So if you know me, you know how much I love food. You know how much time I spend thinking about food, cooking food, thinking about cooking food, eating food, thinking about eating food, thinking about what food to order... the list goes on. So in this blog, I will try to keep you updated with all the new foods I try when I go out and all the foods I attempt to make at home using local ingredients.
A word on the food in India: the word "less" means nothing. "Less sugar, please" gets you 9 teaspoons of sugar in you tea instead of 10. "Less oil, please" gets you a funny look and ghee. Nothing seems very healthy and from what I can tell, the "healthy" food is steamed white rice flour in different forms (which by the way, has no nutritional value BUT it doesn't usually have a kilogram of oil, so it's kind of a give-and-take).
I will tell you about all the unhealthy foods I eat, and you can't judge me for it. It's delicious. To make you think I'm a better person than I am, I'll also tell you about my desperate attempts to cook healthier food at home--and all the funny stares I get in the office when I open my salad for lunch.
The fruit is amazing here. There is an unbelievable amount of variety, and like every other developing country, you only get the fruit that is in season, with a small amount of imported "exotic" fruit. I'll leave out the boring ones and jump straight to the amazingly delicious custard apple. Also, I love the papayas here with squeeze of lime juice and the bananas make an excellently refreshing frozen snack.
The Indian food in India is out of this world. They serve samosas for every occasion, usually filled with spiced potato, like a deep-fried indian knish. The two sauces that normally accompany this samosa are a spicy green chutney and a sweet red one. I also like putting whole roasted chili peppers on mine because they lie about how spicy the green chutney really is. I've been surprised by how non-spicy the food they say is spicy is, but I think maybe they're used to white people freaking out about flavor in general. I've yet to try anything so spicy I stopped to notice the spiciness.
We also ate pav bhaji one night, which is a street food specialty in Mumbai made with veggies and spices all blended up and served with white bread rolls basically soaked in ghee. I tried the chicken pav bhaji, which is pretty unheard of; most Indians don't even know it exists and when I tell them I had it they laugh laugh laugh at the ridiculousness of it. I'm not sure why yet.
We also have had a ton of palak paneer (paneer: indian cheese that is hard enough to grill and keep its form; palak: spinach), aloo paneer (aloo: potato), paneer tikka masala (tikka: spicy; masala: spice blend), grilled paneer kebabs with a spicy yogurt sauce and spicy coleslaw, and a million other veggie-in-mystery-sauce dishes that I can't keep track of (some okra, eggplant, cauliflower, capsicum, etc.). It is hard to find sources of protein in restaurants because so many are "pure veg," and only have paneer for protein.
We've also tried patrani machi, which is fish in a spongey green chutney wrapped in banana leaves and steamed (it looks like this). Also, we had rava dosa, which is made from a batter of semolina, fried and can be filled with deliciousness like an oily, crispier, more powerfully flavorful crepe. Idli is similar to dosa, but uses a mold and is steamed. Dosa and idli can be made using different kinds of flour and have a million varieties that I don't yet know. All have chutney. So far I like the coconut one best.
At home I've been trying to eat slightly better. I've been making egg white scrambles with mashed spiced cauliflower and topping it with tabouleh for breakfast. We found the egg guy down the street. He keeps the chickens in cages at the front of the shop and puts a board on top as his business counter. they're 4 rupees each, a dozen for 48, which is about 75 cents. I bought fish at the outdoor, completely-unsanitary-according-to-US-standards fish market (there was literally a cat licking a fish at a briefly unmanned post, as the fish melted in the sun and a rat scurried to hide beneath a pile of fish-soaked towels) and prepared that for dinner and lunch a few days (no side effects). I found a store with edible fresh veggies that I didn't have to boil before consuming and made green salad. I also found ingredients for a "power salad" of raw moong beans, sprouted beans, chickpeas, roasted corn, pomegranate seeds, green onions, lime juice, etc. I've been roasting cauliflower, eggplant, and broccoli because I'm not yet brave enough to try the weirder looking veggies on the streets.
I almost forgot about the sweets! Everything here that is sweet is too sweet. I wont name them 'cause I don't like them. I only like the ones with dried fruit because they don't add sugar. I found some nice fig and mixed nut squares, as well as some mixed fruit barfi which I can only eat a bite a day of because I can feel the oil seeping through every pore on my body after only a nibble. But it's really tasty. The ice cream is also very fresh and they have awesome flavors, like fig, custard apple, saffron pistachio, etc. When they serve it at parties or after dinner, they cut it into squares instead of scooping it out, which I think makes a lot of sense, actually. OH, there's also the ben yisrael halva, which is not the halva you're thinking of, but a specialty made only for the new year by the group of Indian Jews known as Ben Yisrael. It's made with milk, wheat gluten, sugar and almonds, cooked for seven hours and chilled. I've never had anything like it; it's a creamy, mousse-y, pudding-y thing that looks like jello and tastes like heaven.
Anyway, there is more to come about things that actually matter (my job, what I actually do everyday, the people I've met, etc). That's taking longer because it's harder to reflect on than food.
