Kamlas India

'Fess up. Anytime you plan a trip to India the first thought that you get is all that home-cooked food you can get to eat. And invariably the first comment you will get from other desis is, "Aacha khana milega. You lucky guy..."

Never mind if you are a student, a home-maker, a programmer or an executive...food dominates your thoughts when you are visiting India. And have you noticed how many of us start nit-picking the minute we board the aircraft and comment on our plate of Indian food? To be fair, the quality of Indian food has improved vastly and is palatable, but no that is not sufficient for us...we still crave for the best.

So, the minute you hit your hometown your mom would have prepared all your favorite breakfast, lunch and dinner food items. This is in stark contrast to your hurried breakfast, lunch and dinner of cereal, sandwiches, soups and TV dinners. Yes, you might cook every other day, but it is not the same as food cooked in India. The food does not same the same when you pull it out of the freezer, nuke it and then eat it. There is something missing there, but over time you get used to it, and live a compromised existence.

Besides home-cooked food, you probably are eager to hit your circuit of "food addas" for your favorite dishes.

Now, that long preamble sets the stage to describe my tryst with food when I was in India for two weeks. So, while in Bombay I finally made it to the famous Trishna Seafood restaurant tucked away right behind Rythm House in Kala Ghoda. The food is very good and one of the reasons for this is that the dishes are totally smothered in butter, a forbidden food item for many of us. Of course, kulfi was a must. There were no questions asked when we were prompted for desserts. We made sure we had room for that delectable and sinfully rich kulfi.

I was also lucky this time to be able to visit the Ripon Club, a Parsi club, where I got to taste a typical Parsi chicken dish (the names escapes my mind at the moment), and a scrambled egg dish that consisted of haldi and tons of kothmir. This club is also located in Kala Ghoda and is about 135 years old. Of course kulfi reared its head again as the dessert of choice. Need I say more? We were all yea sayers, and guiltily spooned the rich concoction into our mouths. We were each stealing furtive glances to see if the other person was demolishing the dessert with the same speed. What do you think?

While in South Bombay I made a foray into Parsi Diary Farm, a 100-year old institution that still makes sweet-meats (remember that word?). But, the difference is that most of the mithai makers are from Rajasthan. Besides mithai, they also sell Kulfi (I decided to pass on it) yogurt, flavored milk and regular milk. I picked up some mithai like lagan nu laddoo and some gooey looking jalebis and nibbled on them throughout the day. The trusty bottle of that hand sanitizer proved to be useful to clean my hands and greedily reach out for another small bite of jalebi.

While in Bombay, I make it a point to have a Gujarati thali. Nothing comes close to a Gujarati thali with its endless katorees (cups) of sabzi, dhal and other preparations. If you can wrangle a home-cooked meal from a friend that is the best thing, or else there is the Thakker Club. No, it is not a club, but an old, established eating joint located behind Marine Lines in South Bombay. The food in this place is heavenly, and people swarm to your table eager to fill your constantly depleting plate of food. Rivers of ghee flow from the chapattis, and the mithai is out of the world. The shrikhand and other sweetmeat simply melt in your mouth.

I was lucky to also have some Guajarati khana at a friend’s place while I was in Bombay. I love the whole ritual of eating out of a Guajarati thali, and of course the ghee is constantly dripping off their famously thin rotis. (In the US one of the best places that serves a good Guajarati thali is “Jai Bharat” in Artesia, Los Angeles. They make the best rotla sag, and thepla, and other Gujarati dishes. They also maintain a pretty clean kitchen.)

I have an incredibly sweet tooth and have been known to travel long distances for the right mithai. Bombay, I discovered, does not have any good mithai shops. Yes, I know I got mithai from Parsi Diary, but that was out of nostalgia than for the quality of the mithai. It gave me an opportunity to talk to the interesting folks at the shop. Yes, there is also the Tiwari mithaiwallah in Juhu and somewhere in South Bombay too, but the sweets were disappointing. So, I was really looking forward to my one-day trip to New Delhi where I had carved out a couple of hours to go to Bengali Sweets and Nathu Sweets near Barakhamba Road. Both these places held fond memories for me of having spent many summer and winter evenings eating a plate of gajjar halwa or ras malai, and then packing a bunch of gulab jamuns for my friends who were unable to make this long trek from South Delhi.

