Practically everyone I know claims to be a foodie these days (a broad term that could mean anything from “I eat like a pig and Darshini is my second home” to “You must try my sous vide salmon with chanterelle duxelle and a hint of wild fennel pollen” or “my rajma recipe is a closely guarded family secret”. Our home-grown NRI friends who visit for 2 weeks also call themselves foodies, which essentially means they spend 2 weeks running around to every local restaurant and immersing their being in assorted deep-fried products dipped into condiments that are off the charts on heat and ferocity. Much of those two weeks are also, not surprisingly, spent reading War and Peace in a toilet. But I digress.

India is now neck deep in cook books of an astonishing range and variety, not to mention cookery shows of every description. Do you want to make a refreshing drink to be enjoyed by the pool? Chances are someone on some channel is muddling together mint and sugar as we speak.

I discovered this the other day as I browsed at my local book store. It was truly educational and here for your benefit is a summation of the fruits of my labour.

1. At one extreme is the new bride’s go-to guide for all things South Indian. Written by a “Maami Rajammal” with the picture of a formidable looking woman (usually with a slight moustache) to lend authenticity. This book will tell you how to make “curds” from scratch, the recipes for 20 types of chutneys using the peel of a ridge gourd and 15 different rasams. Recipes will sternly instruct you to “ take a good amount of tamarind…” Precisely what that means is, literally, anyone’s guess.

2. The next category I uncovered was a slew of slim paperbacks on snacks, for every occasion (Tea Time Snacks/ Pre bedtime snacks and so on) These appear to be aimed at young mothers with recipes focusing on fried thingies of various descriptions. A half-hearted attempt at amping up the health factor can be seen – “Add a cup of sprouts”. Clearly written quite hurriedly, I was charmed by one recipe that started off calling for a cup of chopped onions, later forgetting about the onions completely.

3. Then you have a series of books that claim to offer specialized cuisines – Rajasthan, Punjab etc. Some of these seem authentic, others not so much. Call me a cynic but I look askance at “authentic” recipes that call for a cup of tomato ketchup.

4. Cookbooks on the Women’s Era lines – easily recognizable by the way they fiercely hang on in a limpet-like fashion to recipes from the ‘70s – “Blancmange”, “Raspberry Delite”, “Chocolate-Pista Surprise” and so on. Bellbottoms and beehive hairdos! By the way, if you know what a blancmange is – consider yourself officially old.

5. The ethnographic school of cookery – Where Jamie does Tuscany and works up a froth over fresh zucchini flowers, baby artichokes, dusty purple grapes exploding with sweetness blah. Do NOT read these books. Let me tell you what happens – First you identify a recipe you get all excited about – let’s say enchiladas with a chipotle sauce . Then you walk into your local supermarket and hmm, chipotle seems to be a problem. But hey, you are a creative cook, so a little improv is in order. So you shift gear – from chipotle to badgis from Central Karnataka, from fingerling potatoes to whatever’s available, from Vidalia onions to your local pyaaz and for some reason the end product tastes strangely like a dosa. Mexican food’s over-rated anyway.

Frustrated at every turn, stuffed to the gills with stuffed karelas drowning in sweet ketchup, I turned to our local Food Channel for inspiration. Here’s what I found.

• Sanjeev Kapoor’s wooden, sickly smile every hour on the hour – either fusing cuisines feverishly – here cooking biryani with truffle shavings, there grating paneer on to pasta or cooking “healthy” sweets with ghee and sugar substitutes. Is it just me or have others realized that ever since he’s shaven that moustache off, he has this – “I could give you this recipe but then I’d have to kill you – or myself” look on his face. A bit tough for a TV chef that.
• Wanna be Sanjeev Kapoors – with the same puppet like movements and and stilted manner of speaking always ending with “ab aapka mint coriander hing mojito lassi tayar hai”
• Indian women with strangely accented English teaching (presumably) a befuddled western audience how to make “potatoes spiced with a hint of cumin” and such like.
• Two men checking out every dive, dhaba and Udipi hotel in search of…mediocre food? Almost every time I watch this, the two have a conversation somewhat like this…

“This idli is…round and white”

“the fried dal tastes pretty much like dal that’s been fried”

My point is – so why is a 30 minute program based on a restaurant that seems to be a non-event?

