Confessions of a Foodie

Most of you must think how lucky we are to have the opportunity to create and eat all of this fabulous food. I have to tell you that I would never have dreamed I would have an opportunity like this, especially in a country like India, where we have friends who are taking the time to expose us to and teach us about their food and culture. Just an invaluable experience that we appreciate so much.

We have never eaten so many chilis and so much spicy food in our lives. So much curry (YUM!). After being here a full week now, I confess that I am starting to crave some American comfort food. It really hit me when we passed that herd of cows on the street the other day and all I could see was sirloin steaks and hamburgers! I did pick up some frozen ground beef I found at the Q market (burgers are in our near future), as well as a can of tuna fish and some Hellmann’s mayo (Yes, they actually had the real stuff!). I devoured a tuna sandwich for lunch yesterday and had a PBJ sandwich for breakfast this morning. Thank goodness we have found the American grocery for when we need that ordinary food experience. Hopefully, this will help prevent the 'ring sting' I know is coming our way.

So far, so good :o)

More on Food.......

Our hosts continue to feed us like royalty. They insist all of the food they are teaching us how to prepare is just their every day fare. For us it’s all so exotic and different. The spices and odd vegetables are just outstanding! Here is a great example of odd vegetables.

Kara Curry – made with Littlegourd, it looks like a very small cucumber but has an inside like a jalapeño but isn’t hot. It is sliced thin and stir-fried with curry spices and chilis. Very simple and delicious.

Vetha Kozhambu with Drumstick – This is a Sambar using a tamarind base (see earlier post on Sambar). The Drumstick vegetable is used in this one. A very long thin green twig type thing. It is chopped into 3 inch pieces and boiled in the sambar with spices. It becomes quite soft in the center so you can suck the fruit out of the twig when it is done. It has a sweet taste that is fabulous with the tamarind and chilis in the sambar. See photo above of Littlegourd and Drumstick. These dishes are served with rice and a drop of Jaggery, sugar that is boiled into a paste, kind of like palm sugar, and chappathi, of course. YUM!

soaking the tamarind

preparing the sambar spices

from left- yogurt, vk w/ drumstick, rice, kara curry, asst. sprout salad

Now, in case that wasn’t enough for you…….

Can you say Mutton Biryani? This is one of Shrikants specialties, so he was the one doing the magic for this meal. This dish is just a big pot of LOVE. The method is as follows:

Marinade cubed mutton or lamb in yogurt, ginger, garlic, lemon, cinnamon, turmeric, chili powder and salt. Let sit for about an hour. Sauté onions and chopped tomato in more spices. Add that to meat marinade and biryani masala. Simmer to reduce the curry. In a separate skillet stir fry red onions, fresh pineapple, cashews and raisins.

Make some basmati rice and add ghee, saffron and a bay leaf.

Layer into a covered cooking dish – rice, red onion/pineapple stir-fry, meat curry and repeat. Serve with a yogurt/cucumber/chili/red onion and coriander mixture. And, of course, chappathi.

Dessert- Kaju Katli. A ground cashew sweet wrapped in a thin silver foil. :o)

Bollywood

How could we come to India without going to see a Bollywood movie? The movie industry is HUGE here, and I must say, they do a great job. Shrikant, Charanya, Sandhya, and Shuba (from the Eye Institute) decided to take us to a movie. We told them it didn’t matter that the movie would be in Hindi with no sub titles. We would watch the movie and give them our version of the story at the end. It was hilarious.

The movie was a comedy/drama/love triangle story called Ishqiya which means love (only in Bollywood!). The bad guy was after two brothers for something they had done and was going to shoot them in their own grave that they had just dug for themselves. Of course they got away and the bad guy kept chasing them. The brothers end up at this safe house place run by a beautiful young woman who both brothers fall for, hence the love triangle. The plot thickens when the bag of money they took from the bad guy disappears. Bladi, blah, blah………suddenly there are all sorts of folks chasing each other around trying to find the money. An ex husband of the love interest appears. Etc. etc. The brothers have a fistfight over the woman who ends up driving off in the car while they fight. It was hilarious how close we were to guessing the plot. In the end the three of them survive and all the bad guys die when the safe house burns down (except for the original bad guy who really turns out to be a wimp). We had a great laugh.

We will try to see at least one more traditional musical Bollywood film before we leave.