Eating street food at home
March 19, 2005
Losing the fear of street food in one simple lunch. The lesson is 'presentation is everything'. The Nomadic Banquet workshop participants dig in to street tucker. All of the dishes for this meal were gleaned from within a 200 meter radius of Nomadic Banquet HQ. It was the first time in a week that I witnessed one of the DAI students eat heartily.
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Delhi recycling, in all fairness
March 15, 2005
When is recycling not really recycling? When the recycled or re-purposed item never really had a purpose in the first place. These papers, have been left on the ground (location across the street from Jantar Mantar, Delhi), as far as I can tell, for no other purpose than to be repurposed. The image on the left is a stack of paper left on the street as an offering to the gods of the recycled chaat-bag-makers.
Packaging for chaat is often nothing more than a bag made from old newsprint or repurposed paper, or for the wetter stuff, a leaf plate. The bag pictured on the right was made from some terribly interesting literature about bonds. One can see the imprint of the deep-fried sweet peas contained within being absorbed into the paper making a pretty pattern.
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Paan virgin spits like a girl
Everywhere in Old Delhi, on every cornerpost of every building there is a terracotta haze. For a while I thought it was just the build-up of iron oxide dirt and dust - and so much of the architecture (for example the Jantar Mantar observatory) has this colour. But after a few hours of walking around I saw a few fresh splotches of red and realised what it was. Paan spit.
Paan is a 'digestive'. A leaf, painted with all manner of spices, flecks of gold leaf, sugar crystal and proportedly even opium. You take the leaf roll in your hand from the paan-wallah who has lovingly prepared his special version from 20 or so fine tins of ingredients and ingest it like chaw, I think. This morning, before the coffee I tried my first chew.
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A street snack called chaat
March 14, 2005
In Delhi street vendors sell chaat, that is to say snacks consisting of all manner of puffed, roasted and deepfried legumes, grains, pasta products and broken crackers. Nibbles to go, nibbles to take home, nibbles that remind one of the street. A chaat vendor will sell his beans and bobs dry to take home, or if you've got the right guy he'll mix up a little chaat-snack for you right then and there with some very much needed chaat-moisturizer i.e. sweet chilli sauce.
Look at (click on) the image on the left closely and you'll see the bags in which the chaat is sold folded neatly between the goods. The bags are made of recycled newspaper and other redundant paper glued into bags for packaging.
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Delhi street food vendors benchmark good health practices and urban planning
This Delhi street vendor has set up a much needed no smoking zone right in front of his stand (located in front of the state emporia across the street from the Hanuman Mandir near CP). I believe he is selling little packets of flavoured chewing tobacco.
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In the hood
March 12, 2005
I have arrived safely in Delhi and my students and I are playing a little game in which we hit the streets rather intensively and then find little havens in all different forms to come back to our senses. The streets here are LAUNCH pads, and you need a place, a peace, to come down every now and again. For our little group of 6, the time limit seems to be 45 minutes per jaunt. But we've been exceeding this quite a bit.
Tomorrow I'll try to find an internet cafe where I can upload some of the amazing images. Finding such a place is proving difficult, we may have to resort to moblogging with telephone. Poo.
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Black Beauties, wafting truffles from Occitania
March 07, 2005
It wasn't a conventional Valentine's Day gift, but I do think it should become one. I am lucky enough to have dear friends that live in a part of the world where these elephant-skinned nuggets grow underground. Fortune would have it that 2 days before their arrival up here in the Polar Circle a local Occitanian Truffle Fête was in full-swing. and JT and Kristi were wise to bring a bag filled with the little nodules.
They present me with the bag, grinning from ear to ear. I put my face inside, and inhale deeply.
I am confronted with the most glorious, heady aroma, a combination of rich, loamy earth, wafting diesel fuel, fresh ground peanut butter, and fart. Now in just the right combination, that's a good thing.
Here's what I prepared for the 3 of us the very next day:
- Knolsla (celeriac cole sla) with truffled mayonnaise and beet ravioli
- Truffled Chicken in salt crust with 'basically raw broccoli' and truffle butter
- Pots de Crumbly Crumble (truffle-free)
Never have I received such a wonderful Valentine's Day gift; I was given an object but got an evening-filling experience. Thank you JT and Kristi!
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Frozen
March 06, 2005
It's like this... No excuses. Yes excuses. I am leaving for India in 3 days for a Nomadic Banquet! I wasn't joking about the bad eating habits 2 entries ago. The urban mapping workshop that I will be leading for the Doors of Perception and the Dutch Art Institute is about street food.
Please forgive and forget and stay tuned to this blog.
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