Category archive for: Indian Food File
Back homeA yogic diet is not for me
My Aunties preparing an oddly sattvic picnic for our family in Paris' Jardin de Luxembourg It's slightly troubling to learn that my ancestral diet and a yogic or sattvic diet have little in common. I'm a lover of leafy greens, an initator of a sprout restaurant and I've been known to be inordin... Read more
Posted on May 18, 2007 19:17
Doors 9 JUICE reports:
Delhi’s Sabzi Mandi
That's vegetable market to me and you. At the crack of dawn, dodging raindrops the size of wild peaches, a small delegation from the Doors9:JUICE urban agriculture workshop heads out for a reconnoitre of Delhi's Sabzi Mandi, the wholesale vegetable market off Mehrauli-Gurgaon Rd. Through a haz... Read more
Posted on March 15, 2007 12:15
Food supplements
In Ayanagar Village on the outskirts of sprawling Delhi, the urban agriculture workshoppers accidentally stumble upon a food supplement store. A result of the Green Revolution? Read more
Posted on March 12, 2007 15:07
Golgappa,
1 of the top 5
most sexy things
you can put in your mouth
Try to imagine all of the sexy things that happen in your mouth. Now try to imagine a food that embodies these sensual experiences. You are imagining the Indian street food golgappa, unquestionably one of the most exciting things you can do to your body with food in public, a molecular gastronom... Read more
Posted on March 10, 2007 13:29
Psycho-gastronomy
and the
‘Honey, I’m home from Delhi’
breakfast
The kimchi chapati breakfast What could be a more obvious combination than the ubiquitous flatbread of India flavoured with a dash of pro-biotic pickle juice from the Heimatt? Rolling out a kimchi chapati breakfast seems just the ticket to remind me that I'm home from Delhi. It's been a whirlwi... Read more
Posted on March 9, 2007 10:49
Chai styling
This is how chai wa served to the Doors 9 JUICE urban agriculture delegation at Delhi's Sabzi Mandi (wholesale vegetable market). Beautiful and neat. Read more
Posted on February 28, 2007 22:04
Visiting a langar
The entire meal, the ingredients, the preparation and the cleanup, all of it is donated by the community. Everyone eats together as equals, sitting side by side at the langar. In one week's time the Doors of Perception: JUICE round table workshops will begin in Delhi. Despite all of the tragic... Read more
Posted on February 20, 2007 2:30
Chaat Pack for street nibbles
Here is a chaat array being sold on the streets of Delhi. Check out the packaging stuffed in between the sacks of chaat. You buy some chaat, the vendor mixes it up with some piquante sauce, and you're good to go. This is an example of how a food manufacturer together with a forward-thinking ... Read more
Posted on December 16, 2005 9:16
Chaat Street, Indian chips mimic street food golgappa
Nine months ago I was in Delhi and not in the Polar Circle at midwinter, and it was there that I was introduced to golgappa, one of the top ten amazing things you could ever hope to put into your mouth. The more I re-peruse the images of food from ElBulliFatDuckAlineaMoto and the likes, the more I... Read more
Posted on December 13, 2005 18:04
Recycled tetraware and even more leafenware
The image on the left shows (clockwise from 10 o'clock) a repurposeed surplus tetra-pak plate, a banana bark pressed bowl, a paper plate made out of 'surplus' film poster and the underside of the tetra-pak plate showing its origins as a tomato paste container for an arab-speaking country. In the c... Read more
Posted on June 3, 2005 11:53
Leafenware is everything but the squeal
A banana leaf is a plate in Bangalore. The uppermost image shows a Ghandi bazaar (Bangalore) plate maker producing and selling leafenware on the street. The waste products of his production are eaten by noshing cows. This is 'everything but the squeal' vegetarian-style. But Delhi is far far a... Read more
Posted on June 2, 2005 9:47
Chicken jail
A man languishing behind bars of a chicken jail. This image was taken near Connaught Place in Delhi and is part of an archive compiled by participants of the Nomadic Banquet workshop, Delhi March 14-26, 2005. For more blog entries and image archives, please check out the official Nomadic Banquet w... Read more
Posted on May 12, 2005 15:49
Scared of a little granola perfume
In Dutch we have a term, 'doorheenbijten' that means literally 'to bite through something'. We use this term to describe the painful process of exploring unchartered territory. Think for just a moment about what could have motivated someone to invent such an idiom. Now, think about the circumstanc... Read more
Posted on May 6, 2005 12:36
Another short supply chain
This time it's dessert! Ladoos, to be exact. These gentlemen are working in the temple compound (Hanuman Mandir, CP, Delhi) 30 metres from the dung fuel sales and manufacturing woman. Their whole production setup takes place within 10 metres, their point of sale is 30 metres away. A ladoo is ... Read more
