GSE India 2010: Feasting our way through India

India is full of surprises - not the least of which is its seemingly endless array of cuisine and regional dishes. It didn’t take us long to learn that most of the Indian cuisine we are familiar with in Canada represents only a tiny fraction of the culinary delights available here and comes mainly from the Punjab region. The sheer variety of food and their difficult-to-pronounce (and even harder to spell) names makes them hard to do justice to in writing. Suffice to say that we are not going hungry – in fact, on the contrary, we are still trying to figure out how best to politely refuse 2nd, 3rd and 4th helpings of food at each meal. It is a great cause for concern if we are ever seen at any event or gathering without a plateful of food – unfortunately the explanations “I’m full” or “I just ate” don’t go over as excuses … the best we can do is to slooowwwly savor each bite of food in order to avoid attracting attention. As long as our plates are full, then everyone is happy. Our hosts make sure that we have sampled every dish available until buttons and belts need to be loosened for the rest of the evening. But you won’t hear any of us complaining as there are so many tastes to discover, each one more interesting than the last.
Given Maharashtra’s proximity to Gujarat and Pune’s location approximately midway from the North and South of the country, we are seeing a mix of dishes from the different regions (or as one host put it, “the best of India”). A typical Gujarati meal is “thali” (pictured below) with a huge metal plate and small bowls filled with savory dhals, sauces and stews for dipping chapattis and rotis, chutneys and pickled hot peppers – all refilled before you have time to finish the last bite of your first helping. And the best part of it all is that we get to eat everything with our hands!
Mixed in with all the spicy and savory dishes are the sweets served alongside. And somehow the word “sweet” does not adequately describe the taste. Noodles that melt in your mouth swimming in a liquid of sugar, milk and coconut, balls of fried dough dripping in sticky sauces …. let’s put it this way – I’ve gone from taking coffee with less than a teaspoon of sugar back home, to taste buds that now crave a minimum of three heaping tablespoons of sugar every morning. So if there is any truth to the saying “you are what you eat” then you won’t find 4 sweeter Canadians!

Yogourt made from buffalo milk in earthen pots