So anyway, I have decided to have another crack at those enchiladas. I hear my local supermarket’s just started stocking chipotles.

I recently learned the unusual case of a south Indian man who has been living in London for three years. He recently suffered a particularly embarrassing episode at work. It had become the source of some distress. His colleagues, he thought, were looking at him oddly. Though it was never mentioned again, he would remember their perplexed facial expression each morning when he walked into the office. His crime? Eating with his hands. Or more specifically, eating Indian food with his hands. In front of white colleagues.

Now, Indian food might be the UK’s most popular cuisine. Britons like to pat themselves on the back for making it so. But there are some rules regarding the consumption of Indian food that are less widely discussed. Namely, how to eat it.

Eating with your hands isn’t unique only to India. It’s the norm whether you are from Africa, the Philippines or the middle-east. And it might come as a shock to some, but when it comes to pizza, hot dogs or other finger snacks, the west isn’t opposed to getting stuck in with its hands too. As cookery writer Madhur Jaffrey – who had been mocked by another chef for using her hands – told the South Asian Literature Festival last year, it is a “sensual pleasure to touch and feel the food you are eating”. But some foods being gripped by the fingertips are easier to stomach for some than others. Chips, a burger or a sandwich? Fine. Soupy chicken karahi scooped up with a naan? You better have a look around to see who’s around you.

Last year, the New York Times reported that restaurants were inspiring diners to part with considerable sums of cash for the privilege of escaping dinner table decorum to eat with their hands. It was a novelty, forcing customers to finger a dish on their plate and slip it between their lips without the distance of cutlery. Perhaps a few diners realised the pleasures of using their digits, went home, and threw their silverware in the bin. Most however probably retired their new discovery when they retired at the end of the night. The rule of western table etiquette is still: cutlery, good. Hands, bad.

In the same piece, author Amitav Ghosh lamented the atmosphere of Indian restaurants in London and New York. In these cities that pride themselves on ‘authentic’ dining, Gosh found that they neither encouraged nor discouraged diners to eat with their hands – the way that Indian food is consumed by millions of Indians across the world night after night. The rule for any restaurant aspiring to high dining – read: western dining – seems to be that the only thing your hand should be wrapped around is something silver and shiny. The separate Indian and non-Indian sections of 70s Indian restaurants might have disappeared, but certain attitudes have prevailed.

Perhaps it’s simply to do with the food’s potential messiness. But eating with your hands has its own etiquette. Most Indians know how to incur minimum spillage. And yet many are embarrassed to be seen doing it by westerners. The latter meanwhile are still derisive about anyone using the five pieces of cutlery they were born with. In a satirical scene from the film Delhi Belly, a female character sits at a lengthy dining table with her rich Indian parents to eat a banana. How does she do it? With her knife and fork. How civilised.

In Chinese restaurants, you are faced with two options. You can eat the food as it should be eaten: with chopsticks. Or you can opt for cutlery and admit defeat. Asking for a spoon comes with an admission of ineptitude. You have failed to engage with the food before you as it is eaten in its home country. Perhaps Indian restaurants need to enforce a similarly tacit rule. One where patrons are lightly coerced into eating with their hands. Because Indian cuisine has its own rules. And if westerners really want to interact with the customs that go with it, the choice between finger or fork should be a simple one.

“It is perhaps the most elegant, beautiful, dynamic store we’ve opened in our history,” chief executive Howard Schultz said in an interview on the occasion of the opening of Starbucks’ first flagship Indian store, in the exclusive Horniman Circle neighbourhood of south Mumbai (also known as SoBO for those of us in the know!). The news was greeted with excitement as people travelled over two hours from the suburbs of North Bombay to be present at the historic moment of the opening and to their share of free coffee samples. There goes the neighbourhood thought I, the cynical NRI on reading this. Just a few hours earlier I had queued up at the permit-room-bar of the second restaurant from Dishoom – a Bombay Café in London, in Shoreditch (London’s Horniman Circle equivalent.) Affectionately nicknamed D2, this café-restaurant is uniquely modelled to capture the charm of old-worldly Irani Cafés—complete with slow rotating ceiling fans, stained mirrors and sepia family portraits—once common in Bombay, but now fast giving away to malls, designer stores and of course the likes of Starbucks.

