Fusionista Food: East Indian Tacos

Mixing Mexican and Indian food sounds really strange and is most likely a huge disaster. I, on the other hand, didn't even know I was doing it until it had already been done. Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid wrote the cookbook Mangoes and Curry Leaves: Travels Throughout the Subcontinent. Their writing style includes photographs, travel stories and delicious, unusual recipes. Cookbooks can be hard to trust if the first recipe doesn't work. In their previous book, Seductions of Rice, I tried a recipe for Tofu with Tomatoes and Cilantro. I was skeptical but it tasted wonderful.

Once I received their cookbook for Christmas, I chose my first recipe, Mint-Cilantro Beef Patties, collected spices and scouted out the nearest Indian grocery, which turned out to be Namaste Plaza in Belmont. There, I bought mint, cilantro and cucumbers and stared hard at the flours before realizing atta (durum) flour could only be bought in 20 pound sacks. So instead I picked up an aluminum foil-wrapped package of roti made by a lady in Santa Clara. I went to other extremes instead: I ground my own chuck for the patties, making the mix a 90:10 ratio of meat to fat. So I shaped and grilled the patties, heated the chapatis and brushed them with ghee, made a vegetable plate of chopped tomatoes, cucumbers, mint, cilantro and limes, and stirred up a quick garlic and salt raita. Then my husband started piling everything into the chapati, and I started to laugh. Spicy, herbal and hot beef wrapped in chewy, wheaty chapati with vegetables, herbs, creamy sauce and a spritz of lime is nothing if not a cultural and culinary collision of the most delicious sort.

Cumin-Coriander Beef Patties (From Mangoes & Curry Leaves: Culinary Travels Through the Great Subcontinent by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid)

About 1 pound best-quality lean ground beef
1/2 cup finely chopped or grated onion or shallots
1 teaspoon minced ginger or ginger ground to a paste (optional)
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon cayenne
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 plain (full- or reduced-fat) yogurt
1 teaspoon rice vinegar
1/4 to 1/2 packed chopped coriander leaves or 1/4 cup minced mint leaves
Peanut oil or vegetable oil

Mix beef, onion (which I didn't use), ginger (which I also omitted), spices, yogurt, vinegar and herbs. For this recipe I used 1/4 cup chopped coriander and 1/4 cup chopped mint. Knead the mixture together well to obtain a smooth, well-blended texture. I shaped the mixture into 16 smaller oblong patties rather than 8 larger patties. I then grilled the patties on a well-oiled cast iron grill pan till both sides had deep black grill marks and were cooked through.