Culinary Porn

I love food.
So does our entire extended family. Ya, I know what you thinking - who in the world would not like eating? But saying that I was a gluttonous omni-voracious foodoholic would be quite close to describing the real me. Though as I reached my late 20s (sigh!), my gastronomic habits have become more sober, much closer to normal, civilized people.
Still remember the days in college when we used to devour our food like there was no tomorrow. And then our gang of hungry souls was solely responsible for putting out of business at least two all-you-can-eat food joints. God bless them.

Speaking of which, it brings me to last month which was a complete delight for the tummy. The folks were here in Stuttgart and that resulted in such great culinary wonders that not for a moment we felt we were away thousand miles from India. So here is a small walkthrough over what we treated ourselves with.

Caution: If you are somewhere in office or on a diet or craving for food, DON'T read further! Reading ahead and looking at these pictures could give you serious cravings, withdrawal symptoms and greedy tongues.

Yellow spongy bliss.
Khaman dhokla has been the snack of choice for every self-respecting gujju fond of food. Though not made as ubiquitously like the humble idli, it is a well known dish even to non-gujjus.

Top up these yellow steamed cubes with heavenly alphonso mango-ras and puris and it is a already on way to being one of the best lunches ever.
Whats for dinner, btw?

The Handvo is a relatively unknown dish from Gujarat, more so like a savory cake made by baking ground pulses with veggies of choice and a tasty mustard-spice tempering.
(the pic wasn't intended to make the Handvo look like Pacman, but here it is)

A completely microwaved stuffed Karela (bitter-gaurd) and potato dish. Loads of jaggery and spice, cooked to perfection, over the veggies, topped up with coriander and sev.
Ahaa...

Sinfulicious Daal-Makhni made by the missus, with generous amounts of cream and butter falling just short of the annual dairy produce of New-Zealand.

And here comes the most famous export of Gujju-land after Mahatma Gandhi and the Ambanis. The awesome Pav-Bhaji. Probably the most coalition-friendly dishes of all - a delightful mix of mashed up veggies and pav-bhaji masala and topped up with.... well see for yourself.And yeah, eaten with the humble paav, buttered and browned.Bliss!

Nice little south indian breakfast of bowled upma , only the coffee replaced by aromatic ginger-tea.

Speaking of South-Indian breakfast, how about masala idlis washed down with saffrony Alphonso mango milk-shake?

And now the Western Breakfast. Pancakes with a generous dollop of Apricot Jam. But mixed with Indian ginger-tea again.

Paalak Daal and jeera-rice go well if you in a mood for north-south collaboration. And why leave behind cool refreshing peach-flavored ice-tea?

A very gujju coup.

Gujju bhakhris (parathas) with a most tradtional eggplant-potato curry. Just yummy!

Lemon Slice-cake does the trick to cheer you up on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

And since we mentioned desserts, an Apple-pie with the best light-brown crust in Stuttgart will do just fine.

And to round up this yummy array of savories, we have yet another gujju dessert. The always-underrated Doodh-paak. Yummylicious thick flavoured milk with copious amounts of dry-fruits and saffron.

I'll leave you now drooping with saliva and running to the kitchen/fridge for some life-saving eatables...

Why on Earth....

... are we killing the planet that keeps us alive in the first place?



Global warming is not a myth anymore. Its wide-ranging effects are being seen everywhere, in form of melting glaciers, extreme temparature changes, floods, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes and what not. It is true that we are cooking up our planet faster than we can imagine.

So, on World Environment Day today, lets do our bit and try being better Earth-citizens.

Picture credit: www.aboutmyplanet.com

If (with apologies to Rudyard Kipling)

Really really bad joke of the day...

Question: What did Jackie Chan's father say to him when he was small?

If you can keep your head when all the east asian baddies around you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can dream - of surviving 3 thousand assorted bruises and cuts
And yet perform the next stunt, no ifs no buts

If you can cope with Hongkong and Hollywood alike
And treat those two imposters just the same

Yours is (every stunt on) the Earth, the legacy of Bruce Lee mixed with Oriental humor and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be Jackie Chan, my son!

* An uncanny flash of PJ struck when coming across an old Jackie Chan flick while browsing channels at my bored apartment in Brussels, missing home and the missus badly.
* Note to self - Must.... have.... Chinese food today...

* Image courtesy: dimsum.co.uk

Tweeter ke do aage tweeter....

Tweeter ke do peeche tweeter...
Bolo kitne tweeter?

Bad attempt at mixing Bollywood nostalgia with a new internet phenomena and squeeze some humor out of it... But you can't blame a man for trying.

