Food in our 5th and 6th Moons

one of many yummy street vendors

The biggest problem with writing this post is that we have no idea where to start.  The food in India was so incredibly good regardless of whether it was from a restaurant, a hotel or street vendors.  We ate a lot and we ate as often as we could or our stomachs could handle.  What we are going to do is divide this post into breakfast, lunch/dinner, desert and street food.  We could write a book on this topic but to spare you chapters and chapters of reading we will try to keep it as short and to the point as possible (not possible) and try to describe the food to the best of our recollection.

To start off with let’s look at the staple seasonings in Indian cooking (though we have to say, the cuisine varies greatly across the country from region to region).  Most of the salty dishes will have a combination of turmeric, cayenne and/or chilly powder, cumin (both powder and seeds), garlic, coriander and you can’t forget the all purpose garam masala.  Most of the dishes will also come with a sprinkling of cilantro and green chilly peppers.   We found this to be the pattern from north to south with the south known to have spicier food than the north, though we really couldn’t tell as we always asked  for our food to be made “Indian spicy” and everyone was shocked but happily obliged :).  

aloo paratha and a sweet lassi

Our first introduction to real Indian food (not counting the many feasts we have had in Toronto) was breakfast in Varanasi.   We decided to try both Indian breakfasts on the menu, the puri/poori subzi and the aloo paratha.  These two breakfasts which are served with chai or for us foreigners a delicious (NOT) Nescafe coffee (according to M, the worst coffee option in the world) can be found as an option all over northern India.  Let us explain what these breakfasts are: the puri/poori is a delicious puffed Indian bread (unleavened whole wheat dough which is deep fried in hot oil or ghee) that  is used to eat up the subzi, which is a dry vegetable curry and the aloo paratha is basically a potato (aloo), onion and green chilly stuffed roti (unleavened flat bread baked on a griddle) which we got both baked like a roti and fried.  Add a cup of lassi (which is Indian yoghurt blended with water or milk and can be had plain, sweet with a bit of sugar or with fruit) and you have a great start to your day!  S loved the Indian yoghurt so much she had a lassi almost every day with breakfast, lunch and dinner :).

masala dosa

Along the Goan coast the most popular breakfast was muesli with yoghurt and fruit and we had this every day, though we can’t say that this is a particularly Indian breakfast but something made available for the tourists.   In the south, what we saw offered for breakfast were dosas, which are fermented crepes made from rice batter and black lentils and are stuffed with potatoes and onions and sometimes vegetables and served along with a few sides such as a chutney or curd (yoghurt) or a curry.  Yummy!!  In addition to the above breakfasts, we also saw chicken, tomato, onion or masala omlets on the menu and in Mumbai noticed people eating bread buns they dipped in their chai.
 

one of our typical meals

Lunch and dinner are another gastronomic adventure and the types of dishes available are as varied and numbered as the variety of people and provinces in India.   The best part about lunches and dinners in India in most restaurants we visited is that everything is cooked fresh for you, so depending on what you order, you have to wait some time to get your food, but it is always well worth the wait.  The options are endless and the majority of the menu is vegetarian.  We would first choose a curry, whether it be vegetarian or a meat curry, and then decide whether we wanted to eat it with a chapati or roti or naan (be it cheese or garlic or butter and garlic naan but sadly only in the evening when the tandoor oven was on) or with rice.  We have to admit, we rarely went for the all rice dishes such as the pulao/pilaf (can be described the Indian version of risotto) or biryani  (like a fried rice of sorts), as we just loved sopping up our curries with the delicious Indian breads or the basmati rice.  The curry options are endless … endless!! You can have lentil, or potato or cauliflower or paneer (Indian cheese made from buffalo milk) or mixed vegetable curry or you can have them with a variety of meat excluding, of course, beef.  We tried to taste every option but I think we only tried 1/100th of what there is out there.  So much more eating to do!! 

