The Well-Fed Bong

I cycled a hundred kilometres for Mumbai's most famous vada pao. Thats a bit of an exaggeration, I admit. Not the cycling, the fame of the vada pao. I discovered two crucial things on reaching Panvel - one, the McDonalds is not actually in Panvel (its nearly 4km before Panvel) and two, that watermelons are more common than vada pao there. No one in Panvel seemed to think that there was anything very famous about vada paos in Panvel; finally an auto-driver doubtfully pointed me to Wagesh. Wagesh turned out to be Wagesh Pao Bhaji Center,  a short diversion into the market near the bus stand. For someone with a famous vada pao, it was surprising that the only thing associated with pao on the signboard was bhaji, but I went in anyway. Its a tiny joint that's been around for forty years, serving various fried combinations of besan, batata   and bread to what seemed a surprisingly large customer base. The samosa was great and the misal outstanding. Their samosa is the flat, th...

Most of Bengal's famous sweets come from Kolkata, but some particular ones have the names of other places attached to them.. Many of these places remain off the map for all but a small number of people who lived or went through those places. Shaktigarh, whose reputation rests on the langcha - is one such place. The common langcha , an elongated brown sausage of a sweet that adorns the counters of every mishti-shop in sight, is usually a distant cousin to the rossogolla , the chamcham , the sandesh , the mishti doi - more a change of palate than anything worth pursuing on its own. All that changes, though, when you come to the Shaktigarhi variant. Bigger, bolder, a much darker brown and dangerously addictive - this is no pale second-rung sweet. Its hard to believe that there can be anything uplifting about filling a longish paneer sausage with khoa and frying it in ghee, but the best of Shaktigarh is simply outstanding. The magic is in the quality of the ingredients, the mix a...

So I finally had it. Fugu Sashimi, the deadliest food known to mankind. Fugu, the Japanese name for the much-discussed, much-poisonous puffer fish, actually does puff up - it can in fact become a nearly spherical ball of a fish by filling itself with air or water. Its quite a dramatic looker, and quite the aquarium pet. Unlike the average cobra, though, the deadly toxin found in its organs is not produced by the fish itself but by bacteria living inside it - apparently aquarium puffer-fish are not poisonous and can be chomped down without expense accounts (eat the funny pompous fish as much as you like, just don't fool around with the little guys). The toxin itself is really really toxic, and without antidote; apparently you turn into this zombie thing and die within hours. That doesn't prevent the Japanese from paying a lot to eat them, in a whole ceremony involving sharp knives, licensed chefs and voodo (ok maybe not voodoo). In all my trips to Japan, I didn't quite...

Every time I've stayed in Goa I've always been surprised that the breafast buffet spread ignores goan altogether. There's your aloo-paratha, your dosa-idli, your frenchtoast-pancake, even exotica like swiss muesli or chinese porridge but anything is local a rarity. Goans, it would seem, don't wake for breakfast. The Lemontree, as expected, offered us a bland, location-free breakfast but I wasn't giving up so easily. Apparently, hidden away in the menu are Goan dishes that the chef is willing to make for you, if only you can find it, find him, and be charming enough. I'm not sure why they make it so difficult, but my efforts resulted in a Pao with Patal Bhai, which the chef assured me is an authentic breakfast option for the Konkanis of Goa. It turned out to be a spicy aloo peas curry with coconut milk, tamarind and jaggery, eaten with buttered pao. Surrounded by Portugese names, crisp white churches and piles of vindaloo, one forgets that Goa is home to subs...

Though Turkish coffee is famous, we actually spent a lot of time in Turkey having chai. They call it cay which looks a bit like the numbers you find painted on trucks in India, but its chai, black, very strong and very sweet, served always in these colourful plates and glass tumblers. The Turks have a sweet tooth. Actually, that's an understatement - they have sweet tusks, mammoth gigantic ones at that . Sweet in Turkey is really sweet, more than chemistry can possibly allow. Smelling one of those sweets has been known to cause diabetes. Brightly coloured and packaged Baklava shops dripped their honeyed sweetness everywhere, but one of the most surprising desserts in Turkey was a sweet chicken pudding. Nedim convinced me that such a thing did indeed exist, and was in fact edible. And popular, unlike those pufferfish-applefungus kind of creations that only two people in the world had ever salivated over. Yes, it is a dessert and an actual chicken is involved, and it has been...

Ok I was in Turkey months ago. I've just been too lazy till just now about posting on its food. Turkish food has plenty in common with Indian food. The reason isn't hard to find; a succession of Turks have ruled various parts of India stretching back over a thousand years. We had Turkish painters and poets, some of them must have been cooks too. I'm not really going to present a study of Turkish food in a blog post (that is beyond even my fantastic reserves of overconfidence). My idea here is to describe some of my most notable food experiences in Turkey, and so I should start at the start. The first thing I had after landing up in Istanbul was a dolma (or stuffed grape leaf) from a small store that looked like a cross between a New York Deli and an Indian corner grocery. Apparently, cold dolmas are vegetarian, hot ones have meat - this one was cold. This was followed in short succession by " Duniya Mehshur"   Kuru Fasuliye - World Famous Butter Bean Stew. The ...