I have edited my posts and created a new links section on the left hand side of the page. Roll the cursor over the link to get a description.

 I thought this was rather amusing - what do you think?

During the Italy vs Germany match coverage by ESPN 2nd commentator Rodney Marsh came up with this gem:

"you said before that this match would be like a game of chess,well it's like a game of chess on a knife-edge."

For me, little pleasures are the small thing in life that consistently make you happy, that can be relied upon to put a smile on your face.

1. Mangos - See my first post!
2. Chocolate/hazelnut combination - especially giandujotti (1) those scrumptious little foil-coated wedges of pure bliss. They originate from Piedmont in Italy and the shape is supposed to emulate the fins on the mask of Gianduia (2), a local character.
3.The smell of fresh roses - in particular the red, red roses on a particular bush in a garden next to the short-cut that joins Queen Square and Guildford st in London. It has the most intense smell I have ever sniffed from a rose and it holds certain amount of sentimental value too as I would often sniff them after visiting the cafe in Mary Ward Centre. Which leads me to:
4. Pastel De Nata (3) - I love these little Portuguese custard tarts so much and they serve them at the (cheap, wholesome and tasty) canteen at the Mary Ward Centre. It's a combination of the crispy-flaky-slightly elastic pastry with the rich, warm eggy goodness of the custard filing. I'm considering a pilgrammage to the bakery mentioned in the article at the bottom of the link above.
5. New socks -Yes I know, but I love the feeling of pulling on soft new socks, it always lifts me!

I will post more as they come to me - please share yours in the comments box too!

Related Links:
(1) giandujotti
(2) Gianduia
(3) Pastel De Nata

As the modern city of Delhi has grown to encompass all the cities built on the site and their remains, Shahjahanabad (1) has come come to be simply called old Delhi. The link I've given at the bottom gives a brief but interesting history of the area - check out the "historical perspective" section. It also has a map which you can follow my journey on. My journey starts at the bottom of the map near where it says "churianwali gulli", which means bangle alley.

So I took the spanking new Delhi Metro (2) from Connaught Place to chawri bazaar. I headed off down Nai Sarak or new street which was new when the British built it after destroying parts of the city 1857 uprising/mutiny during and as retribution against the citizens of the old city afterwards. My guidebook tells me that the balconies overlooking the street used to be occupied by "dancing girls" trying to entice passers by off the street. They have since been moved on, and another similar area has grown up in different parts of Delhi. Unlike now, these "dancing girls" or tavaa'ifs (3) weren't simply prostitutes but were often highly trained in singing and dancing and courtly etiquette.

But it was police rather than beautiful women who were occupying the attention of the passers by on Nai Sarak. As I walked down towards Chandni Chowk a large police presence were clearing the edges of the street of parked scooters and motorbikes and I got to see the process in three stages; first a policeman was shepherding a guy on his phone back into the stream of traffic while a little further on a full scale argument had broken out between two policemen and a scooter owner and another couple of minutes further still a distraught man, who had obviously arrived too late, was proclaiming the injustice being done to him to all who would listen - which was turning out to be quite a crowd - as his shiny new motorbike was loaded on to a rickety cycle rickshaw and cycled away.
 
The shops I passed changed from bookshops selling everything from medical textbooks to mein kampf and stationary shops to shops selling bright, glittery wedding saris in a whole spectrum of gaudy reds, fringed with tinsel as well a whole range of other wonderful looking fabrics.

Nai Sarak opens onto the massive Chandni Chowk that leads up to the front gate of the red fort and was widened for the royal processions however it retains little of it's former imperial glory (see (1)). As I progressed along Chandni Chowk peering through the windows of fancy clothes shops and perfume makers the reason for the police clear up I had witnessed came into earshot. Behind a slow moving van handing out religious calendar cards came first a group of uniformed drummers followed by a liveried brass band or two, not always taking it in turns to play. Behind them was a bullock drawn chariot/temple under the canopy of which two idols (one of which was of Hanuman (4) I later overheard) sat almost obscured by their garlands and offerings. On one side prasad (5) was being handed out while a priest at the front of the vehicle was taking plates of offerings from shopkeepers.
 