Posted on April 26, 2005 9:07
Love those short supply chains
Here in Europe we can't stop talking about 'food miles', that is to say, how many kilometres our food travels before we actually get to touch it. There's that quite famous study of the strawberry yoghurt, It's the same for all products, including cow dung fuel. The images shown were all taken wi... Read more
Posted on 8:24
Chopping block
In Delhi, right outside our house by the Jantar Mantar monument is a nameless restaurant that serves rickshaw drivers, bus chauffeurs and around 400 various people each day - including ourselves. At the crack of dawn, which in Delhi means a civilised 9 o'clock, the kitchen staff sets to work on th... Read more
Posted on April 20, 2005 23:57
Sticking to the streets
Delhi- Clustering their services in one Connaught Place kiosk are four paan salesmen, each selling a different recipe of this perfumed and intoxicating digestive leaf from the kiosk's cardinal points. One very interesting thing we learned from two of the Nomadic Banquet participants, John ... Read more
Posted on April 16, 2005 9:33
The most beautiful teapot in the world
Finally I can sit quietly with the several thousand images from my trip to Delhi and reflect. WIth a pot of tea. A giant pot of tea. In a teapot from Bihar. Bought at a craftsmarket in Delhi. Made from dark clay, neither fired very hot, nor glazed. Looks like it was fashioned by a caveman wi... Read more
Posted on April 11, 2005 13:36
Delhi Water Bar
A water bar on a sidestreet off Janpath in Delhi. Twenty metres down the street is a pump and a well. This water bar is actually a service on offer to draw customers into a shop selling Kashmiri handicrafts and into an alley with other small shops hidden from the street. I love this tented pavilli... Read more
Posted on April 2, 2005 23:51
Eating street food at home
Losing the fear of street food in one simple lunch. The lesson is 'presentation is everything'. The Nomadic Banquet workshop participants dig in to street tucker. All of the dishes for this meal were gleaned from within a 200 meter radius of Nomadic Banquet HQ. It was the first time in a week that... Read more
Posted on March 19, 2005 10:45
Delhi recycling, in all fairness
When is recycling not really recycling? When the recycled or re-purposed item never really had a purpose in the first place. These papers, have been left on the ground (location across the street from Jantar Mantar, Delhi), as far as I can tell, for no other purpose than to be repurposed. The imag... Read more
Posted on March 15, 2005 13:07
Paan virgin spits like a girl
Everywhere in Old Delhi, on every cornerpost of every building there is a terracotta haze. For a while I thought it was just the build-up of iron oxide dirt and dust - and so much of the architecture (for example the Jantar Mantar observatory) has this colour. But after a few hours of walking arou... Read more
Posted on 6:57
A street snack called chaat
In Delhi street vendors sell chaat, that is to say snacks consisting of all manner of puffed, roasted and deepfried legumes, grains, pasta products and broken crackers. Nibbles to go, nibbles to take home, nibbles that remind one of the street. A chaat vendor will sell his beans and bobs dry to ... Read more
Posted on March 14, 2005 19:27
Delhi street food vendors benchmark good health practices and urban planning
This Delhi street vendor has set up a much needed no smoking zone right in front of his stand (located in front of the state emporia across the street from the Hanuman Mandir near CP). I believe he is selling little packets of flavoured chewing tobacco. Read more
Posted on 18:30
In the hood
I have arrived safely in Delhi and my students and I are playing a little game in which we hit the streets rather intensively and then find little havens in all different forms to come back to our senses. The streets here are LAUNCH pads, and you need a place, a peace, to come down every now and aga... Read more
Posted on March 12, 2005 15:40
Dabba Wallah - git yer tiffin while it’s HOT
You're a dutiful wife (actually I'm temporarily in-between relationships) and nothing short of your own love-imbued cuisine will suffice to nourish your office-bound husband for his lunchtime meal. Problem is you're out in the suburbs of Mumbai and he's situated downtown for the lunchtime hours. H... Read more
Posted on December 10, 2004 12:02
Hash Shakes are sooooooooo passée
Well, what were You eating one and a half years ago? Bhang Shake (serves 3) Aditya and Arjun (not their real names) dosed me with the vivid high of this sublime hash milkshake one and a half year's ago. What were we THINKING!!! (more...) Read more
Posted on November 5, 2004 20:58