Well, Twitter was around a good 18 months ago... And I had joined-in a year back or so, expecting this to be just one of those new jigs in the social networking wave. Suddenly, come 2009, Twitter is THE place to be!
Everyone around now is a Social Media junkie, every other person is a Web 2.0 expert, and everyone is following everyone (not in the strictest literary terms, but you get it)

Yes, a few celebrities on the Tweeting A-list means good news for fans. Forget mainstream media, forget agents, forget 3rd party info - you can get the goings-on in the minds of celebrities right from the horse's mouth (or so I'd like to believe)

Blogging was for people with a serious urge to write and reach out. Tweeting came out to be great for those who didn't have time to sit down and blog. But people are doing just the opposite. More time is being spent on tweeting and status updating every day! True, social-media habits of people can take you by surprise. I wouldn't have ever thought people would actually have fun writing small twitbits about themselves, and reading up twitbits about others, totally unknown ones too!

Now if you'd excuse me, I have to go and update my Twitter page to tell the world that I am writing a blog. Then I'd update my facebook status that I am tweeting about writing a blog. Then my LifeStream account will get updated with the useless fact about me that I am updating my facebook status about tweeting about writing a blog!
Phew!

image courtesy: http://www.readwriteweb.com

Update: (14.May)
Can't help but post this video. Awesome! Thanks to Alina for sharing this.(if your browser cant see this - get flash installed)

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Movie-inspired tourism

http://windowseatblog.com/2009/02/slumdog-millionaire-travel-India-movie

This article on a prominent travel site did not surprise me a bit. I'd mentioned in the previous posts how there were 'Slum tours' being conducted in Mumbai. This one just reaffirms it and says, '....Mumbai, and particularly its 175-acre shantytown Dharavi, are experiencing a boost in tourism....'

Slumdog Millionare is now in the league of masterpieces like LOTR, The Sound of Music and Casablanca.
* flashes a half unsmile, midway between straightness and sarcasm.

What 26/11 did to tourism, Slumdog is reverting it back equally and more.
I'm wondering what we'd say to this...

Underdog Millionare

Much has been said about Slumdog Millionare already.
My two rupees:

The movie is entertaining, yes. But is it extraordinary enough to sweep the oscars? I don’t think so.
Part of the joy in the movie is in the expectation of what happens next, and you begin rooting for the slumdog as he keeps answering correctly and the viewer is engrossed in unraveling the links himself. That's possibly the biggest achievement of the screenplay. And of course some of the shots of Mumbai, slum-life and the kids are breathtaking. More on this here. However, from a superiority point-of-view, I don’t think the movie should be a huge oscar winner. Even ARR who’s got 2 nominations, has done much more brilliant works compared with the mediocare soundtrack (by ARR standards)

If we discount as creative-leeway, the too many horrific incidents coincidently happening to the same set of 3 kids, the screenplay and portrayal of the slum life was pretty much accurate. However, this seems to be a bit too extreme and would cause a lot of heartburn for proud Indians (like me) in the way the west rejoices at the sights of poverty in the developing world. Believe me, I have even seen ads for ‘Slum Tours’ in Mumbai, promising the curious foreigners a glance into the poverty thats so ingrained in Mumbai-life.
Yes, the movie thrives on stereotyping, but then many good successful movies have done so in the past. So maybe if it wins, I wouldn’t be surprised.

Year Two Thousand and Nine

So an eventful year comes to an end.
The world came torn apart by mad bankers who played poker with the world economy, the mother of all presidential elections came to an end, making an African American the most powerful man on earth, a handful of youngsters tore apart Aamchi Mumbai (making it stand up stronger and more determined than ever).... and on a personal front, we both celebrated our first 12 months of the institution thats called marriage.

Christmas time is an empty kinda thing here in Germany. Streets are void, the snow is chilling and people are all inside their homes. So unless you have family here with whom you can spend your 4 days of vacationing, stuffing yourself to the ends of obesity in the process, you (read: all desis) MUST plan a trip out somewhere. Europe gives you quite many options to do that, though they are fairly limited during the cold winters.

So what was it be this time? Salzburg - the land of Mozart and the Von Trapps (remember the Sound of Music?)
After a good 3 days and a hugely overjoyed wife, we both are back to home, although not without a considerable hangover which (obviously) wants the vacations to never end.
The highlights of the trip surely being the Untersberg trip - up in the snowy peaks, and the trip to the Beer Museum - StieglBrau that was followed by a number of complimentary glasses of freshly brewed Austrian speciality washed down the throat.

Its that time of the year.
The aftereffects of too much beer
Makes you feel funny in the head,
And you say instead...
Meppy Christmas and Hairy You Near!

Have a great 2009 everyone!

Enough is enough

(A new post appears on this webpage after almost 5 months. But when would one speak out, if not at this time?)

Few months ago, we Indians were talking our heads off about a group called NSG - The Nuclear Suppliers Group.
Politicians threatened to resign, the media speculated and sensationalized, the intellectuals debated, discussed and the indifferent ridiculed the whole circus about the Nuclear Deal.

