Khanna

One of the purposes of this blog was to record something about the food we have come across in India and although we have eaten in dozens of restaurants and have been cooking at home since February, I have given food little space in my postings so far. So now to redress the balance, but, where to start?

Well, let’s begin with the basics. There are onions and potatoes in abundance of course and it is not difficult to find cauliflower. More unusual, at least for me as I don’t normally eat it, is okra (known here as bhindi), which makes a fantastic spiced dish (any vegetable dish with oil and spices is called Subzi in Gujarat) because it softens up deliciously and soaks the spices up. There are also plump, round and deep purple aubergines (brinjal or bengen), which I have taken to cutting into cubes and adding to Toor dal when I make it in the pressure cooker. This has turned out to be the key to making proper dal (if I can call my attempts that), because the lentils never quite break down in the right way if only cooked in a pan. Yes it is potentially dangerous, but I have the hang of it now and always stay on the alert for an explosion of super hot liquid when the pressure is building, just in case.

Of course there are lumpen carrots too and oblong tomatoes. We also buy corn on the cob when we fancy a break from dal and rotis. The corn is imported from the US. We can get peas in the pod, French beans and green peppers, as well as spinach (palak) to keep up our green vegetables quota. All of this is cheap and usually good quality. Although we’ve been intending since the start of the year to buy vegetables from the roadside stalls and roving sellers (whose incomprehensible calls and creaking carts haunt me in the mornings), we’ve almost always gone to do a big shop at the local supermarket, ‘Star Bazaar’. This has everything one could ever need and so is very convenient, and what’s more is only five minutes walk from the flat. Before images of Tesco’s come to mind, remember that this is India. The trappings of a modern supermarket are there, but I’ve still seen a mouse and a cockroach in the aisles. Anyway as we can’t judge how much we get ripped off by the small sellers, we opt for somewhere where the price per kilo is displayed.

We get fruit from this local ‘supermarche’ too: sweet pineapples, at least four different varieties of melon (the local Gujarati one is the cheapest) and mushy apples that we now avoid. Until a few weeks ago it was mango season and we could choose from five different types of the perfumed fruit. The most expensive is the Alphonso, which is sweet and pungent. We have more often bought the Kesar (saffron) variety, which is smaller, green rather than yellow on the outside and more tart. These have been a regular dessert (alternating with Cadbury’s) and we sit in the living room and eat one or two, discarding the skins into a bowl on the floor that will quickly be surrounded by roving bands of miniscule ants.

The Star Bazaar, one of the Tata Group’s innumerable enterprises, is also where we get a lot of spices from. And what spices. They are not expensive, but the scent and taste is so much better than that of the stuff which arrives on shelves in the UK. Take black pepper for example. Here it’s not just an addition to food; it transforms it. There is also more variety. Cardamom (elaichi) comes in green, black or white varieties, and you can choose between large and small mustard seeds. Admittedly this last choice had me stumped the other day: what difference does it make?