Food in India - February

by Artemis
Yummmmmmmmmm!
I think as I take another bite of tandoori chicken and naan. The delicious flavours all together in my mouth. Tender chicken with doughy naan (naan is an Indian bread that they make in a special tandoori oven its my, favourite Indian bread) and some crunchy unions to get extra flavour! We were all sitting in the restaurant that was completely empty aside from us. Witch I don’t understand because the food is fantastic! I gulp it down with a drink of water and site for a second feeling content.

I’m really getting the hang of eating with my hand! When we first came to India I had to practically site on my left hand so I wouldn’t use it (you see in India people use there left hand to…cough clean certain areas after doing things that involve sitting on a toilet and are not particularly pleasant…lets just say its VERY rude to use you left hand to eat). It does really take a certain amount of practise to get it right. You may think “how hard can it be to eat something with your hand? I mean it’s the easiest way to eat!” Well you’re wrong because it is quite difficult. It may be easy to eat a hamburger with you’re hands but to eat rice and curry are quite different.

First you have to make a little ball of rice with you’re hand and mix it with some curry, then try to pick it up witch is not easy because the rice is small peaces and it doesn’t stick very well. After you’ve got that done you pick it up (remember this is all with one hand) and try to put it in you’re mouth without getting it all over you’re shirt (to do that it involves leaning your head back and dropping it I your mouth).

Remember that’s just rice and curry. The hardest part is ripping the Indian bread. Now to tear the bread is by far the hardest part. First of all Indian bread isn’t like a bun or a loaf of sour doo. No Indian bread is more like pita or its more that shape anyway. There are many different types of Indian bread such as:
-roti
-naan
-chapatti
-papa daam
-parantha
-dosa
That’s jut to name a few (most of the breads are the same thing but restaurants put all of them on the menu anyway. So when you order, lets say two chapatti and two roti, the order will come and it will be four chapatti. Of course after you ask where you’re roti was and why you had four chapatti that’s when the waiter decides to say “oh roti chapatti same thing!” funny how that works out).

As you know my favourite type of bread is naan. It’s the doughiest and taste the best with curry and chicken (It’s best to just eat chicken in India because there’s no proper refrigeration so if you eat cow its so big it would probably be rotten)

The technique of ripping naan with one hand is hard to get a hang of.
Once you do get it right its as natural as eating with a fork and knife.

I’m now going to talk a bit about the types of food in India.

Humm where to start…ill start with Tamil Nadu, the first place we went in India. Each city had its own specialty. Tamil Nadu was famous for tally and raita with chapatti. That’s what we usually had. Tally is a special plate with a whole bunch of curries and rice with some chapatti sometimes, it depends on the restaurant. All the curries come in little boles and there all around a big plate of rice. Then the waiters come around with buckets of the curries and refill all you’re little boles. It’s a very good meal but after a while I got sick of it.

The chapatti with raita was my favourite. Now let me explain chapatti is a Indian bread and raita is a mix of yogurt and unions (uncooked). I no what you think “ewwwwwww yogurt and unions?!” but its actually very good! In fact its so good it was my favourite thing in Tamil Nadu.

In Kerala the chapatti was different from Tamil Nadu. It was dryer and stiffer so it wasn’t as good. In kerala we ate more chicken bryani and instead of chapatti we would have paratha (another Indian bread) also we had allot of tandoori chicken (Tamil Nadu was mostly vegetarian).

Moving up to the north of India the first place we visited in the north was Raipur.
In Jaipur we had the pleasure of having stuffed tomato curry and cashew curry with naan. The stuffed tomato curry was a curry with a stuffed tomato that had been cooked with the curry but was still a whole tomato usually it was stuffed with cheese or flavoured rice. Also, strangely enough we had lots of porridge at are hotel restaurant

Stuffed tomato and cashew curry with naan were all over the north and were some of my all-time favourite dishes in India.
.
The second place we went to in the north was Jodhpur. The food in Jodhpur was the same as the food in Jaipur but the curries will taste a little different.

In Jailer there was allot of Italian food and we ended up having lots of spaghetti (good spaghetti).

India has so much good food its hard to explain all the wonderful tastes and you can’t imagine it until you try it for yourself! I’m definitely going to miss India.

By Artemis Walden