WE ALL KNOW the score: Indian (or Pakistani or Bangladeshi) cuisine is an essential part of the British culinary landscape, curry is actually a British invention and, thanks to Robin Cook, chicken tikka masala is a national dish.

The Glaswegian broadcaster and sometime chef Hardeep Singh Kohli wants to turn the story around. Remember the Goodness Gracious Me sketch where a group of young,

upwardly mobile Bombay socialites go out for an “English” and order the “blandest thing on the menu”? Well, Kohli has gone one better. He - a turbaned Scottish Sikh - travelled around India feeding British food to Indians.

Kohli's book is an account of his journey back to the country of his parents' birth in an effort to reconcile his Scottish, British and Indian identities. He can think of no better way of doing this than by sharing the food he has come to love - shepherd's pie, toad-in-the-hole, stovies and the Sunday roast - with ordinary people. It's a project destined to fail. Even Kohli's otherwise supportive father says: “Son, if British food was all that good then there would be no Indian restaurants in Britain.”

The result is a chatty, funny book that gives us a glimpse of contemporary India. The cast of characters is colourful, from a Tamil fisherman who survived the tsunami to a fast-talking member of Bangalore's nouveaux riches.

Kohli's attempts to cook British food for Indians are stymied more often than they are successful, but the pleasure is in the journey. His plan to cook toad-in-the-hole for the employees of a Bangalore call centre is inspired, his attempt to serve fish and chips from the middle of Srinagar's iconic Dal Lake hilarious.

Kohli is proudly Sikh, fiercely Scottish and happily British. His multiple identities exist side by side rather harmoniously. I am not sure he needed a grand tour of India to figure it out. What Kohli rarely does in his book is refer to himself as Asian.

Enter Ziauddin Sardar. An intellectual, Sardar is prolific, controversial and infuriating. His own website describes him as a “British Muslim author” and it is his works on Islam, particularly his autobiographical Desperately Seeking Paradise, that have brought him wide acclaim and relevance. Yet in Balti Britain, Sardar sets aside religion to explore what he terms “the British Asian experience”. It's a significant and unusual departure.

The label “Asian” has always been problematic. While referring to people whose roots are in the Indian subcontinent, the term hides robust religious, ethnic, linguistic and geographic pluralism. The idea that such a diverse group of people would share a common social, political or economic agenda seems doubtful, but British multiculturalism has more often than not been lazy. Raj-style communitarian “take me to your leader” politics meant that the messiness of identities and solidarities would be sorted out by interlocutors and representatives.

Sardar is acutely aware of this. “The enigma of Asianness,” he writes, “is its immense variety.” To understand British Asians one has to confront the legacies of colonialism, conflict and Partition. During his many interviews, few of his subjects are willing to define themselves as Asian (although they seem more than happy to talk about Asianness), opting for more complex or pragmatic self-identities.

Yet Sardar seems keen to rehabilitate the idea of Asianness. He wants to imbue it with complexity and contour and to make it more than just a box to be ticked on a census form. The result is an engaging, compelling, if at times unsatisfying book.

Balti Britain is a continuation of Sardar's intellectual and personal autobiography. Personal moments and recollections are framed within larger political questions and he is eager to tell his story. The account of his migration to Britain and the struggles of his family to make a home here are told with passion, warmth and humanity. This is an erudite and entertaining book and it is its core contention that resonates profoundly: that Asians are not newcomers to Britain or foreigners to be accommodated and tolerated. Rather, the histories of Britain and the subcontinent are so intertwined through the experience of Empire and colonialism that British Asians are in fact direct products of this centuries-old encounter.

Why then does Asianness need to be salvaged?

Given the complexity of the issues that Sardar investigates, should we not be ditching old simplifications for more accurate and precise ones that reflect global realities and personal self-identities? It is a question that is left frustratingly unanswered.

Indian Takeaway: One Man's Attempt to Cook His Way Home by Hardeep Singh Kohli
Canongate, £16.99; 256pp Buy the book

Balti Britain: A Journey Through the British Asian Experience by Ziauddin Sardar
Granta, £25; 416pp Buy the book

Times Recommends

• The 100 Best Books of the Decade
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• The conversation: James Ellroy