Food and other interesting things

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.