us to stick to cuisines that originated in Europe and India, when we don’t live anywhere close to there.
It doesn’t make sense, does it, to buy sacks of Basmati rice month after month, when we live nowhere near the foothills of the Himalayas. Especially when there’s local rice varieties that are healthier and easier to cultivate. What’s the point of sticking to a wheat-based cuisine when wheat makes you ill, and substituting other flours in wheat-based dishes leads to crumbly pizza and cake that doesn’t keep?
I’d often reminisce about my late teens in Udupi-Mangalore, which was full of free lunches at one or the other of the zillion temples that dotted the coast. The food is all vegetarian, cooked in ginormous quantities to feed a few hundred twice a day, multi-course, and consistently tasty. Udupi cuisine has a few different dish templates, and all you need to do is fill those templates with local, optionally vegetarian ingredients. And it isn’t restricted to temples alone. The region is known for its great cooks (bhattas) who dominate the restaurant trade in India and elsewhere.
With that in mind, my husband and I went apeshit with ingredients, and with trying to please each other’s palates, and came up with dishes that confused both our families. Ragi bread, besan pizza, tomatillo rasam, cranberry pickles, acorn meal dosa…. All with a side of pico de gallo with puffed rice, which my folks called a Mexican bhelpuri. My guiding light through all this was “How would my ancestors cook if they were here before globalization?”.
I wondered about making a cookbook of these recipes. But in all honesty, my recipes are amateurish, are probably common among all the desi housewives within throwing distance, and simply not very interesting.
Plus, why am I the best person to write this book? Cooking is not my strong suit or passion.
I laid the idea aside. But it never really left my mind.
A Novel Cuisine
Mia has a great sci-fi+baking serial happening over at her Substack. Reading her latest episode, it occurred to me that I could try doing the same thing! That’s what I need. An exciting story to go with each recipe!
Pre-16th Century Indian cuisine didn’t have new-world ingredients, like maize, chillies, peppers, potatoes, and tomatoes. My grandparents would refer to vegetables like capsicum, eggplant, and some squashes as “English vegetables”. Even now, the food cooked on the day you remember your ancestors are made without nightshade plants (because they wouldn’t recognize them).
Wouldn’t it be exciting looking at foods native to the Americas from the point of view of an experienced Indian chef who had never seen them?
Given this, I really want to set this story in that era after Vasco da Gama came to India (1498) and before Spanish colonization of California took off full swing.
And given I wanted to explore American ingredients from the perspective of Udupi cuisine, my character would need to be from the Udupi/Mangalore area.
Which works out pretty convenient, as Mangalore has always been a popular port city, with lots of international trade. Historically, trade was with the Arabs and East Africa. It was also briefly under Portuguese control, before it was brought under British rule.
I love port cities and trading posts as settings for stories, because they are always full of activity, and you never know who you’ll meet there! Perfect!
The Portuguese Port City Of Mangalore
I looked through Wikipedia for the history of Mangalore. What I found astonished me.
First, Krishnadeva Raya, the king most remembered for the golden age he heralded across South India was a Tuluva. Somehow, I thought he was a Telugu, because that was the official language of his court.
Second, Krishnadeva Raya had friendly relations with the Portuguese, who traded with his kingdom at Mangalore. This one blew my mind, because though factually I know the Vijayanagar empire lasted from the 14th century to the 17th, I don’t imagine them indulging in sea trade. Vijayanagar empire conjures images of Hampi, which is pretty far inland, and in Northern Karnataka, and you imagine gemstones being sold on the streets and people spouting Telugu poetry. Not trade with the Portuguese and Arabs, and I barely think of Mangalore and Udupi as being part of that empire. But, there were two Portuguese travellers who gave us great accounts of the empire.
This just goes on to show me 1) the extent and the might of the Vijayanagar empire, and 2) the wonderful job the education ministry does with writing history textbooks.
Vasco Da Gama was a Portuguese sailor who wanted to find a trade route to India. Apparently he docked in East Africa, where an Indian or Arab navigator showed him the way to India. He landed at St. Mary’s Island just south of Mangalore, planted a cross, and was off on his merry way to Kozhikode, which is his ‘official’ landing in India.
The Portuguese wanted to destroy Arab trade in India. In 1526, they captured Mangalore. I don’t quite understand the sequence of control here, but the Vijayanagar Empire and their vassals reestablished political control over the city in 1550. But somehow, the Portuguese still had enough control that they restricted and blockaded Arab trade. Which pissed off the Arabs enough that they burned Mangalore in 1695.
About 50 years later, Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan, the Dalawayi (Prime Ministers) of the Mysore kingdom controlled Mangalore briefly before losing it to the British. Which is historic AF, but writing about history in that period is complicated with too many players. It’s also a little late in the cycle of history.
