Baptism by Biryani

2017 is rapidly drawing to a close. And looking back over the last 12 months, the SFA is proud of our work. We produced 14 documentary films. We recorded 80 oral histories. We published the Southern Foodways Alliance Guide to Cocktails and four issues of the printed edition of Gravy. We hosted symposia and book signings and screen films at a PASL festival.

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For more than a century now, new arrivals have flocked to the Gulf Coast Megalopolis of Houston. Oil, gas, and shipping port development has transformed the once muddy flatland. Houston is now the South's largest city, a sprawling beamuth of soaring skyscrapers and never ending strip malls, and cul de sac ranch house suburbs. Houston today is a dizzyingly diverse place, a place of Budan Kalachis and lemongrass boiled crawfish, of biryani and a rose comphoya.

The foods of Houston look like the rainbow of people who claim this new South City. You're listening to Grace? Gravy? A visit to the most diverse major metropolitan area in the country, and to one's suburban kitchen, where an immigrant father teaches family traditions to his American-born son. Barry Yeoman, who also reported a recent Gravy podcast on Texas hurricane recovery, brings us this story.

Today, in the Houston suburb of Cady, Texas, John Marthand is getting ready for his cousin's birthday party. His wife and daughter have vacated the house. I know, Mama already has them. Leaving him to commandeer the kitchen, along with his son and cooking partner Joshua. John is forty-five, a technology professional at an older. He's a big guy with a shaved black. Joshua is slavery.

He is graceful around a stovetop and talks about food with precision, which he did just a few minutes ago as he laid out today's menu for me. We have two separate things going on here. This is going to turn into a shrimp curry and this is going to soon become a biryani. So we've already fried these onions and we put them back on the fire so that they'll heat up and now we're going to ground some spices and fry them, fry the onions again with the spices. What sorts of spices?

Uh we'll be using uh cardamom, cinnamon and cloves. And so we're gonna ground them here. With a mortar and pestle, that is. Meanwhile, sitting in the sink is a colander filled with two pounds of shelled shrimp, deveined and coated in turmeric. John explains to me that he uses turmeric and saffron both for their flavors and for their medicinal qualities. Cermic powder is a natural disinfection. In fact, it's such a good anti- Burns you can Directly put turmeric power onto

This is shaping up to be a sublime fragrant meal and also something bigger. Three hours of bonding between a father and son without even a mention of sports or electronics. John and Joshua move around the kitchen with the fluidity that not every duo can achieve in a small space. It's not just that they share a favorite activity. The kitchen is also where John, who was born in India, transmits some of the family's culture to Joshua, who was born in the United States.

This is the most diverse large metropolitan area in the In Harris County, which includes Houston and part of Katy, one resident in four is foreign born. That's more than a million people who immigrated from other countries. many of them, no doubt, thinking about how to teach their food traditions to their American born children.

In this house that means reinforcing to your son that when you cook shrimp curry, you don't throw those tomatoes into a blender. Only by chopping them with a knife will you get the proper consistency for the next step. We cut them on the case. stir it for about one or two, maybe even three hours, and it becomes a very very thick paste. The flame under the tomatoes is really probably at the topmost setting that is to help us evaporate as much of the liquid from the tomatoes as possible.

The tomato paste will eventually be combined in a series of steps with a shrimp, caramelized onions, green chilies, saffron, those spices that John crushed with the mortar and pestle. And uh of course uh salt to taste and that's going to make the sky. It smells great already. Thank you. We're actually not even We're not even halfway reducing those tomatoes down.

Houston was not always a city of immigrants. but it has always been a city of opportunity. Over the years various groups have arrived to seize that opportunity. Here's sociologist Steven Kleinberg, founding director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University. And the story for Houston is that during the oil boom years of the sixties and seventies, Anglos were pouring into the city. This is where the jobs were. After the oil bust, the collapse of the oil boom.

In nineteen eighty-two, thirty-six years ago, the Anglo population stopped growing. And all the growth of this, the most rapidly growing city in America, has been the influx of African Americans, Latinos, and Asians. and this biracial southern city dominated throughout all of its history by white men, has become the single most ethnically diverse major metropolitan area in the country.

