Favourite foods

We used to cook at home almost all the time, but lately we've been eating out a little more. (When I say we, I really mean Gopal did most of the cooking and I would sometimes help by chopping vegetables :-). We've been going out and getting dinner at one of the street food vendors nearby. We tried a number of them and have definitely settled on our favourite, a young guy who is set up outside a Rajasthani sweet shop in nearby Yapral village. Over time, we've tended to converge on a standard menu. It's even gotten to the point where Nilesh starts to make our order when he sees us coming.

Papdi Chaat

We normally start by ordering a bowl of papdi chaat and setting it aside to cool:

This mixture is based on chickpeas, with broken pieces of papdi in it (kind of fried pastry/dough). We get it without the usual onions and chilli, and just have whatever else is available: carrots, tomatoes, mint, potato. It varies by vendor and availability of ingredients.

Vada Pav

While we are waiting for the chaat to cool, we normally order a vada pav, which is a potato pattie in a bun, kind of like a mini potato hamburger. The bun and pattie are both lightly fried in ghee first, and have some chutney and spices on them. The whole thing is garnished with some carrots and coriander, sev and served cut into four pieces with some chutney.

Pani Puri

After that, we will normally have some pani puri. Puris are round hollow fried balls, and paani means water. Eating pani puri is a process as much as a product. The seller first makes a hole in the puri and then puts in some chick-pea mixure (the same as the base for the chaat). He optionally then puts in some sweet chutney (we always take this option), then he dips the thing in a bowl of spicy water (the paani) and then puts it into the customer's bowl. Most customers have their bowl full of chopped raw onions which they then also add into the puri before eating it, but we skip that step. You have to eat it in one bite, and reasonably quickly, before the paani makes the puri disintegrate.

Normally, the vendor will just continuously make these and give them to one customer after another in a round-robin fashion. It's quite a challenge for him remembering how many each person has had, and remembering which people want the meetha (sweet chutney) and who doesn't.

After a half dozen paani puri each, we usually find the paapdi chaat has cooled down enough to eat it. we often get Nilesh to add some dahi (yoghurt) at this point, and perhaps also some carrots for garnish.

Masala Puri

Finally, we cap off the meal with a plate of masala puri. These are the same puris with the same chickpea mixture as before, with the the sweet chutney, some spices and filled with sev). Sev is small crunchy noodles made from chickpea flower and turmeric that are then fried.

These are my favourites. Some places make them very wet, so the puri disintegrates quickly and you have to eat it with a spoon. Others have a thicker mixture that lets the puri hold together a bit longer. Exactly what you get in each of these dishes varies from one place to another (and even varies in the same place week by week). Some make things very spicy, others less so.

All of this is made in a small stall on the side of the road somewhere. The cooking is done with gas and everything is done by hand. We've seen a few places where the guys making it wear gloves, but that's pretty uncommon. The food is mostly open to dust, diesel fumes, bugs and who knows what. Cleanliness varies too. There was once when I wasn't feeling that great for a few days that may have been related to something I ate at one of these places, but I can't say for sure. I've probably eaten this food dozens of times now with no problems, whereas the two times where I definitely had food poisoning were in "decent" restaurants.

Apart from being delicious, it is also a very cheap way to eat. The photos above are dinner for both of us, and together costs around 80 rupees, which is about $1.60.