A burning city with a thriving international trade scene is about right for a young lad to leave everything behind and sail away on a ship. Presumably as the ship’s cook. I would like to set it in and around the burning of Mangalore for this reason.
The Maritime History of California
I assumed California would be besieged by colonizers of all stripes, and be a hub of sea trade. Apparently that wasn’t the case at first. Here’s where I’m basing off what I’m about to say.
Mexico was called New Spain, and that’s where the Spanish conquistadors did their looting, pillaging and murdering. Their home port was Acapulco.
In the late 1400s-early 1500s, there were a couple of expeditions up north, but the folks who went by land stopped at the Colorado river, and the ones who went by sea caught high winds, thick fog, and jagged rocks and choppy waters. The leader of the second expedition hurt his shin on the rocks around Catalina island, developed gangrene, and died.
The Spanish decided Alta California wasn’t worth it, because neither was there gold, nor was there advanced civilization, or an easier route to China.
In 1565, the Spanish started their Galleon ships to go between Mexico and the Philippines. In 1579, Francis Drake, a privateer, captured two Spanish ships, and landed somewhere by Point Reyes. And then after repairing his ship, he set off to circumnavigate the globe. He returned to Point Reyes in 1580, and claimed it for England. In 1595, an exploring Spanish Galleon got shipwrecked, after which Spain decided there would be no more exploration.
It looks like nothing happened on the coast all the way until 1769, when things went into overdrive, and the Missions were established.
To have our Bhatta get to the San Francisco Bay pre-Mission, he would have to be part of the earlier failed expeditions, or he would need to arrive along with Francis Drake.
Chino Slave Trade
Zelda told me about the Chino slave trade. Those Manila Galleon ships didn’t only have silver; they also trafficked people. The term for the slaves was Chino, but the slaves were from all over the Portuguese sphere of influence, like the west coast of India, Southeast Asia, Africa, and of course, the Philippines, China and Japan.
I found this book by Prof. Tatiana Seijas, titled Asian Slaves in Colonial Mexico - From Chinos To Indians. One chapter talks about a slave named Antonio who was brought from the Malabar coast to Acapulco. I haven’t yet read it, but it seems like a great source to dive deeper on this aspect.
Putting Together A Timeline
So if our Bhatta comes thus to Baja California, it would have to be between the late 1560s to the early 1700s, which would fit in well with the 1695 sacking of Mangalore.
He would probably feel very at home in Acapulco, because the environment, and vegetation are very similar to his hometown. There’s even a lot of the same fruit, including mangoes and jackfruit, and several kinds of squash.
But if it were on this timeline, how would he make it to Alta California from Acapulco? And given how big a city Acapulco seems to be, would he even be able to break free and hide out? I wouldn’t like to catalog an enslaved life, really, because it doesn’t fit in with my nature to write about dark, hopeless situations.
Maybe he’s on one of the Manila Galleons that Francis Drake captures? That would have him get to Point Reyes eventually, and meet the Miwok. But that doesn’t fit in with the timeline, as Francis Drake came earlier.
Maybe I can take creative liberties and talk of yet another expedition (or maybe I’ll find one if I dig deeper) which happened in the early 1710s or so. So by the time the Missions come in 1769, Bhatta would be an old man who’d have to summon his last bits of strength (and culinary abilities) to fight them.
Which doesn’t sound too appealing.
Maybe the sanest thing to do would be to set Bhatta’s departure in the time of Hyder Ali’s capture of Mangalore in 1762-63. Then we could have him travel the world for 3-4 years, then end up in the San Francisco Bay (How? I’ll figure it out) around 1765-66. A good three years to get acquainted with the community, after which he needs to join the fight against the conquistadors.
All worthy options, but I feel I need more knowledge to make an informed choice.
The Riches of California
The Spanish said there was nothing of value in Alta California for 220 years, no gold, no advanced civilization, and oh, how wrong they were.
With such treacherous coasts, fire, tarantulas, earthquakes, drought, and Shen Yun, is California a place to be during a natural disaster? The Spanish who exploited every land they came across found it inhospitable for so long. It had me wondering if there’s any value to the location at all.
But looking at it through another lens, those negatives was what kept California protected and isolated for so long. The dangerous rocks on the coast, the fog, the winds, and the Colorado river are what kept people away, while the natives could spend barely four hours a week to obtain all their caloric needs. The coasts were flush with shellfish and salmon, the land abounded with acorns, berries, deer and fowl. It seems like a pretty easy life on a superficial level.
I don’t know when I’ll get to this. Maybe in a year, after San Francisco Serial and India House are done? But this seems like a rather exciting series to write, especially since it involves bringing together the history of two places I hold dear in my heart, and want to learn more about.