Kleinberg calls it a bifurcated immigration. Highly educated folks like John came for well paying technical and medical jobs. Less educated immigrants came to work in the construction and service industries, where wages are considerably lower. And so you've got the two streams of immigrants coming into the city, uh in in a city that had been overbuilt with the with the expectation of fifty dollar oil back in nineteen eighty two when oil suddenly dropped to th twenty eight dollars.

And so the lot of empty spaces are inexpensive land. Immigrants go where they know people where you have a cousin who can find you a job and so critical mass develops and Houston without anyone having planned it has found itself at the center. Of the transformations that are occurring across all of America, nowhere more clearly seen than in the

Among Asian immigrants, the largest group comes from Vietnam. That's because Houston was a major refugee resettlement center after the fall of Saigon in nineteen seventy five. Indian Americans rank second, but Kleinberg says they are the fastest growing Asian immigrant group in Houston. John grew up in Hyderabad, a city of Toe of South Central India.

To rule that Deccan area in India married and brought wives over from countries like what is today's Afghanistan and Iran and even from some other Saudi Arabian countries. traditions and the food traditions kind of mingle with what was already going on and that's how biryani, which is originally a Iranian dish, came to India And became a Indian dish and it is now popular as an Indian dish all over the world. Remember Biryani, it comes up a lot in the story.

It's a rice dish that takes many different regional forms. The mixing of cultures isn't just some historic It was very much a pair. He grew up Christian but had lots of Muslim and Hindu friends. sharing food was an important part of those relationships. He tells me about Bakreed, the Muslim holiday honoring the Old Testament story in which Abraham sacrificed a ram in lieu of his son Isaac.

And so they use mutton which i is called mutton but it's not truly mutton, but it is basically g meat of goats that's cooked and made into biryani. During Bakreed, John would leave home in the early afternoon and visit his Muslim friends. He might hit twenty houses in a day, sampling a small bowl of goat buryani at each one.

During Christmas, his non Christian friends visited his house and enjoyed food and drink that might be off limits at their own. Some of his Muslim friends drank wine, some of his Hindu friends ate meat. Hydrabat has about the same population as Greater Houston, but packed into a much smaller area. So we tend to live a lot closer, the population is a lot denser.

I think that closeness also helps because when you use strong spices and a mixture of spices it's very easy to get the smell from one home to another home. And that invariably gets either a conversation started or food shared or Or something that you know you'd never expected before. Food was also a vehicle for generosity, and not just toward loved ones. In India typically people who do not have much to eat or do not have any food to eat will go home to home asking for a little bit of food.

and most of the housewives when they're cooking, even before they feed their family, just while they're cooking or just finished cooking, they'll take a little portion and give it off to these people so Essentially you have fed someone outside your home before your own family has gotten to eat food. And I think that's a a very amazing thing.

John's wife Caroline also came from Hyderabad. Hers was not a biryani cooking family. In fact, they never even attempted the dish. The couple met through their mothers, though the families had known each other for at least three generations. For Caroline, coming into the Marthan family was a revelation. And I saw that their whole family's life happens in the kitchen.

And what I noticed is my mother-in-law and father-in-law would never agree on how to make biryani. So they had their own flavour. She would make chicken biryani and he'd make mutton biryani. So for me it was uh baptism by biryani. John moved to the United States in 1999. Caroline joined him a year later. They first settled in Michigan, where Joshua was born, and moved to Texas when he was a few months old.

John started educating his son early about the importance of food. They've shopped together for spices since Joshua was a baby. that culinary connection deepened when Joshua was seven. I started grilling outside and uh I was making kebabs. And I made one piece out of all the kebabs I made I took one out and I said that this is gonna be a Joshua and Daddy piece and nobody else got to eat it. I'd just get a small bite and he would eat the rest of it. So that kind of became special.