I knew my young cousins in Bombay would welcome Starbucks with open arms. Heaving a sigh of relief they would make a bee-line for its air-conditioned sanctuary which offered an escape from the prying eyes of neighbours, parents and well-meaning-aunties as they dated the boy from chemistry class in college, gossiped with girlfriends on the latest Bollywood heartthrob and tweeted tips to each other on how to fill in MBA or Engineering application forms. All this over frothy caramel frappuccinos and tamarind peanut chicken calzones. I had done the same many moons ago, when a bunch of friends and me had plotted to break away from our day jobs and start a youth magazine, at an Irani Cafe in Prabhadevi accompanied by many cups cutting-chai & bun-maskas.

You’ve come a long way baby, or perhaps not. Sat in that old fashioned Bombay Café I had dreamt of countries around the world, wondering what lay out there in the big beyond, and how to break away from being another brick in the wall. Would I have the courage to follow my heart? I had wondered then. Fifteen years later here I was in a Bombay Café albeit of another kind, with somewhat similar décor—in a completely different part of the world, one which I had never thought I would ever call home—still wondering how to step off the carousel, not become another corporate cog and find the courage to follow my voice. The more things change the same, the more they remain the same. As for Starbucks, well as a comment by Puneet Tandon, on a mainstream Indian newspaper’s report of this news sums it up “A minute of silence for all the CCD (Café Coffee Day) outlets in Mumbai. SoBos can rejoice. Are you ready to go and have overly priced coffee to look cool? Yayy !“

What’s your take? Is the opening of Starbucks good for India? Do write in and tell me!

Dear NRI readers why not connect with us on the following social media platforms.

Click here to join our Facebook Fan Page

Click here to join our LinkedIn Group

On the trail of the elusive Camden Pale Ale, my husband and I had taken my just-arrived-from-Bangalore sister & brother-in-law to the newly opened Camden Town Brewery in Kentish Town. Set among the railway arches of Kentish Town West train station, this quirky venue is open only on Thursday and Friday evenings. It also has a great home-brewn beer list to match with ear-catching names such as Black Friday (a dark pilsener) and Gentleman’s Wit (Dutch-style wheat beer made with roasted lemons.) And then reading through the menu, we looked at each other in horror. Sacrilege! There were no bar snacks, no chakhnas, to accompany the ritual of imbibing liquids.

As we drank our way through the first round we reminisced about the variety of snacks which had arrived fresh from the home country—including masalaapodi, chakli, khakhra, omapodi and masala groundnuts—all happily perched on respective shelves in the kitchen at home—and on which we could have been munching away on happily just at this time. It was the thought of a freshly made masala papad, my all time favourite, which finally had us springing up even before the last drop of beer had been drained and heading home to where said savouries were waiting.

On my way home I cast my mind back to my very first week in London, more than a decade ago. My husband insisted that I had to begin my new life by seeing a rather wondrous sight. He proceeded to drag me off on a journey across town, from north London where we live, all the way to the Punjab—almost. As we dis-embarked from the train at Southall my head still reeling from this voyage back to what I have since titled Native Place, he proudly pointed out the signs around the tube-station which had Southall written in Gurumukhi. Then he took me just up the street to that watering hole which has welcomed many a weary traveller, who not less than a week away from the home needed a hit of the sight-sounds-smells of the mother country. Yes, you got it right, he took me to Glassy Junction, THE pub in Southall which had a picture of a dhol player in the traditional Punjabi outfit all lit up in neon. We walked under the arch of this temple to be served normal lagers, and best of all hot Indian snacks.

I am avowedly from the class of alcoholics who love the chakhnas with my drink of choice. Without these, the alcohol simply does not taste the same, and the conversation around the table falters. Thus on my trips back home to Bombay, my biggest indulgence is going to Pooja Bar next door to my parent’s apartment building, just for their endless supply of tasty Udipi snacks to accompany my Kingfisher. My brother-in-law drew my attention to a pub called Toit in Bangalore, which along with its bar snacks also has a notable beer list featuring a home grown light brew called Basmati Blonde. Haha! A true meeting of the East & the West this name was. It made me wonder why there was no pub in London which had both a comprehensive beer list as well as a strong chakhna menu.

