Wednesday, December 22, 2004

Food, glorious food!

This blog would not be complete without some input into the wonderful Indian cuisine that is no doubt responsible for some of our weight gain while here. Fortunately, we did lots of walking (up and downhill) while in Darjeeling, so we are hoping that that will offset some of it.

We have drunk tea in all sorts of guises; tiny glasses of hot char from the street vendor, or sweet and stewed in clay cups, which get thrown away after use, and in classy joints the heavy silver service with pale orange pekoe, no tea cosy, but a handle cosy, strainer in silver as well, with hot milk and chunky sugar to add as you please. Other liquid refreshment has been sweet lassi (yoghurt drink), a myriad of coloured fizzy varieties, bottled mineral water and the odd coffee. And (to appease Shaggy) we made a special point of ordering jal jeera (a spicy concoction that is indescribable really) and decided that his homemade drink in Thailand was definitely up to a posh hotel version!

Dahl comes in a huge variety of styles, including black lentils (Nepali speciality) and it is eaten with chappatis, puris, paratha and different naans, as well as rices. Uma (Pawan's wife) showed us how she cooks the flat bread on a tali and then holds the chappatis for a few seconds in the naked gas flame where they puff up perfectly. The trick is in the rolling, which Roxanne found was not quite as easy as it looks. Uma also insisted that we try various digestive aids, including fennel and some pungent little balls - we're not sure that they worked!! Biryani is always delicious, and we liked the Bengali creamy fish curry flavoured with mustard as well as a host of yummy vegetarian concoctions. Airlines offer 'veg' or 'non-veg', and restaurants advertise outside which they are. Aloo paratha, like chapatis but with mashed potato and spices inside the pastry, which is then fried, we specially enjoyed at Jagjit Singh's new restaurant just outside Bagdogra.

In Agartala, we had several meals cooked for us that were just very plain rice, dhal and boiled vegetables, but most food has a huge range of spices added, some of which we were able to identify, but others that eluded us in translation. One of the most interesting we came across is called black salt (not really black in colour, sort of dark pink). It is added to various dishes to lift the flavour, and we tried it with freshly squeezed orange juice. The result to us seemed very similar to hydrogen sulphide - most bizarre in the context of juice!

Darjeeling has a lot of Tibetan food and momos were one of the dishes that all Hermonites (bar one or two) remember fondly from our leave days. Momos are similar to won ton, but with slightly different ingredients - can be eaten fried or steamed, with or without soup and always with tomoto salsa to spice them up. Thukpa is a Tibetan soup - again delicious, and we sampled several versions of it in Darj.

Bengalis are famous for their sweets, and we avoided the ones that are commonly available in NZ - gulab jamun, ladhu and jilebi (even though the latter were still piping hot from just being cooked). Instead we tried out various kinds of sandesh, pera made from jaggery, homemade ladhu using gum as an ingredient, rosgulla and rosmalai from spongy curd soaked in sugar and water/cream and flavoured with rosewater - the last two being my special favourites. All very very sweet (goes with the tea) and available at tiny shops along the street, piled high in pyramids, or neatly arranged on trays. Roxanne on our last day finally discovered the perfect barfi she had been looking for for a fortnight. Takeaway sweets come in brown paper, or if you get more in tiny cardboard boxes. If you eat them on the spot, they are usually dished up on a saucer made of dried leaves with a wooden spoon - handy for all the juicy ones. Piyash is the original rice pudding - creamy, cardomom and cinnamon delicious and eaten in tiny bowls. We had an interesting version made from vermicelli rather than rice, topped with almonds and pistachio nuts that was very yummy.

We didn't become game enough to eat the snacks that smell gorgous from vendors along the street, although we did like the egg roll from the tiny stall on the main road in Calcutta. And we did have several samosas that had just come out of the oil - and were hot in more ways than one!

Thailand provided us with the fruits that we miss from Brunei - mangosteen, rambutan, mango, papaya and pomelo. Even the transit lounge in the airport had a stall selling fruit freshly cut and available to be made into drinks or to eat whole. Annie in Cal insisted that we try pomegranate for the first time.

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