Open Wide – Travels in India and Pakistan #6: Food Glorious Food – India

Food Glorious Food
I admit it. I’m here for the food. Forget culture, forget history, forget music. I came to India to eat. How insensitive. With starving people everywhere, all I’m concerned with is expanding my palate’s reach.

Yesterday was probably the pinnacle of my foodie experience here, not because of its deliciousness, but for the sheer volume of food I consumed. Staying with a family in the south of India in a town called Thiruvalla, I was introduced to the joys of south Indian cooking.

I was introduced to a jackfruit, which looks like, pardon me, a large snot with prickly green spikes. It’s the largest fruit on earth, apparently. However, it’s not my favourite. I sampled jackfruit in three incarnations – raw, as part of lunch mixed with spices and in halwa. I liked it best disguised with the spices.

Next, there were strange pink fruits that had the consistency of watermelon, but were small garlic-head shapes. Finally, I sampled a not quite ripe coconut and its water, which is the refresher drink of Kerala, which is the state I am in. Kerala means land of the coconuts. All of these were kindly provided by the backyard yield of my host. For tea I sampled various cookies, jalebhi, which look like orange squiggly donuts and are sweeter than Indian pop (which is saying something), and various other cakes.

Meals were another thing entirely. After arriving starving, I showered and came downstairs only to be informed that I must wash my hands and abandon all hope of using cutlery. In the south it’s main a la bouche. This suited me just fine.

Breakfast stunned me. A mixture of rice and coconut was heaped onto my plate, and I was instructed to spoon on some sugar. Then I was given a small, fat, plantain banana and squooshed it with my fingers into the rice-coconut-sugar mixture. I am sure that was the best banana I will ever eat. I tried to record its taste in my body since I wouldn’t encounter its like again. Called puttu, this dish is a typical south Indian breakfast and it is absolutely divine. The sweetness of the banana and sugar made the dish dessert-like, which is exactly how I like my meals.

For lunch I was introduced to moru, another meal with rice as the staple. Unlike in the north, where dhal is the main, here it is a yoghurt/spice mixture. Tasting somewhat like cheese, moru found its way in copious amounts to my stomach. I got the recipe and will try to replicate it in Toronto. Somehow, I don’t think that will happen.

Finally, dinner was quite an occasion. The next day was my birthday and the family went out of their way to make it a special night. I was serenaded with a uniquely Indian version of “Happy birthday to you”, with several verses and mangled English, but a wonderful celebratory spirit. I blew out the multicoloured candles on my cake which was a fairly standard issue marble cake, sans icing, and sliced it for all attending the affair. Since my mom couldn’t be with me, my host mom fed me my slice of cake symbolically, and husbands and wives fed each other their cake in the manner of newlyweds on “A Wedding Story” on the Life network. (Did I just admit I watch that program?!! Another confession: I’m addicted.)

The meal was brought out, moru for me because I loved it before, and several veggie dishes, a pickled mango, and the piece de resistance – buffalo meat. All I could think of when I saw the meat was, “but, water buffalo almost crushed me on the streets in Varanasi! I have a relationship with water buffalo here. We share the streets! How am I going to eat them?”

Of course I will eat pretty much anything that is put on my plate in order not to be rude, so the buffalo went down with handfuls (remember, no cutlery) of moru. Not bad, pretty chewy. In fact, let that be the worst thing I have to try here. I can just imagine people’s thoughts on buffalo. I’m so tame when it comes to trying new things. Buffalo is nothing. The challenge will be to try goat’s balls in Pakistan.

For dessert I had ice cream, pineapple and mangos. Now, in my emails to friends I’ve tried to describe the mangoes here. They’re beyond description. The pineapple also deserves a plug for its juiciness. Instead, let me briefly mention the ice cream, which tasted like ready-whip edible oil product. The ice cream at Kwality’s or other normal stands is pretty decent. I have no idea what this was.

I couldn’t sleep last night. My stomach was busy digesting the mass quantity of food I had consumed. During an outing, my friend took me to buy supplies for my train ride. Banana chips and a peanut square was the order of the day. Sitting in bed, I sang silly songs to myself and wondered what would be on tomorrow’s menu. Frankly, it doesn’t really matter. Even bad Indian food is good. (I can hear protests from upset stomachs across the subcontinent!)

At least with the food in India, so far, I’ve not been disappointed.