two plain naans, tandoori chicken, Indian salad and a veg curry all for $6

On the Goan coast we had a lot of fish and cheap and delicious fish at that.  The local fish is called the Kingfish and you can have a 2.5 to 3 kilo whole fish meal (either grilled, fried or tandoori style) from $6-$10 depending on the size.  Tuna, which is a lesser fish according to the Goan’s, was even cheaper!!  In Rajasthan and Maharastra we also found thali’s on the menu (thali means plate in Hindi), which like Nepal’s daal bhaat tarkari is a selection of dishes served on a large round tray with small bowls and a pile of rice.  Typical dishes include dhal (lentils), vegetables, chapati, curd, chutney, and a vegetarian or meat based curry.  Unlike Nepal, they are always served with a desert.  Now we can’t finish our lunch and dinner portion without mentioning the tandoori.  We have to say, the tandoor oven has got to be the best oven ever created!!  Anything and everything that comes out of this oven is absolutely magical.  Whenever we could we definitely ate something from the tandoor, whether it was tandoori chicken (which is chicken marinated in yoghurt and seasoned with garam masala, ginger, garlic, cumin and cayenne pepper and sometimes other spices and then cooked in the tandoor oven) or chicken tikka masala (which is a curry made with chicken skewers that were marinated in yoghurt and spices and cooked in the tandoor oven).   In Goa we also ate the tandoori Kingfish quite a bit.  Anyone that wants to get us a delayed wedding gift feel free to get us a tandoor oven :).

gajar halva on the left and a gulab jamun on the right

We mostly ate deserts in the Northern part of India, namely Delhi and then in the province of Rajasthan.  Our two favourites were gajar halva (which is a carrot pudding or carrot milk porridge) and gulab jamun (which are deep fried milk balls in sugary syrup).  However, this doesn’t mean that we didn’t love the hundreds of other deserts we tried on our many walks.  We had cheese balls in a cardamom spiced custard, cornmeal balls in a sugary syrup with saffron, rice puddings and many varieties of these types of deserts.  North Indian deserts all seem to be derived from a milk pudding or rice base and are usually soaked in a syrup.   Goa, outside of its "German Bakeries" which carried fake brownies and an assortment of cakes, also had a large selection of desserts mostly catering to the western tourists which consisted of caramels, chocolates, ice creams and lady fingers.  The most popular seemed to be a desert called Hello to the Queen which we tried once and it consists of bananas and crumbled cookies in a caramel and chocolate sauce.   Not Indian but not bad.

mmmmm .... bhelpuri in Mumbai

Now we save the best for the last … okay, maybe not the best but certainly a delicious and integral part of any Indian food experience: the street food.   In the north, the streets were filled with pakora’s, samosas, breaded and deep fried chilli peppers and vegetable cutlets, along with your vendors serving lentil curries with chapati and mixed street nuts with dried vermicelli, spices and fresh onion, chilli peppers and tomatoes.  For beverages you could always find chai, sugar cane juice and citrus juice.   It was really hard to go half an hour without smelling something good that made your mouth water and your belly crave more food!!  Our favourite of all street food was the famous bhelpuri in Mumbai.  While the vendors at Chowpatti are said to have the best, we found the one we had there kind of stale but were lucky to have a street vendor only a 10 minute walk from our hotel who had amazing bhelpuri - and you know it’s good when there are always people around him lining up to get some!  What is this bhelpuri you ask, while we had a few variations, generally it is puffed rice balls that are cut open and filled with a chickpea curry and topped with chutney (we think it’s a tamarind chutney), green chillies, cilantro, dried vermicelli and crushed rice balls. 

making vegetable pakoras

For those health conscious people out there worried that we weren’t getting our daily quota of fresh fruits and vegetables you will be happy to hear that our meals were always served with an ‘Indian salad’ which consists of raw onions, tomatoes and cucumber and a lime and we always made sure to buy lots of fresh fruit daily.   We sure miss all that fresh and juicy guava, papaya, mango, watermelon and oranges!!!!

In conclusion, I'm sure it's obvious that we were constantly eating while in India and that we absolutely positively LOVE Indian food.  We ignored all the warnings and ate anywhere and everything and minus the one incident we have already spoken about (due to our coffee craving after too much shitty Nescafe) we enjoyed every second of it and can't wait to do it all over again. 

Happy eating!
S&M

you guessed it, another curry and a butter garlic naan

samosas frying

making samosas

paneer pakora

murg hydrebadi and a paratha

sugar cane juice vendor

the simply delicious vegetable cutlets

a meat thali

a sweets display in Jaipur

cheese balls in a spiced cardamom custard like liquid

breaded deep fried chilly peppers

another dosa variety

desert vegetable curry in Jaisalmer