That same year, John made Joshua his kitchen assistant, dispatching the boy to fetch onions and spices, as John prepared a giant pot of biryani. At first, for Joshua, helping his father was a chore. Then it became a way to learn the skills he'd need as an adult. As he got older and began chopping and frying, it evolved into something more meaningful for him. It would make um it would like it would spark conversations between us. Sometimes we're not even cooking and we talk about food.

Some of their best conversations have happened while cooking biryani because it takes a long time and the time is spent in close quarters. While we're cooking biryani, we discuss a whole range of other topics. We discuss fish. Discuss culture, we discuss science, mathematics, all kinds of things. And there are a number of life lessons that are learned because it's not me teaching Joshua, it's ninety-nine percent What has he taught you? To be humble, uh to be loving, to be happy,

Caroline, it should be said, is no slouch in the kitchen. The family is crazy for her doll, which is a thick lentil soup. Back when the couple was engaged, she took lessons from John's mother, who taught her how to blend spices in the hydro batty tradition. But when she watches her son cook, she knows which side of the family Joshua's enthusiasm comes from, not to mention his attention to detail.

I'm happy to see them bond over cooking. It took me a few years to realize that this is really important for my uh family, for my in-laws. When they came here at first it would frustrate me the fuss over biryani because it would all be about how the ingredients are not the right kind, how they diff are different from the ones they find in India. The meat quality was never the right and I'm thinking

It's just food, guys, you know. Um so it would frustrate me watching the the fussing over it and the long discussions over it. But then over time I realized it's really important for them and that's how this family bonds and works together and that's when I started being a part of Coming up, a Biryani delivery in a storm, and a rose conpoyo in return. That's a hell of it.

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We're almost an hour into the preparations for John's cousin's birthday party and on to the main kitchen event. fourteen year old Joshua explains. So now we're going to start working on the biryani. The rice has already been uh soaking for a while now, but now we're going to move on to marinating the meat. Chicken specifically organically raised and procured from a halal butcher. We've uh slit some chilies and now we're cutting these limes in half.

and they're going to be squeezed into the pot of meat along with some m spices and mint and uh cilantro and green chilies. The spices are cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, black cardamom, bay leaf, and some cumin. Okay. Barry this is going to make a large sample. That's okay. Biryani is not everyday food. Caroline calls it a wedding dish. On an ordinary weeknight, John might caramelize some onions, then follow his imagination, until he's produced a complete meal in thirty or forty minutes.

Because Biryani takes hours, it's reserved for special occasions. And in Houston last summer, there was no occasion more exceptional than the arrival of Hurricane Harvey. Three days before Harvey made landfall, John called his butcher and put in a large meat order. Because that's the best way to spend a large amount of time not thinking about Harvey, not focusing on uh a disaster that's gonna come.

maybe it's a way of trying to escape from it. Maybe it's a trying uh a way of trying to mentally prepare and not dwell on it also. So I put in all my orders for meat and spices and everything on Tuesday and I spent all of Tuesday and Wednesday going and picking up all the ingredients I needed. Uh we stocked up on water, we stocked up on all the other essentials. And then the day that the storm hit was uh Friday and on Friday I I started cooking biryani

The idea was to keep Harvey news at bay. No television, no radio, no computer, not even much talk about the storm. Here's Joshua. Harvey did not dominate our conversation because for us, when we cook, we don't talk about anything stressful. We we talk about hobbies and, you know, events around us and our fate. As they cooked, John thought about one of his neighbors, a Houston native named John Green. The two families became friends through their daughters.

John Green is a white guy, conservative but not insular, he goes out of his way to engage with people from other cultures. Driving to his banking job, he'll often stop at the park and ride lot and pick up someone from a different ethnic background. As they travel downtown, the conversation often veers toward food. John Marthen had been planning for months to cook John's name. Remember, he comes from a culture where people outside the family are fed before people inside the family.

Even before I made this biryani it was locked in my mind that the next time I make a biryani, John Green's gonna get a portion. He packed some in a box and drove it over to his neck.