There are some great restaurants, and now cafes (such as Dishoom) but no mainstream pub which along with cool brews also has some hot snacks. If British pubs can serve Thai food and even have curry nights (Wetherspoons) then why not have a tavern which serves the great Indian snacks (and of course also shows the latest cricket match playing from around the world for ze husband.) What do you think? Do you know of any such place which I am perhaps missing out on? Do write in and tell me.

Photo credit: ifood.tv

Dear NRI readers why not connect with us on the following social media platforms.

Click here to join our Facebook Fan Page

Click here to join our LinkedIn Group

I can’t deny, a wave of excitement rushes over me everytime I research a food and drink piece.. This time, more so, as the subject was wine – and Indian wine at that. I had previously attended a wine tasting at La Porte des Indes, London and was eager to find out more. It’s easy for people to think of Indian wine as a reasonably new venture which may not match their traditional expectations of the drink, but as I quickly discovered, these wines are as good as any other and the tradition of wine in India goes back further than we think.

I met with Sherin Alexander Mody, Executive Director at La Porte des Indes. A chef in her own right, Sherin works alongside head chef and partner Mehernosh Mody. We went through a series of Indian wines the restaurant stocked and to my delight, Sherin, like any good hostess, suggested small dishes that would go well with the respective wines. She explained the unique quality of each one, its merits and discussed the respective vineyards.

La Porte des Indes, adopts the line ‘the legacy of France in Indian regional cuisine’, as such, its food, though Indian, demonstrates a successive blend of European influences. Think of the old world colonial history that has been elegantly married to Indian culture for the last several hundred years – spanning the east to west of Southern India. Similarly, the wines the restaurant have been serving have been chosen by variations in age, character and provenance. Ultimately, however, Sherin touched on the idea that any wine can accompany any dish, and that taste, is always a very subjective experience. Some flavours will always work well with others, but taste overrules typical wine rules. In a recent blind tasting, Sherin commented that tasters were offered Indian wines and asked to locate their origins. They chose from popular wine growing regions in France and South Africa, failing to note any particular distinctions that would set Indian wine as weaker than any other. All the literature from the vineyards we discussed, including Grover, Sula and Ritu – claim that India’s varied ecosystems offer rich biodiversity in the yield of grape produced to match that of any European climate. Also, as production methods have evolved, we established that the current quality of the wine is higher today than ten-twenty years ago, where the wines were perhaps too rich or sweet: good perhaps only for cooking and Port-like in consistency. Today’s wines feel more refined, all the way from fragrance to brand.

We started on the lighter wines, sampling the Four Seasons’ Ritu Blush. This is a confident blush, strong in colour and makes for more of an exciting pairing with fish or salad than a traditional rose or white wine would. I quickly earmarked it as a favourite in my selection. At this point, Sherin pointed out the scallops in saffron sauce and crab malabar that went well with the blush as well as a Viognier that we tried.

As we moved onto Chenin Blanc and Sauvignon Blanc from the same producers – I learnt that the food pairings that Sherin had selected were natural suggestions chosen for the nature of the spices used, rather than an attempt to quash them. For example, a cream curry, carried with it light and elegant spices, which went well with the Sauvignon Blanc. We talked about the emergence of Cobra beer as recognisable brand in restaurants in London and how this could soon come into effect for more of the popular Indian wines. The importance of the Indian wines is that they should be valued in their own right. People flock to Indian restaurants because they assume it’ll be a spicy assault on their senses and that to cope, only water, juice or beer will suffice in appeasing the kick of the food. This is an idea that the restaurant moves away from, in employing a broader range of flavour in its approach to southern-Indian food. Indian cooking is about enriching food, not making it difficult. Wine and the food therefore sit side by side, rather than having the former cleanse the latter.

We continued to sample a 2008 Chenin Blanc from Sula Vineyards, followed by their 2009 Sauvignon Blanc. This label is another popular offering at the restaurant, the latter being an award-winning wine, full of a floral aroma – akin to lilies and jasmine. I could see it working well in a number of different environments. It’s from the Dindori region north of Mumbai and on this occasion went well with small savoury samosas.

