LOS ANGELES (AP) – What the heck is Aloo Gobi?
After creating a hit movie about rejecting traditional family-life domesticity and making jokes about the Indian vegetable dish, “Bend It Like Beckham” director Gurinder Chadha is learning how to “cook it like mother” on the film’s DVD.
The dish, which includes cauliflower, potatoes, chilies, garlic and spices, is mentioned in a joke in the film about a young Indian girl who wants to play soccer against her parents’ wishes.
But Americans never laugh, Chadha said, because most don’t know what it is. That’s one reason she added the cooking featurette on the DVD, which came out Tuesday.
“I cook it with my mum, it’s quite funny because my mum is complaining about everything I do,” Chadha told The Associated Press. “That little moment really mirrors the film. I’m cooking it my way and my mum’s going, “No! Do it nicely! You have to do it nicely!”‘
The “Beckham” of the title is international soccer star David Beckham, and “Bend It” refers to his signature curling free kicks, which rack up goals from far afield by curving around defenders.
The film stars Parminder Nagra (now a regular on the NBC medical drama “ER”) as the rebellious daughter of a traditionalist Indian Sikh family in England.
Keira Knightley (“Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl”) co-stars as a friend who encourages her to join her soccer team, but is facing the same kind of opposition about her passion for the male-dominated sport.
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