Come November 2008, India was talking about another NSG this time. NSG, the elite group of commandos that was supposed to protect our...... err... great leaders against misbehaving crowds and the occasional assasin!
Did someone say they were also supposed to protect us? We the people? Are you kidding? They way they were stationed back there in Delhi, the way they were brought in to Mumbai in a plane borrowed from Chandigarh, the way they waited at the Mumbai airport for an hour, waiting for a 'best' bus (notice the irony) to take them to the scene of action, it certainly didn't seem so...

Looking at the way the NSG men worked non stop for 60 hours, I felt a sense of pride.

And I have never felt so proud and sorry for my country at the same time!

On one side there were the unselfish staff at the two hotels, the dutiful firemen, the unitiring police constables, the common people who quenched the thirst of the ones at the site, and of course the NSG themselves.

And on the other side there was the ever sensationalist media, and the juggernaut called Maar-khaa Dutt who ran amok pushing aside survivers, commandos and the onlookers, the spineless politicians profiting on the situation, all the bickering to get to the CM's seat, the Intelligence failure or the government's failure to heed to intelligence, and the complete bureaucracy which ensured that the NSG arrived at the scene not earlier than 9 hours after the attacks started.

Can somebody pls explain to the procurement department in the Government, police or whatsoever, that rifles and pistols from the world war 2 do not work in this new century! And yeah, Bullet proof vests are supposed to stop... you got it.... bullets!!

Guess any fundamentalist anywhere in the world might be thinking now... "Hell, I could just borrow my friend's fisherman raft, 'pak' my rucksack with the latest ammo, reach the shores of Mumbai and just bomb the hell out of the city! Wait, I need not do that myself. I'll just get a downtrodden guy in the 20s, brainwash him against the Western ideology and he will be ready to kill left-right-center even before you can say, 'Jihad'!"

This is simply not done!

And yeah, bombing the neighbouring country isn't going to help. Even though if it might, then the first thing is to get our internal security system in place. Someone needs to get tough and tax the junta a few percentage points more, just so that our police and the NSG get the minimum required equipment, the Naval guards get the right gear to monitor our porous shorelines and the people in the public security services get paid well !

Till the time we have malnourished-looking and underpaid policemen, who have to sadly cling to old time rifles and 'laathis', and till the time we all started respecting their profession just a little bit more, things wouldn't change.

I wish they would.

Football, flying and the feeling of irony...

Excuse the bad alliteration in the subject line, but its for want of a better phrase...

21st May, 2008, the biggest football match of this season in Europe will unfold.
Mancheter United take on Chelsea FC.

Thats tomorrow.

The 2 best English teams of today will fight out the highest trophy in Europe. Its already assured that an English club will be the Champion of the continent.
And the irony is - the English national side didnt even qualify for the EURO 2008 happening this June.

My Personal irony:
As I travel between 2 of the greatest footballing cities in the world, flying from Lisbon to Madrid (and the next day back to Stuttgart), the feeling of void, of having missed one of the best footballing actions ever, will stay for quite some time.

I wish they had live TV on flights :P

What I now know about flying

- That a 3 hour flight journey is as bad as a 10 hour one, if you don't have something proper to read on the way, and/or you end up in a seat beside a 120 kg fella who conveniently spills over adjacent arm-rests.

- That 'Catcher in the Rye' is different, and good! Probably worth the accolades it has got, but it makes you feel like strangling that guy Holden Caulfield for being so irritating. (but thats what the author wanted I guess)

- That Air France stewardesses will go out of their way to freak you out (and always more than once) if you happen to get one of those seats at the Emergency Door.
"Sir, I have to ask you AGAIN - you must jock open this Emergency door if and when I tell u so. Is it FINE with you? (or should I ask some other ignorant fool to take your place?)"

- That the Emergency Door seats do have their latent advantages. There is so much leg room, you can almost tap dance there! (ok, that was a bit over the top, but you get the drift...)

- That Air France meals are actually decent, but if your crossiant topples out of your tray and rolls over to the bottom of the seat behind (and below the shoes of the guy sitting there), its actually not good news.

- That the laws of Physics do not work inside aircrafts compartments. (Murphy's laws do, though). So, no, the crossiant will NOT roll back to your feet when the plane actually applies its landing breaks.

- That having a connnection at Paris - Charles De Gaulle, and catching it smoothly is equivalent to expecting the Deccan (Dis)chargers reach the semifinals of the IPL.

- That if you happen to be dropped off at a CDG terminal other than your connecting one, then you could might as well say adeiu to your flight if it leaves in less than 45 mins. (forget asking why on earth did the airline offer you this impossible connection anyway)



- That Air France does have Boeing aircraft too on its fleet. 'French connection' doesn't come in way of free-market dynamics. (My solitary MBA gyaan for today. No such observations anymore)

- That at 2200 hours, due to the low flight traffic, the quick-as-ever ground handling staff at Lisbon airport will deliver your baggage to the conveyer belt in record time. In just less than 32 minutes. Really.

- That having an actually decent flight is not half as interesting as pretending it was lousy and cribbing about it online. :)