Tag Archives: india

Incredible India All Over Again – Old and New Favorites

26 May

This is really incredible… I traveled to India once again.  Hey, a palm reader actually told me when we were there about 6 months ago that I would return to India many, many, many times in the future.  One down, God knows how many more to go…

This time I went to India with my yoga center group to attend Kumba Mela 2010 in Haridwar – a spiritual celebration held every 12 years where spiritual masters come down from the Himalayas and all over the world to bathe in the River Ganges at specific very auspicious days.  I feel extremely blessed to have been able to be present for such a special spiritual event.

 In the 3 weeks we were traveling through India we visited a few places we’ve been before – Delhi, Haridwar, Rishikesh, Varanasi… but I also visited a few new places such as Mumbai, Ujjain, Maheshwar, Omkareshwar and Indore.  In doing this, I certainly got the chance to savor some of my favorite Indian delicacies and also discovered some new treasures.

Among the tried and true…

American Airlines does not “disappoint” with their Indian Vegetarian Meals in Coach…  White Rice, paneer in a spicy sauce and stewed chickpeas.  I always eat mainly the rice and paneer, but I have sworn I will never travel to India on Coach.  Business-class is definitely in my future and hopefully better food and better movie choices.

    

Breakfasts are my favorites…  I got to try again chole, without the bhature, and dosas.  My favorite dosa filling is the curry potato filling.  They usually give me the sambar and the chutneys, but I eat the dosa and filling alone like that.

 

 

I also got to drink again my favorite tea, chai masala.  I drank it out of regular cups, and in Varanasi, where I learned to enjoy this delicious tea, I drank it out of the traditional clay disposable cup.  And watching the Varanasi sunrise, this was a real treat.

   

Among the new favorites…

In Maheshwar we got to taste a delicious yet very spicy breakfast – Parathas and Cutlets.  Parathas are a sort of flatbread that can be plain or filled with various vegetables.  The first ones were filled with potatoes and scallions.  Here you can see how parathas are made so flat yet filled with so much deliciousness.  Cutlets are a potato/vegetable fritter…  I explained it to locals as vegetable “alcapurria”.  These cutlets were extremely spicy for my taste, but they were very delicious still.  Don’t they look appetizing and where the heck was the plain yogurt??

     

 Last time I visited India I had a watermelon juice every morning.  Well, this time around the popular flavor was Sweet Lime.  A taste smilar to mixing lemon and orange juice, it was available everywhere and very refreshing.  Maybe this fruit was in season in April…

 

In Haridwar we got to try a few new things…  I learned about uttapam, vegetables cordon blue and pohe.  Uttapam is a rice flour pancake with vegetables.  Definitely a savory pancake, but really, really good. 

      

As you can tell, Indians like their fried foods; very much like us Latins, so probably that’s why I was drawn to these vegetable cordon blues – a vegetable fritter with a creamy, cheesy interior.  

Pohe is a flattened rice dish, often served for breakfast.  Mine looked more like polenta or cooked corn flour than rice, but let’s trust the locals that told me I was eating pohe.  My version had petit pois and I had it with some spicy curried potatoes.  Very spicy indeed.  As you can see, I have to supplement my Indian breakfast with some Western corn flakes and banana…  It was ripe even though it looks green.  Believe me…

 

I am super excited of my recent trip to India… we definitely found much more variety of delicious foods than during my first trip 5 years ago.  Stick around so you can learn more about the delicious and interesting food things I encountered.

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Incredible India… Lassi

19 Nov

I have mentioned lassis to you before… I shared with you my version of a mango lassi earlier.  But after having lassis in India during my past trip there, I realized my version of lassi is not that authentic.

Lassi is a yogurt-based drink very typical to India.  It is made out of plain yogurt churned with some fruit, typically mango, but I learned that it can be done with other fruits too.  But the fruit is minimal, because all the lassis I had during this trip are white and do not take on the color of the fruit being mixed in.

Lassis are typically drunk as an appetizer before a meal…   I drank them also during the meal to help cool of my taste buds of all the spicy Indian food.  I even had it as an afternoon snack… when everyone at the hotel bar was ordering drinks after taking in the sights of the Taj Mahal, I ordered myself a lassi.  The server laughed but found it endearing and as a sign of us embracing of Indian culture.  He also thought I was Indian…

I learned there are 2 versions of lassi – salted or sweet.  I only knew the sweet versions, which was preferred by everyone I asked.  I got to try the salted version during our 1st breakfast in Agra.  Nothing special, just imagine a liquid yogurt sprinkled with salt.  It only helped me to cool down the spiciness of the dosas and chutneys I had that morning… other than that, I will continue ordering sweet lassi.

 

Also, lassis are made with a churner, like the one you see below, instead of a blender, like I do…  I guess that was why the lassis would take a little while every time I ordered them.