As we were driving down Barakhamba Road and made our way towards the two sweet shops I had visions of being torn between which mithai I need to choose and take with me. I made a quick sortie into Bengali sweets, and then changed my mind and darted across to Nathus. Sure, I was torn between all the different mithai and had a hard time choosing. The one thing that I find common in most mithai shops is the changing nature of the mithai itself. Now, many of these sweets resemble French pastry complete with that cherry on top. And some resemble a white version of Godiva chocolates since they are shaped and molded like those bite-sized chocolates. All this is very confusing for me, when all I want is some good old mithai that is full of flavor. , I am never sure how these new-fangled sweets will taste. I stuck to buying kalakandh, raj bog, something called a nut halwa, and ghujiya. My eyes popped out when I noticed the ghujiya, which is a sweet associated with Holi, and I quickly ordered some gujiyas.

So, armed with my bundle of sweets, or should I say my bundle of joy, I happily stepped out of the shop into the car. Well, folks the sweets were a bit disappointing. The ghujiya did not measure up to my taste buds...it was missing something, and that was the burst of flavors of khoya when you bit into the ghujiya. Instead, the filling was some indescribable thing…that is no words exists in my vocabulary to describe the taste. The kalakndh was also a disappointment. Nobody seems to be using the real things when making mithai. There is maida and other items included in the preparation that robs the sweet of its essence.

So, my quest for good mithai provided to be not that successful in either Bombay or New Delhi. And, my last hope was Bangalore, which is a foodies paradise. People of this city have always been food lovers and I remember as a child going to various restaurants in Bangalore. You see going out to eat in Madras was not the done thing when I was growing up. Most of the cafes and coffee-houses catered to male clients, and I am still not sure why. But, we were allowed to pack our food and bring it home. And, god forbid if I stepped into a military hotel in Madras for a bite of their food, all hell would break loose. The only exception was the Nair chai kadai, where a gang of us would descend to have that famous meter coffee or tea. The other exception to eating out was the old Woody's and the new Woody’s. The old Woody’s was a drive-in place where the waiter came and fixed a steel-tray to the car window, and your ordered your idlis and dosas and had piping hot filter coffee.

I digressed. Back to Bangalore, which has eating joints everywhere you look. There is the traditional South Indian fare, and there is the more exotic Chinese, Japanese, Korean and now Italian food. In-between these categories is that all encompassing category of multi-cuisine food. Of course while I am in Bangalore my sorties to restaurants diminishes quite dramatically since I get to eat home-cooked food of idlis, dosas, rotis, dal and sabzi, and kheer, my all-time favorite dessert. However that does not preclude me from doing some window-shopping, and buying some mithai.

Interestingly some of the better mithai is available in Bangalore. Even a regular food store like Sunday to Monday (I am not sure of the exact name) has a mithai counter and they sell some really nice mithai. And, of course there is Krishna Sweets with its piping hot Mysore pak and Sri Mithai with its kalakandh and sandesh, and KC Das with its chenna preparations. You can get some really nice kheer kadom and mishti dhoi at KC Das that has outlets in almost all the major areas in Bangalore.

I also lucked out while on a hurried trip to Malleswaram to stumble upon an old sweet and savory store run by a bright-eyed, alert and clean-shaven Tamilian, who was so happy to hear me prattling away in Tamil. Malleswaram is what is described by many as old Bangalore complete with narrow roads, small and crowded shops and no parking spots. This old, sparsely-stocked store had a wonderful name "Love Luck," and is located on Sampangi Street. The store had a single 60 watt bulb illuminating the room, and neatly stacked on the counter were plastic bags filled with murukku, cheddai, adarsams, appalams, and nylon mixture. And it was here that I got my cache of adarsams, chikkis, and other South Indian sweet meats. Along with that I also got some murukkus, adai, and mixture.

Now that I am away from India, I am rationing my cache of mithais, mixture and murukkus, but unfortunately it is a loosing proposition. Better sense does not seem to prevail, and often we find ourselves gorging on these "bakshanams" or tiffin items, and the rate at which the food is diminshing I suspect we will be out of our cache by this weekend. Blame it on the snow and the cold that make us prisoners in our own home and we are reduced to consuming cups, and cups of adrak chai (not that weak concoction that Starbucks sells as chai) and of course you need something to chew when you sip your Brooke Bond tea. As I notice the diminishing food supply, my mind is buys plotting on when I can make another trip to India to stock up on food, and eat some good home-cooked meals.