Chhavi Noticed This!

Test full. C’mon. It’s test-full icecream. Just like the kulfi you get in Chowpatty which is “with the full of nuts and fruit”.

Sorry for the blur. I had my taxi wallah slow down but the vendor to whose bicycle this icebox was attached kept darting back and forth, even as he smiled happily for my camera phone!

Let me tell you while you figure exactly what that is in the photo, this dish did not look ANYTHING like the descriptors on the menu. And I will confess, after we photographed the gook and worked up the courage to taste it, it was totally divine. So I started to think up disclaimers to add to the menu: “close your eyes when I arrive;” “Disgusting looking, but delicious!” “Always remember: the proof of the pudding is in the tasting!” Which in turn reminded me of the ad campaigns Dudley Moore’s character came up with in “Crazy People“. Did I mention this was dessert? Ok, so here goes: served with salad and chocolate ice cream, this is actually flambéed bananas in a rum-cream. And the quote in the title is from Dudley’s ad about Volvos.

Fish massage (or “FiMassaa” in the patois spoken by the guys trying to tempt you into getting one) is quite a popular thing for tourists to try in South East Asia. In Cambodia, at the night market, we were accosted by a FiMassa guy. Sure enough, there was a white dude sitting on the lip of this inflatable swimming pool with tiny fish nibbling away at his feet. He merely smiled, albeit wryly, in response to my inquiring look. This poster almost made me sign up for a 5 minute session But then I guess I still ‘felt confused matter of me’ even after dinner so I didn’t.

Think I could have gotten the daily tour (good use of space, no?) for less if I’d gotten Dr. Fish at my heels?
Click the image for a larger, clearer picture.

So, you know the potato crisps you get at the old-time movie theatres? Not the branded ones shilled by film stars – the ones that look like hey, they could have been fried and packaged in a cottage industry around the corner? Well, turns out that they kinda are! This was the glimpse I got into a wafer-ki-dukaan in Kotachiwadi one afternoon. Behind the posh, clean counter with the sealed bags of all kinds of fried farsaan was this massive man with an even more massive set of utensils. Look at the size of that ‘pateela’ and the fryer he’s using to literally paddle the crinkle-cut potato wafers in the scalding oil! Don’t miss the salli (as in salli-boti) and the already fried chips in the forefront.
P.S. Kotachiwadi was beautiful; really a small glimpse of Mumbai’s colonial past with the Portuguese architecture and the brightly painted cottages

Once in a while, I see something that takes me back to my childhood with such an intensity that I have to stop and take a breath. Remember these Phantom cigs? I’d lick their pink tips and pretend to smoke them (back when I thought smoking was ‘cool’.) I seem to remember competing with my friend Rima to see who could make the end most pointy before it broke.
Maybe these have always been around and I haven’t been paying too much attention. Some candies I adored as a kid have disappeared, but others, like Parle’s Melody Chocolate Toff, have been resurrected, with shiny new 21st-century packaging. Harnik, here’s blowing phantom smoke rings at ya!

In the streets of Mumbai, not only do Hindus and Muslims shiver in the same cold, but the cats and dogs seem to have come to some understanding as well. See, it’s all just dirty politics that serve to divide us. This was taken one cool evening near Bombay University as we traipsed around Kala Ghoda, drank ganna juice, gazed at Flora (you know … of Flora Fountain fame), marvelled at how green and velvety the grass looked under the fountain, and then stumbled upon this rag tag group sleeping near the homeless.

Uh, so this post’s title ran away from me …but never mind. What you see in close up is a Japani Samosa. We read about this in the paper – this store run by a Sikh has been selling Japanese samosas for the last 60 years, so 4 days before I packed up my life in Delhi, we went scouring the streets of Chandni Chowk and Chawdi Bazaar for all the old-world treats. (we also bought jewelry on Dariba Kalan, the silversmith street, but the food really was the biggest draw). Here, across Moti Cinema, is Manohar’s Japani Samosa stall. The samosa is shaped like an accordion fan (think deep fried, stuffed, fanned phyllo.) The chhole, though, were to die for. (And after two helpings each, we were close.)

Sigh. I don’t even feel like writing anything. There’s nothing to say. The mango season is ending. These shops are gone! Now, instead of heaps of orange, even red beauties twinkling in store fronts, you’re lucky to see a single basket heaped with green langdas at the fruit vendor’s.
The store fronts are super smart though: they’re let to the vendors seasonally. This one is a paper mart for the rest of the year, I guess.
This was the second year that South Asian alphonsos were available in the U.S. I anticipated hearing more vocal rejoicing, given how gross that fibrous tasteless mess that passes for a mango in the US is.   Lucky me to be home in desh!

We went to Meerut to report for a story, and got taken for chai and then on the way, we stopped to see the banana godown (there are about 5 in Meerut, we were told.) They come in trucks from Maharashtra, still unripe, to ripen in storage. After 2 days, they are then sent out to the rest of Meerut where they’re ALL consumed! (Do we really eat that many bananas?) The photos from the godown are just uniformly green – stacks and stacks of bananas on ice – but these two characters across the alley seemed oblivious.

So there are people out there who claim to be Gujarati and never heard of dabeli – also given the nomenclature of “fun in a bun” by my foodie friend Sheetal. Dabeli is the past participle of ‘press’ – so, in a word: pressed!
Forget vada-pav, that’s done with. Dabeli is a potato thing with raw onions (crunchy), peanuts and pomegranate kernels. And right before serving it, the vendor will sprinkle sev on it… Hot, spicy, sweet, crunchy, chewy — good stuff! At a street corner near you, but only in the evenings. And the best one ever is around the corner from my house! Yay