When hunger strikes...

Indian food back in Nebraska is one of my favorite types of meals! We have an very nice resterant called The Oven and it serves delcious varations of northern and southern Indian food. However, once I got to this country, as expected, the food wasn’t quite the same.

In India, when a family goes out for dinner they make an evening of it. Taking up to several hours. First they will go out for drinks and talk for atleast an hour, then they will go to dinner and start with a appatizer, then the main course, then dessert. Afterwards they will sit there for another hour or so to chat. Finally, if they are not too many children they will go out for more drinks and dancing. I think this is an intersting difference bettwen American and India. Many times in restaurants back home, customers are almost pushed out of their seats because they are other families waiting.

India has so many herbs, spices, and produce that we don’t have back in America. Meals are incredibly rich with a fulliness in their texture and satisfaction. Indians also tend to have a more spicy pallet. Every meal I ordered, I was asked how spicy I wanted it to be. I started off just ordering mild and sometimes that was too hot. The zest that comes with the spicy does not settle on your tongue like most dish in the States, it wakes up all your taste buds in the back of your throat and warms up your whole body.

Herbs and Spices

The typical meal in Indian is a curry based chicken or mutton (lamb) with roti. Curry is a mix of spices that creates a paste that the meat or vegatables is then cooked in. Roti is a flat bread made of wheat and looks something like a tortia. What most people do is with their right hand, and only their right hand, is tear off a piece of roti and use it to pick up or dip into the curry. Locals say a true Indian can finish their entire plate and not have a messy hand. The reason they only use their right had is that it is customary to wash and wipe oneself with their left hand, so it is seen as dirty and unsanitary for eating purposes.

Karim-Famous restaurant in Delhi 

After you are finished, the waiter will bring out a small bowl of hot water with a small lemon inside of it. This is to wash your hand. The hot water mixed with the acidity of the lemon removes any left over food particales and cleanses your hand. It feels so nice and I like to think of it as a mini manicure. If a waiter doesn’t bring out a wash bowl, there are always sinks localed by the front door or just outside of the restaurant.

Although they do have vegatarian curries, they don’t typically have vegatables in them and if they do there is not a lot of them. It is just not a big part of the culture to eat a lot of veggies. Because I am not a big meat eater back home, I have had a difficult time going without them. But what is wonderful about these types of dishes is that they are incredibly fulling, I am always satisfied after I have finsihed.

Before the meal comes out, most places will set out a dish of raw onions and lemons. It is used as an appaltizer as well as something to clean your mouth of taste between different dishes. Because no one knows exactly where these fruits and veggies have came from, I can not eat them unless they are cooked or peeled. But many Indians love to eat this small free dish when they go out for a meal.

What I have found though is that although I wont eat the mutton, the chicken is some of the most savory and tender chicken I have ever had. Often times if we order a starter it will be chicken kebobs. But these are not kebobs like back home, these are slow roasted chicken pieces in fantastic sauce and a dry seasoning. One of the main reasons that this chicken is so wonderfully full of taste is that not only are they locally raised and bought, they are not raised on hormones.

While on the other hand since the chicken and lambs are rasied and sold near by, they can be bought in the markets. There are very loose governement regulations of places that cook and sell food, therefore there is little education about safe food. Walking into any strip of  shops there is atleast one to 10 places with some sort of meat hanging in the front. These shops are more like open huts, forts, and sometimes shacks. If they are actual closed buildings, there are still not air conditionared. All sorts of flies and bugs sit and nest on these raw meats. Since I have seen this, I try to eat as little meat as possible. But there are still many delcioius snacks and meals that are sold on the streets and markets!

Street vendor

Besides Indian food with its curries and rotis, there are several Chinese food places here. Almost every place is multi-cuisine and serves both. Chinese food in India is like Mexican food in America. You can other all kinds of Chinese dishes and desserts. This can be nice to mix it up.

Our travel guide, Abinov, had been taking us around for the previous two weeks and one of his friends, Aniath, owns a high-end hotel/restaurant. We went there for our welcome dinner. We had several different types of cooked chicken, mutton, and rich rice. We had so much food that I was stuffed after the starters. After the first part of the meal, Aniath allowed us to see how our meal was being made and how to make it. We all returned to our dinner table with recipes that can be made back in the U.S.A.

Chef making spinach paneer

But once we were all relaxing and chatting some more, Aniath ordered a couple different types of desserts. I usually prefer salting things, but these desserts were the most delicious combination I have ever had. The first one was dough that is soaked in sugar syrup, fried, and dipped in the sugar syrup again. It was still warm from the fryer. What you do is take a small bit of the dough and scoop up a bit of the vanilla ice cream and eat them together. I have no idea what it is about Indian ice cream but it is hands down the best ice cream I have ever had. It is so delicate and sweet in a home-cooked way. It was the perfect way to end an evening.