Ghastly Porridge and Other Eatables

Say what you like about Indian food -- it's delicious, it's really spicy, it makes me have to go to the bathroom -- one thing that it certainly lacks is inter-meal variety. At least in South India, I eat the same dosas, chutney, and samba for breakfast as for lunch and sometimes even dinner if I'm not careful. I'm ashamed to admit it, but anywhere I am that's the least bit touristy, I jump on the "continental" breakfast items like Mark Foley on a congressional page.

One solution I've found, for breakfast, at least, is to eat what Indians call "sweets". I go to a bakery and buy something like this butter bun with crystallized shredded coconut, and eat it with a coffee...



My teeth don't really appreciate it, but whatever. They don't really appreciate the amount of soft drinks I have to drink as well, because I have to have packaged beverages because I can't drink the water. Once, i tried a Slice...



But Slice, dammit, doesn't taste like Slice here. It's not carbonated. And it's mango-flavored. Arguably, it's better than American Slice, but about my personal comforts, people?

Here's a pretty awesome street snack that I've been eating. Vadas are like little latkes, only in ball-form. They're potato-onion-spice nuggets, and they're delicious.





And then, when I was living in a computer skills training center outside of Madurai a few weeks ago, my neighbor and hostess Dr. Daizy showed me how to make puri, which along with naan, roti, baroda, chapatty, and dosai, is one of the starch staples of many Indian meals.

The dough is just wheat flour with some oil and salt, rolled into a ball, then flattened with a pin. Then you submerge it in boiling sunflower oil...



And 8 seconds later... BAM!



This week, I've been in Nagapattinam, a fishing region south of Chennai that got particularly badly hit by the tsunami. I was working with an NGO called ROSE, and despite the wrecked communities, they still get incredible fresh SEAFOOD:



The place we went to, technically a "hotel," although better described as a sort of canteen, was the real deal. A typical village fish-shack. The walls and roofs were thatched. Here's Vana and Kartick, one of the ROSE staff, gettin' they eat on...



Then they serve you, on the traditional banana leaf, a fish curry with rice, but also several pieces of masala fish fry. The masala (which just means "mix"... You might say that I, with all my diverse interests and qualities, am a masala. But you might not, I don't blame you.) that they used was made of chili powder, coriander, and garlic, and it tasted surprisingly like Baltimore's own signature allspice, Old Bay. I ate at this "hotel" at least 6 times while in Nagapattinam.


And finally, this blog entry's digestif. In 1947, when Ghandi visited Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last viceroy of British India, he brought his own food with him. All he ate, being on a strict, purifyinh, Hindu-mystic diet, was goat curds. He offered it to Mountbatten, who tasted a spoonful and declared it "ghastly porridge."

Indians today still mix curd with their rice as a sort of stomach-settling after-dinner snack. I don't really like it, but I try it every now and again ("When in India..."). It tastes like unsweetened, extremely sour yogurt. Mmmm...