Returning to Ritu wines we finished with a sampling of their best reds, of which the Ritu Barrique Reserve Shiraz 2008 stood out as my favourite from the evening. ‘Smokey’ was one of the words to describe it and depending on your interpretation of the word, that can conjure mixed feelings. For me, it captured everything that I like about a red, soothing, comforting and velvety.

I described to Sherin that my analysis of wine was usually made on the basis of experience and memory rather than aroma and taste alone. So, whether it be a Ritu, Sula or Grover wine, it’s more about sensation the wine reminds me of most. Luckily this was often a good one. We talked about English wines, biodynamic wines and the changing face of food and drink across the London restaurant scene.

Of course, Sherin’s prior experience as a chef, gives her a natural nose in terms of what to look for, but we concluded that where spices and wines are plentiful, the pairings one could make between food and drink were infinitely variable. Towards the end of our evening, Mehernosh came out to greet us and we were offered the chef’s selection of puddings. This featured a sweet samosa, with salted caramel ice-cream and a mango-mess (an Indian take on Eton mess). It was a perfect opportunity to bring back the glass or Ritu blush that I had started with and polish it off.

For Sherin and Mehernosh, the restaurant, alongside their passion for food and drink is part of everyday life. This was an opportunity to learn about how the face of Indian wine is changing, but in doing so, it tells us more about the continued effort that goes into the whole dining experience. In their attempts to keep the levels of service high, owners like the Modys put careful consideration into what they offer. With wine producers now approaching restaurants, rather than the other way around. Sherin and Mehernosh have chosen wines that not only compliment the food, but will help to serve the reputation of Indian wine as it continues to grow in prominence across Europe.

As I left, Sherin took me around the restaurant. In the time we’d spent speaking, it had transformed from a quiet afternoon spot, to a bustling hive of activity. The plants, columns, uniforms and paintings all converged to make the upstairs feel like a cross between a Rajastani haveli and a Pondicherry villa. What a fitting environment, I thought, for Indian wine to end up, after its own journey from Moghul cups, to colonial rule and now European restaurants.

La Porte des Indes offers cooking classes once a month and has another wine event scheduled in the near future.

Dear NRI readers why not connect with us on the following social media platforms.

Click here to join our Facebook Fan Page

Click here to join our LinkedIn Group

It’s nearly coming up to a month now on my Vegan dietary experiment – and I have to say, this has been one of my easiest health fads. So much so, that I may even stick to it. I say fads, as this is the sort of thing I like to do from time to time. Well, with a juice fast in January and then routine weeks of raw-food diets interspersed throughout the year, friends often get confused as to what I’m eating from week to week. Plus, I also like to try a new thing to give up every Lent, purely out of curiosity, rather than camaraderie with Jesus. It gives one time to acknowledge what one can and can’t be without. Alcohol was tricky one-year, so I’m glad, that as a vegan, I can still include this as part of my lifestyle.

I was originally spurred on by various YouTube clips, some quite harmless, and others totally evangelical. The one that influenced me most was a 40-minute lecture from the Dr. Neal Barnard. In it, he suggested that everybody should attempt at least a three-week trial of veganism to see how it benefits them. It takes at least three weeks for the body to adjust to any long-lasting habits, after which, you can decide what you’d like to go back to. Veganism, is essentially conforming to a plant-based diet – of course you can include modern processed and cooked food – (albeit non-dairy) but nobody survived on beer and crisps alone, so the emphasis was always on keeping this as varied as possible, most importantly, keeping fruits and vegetables at the core.

The reason I wanted to bring this diet, and my experience of it, to light was because of its relative compatibility to the north Indian diet. Which as an NRI, I’m still partial to at the family home. This largely constitutes chapattis, rice and an array of daals and sabzees. Of course, there are restaurant indulgences and culinary experiments on the side, but these all comply the vegan rules. London’s restaurant scene has become more forgiving that way, with 42° Raw, Saf and Amico Bio being among some of my favourite places to dine.

