Eternal India Encyclopedia

A GREAT DESTINATION

coconut they are pleasantly light to eat and easy to digest. Rice and vegetable dishes often form the main course of the meals. Soft idlis and crisp dosas are the contributions of South India to Indian cuisine. They are made from lentil (dhal) rice, the idlis being steamed, and the dosas fried in a frying pan. They are generally eaten at breakfast or as snacks between meals. Dosas with a potato-onion filling are called masala dosas. South Indian vegetarian food is served on a thali - a stainless steel plate with a number of small bowls on it. The rice is heaped in the middle of the plate, sambar and rasam, the vegetable dishes, curd and buttermilk are in the small bowls. (Sambar is a dhal (lentil) coeked with vegetables). Rasam is clear lentil soup. Rasam is the forbear of the now famous mulligatawny soup, the name itself is a corruption of the Tamil milagu tannir or pepper water. Right on top of the rice is placed a papadum, crisp, deep - fried wafers which are an essential part of every South Indian meal. Rice is a versatile cereal which can be transformed, besides idlis and dosas, into many other delicacies - appam (a soft -centred crisp rice and coconut pancake), murukku (rice and lentil deep - fried in a coiled shape), etc. And then there is Lime rice which is prepared on festive occasions. Kerala's long coastline and backwaters make it -a sea food paradise. Mackarel, sardines, pomfret, lobster, mussels, prawns and crabs form the basis of a variety of dishes. Bengali sweets which constitute the aristocracy of sweetmeats, are popular all over India. They are made of milk and cottage cheese and are easy to handle unlike North Indian Mughlai sweets which are generally sticky and heavy. The Bengali rasagullas are cream cheese balls in a thick, rich sugar syrup. Gulab jamuns are made of flour, milk, cream and ground almonds and served soaked in sugar syrup flavoured with rose - water. Rasmalai and Sandesh are milk dishes which are favourites of Bengalis as well as others. Bengali cuisine, unlike the other regional cuisines, does not include yoghurt. But to compensate there is misti doi , literally meaning sweet yoghurt. Among Mughlai North Indian sweets the popular ones are jelabis which are made of flour and yoghurt, deep fried in knot (pretzel) shapes, immersed in syrup flavoured with rose - water. Another North Indian speciality which is popular all over India is halwa, a translucent sweet made from wheat and coloured green or various shades of red. Payasam is the traditional sweet of the south - milk slowly simmered with cereals and sugar, topped with raisins and sliced cashewnuts. In Maharashtra Shrikhand is famous. Made of yoghurt from which all the liquid has been drained, it is sweetened and flavoured with saffron and cardamom and sprinkled with chopped nuts. No Indian meal is complete until it is rounded off by paan, either sadha (plain) or mitha (sweet). Folded in an edible betel leaf, the concoction contains parings of the areca (betel) nut and various spices which add up to a digestive when chewed. There are almost as many types of paan as there are states. Banarasi paan is particularly sought after. In the south the paan is called bida. QUOTES Indian desserts or "sweets" are very sweet. But nobody makes ice- cream like the Indians. Major brands like Vadilal and Gaylord do a wide, mouth - watering range of flavours -quite as good as Baskin -Robbins in the West. Traditional desserts like

kulfi (like ice-cream), jelabis (small cart-wheel shaped pancakes, dripping with syrup ) and milk/curd-based sweetmeats like rasagulla and sandesh are all widely available, though best sampled in Calcutta. Indian sweets have been brought to a high art form, often sold in elegant little boxes, with each item individually covered in wafer- thin silver paper. You can eat the silver - but eating the sweet itself is not always pleasant. Many have a high content of cardamom., and this spice is very much an acquired taste. - Frank Kusy, "India". Mulligatawny : The name of this well-known soup is simply a corruption of the Tamil milagu - tannir, " pepper -water", showing the correctness of the popular belief which ascribes the origin of this excellent article to Madras....

1784

" In vain our hard fate we repine;

In vain on our fortune we rail; on

Mullaghee - tawny we dine; or

Congee, in Bangalore Jail".

Song by a gentleman of the navy (one of Hyder's prisoners).

- From Hobson - Jobson

The most popular beverage by far in India is "chai" - it's supposed to be tea, but you won't recognise it as such. Brewed up on every street corner, price just 50 paise, it usually appears as a glass of filmy, dark brown liquid strong enough to stand a spoon up in. Chai is commonly made from boiled buffalo milk, and is loaded with sugar. If you haven't a sweet tooth, one of the first Indian phrases you'll learn will be: "Ek Chai - neh chini" (one tea, no sugar), though the first chai - wallah 1 tried this on replied, astonishingly, "Oh, you are diabetic?" - Frank Kusy, "India" In the south the food is more strictly vegetarian, more rice is eaten and the curries tend to be hotter, sometimes very hot. Another peculiarity of southern vegetarian food is that you do not need eating utensils; it is always eaten with fingers (of the right hand only). Scooping of food that way takes a little practice but you soon become quite adept at it. It is said that eating this way allows you to get the 'feel' of the food, as important to South Indian cuisine as the aroma or arrangement are for other cooking styles. Dishes tend to be served all at once instead of a long string of courses. From a huge menu, you select such goodies as something cooked in the tandoor oven, some meat, fish and vegetable dishes, a variety of rice and breads, a dhal (pulse) and a curd to cool down the spices. When it all arrives, quite the nicest way of eating is with the fingers, pulling off pieces of freshly baked bread and wrapping them around a piece of meat or mixing the spicy juices with rice. As breads are best hot, you can order more as you go. It is important only to eat with the right hand. There is also somewhere to wash and many restaurants bring bowls of hot water to the table afterwards. - Louise Nicholson, "India in Luxury" - "India : A travel survial kit."