FOOD!

I think the time has come to talk about food. Like so many things in India (and everywhere), food is different from town to town, and it's hard to generalize, or even begin to explain the food. I'll try and give an overview of my culinary experience so far...

Northern - Southern
Northern Food is much more based around chapati and naan and therefore most meals provide enough sauce or gravy for you to soak up with your bread. Famous dishes like Aloo Gobi (potato and cauliflower), Dhal (lentil and veg mix) and Paneer Palak (cheese and spinach) are prefect when ordered betwen several people, so that like chinese and Spanish food, you can have a bit of everything. There is also a strong Muglhai influence on the food which exists till this day, so that some dishes are similar to Middle Eastern cuisine.

Southern food is heavily rice based. In the school I taught at near Trichy, it was idli's for breakfast (spongy steamed rice balls), rice and sambar for lunch (rice with mixed veg) and dosa and dip for dinner (thin rice pancake). To be honest, it was a bit too much for me, and I prefer the juicy deliciousness of the north.

Veg - Non Veg
Before I came, I really thought I would become a near vegetarian in India; and then I ate meat and I wasn't sick, so I've kept eating meat, usually at least every 2 or 3 days. However, the veg dishes are usually so flavourful and nutritious that you don't really need/want meat, and most people you meet are vegetarian, so unless I'm alone, it's usually Veg. One dish you can find aboslutely everywhere is the thali, usually served in a metal plate, with chapati (flat floury round bread, similar to tortilla) or puri (deep fried bready mix) and 4 or 5 different things to dip into, with usually a side of rice and curd (like yogurt, good if the food is too spicy) to balance it all out.
As for the Non Veg though, Tandoori chicken is the best (cooked in a clay oven) when it's well done, juicy and chargrilled, and not too dry. There's a lot of mutton available too, but what I've tried hasn't been that good. Non Veg restaurants are much less common than Veg ones, and in non-touristy towns the meat joints are usually quite dingy and dark, located in the back alleys and frequented only by men, while the veg restaurants are more the happy, family type. This adds a layer of thrill (what stomach problems will I get this time?!) and a aura of sin to the meat restaurants that is fun.

The problem is, every place will cook up their own version of every dish, so you never know exactly what you're going to get. Menus here are usally in English which is great, and many places will serve their own take on chinese and continental, which doesn't always work (I once had a chicken sandwich wrapped in cling film with ketchup poured on top, on a plate).

Although India serves up some wacky food with new, intense, tastes, it's not at all as weird as the food was in China, which had a lot more meat, and therefore weird body parts ended up being used for cooking. India does offer a massive selection of fruit and fresh juices though, which are dirt cheap and usually filled with amazingness. Usually the juice-man will mix fruits for you if you ask nicely. My favourite is Pineapple-grape: too good.

Street Food
This is another dodgy one, but I quickly fell in love with the street food here. Everything is deep fried, so if it's just come off the pan it's pretty safe, and this is mostly the kind of snack I get during stops for long bus or train rides. These vary from town to town, but just about everywhere you can get yourself some samosas and deep fried onion mixed with potato and peppers. It's ridiculously cheap and usually delicious, though it can get very greasy.

Drinks
It's all about chai here, super sweet, super milky tea. I'm not sure if it's a spinoff of the English cup of tea, or if we copied the Indians, but its really good. Chai is everywhere. There are chai merchants on bicycles, motorbikes, in every street, in stations, trains, offices, malls... It's usually about 5 Rs for a small cup and a great start to the day, and although many foreigners complain about how sweet it is, i love it. One of my favourite things to do here is hit the chai shop around 8 in the morning, buy a cup of chai and some butter biscuits to dip, and watch India wake up and everyone getting to work.
Alcohol, like meat, is very 'underground' and even illegal in some states. It's decently priced in shops but usually expensive in restaurants, and bars are pretty rare. Some shops have little back rooms that you can drink in after purchasing your alcohol, and these are suuuper grimy and grungy and fun for a quick cheap drink with the locals. After beer, most people will choose rum or whisky. As far as local liquor, I havn't really tried any. I was scared off by the amount of deaths late last year from alcohol poisoning in small towns.

The strangest thing I've eaten here (and maybe anywhere ever) is Pan. It's basically a leaf filled with all kinds of weird stuff, powders and pastes and little sweets and nuts. Really, for my first (and last) pan the pan-man seemed to apply about 15 different things to the leaf, then roll it up and hand it to me. You're supposed to put the whole thing in your mouth and chew, which results in an explosion of really crazy weird flavours and things happening inside your mouth. It was too much for me, and since the leaf and some of the weird shiz wouldn't dissolve, I couldn't finish it. Many places will put some tobacco in the leaf also, giving you a buzz and so the snack has a highly addictive element. Aside from Pan, and more regularly used is a beetle nut and tobacco mix that people put in their mouths. Many time when you want to speak to a shopkeeper here, he will just mumble, not wanting to open his mouth, because this stuff makes you salivate so much. for this reason Indian streets are filled with little red spit stains. It also makes people's teeth all red, pretty gross stuff.


Although I've been craving Western Food from time to time, the thing I really miss the most is cooking. Who knew eating out could get boring! Well, not boring, I still have many places to see and things to taste coming up (next: Bengali Food!)