Green, for his part, was getting ready to trudge through three foot high water to help another friend whose house was in danger. Here's John Green. I didn't even answer the door. My wife did. My friend was about to flood and he needed help moving furniture up, so I was getting ready and I was actually. And he was basically sending the SOS out of the I need you to get to my house however fast you can to help me move furniture.

So my wife said, The Martin's brought over some biryani for you. I'm like, What? It's raining, is there's tornadoes outside. How They're breaking up Over biryani for me? The next day, John Green's wife Danielle, the daughter of a Mexican immigrant, cooked Samaroth Campollo, That's a chicken dish that, like the Marthen's briani, also contains meat and rice. To return the favor, John Green brought some over to the Marthan's house.

You know, it's a simple story, but it's it's something that I think neighbors do and it's a you know, i it was it was interesting that you had the I guess courage, or maybe you were just bored, or I don't know, but it was very kind of you to bring over Biryani during a tornado warning in a flood, so You didn't mention that that that there was a a tornado warning.

Yeah, there was a tornado warning. Um it started to beep on the phones over here and then we got I said, Okay, let's just go And my wife said, You think it's okay to be out when the tornado warning's going off? I said, Yeah, we I think we'll be fine. And let me uh read you the text that he sent me. Afterwards when I texted him to thank him.

I said, Thanks for the biryani He said you are very welcome. This is the traditional way of making biryani and closer to the exact taste in comparison to what you get in the restaurants. He didn't care that there was a tornado warning or anything. He wanted to make sure that he knew that he made it the exact way and it's not like what you would get in the restaurants.

The Marthans were fortunate, as their street filled with rain, the water lapped at their property but didn't invade their home. The church they attend took four feet of water, and some of its members' houses flooded too. But no one in the congregation came to physical harm. A few days later, in a show of gratitude, some of the members got together for dinner at the pastor's house. It was a potluck, so John and Joshua made an enormous plate of kebabs.

And just as we finished dinner we looked out the windows and we saw direct sunlight touch the ground on the backyard. And uh was like uh Noah's Ark when he sent the the dove out. The sunlight showing up after that dinner was like the bird coming and bringing an olive branch for us, letting us know that it's peaceful now, everything's over. Houston will have to rebuild, Houston will have to deal with what happened, but Mm. The bad weather itself was over.

That church potluck was multiracial and multicultural, much like Houston's son. Steven Kleinberg, the sociologist, says that's the direction much of America is heading. In twenty five years the census tells us America will look like Houston looks today. Bye. So this is one of the places where the American future is being worked out.

This is now a nation of immigrants from all over the world as we make this transition in America from having been a microcosm of European nationalities into becoming a microcosm of the world. There's one more dish to make before the birthday party. Joshua cuts the peppers into fours. You need some oil in a small Yeah. Includes peanuts, coconut flakes, and chili pepper. along with fenny greek, curry leaves, and dried apricot.

So now we've just put a lid on it and we're going to let it sit on a rather high fire. This last step fills the kitchen with smoke. You can taste the heat through your nose. It's all rather intoxicating. By now, Caroline and seven year old Joanna have returned from the mall. Look over here and shrive! There's a knock on the door. It's John Green arriving just in time to sample all three dishes with me. This looks like travel. It is trouble. Oh my god, it is so good. It is so good.

Are you gonna go back to North Carolina? Ten pounds heavier. That's it's worth it. Okay, that's an awesome fight. No, no, no, we're right. Make here. Okay, so that's Sorry. Oh, the the really spicy one from last time. We talk about food of course and about Joshua's talent in the kitchen. We talk about who got flooded and about the Marthand's church and about more mundane subjects like Houston traffic.

As the gathering breaks up, my final image is of little Joanna, her face buried in the steam coming off the Briannipot. Wanna keep my nose? forever. Okay. Amen. Yeah. North Carolina Richard Ziegler recorded narration and we thank Leah. For helping with tapes. John Buin from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University produced this episode. Gravy's theme music is by Wendell Patrick and Donor Music is by Jazar. This podcast and all other S Fay content is Sarah.

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