When I first say to others that I’m a vegan now (or that I’m being a vegan at the moment). It tends to come as a shock, ‘Wow, that’s so extreme’ or ‘OMG, really, isn’t that a bit much?’ What they forget of course, that this is just as simple as being a vegetarian (which I’ve already been for 12 years) though to the next level, veggie 3.0 if you will. Parents and family also forget that with just a few simple tweaks, the Indian diet becomes instantly vegan. In this instance, I’ve made two simple changes. Replace butter with oil, and forego yoghurt. None of which have been that taxing on our kitchen or on my stomach. I have, however, had to build a resistance to carb-loading. In the absence of cheese and eggs (which most vegan-pro-activists will argue are high-cholesterol drugs) it’s been easy to over-rely on carbs, namely: chips, crisps, pasta and toast. Though I’m coming to terms with this by focusing on beans, lentils and a measured dosage of vitamin B12. I’m learning to wean myself off protein shakes with a steady supply of Quinoa. I haven’t as yet, started with the cross-examining the small-print on the back of everything, life is short and I draw the line at micro-traces of dairy, horse-jelly or egg. It’s more important that the bigger decisions I make are the right ones.

So, a question remains, why isn’t there a massive up take of veganism of cultures across the world (aside from the fact that most of the world loves Pizza?). In India, I began thinking about the holy cow. How it’s revered as one of Krishna’s creatures. Then I fell into a little catch. Is it revered because it’s the provider of free milk? Or do we use it for milk, as it’s a revered creature of Krishna’s? In either case, vegans theorise that humans are essentially herbivores and not carnivores. They’d suggest that our teeth are more similar to those of a giraffe or a monkey rather than a shark or a tiger. They’d also suggest that we only have one stomach, whereas dairy consuming large mammals – such as cows have four (helping them to ingest and produce milk). Why therefore, after infancy, would a human require the factory-processed produce of cows?

I’m not here to provide the answers or preach on these matters, merely question people’s attitudes to them, and perhaps qualm the general sense of shock and awe. Of course, globally, most people would consider themselves exceptionally lucky to have access to plentiful supplies of meat and dairy, whereas in others, veganism just occurs as the result of poverty.

What we should take away from this discussion, is not whether or not the chicken sandwich you’re about to have a lunchtime is right on the grounds of veganism, but more so it’s environmental and carbon impact. If the western world demands burgers all of the time, then we must consider the effect millions of cows and their slaughter will have on green-house gases. You can begin to think about he biological benefits after. We need to displace the shock away from the practice of being vegan to the consequences of mass-meat production. Whatever dietary choices you make after that is entirely up to you.

Photo credit: choosing raw.com

Dear NRI readers why not connect with us on the following social media platforms.

Click here to join our Facebook Fan Page

Click here to join our LinkedIn Group

The Bollywood crazy family that we are, a recent phone conversation with my sister in Calcutta went like this, “Aaj mere paas Chipotle ka Mexican burrito hai, Vietnamese pho hai, gyro hai, Pad Thai noodles with Thai curry hai. Aur tumhare paas kya hai?”

Confidently, she said, “Mere paas phuchka waala hai”. **

It was a closed case. She had won.

Think what you may, I have often woken up in the middle of the night craving for phuchkas. I have often fantasized about the round, crispy phuchkas in my biochemistry classes, drawing patterns of them on my lecture slides. No, I have never had an affair with any of the phuchka waalas of Calcutta. The love for phuchka is one of those loves that is unconditional.

Phuchka. Paani Puri. Gol Gappa. Call it what you may. A very familiar scene outside most colleges (especially girls’ colleges) would be hordes of girls and boys flocking to the phuchka waala. “Koto korey?” (How much?) Asking this is a mere formality, for you know that you will have them in dozens no matter what he charges you. “Bhalo kore baniyo” (make it tasty) is another redundant instruction one never fails to ask.

Our phuchka waala is a lungi-clad man with dark blue and green stripes on the lungi. The lungi itself dates back to the times of Akbar, and it looks like both our phuchka waala and the lungi could do with a wash. You will often see him scratching his lungi or his unshaven cheeks with a bored look when there are no customers around. Baba has often told me such stories to deter me from having roadside phuchkas. Hygiene be darned, it is funny how the basic commandments of hygiene you have practiced all your life escape you the moment you spot a phuchka waala. The phuchka waala puts his hand inside the mountain of phuchkas covered with a plastic wrapper while a candle burns in the middle of his wicker basket of phuchka paraphernalia. He stuffs some potato filling from God knows where, dips the phuchka into an earthen pot of tamarind water with millions of germs of jaundice, cholera, and typhoid swimming backstroke and free style. You wait there drooling until you have put the first phuchka in your mouth, and congratulations, you have just had an orgasm inside your mouth !!

