Today’s Special: Arjun’s Vegetarian Manchurian

Arjun Khadka, the head chef and one of the owners of Cumin India on Skiff Street in Hamden, laid out a spread of Cumin’s more popular dishes. Among them were well-known fare like chicken tikka masala and garlic naan.

But the restaurant is also a place to sample Indo-Chinese dishes, a lesser-known facet of Indian cuisine that combines the influences of India and its neighbor, China. Among the many Indo-Chinese offerings on the menu is vegetarian Manchurian — vegetable dumplings topped with a sauce that pulls its ingredients from across Asia and elsewhere, and reminds us that India, as vast as it is, is also connected inextricably with the wider world.

To make the vegetarian Manchurian dish on Cumin’s menu, Khadka begins by chopping an assortment of vegetables and then cooking them together with corn starch to make them into small dumplings. The base for the sauce is a mixture of ketchup, tomato puree, fresh tomatoes, and vinegar. This is cooked in vegetable oil together with a paste of ginger and garlic, ​“until you get that color,” Khadka said, a rich, dark reddish-brown that looks as good as it tastes.

After that, he adds ​“a touch of soy sauce,” the unmistakable influence of Chinese cooking, and salt and pepper. The result is a taste of two vast countries rolled into one — and available for takeout or delivery.

Takeout and delivery orders will prove crucial to the ability of local restaurants like Cumin India to weather the pandemic during the coming months as Covid-19 cases climb and cold weather sets in. Get an order of Indian and Indo-Chinese dishes for takeout or delivery by calling (203) 248‑6464/6565 or ordering online. Cumin India is open daily from 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Multinationalism is also reflected in Cumin’s history and ownership. Cumin has three owners: Khadka, who oversees the food itself; Ram Chaudhary, who came to the partnership with restaurant management experience; and Sukra Shrestha, who handles the business and administrative aspects.

Shrestha is from Nepal, which he described as ​“a very tiny country” between China and India, ​“like a sandwich.” In Nepal he worked with a variety of NGOs and the United Nations Volunteers program. He worked in Bangladesh for four years with volunteers from multiple countries. ​“That was a nice project,” he said. It ​“coordinated poor people from all over the country, educated them,” and then helped them ​“find some resource, like seed money, to start their own business.” The ultimate goal was to ​“make them self-reliant.”

He also did some traveling of his own. One thing he learned, in visiting other places, is that ​“Indian food is so popular, everywhere you go.” He visited London and noticed the Indian restaurants were crowded — and entirely by Englishpeople. He visited the United States in 1996 as a tourist and liked it enough that he decided to stay. He was living in New York City when others in the Nepalese community invited him to visit Connecticut, and he has been here ever since.

He got into the restaurant business because ​“there was no choice,” he said. He faced a problem common to immigrants to the United States. In Nepal, he had earned a masters’ degree, but ​“no matter your qualifications, or where you graduated from, that will not work in America. You have to start over again,” he said. He began working as a waiter and slowly worked his way up, learning about how the restaurant business functioned.

“I never dreamed that one day I would be owner of a restaurant, but it happened,” he said. He opened a restaurant in Orange in 2005, ran it for a year, and sold it. He met his business partners and they opened another restaurant and sold that, in 2014.

The three owners opened Cumin India in 2010. ​“Nepal and India are similar in culture, food, dress,” Shrestha said. ​“Even language.” The owners’ hunch that Americans would like Indian food as much as the English did was correct. ​“We have been crowded from Day 1,” Shrestha said.

The arrival of Covid-19, however, created plenty of problems. At first, Shrestha said, owners and employees were wary of each other — worried that they might get each other sick, or get a customer sick. The restaurant closed altogether for the first 20 days of the shutdown. Then ​“we had a meeting with our employees, and we decided to reopen” for takeout and delivery. Indoor dining has remained closed.

“So far, it’s still good,” Shrestha said, though ​“it’s not easy. The uncertainty is higher.” That said, the business partners opened another restaurant, Tika Indian Cuisine, on Washington Avenue in North Haven on Dec. 3. They are banking again on the American appetite for Indian food. ​“The spices we use are good for health — cumin, garlic, onion, tomato, black peppers, turmeric,” he said. ​“It works like natural medicine.”

Khadka started cooking in the area at Darbar India in Branford, in 1994, helping build the then-recently opened restaurant’s business. He worked there for seven years. After that he started his own business in Michigan. After that he went to work in the kitchen of a Hilton, where ​“I cooked all kinds of food,” he said. ​“I just wanted to learn more about food.”

Indo-Chinese cuisine has been a part of the Indian food landscape for two centuries. ​“China is right next door” to India, Khadka said, and Indo-Chinese food features noodle and fried rice dishes, dumplings, and other ingredients and cooking methods familiar to Chinese food. ​“We just use our Indian spices” to make them, Khadka said. In India, the cuisine is still developing as cooks figure out new ways to put the foods together.

Previous coverage of recommended take-orders to help keep local businesses survive the pandemic:

• Today’s Special: Haci’s Napoletana Pie
• Today’s Special: Fred & Patty’s Brie On Baguette
• Today’s Special: Nieda’s Moist Falafel
• Today’s Special: Qulen’s Vegan ​“Wings”
• Today’s Special: Aaron’s Peruvian Rice Bowl
• Today’s Special: Singh Bros.’ Chana Kulcha
• Today’s Special: Grandma’s Chicken Soup
• Today’s Special: Woody’s Steak & Shrimp
• Today’s Special: Shilmat’s Yemisir Sambusa