Wishing you all a new year as filled with new things as my first week here and as sweet as the aforementioned halva,
Leah
A word on the food in India: the word "less" means nothing. "Less sugar, please" gets you 9 teaspoons of sugar in you tea instead of 10. "Less oil, please" gets you a funny look and ghee. Nothing seems very healthy and from what I can tell, the "healthy" food is steamed white rice flour in different forms (which by the way, has no nutritional value BUT it doesn't usually have a kilogram of oil, so it's kind of a give-and-take).
I will tell you about all the unhealthy foods I eat, and you can't judge me for it. It's delicious. To make you think I'm a better person than I am, I'll also tell you about my desperate attempts to cook healthier food at home--and all the funny stares I get in the office when I open my salad for lunch.
The fruit is amazing here. There is an unbelievable amount of variety, and like every other developing country, you only get the fruit that is in season, with a small amount of imported "exotic" fruit. I'll leave out the boring ones and jump straight to the amazingly delicious custard apple. Also, I love the papayas here with squeeze of lime juice and the bananas make an excellently refreshing frozen snack.
The Indian food in India is out of this world. They serve samosas for every occasion, usually filled with spiced potato, like a deep-fried indian knish. The two sauces that normally accompany this samosa are a spicy green chutney and a sweet red one. I also like putting whole roasted chili peppers on mine because they lie about how spicy the green chutney really is. I've been surprised by how non-spicy the food they say is spicy is, but I think maybe they're used to white people freaking out about flavor in general. I've yet to try anything so spicy I stopped to notice the spiciness.
We also ate pav bhaji one night, which is a street food specialty in Mumbai made with veggies and spices all blended up and served with white bread rolls basically soaked in ghee. I tried the chicken pav bhaji, which is pretty unheard of; most Indians don't even know it exists and when I tell them I had it they laugh laugh laugh at the ridiculousness of it. I'm not sure why yet.
We also have had a ton of palak paneer (paneer: indian cheese that is hard enough to grill and keep its form; palak: spinach), aloo paneer (aloo: potato), paneer tikka masala (tikka: spicy; masala: spice blend), grilled paneer kebabs with a spicy yogurt sauce and spicy coleslaw, and a million other veggie-in-mystery-sauce dishes that I can't keep track of (some okra, eggplant, cauliflower, capsicum, etc.). It is hard to find sources of protein in restaurants because so many are "pure veg," and only have paneer for protein.
We've also tried patrani machi, which is fish in a spongey green chutney wrapped in banana leaves and steamed (it looks like this). Also, we had rava dosa, which is made from a batter of semolina, fried and can be filled with deliciousness like an oily, crispier, more powerfully flavorful crepe. Idli is similar to dosa, but uses a mold and is steamed. Dosa and idli can be made using different kinds of flour and have a million varieties that I don't yet know. All have chutney. So far I like the coconut one best.
At home I've been trying to eat slightly better. I've been making egg white scrambles with mashed spiced cauliflower and topping it with tabouleh for breakfast. We found the egg guy down the street. He keeps the chickens in cages at the front of the shop and puts a board on top as his business counter. they're 4 rupees each, a dozen for 48, which is about 75 cents. I bought fish at the outdoor, completely-unsanitary-according-to-US-standards fish market (there was literally a cat licking a fish at a briefly unmanned post, as the fish melted in the sun and a rat scurried to hide beneath a pile of fish-soaked towels) and prepared that for dinner and lunch a few days (no side effects). I found a store with edible fresh veggies that I didn't have to boil before consuming and made green salad. I also found ingredients for a "power salad" of raw moong beans, sprouted beans, chickpeas, roasted corn, pomegranate seeds, green onions, lime juice, etc. I've been roasting cauliflower, eggplant, and broccoli because I'm not yet brave enough to try the weirder looking veggies on the streets.
I almost forgot about the sweets! Everything here that is sweet is too sweet. I wont name them 'cause I don't like them. I only like the ones with dried fruit because they don't add sugar. I found some nice fig and mixed nut squares, as well as some mixed fruit barfi which I can only eat a bite a day of because I can feel the oil seeping through every pore on my body after only a nibble. But it's really tasty. The ice cream is also very fresh and they have awesome flavors, like fig, custard apple, saffron pistachio, etc. When they serve it at parties or after dinner, they cut it into squares instead of scooping it out, which I think makes a lot of sense, actually. OH, there's also the ben yisrael halva, which is not the halva you're thinking of, but a specialty made only for the new year by the group of Indian Jews known as Ben Yisrael. It's made with milk, wheat gluten, sugar and almonds, cooked for seven hours and chilled. I've never had anything like it; it's a creamy, mousse-y, pudding-y thing that looks like jello and tastes like heaven.
Anyway, there is more to come about things that actually matter (my job, what I actually do everyday, the people I've met, etc). That's taking longer because it's harder to reflect on than food.
Wishing you all a new year as filled with new things as my first week here and as sweet as the aforementioned halva,
Leah
May your experience be as sweet as the "too sweet" candies Have a wonderful and exciting year. kg
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