A little further on I ducked down the legendary Paraanthewali Gali (alley of fried, stuffed breads)famous for it's varieties of Paraanthas - like a fried, stuffed chapati. I wasn't very hungry but I will definitely be going back to taste! Next I came across the famous Ghantewala sweetshop (6) which was opposite a large outlet of the massive snack manufacturuer Haldirams, which was bustling and crowded with families all jostling to buy sweets from the long line of class fronted cabinets or a wide range of hot snacks from red capped counter staff. Ghantewala on the other hand was empty. I bought a small selection of their barfis but wasn't massively impressed, but I look forward to returning with a larger appetite to both places! Further on still was "old and famous Jalebiwala" which sold the most fantastic hot, sticky and crunchy jalebis (7). Of course I stopped for one! They were much chunkier than any I'd had before and deliciously warm and crisp and dripping with syrup!
 
I carried on to the red fort and turned right onto Netaji Subhash Marg by which time the character of the street had completely changes. Gone were the fancy shops, instead a temple cordoned off with barbed wire at the end of Chandni Chowk lead on to a large bus stopping area. Further on, past rows of cheap bag sellers, I passed a little row of shops selling a wide range of shrieking birds from ducks to parrots. The owners of which were somewhat over keen to persuade me to check their wares, I hurried on. I passed a small grassy arena with a picture of two semi-clad men grappling outside, advertising weekly wrestling matches.
 
One block further on I wandered into the somewhat bedraggled Netaji Subhash Park which had five or six cricket matches happening consecutively in a space about half the size of a cricket pitch, with all the confusion that might bring. Stretched out in the shade of a large tree nearby a rather corpulent man was stripped down to his underwear and was being oiled up for a massage by skinny white-bearded masseur with small audience of onlookers. I didn’t stay to watch the results; instead I carried on past street vendors with piles of semi precious stones spread out on sheets like jelly beans, each eager to tell me of the various health benefits owning one of the se stones could provide. Past my first roadside dentist, replete with rusty pliers and file and on the main strip of shops of N.S. marg to my penultimate destination - the Aap Ki Pasand teashop, which as it turns out was closed! My tea tastings will have to come later!

Then, as dusk was falling, I made my way down the Chitli kabr Bazaar towards the Jama Masjid, which loomed wonderfully at the mouth of the bazaar against the coloured sky. I made my way off the main street to Karims (8) and enjoyed a restorative meal of Mutton Burra (mutton on the bone roasted with a spice paste/marinade) and tandoori rotis followed by kheer, a thick rice pudding covered with pistachio crumbs served in a shallow conical earthenware bowl. Opposite the alley on which Karims is located is an open fronted restaurant with a small crowd of men crouched in front, waiting, as is the custom, for a rich passer by to pay for a (non veg) meal. I ended my day my giving the owner enough for several of them to be fed before finding an auto rickshaw to take me through Delhi’s darkness back to my hotel.

Related Links:
(1) Shahjahanabad
(2) Delhi metro
(3) tavaa'ifs
(4) Hanuman
(5) prasad
(6) Ghantewala sweetshop
(7) jalebis
(8) Karims

Oh boy! The market is now well and truly flooded with dusheri mangos - little ones, big ones green ones, yellow ones, grreenish yellow ones etc. But I still have not been won round to these much-praised, slender mangos. They have a a fragrance and flavour that I can't pin down and for some reason don't like. Never mind there are still some safedas in the market and today I saw the first chaunsas.

Also, when I went to the fruit shop I have begun to frequent, there was another pile of mangos next to the pie of dusheries and safedas. They were small and a uniform lemon yellow in colour with a blunt shape. When I asked about them the owner smiled and took one and began massaging with his fingers till the whole mangos was soft, then he washed the end and gave it to me, telling me to rip the stalk end off and suck out the pulp. Wow! what an experience - it tasted not unlike a dusheri but the sensation of squeezing the pulp out like you would toothpaste from a tube was quite a strange one!. Then when no more of the thick, saffron coloured juice could be coaxed through the tear in the top I did as the owner of the shop was encouraging me to and squeezed the stone fully out and slurped off the remaining goodness! When I asked what it was called the owner, who'd been standing next to me watching me intently all the way through this process, beamed and told me the were dingas (pronounced ding-ga) from Lucknow. I'd heard about this kind of mango but never tried it however when it came time to buy the mangos I decided to stick to my trusty safedas! I tried to find some pictures on the net but so far nothing great has been turned up, though I did find this quite informative site and this site which shows the kind of debating that goes on over the relative merits of different varieties!

