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Punjabi Flavours Rule in Sikh-Canadian Stronghold:
Brampton, Ontario, Canada

DAKSHANA BASCARAMURTY

 

 

 

Once a year before winter starts, Rick Singh Matharu’s mother and grandmother perform a pungent annual ritual in the backyard of their Brampton home.

Rick retrieves a one-litre Mason jar from the fridge and encourages me to take a whiff of its lightly browned, oil-slicked contents: sweet, sauteed onions. Several pounds of them cooked down in this jar.

“Just like Italians do with tomato sauce, they’ll do the same thing with onions,” he explains. “They’ll take a whole day and stink up the neighbourhood.”

Onions, garlic and ginger are the aromatic trinity of Punjabi cooking, I learn. I’m at Rick's house to talk about the culture of food in Brampton (my home for a month) and just how far removed it is from the scene in Toronto’s core -- the heart of the metropolis only a few miles away .

I’ve taken temporary residence in Brampton because for years it’s been at the centre of many demographic changes that are slowly taking hold in other parts of the country. Its growth, fuelled largely by immigration from Punjab, has impacted everything from health-care delivery to the culinary landscape.

Bramptonians don’t have the same Yelping, Chowhounding and food blogging tendencies as Torontonians (in fact, I’m a little embarrassed when I pull out my phone to take pictures of the bake and shark I order at a Trinidadian restaurant in a Brampton strip mall). So Rick, an amateur cook turned food blogger, is a rare specimen. He was born and raised in Brampton and learned to cook everything from aloo gobi to karrhi pakora from his mother – but he usually puts a fusion twist on his dishes.

Last year, he won the Food Network’s Recipes to Riches show with an Italy-meets-Punjab entrée: a butter chicken lasagna.

On this night, in his kitchen at least, diplomatic relations between Lebanon and Punjab are strengthened. He’s making a Punjabi-style shawarma plate: basmati rice, tandoori-spiced chicken, garlic sauce spiked with fresh mint and basil, sliced onions topped with balsamic vinegar and a salad served with olives, banana peppers and pickled turnip.

Dessert is mango milkshakes with cardamom.

We pick up most of the essentials he doesn’t already have at home – chicken thighs, fresh mint, yogurt, sour cream – at 'No Frills' and then drive down the road to 'Subzi Mandi', a Punjabi grocer, for Thai chilies and three pounds of totapuri mangoes (an variety I’ve never seen before).

Bernice Leung, the ethnic practice lead at Nielsen Canada (the consumer and media research group), tells me Punjabis in Canada “tend to compartmentalize their everyday purchases into two or more stores – typically one ethnic store and one mainstream store.”

They buy far more fresh ingredients, such as vegetables, eggs and yogurt, than the general population, which suggests they cook at home way more than they eat out. It makes sense in Brampton, too, where many Punjabi families live in multi-generational households and there are often two or three primary cooks on hand (Rick, his wife Harjot Kaur and his mother, Manjeet Kaur, trade off duties in their household of six).

And it’s not just Sunday cooking with leftovers to last the week in the household; they whip up impressive meals on weeknights too – albeit with some shortcuts.

Because Rick can only marinate the chicken in a yogurt and spice blend for about an hour (instead of the ideal – overnight), when the chicken is nearly done cooking in the oven, he brings out a pair of kitchen scissors and starts snipping away at the larger chunks of meat, allowing the tangy, spicy sauce to seep into the cuts and add extra flavour.

As he prepares his garlic sauce in the blender, I ask Rick for recommendations of places to eat in the city. He rattles off a long list of takeout joints – the best spots for fish pakoras (Indian Sweet Master), Caribbean fried chicken (Sunrise Caribbean) and Punjabi-style pizza, which is regular pizza topped with garlic, ginger, coriander, spices and green chilies. Pizza Depot and Popular Pizza were the joints that brought the trend to Brampton, he says, and it’s been such a hit that one major pizza chain (which shall remain nameless) has hopped on the bandwagon. While they won’t give you your coriander and chili-topped pie if you call their central ordering line, they will if you place your order in person at certain Brampton locations, he tells me.

When I asked him to point me to some of his city’s upscale establishments, his brow furrows.

There’s the one buffet place, he says, and another newer spot in a power centre known more for its desi decor than its food. Aside from a handful of Italian restaurants, there isn’t much of a fine dining scene in Brampton.

“I don’t think [an upscale Punjabi restaurant] would run as well if they were to open one – especially in this area – because everyone’s competing with $2.99 chhole bhature [at takeout restaurants],” he says.

 

[Courtesy: The Globe and Mail. Edited for sikhchic.com]

May 18, 2013

 

 

Conversation about this article

1: Roop Dhillon (London, United Kingdom), May 24, 2013, 7:27 AM.

Outstanding.

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Brampton, Ontario, Canada "









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