Indian food
Note: I am back in New York. My laptop broke a while ago so I am catching up on blogging now that I'm back. Plenty of stories and craziness to share in the coming weeks. This post I did largely write before I left India but did not publish until now.
I have not said much about food in India. I suppose there have been more than sufficient distractions such that food has taken a back seat.
I have always liked Indian food since I started eating it back in college. I was excited for the food here and it has been good, and in some cases great, but I admit that the hygienic concerns have kept me from really going hogwild.
In fact, let me say a word about hygiene. Traditionally in India and in many other Asian countries, the left hand is viewed as unclean because it is the hand that is used to clean oneself in the bathroom. By this I mean you use your left hand and water to wipe your ass clean after you're done. I add that detail since just telling the story people seemed to be confused as to what I mean by "clean oneself." So, when eating food with your hands, as is often done in India, you will use your right hand to tear off pieces of bread, scoop up some whatever, and shovel it into your mouth. Also, as I have done a few times here, rice and curry or whatever will also be eaten with the right hand. The left hand remains largely inactive during meals, though it is used to occasionally hold silverware or manipulate plates or cups. The idea is that it wouldn't touch the food.
Now the funny part about that is, that the left hand is traditionally unclean, but zero attention seems to be paid to which hand is *actually* clean. Now people will actually wash their hands before they eat it seems pretty regularly, but as far as I can tell that is not a concern among the food preparers. I see guys reach in with a bare hand, pick up a samosa, put it on a plate, hold it there with their thumb while they squeeze sauce onto the plate, then hand it to the customer, and then use the same hand to collect their money and give them change. Vada pav are also assembled by hands. Basically everything that happens to your food before it gets to you happens with bare hands. The same hands that handle money, shake hands with buddies, or scratch their asses. Now I'm not a super squeamish guy. I don't carry around a little bottle of hand sanitizer with me everywhere but I think this is the opposite extreme here. It did make me laugh though as I saw what people do with their hands in India without washing them as I thought of people in New York breaking out a small bottle of hand sanitizer in every restaurant because they might've touched the subway pole that day.
Maybe in the US we've gone overboard with trying to avoid the transmission of germs, but when I see kids sitting on the floor of the train with their hands touching the floors, hands that are not gonna be washed anytime soon, I can't help but feel a little concerned.
Anyway, such as it is, I was very aware of food preparation in a way here that never bothered me or even occurred to me in China. In China I eat 70% street food I'd say, and this last trip I didn't get sick once. For what it is worth, in China they tend not to eat with hands too often, so maybe that's part of why it concerned me less. So that aside, I have since eaten a bunch of street food here in India and mostly ate in small cafeteria style restaurants. My stomach has been a little upset the last few days, but nothing catastrophic so far (fingers crossed).
Some things I have eaten here that I have had in my life before include varieties of dosa including my favorite, the rava dosa. This was always tasty and similar to good dosas I have had in the US. Vada Pav, which is the mumbai street sandwich made of a potato patty on bread with varying sauces. Also very good. I had street samosas yesterday for the first time which were very delicious. I have had some rice pulao with alu mattar and chana masala. I have had dal fry several times. I have had a few mixed vegetable curries and a few thalis as well. I had a vegetable biriyani which was the best I have ever tasted. I had a few new dishes too which defy description a little but I will try. One notable dish was Thalapith which was this sort of bread pancake made out of "pulses" and serves with some sort of tomato-ey sauce. I had sev puri, sort of like bhel puri. That was one of the only raw things I ate which concerned me a little but I survived. I had this really interesting dish called panki which is some sort of chickpea flour cooked in banana leaves I think, and then you can take the cooked flour/bready result and use it to scoop up this spicy green chutney. I had a great street food veg kebab roll. Oh, I had this thing called a frankie which turned out to not be a hot dog but instead was potatoes and onions rolled up inside of bread and cooked up on a griddle. I've had a few good meals here, though I think the really stand-out items were the new things I have never seen in the US before. The other things were perfectly good and sometimes great, but I don't feel as if I can't get food of similar quality in NYC or elsewhere in the US. There were a few meals I ate at Shweta's house which were noteworthy, although it is difficult for me to describe all the dishes. Those meals all a home-cooked touch which none of the restaurant meals could really touch. It has inspired me to take a real run at Indian cooking when I get back home.
I was thinking about the insistence of people that the street versions of things are always superior or that there is no way a dish outside of the native country would ever be as good as the one there. I was wondering if this has something to do with the cooking surface, such that whatever the hell is stuck on the pan or the grill or at the bottom of the sauce containers is the magic sauce. This made me think of Steve Martin who said that people always assume it's difficult to eat well on the road, but for him it was never really a problem "because I love animal lips...I do...I guess rat feces is about one of my favorite things. I do enjoy it." I imagine rat feces is the mystery ingredient in many a street delicacy. Maybe Anthony Bourdain knows.