So, for a more authentic version of lassi… you can still follow my recipe, just add a tiny bit of fruit, to maintain the white color of the yogurt.  and you can add some pistachios on top… to resemble the one I had at the ITC Agra Hotel… super chic indeed.

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Incredible India… Fine-Dining

16 Nov

Via this blog, you’re getting to know me… and a little my friend Annie Mariel too.   And from our adventures in Paris this past September, you may already know we like to eat in nice restaurants, especially when we travel.

Visiting Delhi gave us the chance to eat at two fine restaurants – Fire at The Park Hotel and Zest at the DLF Emporio Mall.  Here is a recollection of what we ate…

FIRE @ The Park Hotel – New Delhi

This restaurant was recommended by our hotel concierge.  We asked him that if we were Bollywood stars staying in Delhi, where would we like to eat?  Among the recommendations given was FIRE, although what he actually said was AGNI, the Sanskrit word for fire.  But AGNI is the club, not the restaurant at The Park.

AM @ FIRE   Made @ FIRE

The décor of FIRE is super modern and chic.  A panel of “flames” highlights one side of the dining room, changing in color from deep magenta to deep orange to fire red.  Super nice indeed.

We loved that in the menu all vegetarian dishes are clearly marked with a green square next to the name.  No need to creatively ask how a dish is made to make sure it is truly vegetarian.  Now, finding out if a dish is spicy to our tolerance level of spiciness that’s another thing altogether. We also liked the menu had an Organic dishes section. 

This is what we ordered… a tandoori broccoli starter to share, stewed morel mushrooms for me, some organic black lentils for Annie Mariel, and a sweet couscous and plain naan to accompany it all.

Just after we ordered, in true fine dining fashion, we received an amouse bouche – don’t ask me in detail what it was, but what I know is that in had some lentils and yogurt and it was so spicy I was not able to eat more than two bites from it.  When the server asked me if I had not liked it and I replied that it was delicious but just too spicy for me, the chef sent over some mini roti with pineapple chutney that was just divine.  The perfect cooling effect my palate needed at the time.

FIre - Amouse     Roti w Pineapple chutney

The broccoli came with picled onions and it was delicious… to me it could have been a great side dish, more than a starter.  But I enjoyed it all the same.

  Menu Fire 1      Broccoli Starter

Then the entrees arrived.   The server just serves a bit of everything on the plate for you to enjoy.  They don’t look particularly great on the plate, but they tasted delicious.  At least what I could stomach.  The morels were great, but spicy and I didn’t even dare try the lentils when Annie Mariel mentioned that they were even too spicy for her taste and she can handle heat way more than I can.  We complimented the server for her sweet couscous recommendation and the plain naan because without them, it would have been harder to eat all that spicy food.

FIRE MENU   Menu Fire 2

FIRE my food

Menu Fire 4   Menu Fire 3

But what also made the evening a success was the company… yes, I arrived at the restaurant with just Annie Mariel, but we left the restaurant with 4 new friends – Fabio from Italy, Sergio from Barcelona, my table neighbor from Bangalore and Steve from Singapore, who were all in Delhi on business.   Annie Mariel and I have a real talent to be able to make friends with total strangers when we travel and this trip to India was certainly not the exception.

I bring this up because our food was not the only dishes we tried that evening… my friend from Bangalore, being also a vegetarian, gave us a taste of his dish.  He was so intrigued when he saw me taking pictures of everything on the table, even the menu that we struck a conversation.  I believe he had the Gobhi Hara Masala, but I am not really sure.  It was also super spicy… so spicy indeed I ended up ordering a sweet lassi to help me cool off my tongue.

Food from india guy  P1090606

We didn’t order desserts because our friends Fabio and Sergio shared theirs with us… a true international night. 

Fire Friends

ZEST @ DLF Emporio Mall – New Delhi

India is a very poor country overall… but there are people in India with money; a true juxtaposition of the haves and have not’s.  That is evident when you visit this DLF Emporio mall in the outskirts of Delhi – Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Marc Jacobs, Dior, Giorgio Armani, Cartier, Tiffany, and every other designer store you might imagine.  And amidst all these designer stores you will also find delicious fine dining.

I learned about ZEST in a magazine we had at the hotel.  I was intrigued because it mentioned the restaurant had 6 kitchens – Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Thai and Continental.  I figured if we were not in the mood to eat Indian again there would be plenty of options there.

ZEST

We arrived at ZEST in the early afternoon after a full morning of visiting temples and shopping.  We wanted to just nibble a few things so our appetite would not be spoiled for dinner.  This is what we ordered:

Menu ZEST

Vegetable Spring Rolls – For us, the best thing we ordered. Can’t fight with anything fried…

ZEST - Spring Rolls

Grilled Paneer cheese seasoned with Carom – very spicy, but really nice.  I liked the taste the grill gave the soft cheese.  Tasted really Indian.