I'm hungry. Depending on how you look at it that's either the best or the worst state to be in when you start writing about food. So, straight after writing this, I'm going to rush to Saravana Bhavan (1) for a dosa and quite possibly a delicious, frothing south Indian-style filter coffee. I'm a big fan of SB, I've eaten there quite a few times in Chennai and in Delhi and I've only once left the restaurant not feeling happily sated. Of course they're cheaper and slightly better down south, - the dosas are crisper and the chtuneys the dosa comes with (white - coconut, green - corriander leaf and red - tomato) seem fresher and zingier. But it would be wrong for me to complain - I always look forward to and relish the thali, with it's wide array of different tastes, the dosas and the squidgy coconut burfi. Also there's the canteen at the Andhra Pradesh Bhavan (2) which serves authentic Andhran meals all week and fantastic biriyani on a sunday. I won't give a full description as the article I've linked does a very good job of that. I went the re last night ad ordered teh meal with crispy, spicy "chicken fry" which, along with the ever-replenished thali, was almost too much. It was also fascinating to watch the way different people ate - all the various ways of mixing the rice with everything else and varying degrees of elegance that people used to convey this mixture to their mouths. Personally I like to take a couple of spoonfulls of one thing at a time and slowly work my way through sampling all the different dishes a few times but others mix everything up on their plate or go for all of one thing at a time. I certain think that the traditional way of finishing up by mixing some yoghurt with the remaining rice is a nice soothing come-down from the spicy trip of the food. And you have to eat it with your hands. getting just the right balance of stuff to rice and then coaxing it into a ball just the right size to scoop into your mouth is a wonderful, tactile experience. True, it takes a bit of practise but as I'm so often told - it seems tastes better than from a fork or a spoon. Not that I've been ignoring north Indian food. Karims's Hotel (3) in old Delhi is a massive feature on Delhi's culinairy map. Down a tiny little alley that it has now grown to encopass, a few steps away from the stunning friday mosque built by Shah Jehan Karim's has no shortage of competition from it's neighbours. But It's reputation is such that 8/9pm onwards it's four dining halls are regularly full of greasy fingered men and families. You can read about their history in the "about us" section of their website. I will write more about the food itself in posts to come, but for now I think I'm being sucjed in the hunger vortex that I have just whipped for myself!

Related Links:
(1) Saravana Bhavan
(2) Andhra Pradesh Bhavan
(3) Karim's hotel

I saw this guy's blog on an internet forum dedicated to travel in India and quite liked what I saw, especially the post on "What backpackers say and what they actually mean". I also post on that forum and on this one too. They've both got lots of information about travel and culture in India, well reccomended if you're travelling there or just want to read about it.

I also rather enjoyed making sandcastles on a sunny Welsh beach a couple of weeks ago so I was rather interested in this site.

Of course I have lots of other interesting sites but that's enough for today!

Mangos are wonderful things. When they're good, they're a source of almost divine eating pleasure. Today they were very good, I knew they would be because I bought them from the same shop I did last night.

I have been looking forward to mango season since the last chaunsas shot up in price before finally disappearing from the market last year. I left Jaipur - and India - before the first wave of chemically ripened and somewhat unripe mangos, with their slightly sour soapy taste, had given way to the mangos of the season proper. On returning a few days ago I tried all the different mangos in the Paharganj fruit market - green langras from Banaras, massive yellow, southern mangos with a name beginning with k and a reddish blush, long slender dusheries from Lucknow and bright yellow safedas. But I somehow managed to only pick mangos ranging from mouth puckeringly sour to just alright until I got into conversation with the man who sold me these mangos.

He told the order of seasonality - safedas were at their peak this week but would finish in 10 days or so, dusheries, although most of the push-carts in the market were piled high with all different sizes of them in shades from lime to pastel green and yellow, they wouldn't have their full flavour for another week and a half and after that, and only then, came langras.

He showed me the difference between the chemically ripened, cosmetically superior safedas and the naturally ripened but much tastier ones. He showed me how to look for the little black dots to show ripeness, just as on a banana and to squeeze very very gently to judge the texture.
Yesterday I bought just over a kilo and ate them in front of the Holland/Ivory Coast match, even the one I was going to save for breakfast the next day.

Mangos for me are extremely addictive. I get lost in the sweet heady juice and the fragrant flesh and I'm driven to the point where I can't stop until I've gorged myself on all the mangos in the bag. From now it'll only get worse till the season ends, but that's ok, it's part of the reason I came back.

Mangos are one of my absolute favourite things to eat and they are the first thing to go on my new list of Little Pleasures.