There is no substitute for eating a dish in its place of origin, preferably made in a home kitchen by hands that hold the muscle memory of thousands of meals. For me, a close second is stumbling across a recipe, trying it out, and feeling transported to a new place by its flavors. The vastness of the Jewish Diaspora has gifted us with a wealth of interesting types of culinary mergers, and I particularly love exploring the Jewish food of India, where Jewish communities date back thousands of years.

There are three distinctive Jewish Indian groups that happened to be largely isolated from ea...