ZEST - paneer

Foccacia-style bread – what we got resembled nothing to true foccacia bread.  It was basically pizza dough flavored with rosemary, parmesan and garlic.  Nonetheless, really tasty…

ZEST - Focaccia

Z’attar Roasted potatoes – Too greasy for our taste, but I wanted to try z’attar.  Nothing to brag about in my opinion…

ZEST - Potatoes

Charoli Kebabs – this was our least favorite of the bunch. Too spicy to even try to understand the rest of the ingredients…

Kebabs

We loved the service, the music and the total ambiance of the place.  We would have loved to visit it at night and try some of the entrees, but this was certainly too far away from our Connaught Place hotel to visit at night.  It took us almost an hour to reach the DLF Emporio mall with the Delhi traffic.  But if you are visiting Delhi and have the time, you should certainly try it too.

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Incredible India… Breakfasts

12 Nov

Be careful what you wish for… because you might actually get it.

I decided at the beginning of the year that I wanted my official job description to read – PROFESSIONAL JET-SETTER. Because travel is one of my true, deep passions… well, this last October I got to visit India for the second time.  In the last 2 months, this is my 4th trip.  My friend Annie Mariel asked me to accompany her run some errands in Delhi and I immediately said yes.  How could I really say NO to that invitation?!?!?!

My first trip, exactly 5 years ago, had a spiritual purpose – visiting various religious temples in the Himalayas – but this one was much touristy.  We visited Delhi, Varanasi and Agra, to see the Taj Mahal. 

nataraja    varanasi 2

Taj Mahal

Breakfasts are really important to me… especially when traveling.  I do not know why, but my appetite is HUGE during breakfast when I travel.  Delhi has a lot of smog and is much dustier than what we’re accustomed on our side of the world.  So I made it a point to always eat lots of fruit and yogurt to maintain my body’s defenses.  Here are a few examples of typical breakfasts I had at our hotels:

The first was in Delhi – papaya pieces, plain yogurt, porridge or oatmeal made with milk.   Just the way I like it.  I always complemented breakfast with some freshly squeezed juice and apparently something very popular is watermelon juice.  I found watermelon juice in Delhi and in Varanasi.  They would even prepare it to order… super sweet and delicious.

    Breakfast Delhi

watermelon juice - KFC

This second was in Agra – papaya pieces with pomegranate seeds, plain yogurt, corn or wheat flakes.  Here breakfast was complimented by salted lassi and pineapple juice.  I much more prefer sweet lassi, but we’ll talk about that a little later on in a future post…

Agra Breakfast

But these are very typical breakfasts… you might be thinking.   But this was not all I ate each morning… this was just the starter complimented also by one of two Indian versions of breakfast too.  Indians do not limit their curry and savory food intake from lunch on.  They have their savory and spicy foods right after they open their eyes.  Even though we stayed in Northern India, we got to taste the breakfast preferences of both North and South India.

NORTH INDIA

When we were in Delhi, I was intrigued by what my table neighbor was eating.  I saw this puffed up bread and I immediately was curious.  It is called chole bhature and it is fried bread made from either maida flour (very-fine wheat flour) or rice flour.  I had them both and you can barely notice a difference.  You eat this fried, puffy bread with curried chickpeas and spicy/sweet mango chutney.  The yogurt on my regular breakfast plate helped to cool my mouth because of the spices for the chickpeas and chutney. 

North India Breakfast

Our servers at the hotel restaurant were so impressed with our interest in their local food, after I ordered just out of curiosity, that they would bring a service of this chole bhature without us having to order it.

Not what I normally crave for breakfast, but certainly interesting enough to enjoy it while in India…  and I am all to have the most out of my travel experiences.

SOUTH INDIA

After an overnight train experience that left a lot to be desired, we arrived in Agra at 9:30AM and we were HUNGRY for breakfast.  The buffet spread was exactly what we needed.  That’s where we learned about Dosas.

Dosas are the typical South India version of breakfast… it’s a rice flour crepe filled with a curried-potato mixture.  They’re made to order and you enjoy them with a coconut or tomato chutneys.  And you know me, I am a crepe fanatic.

Dosa 4

The potato mixture is spicy, but the chutneys were way spicier for my taste.  So after tasting them initially, I kept on eating without the accompaniments.  Salted lassi helped ease the spice level on the tongue.  They were so good, we had dosas every morning we had breakfast in Agra.

 Dosa 1     Dosa 3

Dosa 2

I hope this encourages you to try out these Indian favorites the next time you travel to India or visit an Indian restaurant in your neighborhood.  Tasting the local flavors is an integral part of getting to know a new country/culture.  It’s what separates the travelers from the tourists… don’t you think?

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