Phuchkas are an essential ingredient for courtship. Every woman who is fond of movies like Hum Tum (2004) dreams of a husband, chote chote bachche (little kids), and Tommy (the dog) making a happy family sight eating roadside phuchka. “Phuchka khete jaabe?” (Want to have some phuchka?) – A proposal like this would turn anyone into Pavlov’s dogs. Ma had often tried to dissuade us, by buying readymade mix and making it at home. But there is something about standing by the roadside balancing your books or shopping loot, a hundred mosquitoes feasting on blood from the exposed skin on your legs, with not a drop of water to drink while your tongue hangs out due to a green chilly overdose (no matter how much you insist, “Jhaal kom deben”- less spice please !) and gulping puchkas one after another. I especially love the last phuchka (called the “phau”), given for free, which would have extra lime juice squeezed into it. If your taste buds have ever experienced heaven, this would be it. No matter how appealing homemade food is, it is nowhere close to the roadside phuchka from the lungi-baniyaan clad man who hands you a damp and dirty twenty rupee note and some coins as change. There is something amiss in the Haldiram’s paani puris. You have killed the joy of having them the moment you introduce hygienic conditions, mineral water, an air conditioned seating arrangement, and preparers wearing gloves into the equation. Who wants to sit and eat phuchka in a civil way when you are used to standing by the roadside, dropping half the tamarind water on your clothes, your mouth stuffed with the phuchkas while you pop out your eyes when he asks you, “Aaro debo?” (You want more?). The worst wait is when friends stand in a huge circle around him, and he takes an age get round to you again. However, the real excitement starts when most quit after eating 4-5 phuchkas, and now you have the phuchka waala’s undivided attention. Bengalis nowadays have taken a leaf out of the North Indian books, introducing phuchka stalls in weddings, which gives some stiff competition to the Bhetki maacher fry (Bhetki fish fry) and the Mutton Biryani on the menu.

One often hears tales about some random phuchka waala striking gold when his phuchkas were liked so much by some foreigner that he flew the poor man to Germany, Japan, or wherever he lives, and the phuchka waala became a millionaire overnight. I would not be surprised if this happens, for the potential market of Indian fast food in most foreign countries is vastly unexploited (perhaps barring bigger cities like New York and the bay area in California). The only place you get phuchkas in Seattle, they serve you a measly five tiny phuchkas the size of goat testicles with little potato filling for an exorbitant amount. I actually wait until I go back to Calcutta to have my share of double digit phuchkas for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It is totally worth the wait.

I have rarely met someone who does not like to eat, or even talk about phuchka. We Bengali people are infamous for discussing food even more than we eat (which is also quite a lot). We often have discussions on how many varieties of phuchka we have had. There are these huge cricket ball sized ones in Esplanade that would cut your lips at the sides and your upper palate when you try to stuff them in one go. Sometimes, they smash small pieces of coconut or alu’r chop (potato cutlets) in the filling – a master stroke of an idea. Sometimes they give you the option of meetha paani (sweet water) for the fainthearted who cannot handle spice. Personally, I do not like huge phuchkas that could potentially kill you in the process of eating them. I like them small, crisp, tangy, and less spicy.

Phuchka is an element of bonding. It makes friendship stronger. I had a bunch of loyal phuchka friends who would be available anytime I craved for some. You would see these couples bunking classes and meeting surreptitiously, having phuchka near Science City or Victoria Memorial. Little joys of life, I would smile to myself. If you have been drooling all this while like I am, please stop reading further, go out, and gulp down a few dozen phuchkas. Have faith in your immunity and forget about dirty hands, typhoid and jaundice. Like my sister said when she was three, “They are poor people, if all of us worried about hygiene, how would they make a living?”

Dollars might have the potential to buy you a lot of things, but it cannot buy you the happiness of standing on a busy street and sweating while plopping phuchkas into your mouth one after another, praying that the phuchka waala had added fewer chilies, but not wanting to stop until you die of happiness. For you know that every moan you make while you close your eyes and gorge on them is worth every rupee you spend.