I have not said much about food in India. I suppose there have been more than sufficient distractions such that food has taken a back seat.
I have always liked Indian food since I started eating it back in college. I was excited for the food here and it has been good, and in some cases great, but I admit that the hygienic concerns have kept me from really going hogwild.
In fact, let me say a word about hygiene. Traditionally in India and in many other Asian countries, the left hand is viewed as unclean because it is the hand that is used to clean oneself in the bathroom. By this I mean you use your left hand and water to wipe your ass clean after you're done. I add that detail since just telling the story people seemed to be confused as to what I mean by "clean oneself." So, when eating food with your hands, as is often done in India, you will use your right hand to tear off pieces of bread, scoop up some whatever, and shovel it into your mouth. Also, as I have done a few times here, rice and curry or whatever will also be eaten with the right hand. The left hand remains largely inactive during meals, though it is used to occasionally hold silverware or manipulate plates or cups. The idea is that it wouldn't touch the food.
Now the funny part about that is, that the left hand is traditionally unclean, but zero attention seems to be paid to which hand is *actually* clean. Now people will actually wash their hands before they eat it seems pretty regularly, but as far as I can tell that is not a concern among the food preparers. I see guys reach in with a bare hand, pick up a samosa, put it on a plate, hold it there with their thumb while they squeeze sauce onto the plate, then hand it to the customer, and then use the same hand to collect their money and give them change. Vada pav are also assembled by hands. Basically everything that happens to your food before it gets to you happens with bare hands. The same hands that handle money, shake hands with buddies, or scratch their asses. Now I'm not a super squeamish guy. I don't carry around a little bottle of hand sanitizer with me everywhere but I think this is the opposite extreme here. It did make me laugh though as I saw what people do with their hands in India without washing them as I thought of people in New York breaking out a small bottle of hand sanitizer in every restaurant because they might've touched the subway pole that day.
Maybe in the US we've gone overboard with trying to avoid the transmission of germs, but when I see kids sitting on the floor of the train with their hands touching the floors, hands that are not gonna be washed anytime soon, I can't help but feel a little concerned.
Anyway, such as it is, I was very aware of food preparation in a way here that never bothered me or even occurred to me in China. In China I eat 70% street food I'd say, and this last trip I didn't get sick once. For what it is worth, in China they tend not to eat with hands too often, so maybe that's part of why it concerned me less. So that aside, I have since eaten a bunch of street food here in India and mostly ate in small cafeteria style restaurants. My stomach has been a little upset the last few days, but nothing catastrophic so far (fingers crossed).
Some things I have eaten here that I have had in my life before include varieties of dosa including my favorite, the rava dosa. This was always tasty and similar to good dosas I have had in the US. Vada Pav, which is the mumbai street sandwich made of a potato patty on bread with varying sauces. Also very good. I had street samosas yesterday for the first time which were very delicious. I have had some rice pulao with alu mattar and chana masala. I have had dal fry several times. I have had a few mixed vegetable curries and a few thalis as well. I had a vegetable biriyani which was the best I have ever tasted. I had a few new dishes too which defy description a little but I will try. One notable dish was Thalapith which was this sort of bread pancake made out of "pulses" and serves with some sort of tomato-ey sauce. I had sev puri, sort of like bhel puri. That was one of the only raw things I ate which concerned me a little but I survived. I had this really interesting dish called panki which is some sort of chickpea flour cooked in banana leaves I think, and then you can take the cooked flour/bready result and use it to scoop up this spicy green chutney. I had a great street food veg kebab roll. Oh, I had this thing called a frankie which turned out to not be a hot dog but instead was potatoes and onions rolled up inside of bread and cooked up on a griddle. I've had a few good meals here, though I think the really stand-out items were the new things I have never seen in the US before. The other things were perfectly good and sometimes great, but I don't feel as if I can't get food of similar quality in NYC or elsewhere in the US. There were a few meals I ate at Shweta's house which were noteworthy, although it is difficult for me to describe all the dishes. Those meals all a home-cooked touch which none of the restaurant meals could really touch. It has inspired me to take a real run at Indian cooking when I get back home.
I was thinking about the insistence of people that the street versions of things are always superior or that there is no way a dish outside of the native country would ever be as good as the one there. I was wondering if this has something to do with the cooking surface, such that whatever the hell is stuck on the pan or the grill or at the bottom of the sauce containers is the magic sauce. This made me think of Steve Martin who said that people always assume it's difficult to eat well on the road, but for him it was never really a problem "because I love animal lips...I do...I guess rat feces is about one of my favorite things. I do enjoy it." I imagine rat feces is the mystery ingredient in many a street delicacy. Maybe Anthony Bourdain knows.
posted by Dan at 4:24 AM
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