** This is a reference from the movie Deewar (1975)

Photo credit: Hira Zubairi

Dear NRI readers why not connect with us on the following social media platforms.

Click here to join our Facebook Fan Page

Click here to join our LinkedIn Group

I couldn’t say exactly when my junk food addiction began. It seems to have always been there.

I grew up in New Zealand with a smorgasbord of candies and snacks always within easy reach, provided I had the money to pay for them. Week to week, I’d save my cents for another treat at the local corner store, often splurging any precious cash the moment it reached my pocket. I’d look up hopefully at my paper-round-rich older brothers whenever they returned with yet another wax-paper lolly bag or packet of potato chips, cherishing any small offering. I suppose it was sometime around here that the addiction started, fuelled by two thrills: the high these sugary delights gave me, and the exquisite rarity with which I could attain them.

The transition to adulthood brought a paying job of my own, and the supermarket shelves opened their arms to me. Any new variety of potato chip, chocolate bar or lolly could and would be sampled and then either treasured or discarded, depending on my response. And then I moved to Japan, where junk food has been taken to a kind of master level of form, variety and availability in the form of convenience stores. A year there was the worst possible thing for such an addiction, a cycle of joy and self-disgust.

Through all of this, I somehow did not become fat, but my junk food addiction ballooned into something I didn’t even notice anymore. It was just part of who I was. And then I moved to India.

The range was pitiful, especially compared with the Socratic ideal of junk food that I’d been subject to in Japan. I pushed down my addiction with spicy-masala-flavoured tapioca chips, boxes of Munch chocolate wafer bars and the occasional decadent Dairy Milk, none of which satisfied. A benefit of living in a tourist town meant a very slightly wider range, which included the more familiar Snickers and Bounty bars for – gasp – 40 rupees, an expense I could hardly justify on a regular basis.

One day, out of curiosity, I bought some tiny white paper packages out of a jar at a Varkala bakery. The shopkeeper smiled and wobbled his head knowingly as he handed over these nondescript cubic parcels. They could have been anything, even narcotics – and though they were only one rupee apiece, narcotics wasn’t far from the truth. They were soan papdi.

Soan papdi is a sweet made from sugar, flour and any of a number of flavours, like almond, cardamom and pistachio. It somewhat resembles candy floss, but is more adequately described as sugar thread – that is, thousands of threads compressed into an edible mass. You can see a fascinating video of its production here; basically, it’s a diabetic’s worst nightmare, a pupil-dilating bite of crumbly sugar that melts gleefully in your mouth.

When I got these packages home and shared them with my housemate, we silently marvelled as the sugar shot into our bloodstreams. I’d bought a few, so we pulled the little cubes apart, examining the individual strands and scattering sugar threads all over the dining room table. We talked earnestly about what they reminded us of and how they made us feel. It was a moment of Discovery Abroad; a New India Experience.

It was also just what I needed, even a miracle of sorts. For one, it satisfied my desire for a fulfilling new type of exotic junk food. I soon learned that as well as these individual doses available on the counter, most bakeries and supermarkets (like Puthooram) stocked luxury packs of brand-name soan papdi. Their plastic coverings glistened with the promise of fascinating new flavours, pineapple chocolate orange mango and all, and it wasn’t long before I’d tried them all.

The other miracle was that soan papdi helped me to learn moderation in my junk food intake. With all other junk food options paling into insignificance in the face of soan papdi’s wonder, I hardly wanted anything else, but it was so massively sweet – in the literal sense – that I could only have one once in a while. (I later discovered halwa, which went some way to restoring by previous junk food habits; now that I’m back in New Zealand and confronted with an ever-increasing array of enticing products, I’m well and truly ‘off the wagon’.)

There are a number of tasty delights that I can’t wait to try the moment I get back to India. A masala dosa, a roadside chai, a fresh mango juice. Now that I’ve remembered it, soan papdi can be added to the list. I have no doubt that at future idle moments I will remember more, and this list will grow and grow.

Photo credit: Georgia Popplewell

Dear NRI readers why not connect with us on the following social media platforms.

Click here to join our Facebook Fan Page

Click here to join our LinkedIn Group