Doors 9 JUICE reports:
Delhi’s Sabzi Mandi
March 15, 2007
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That’s vegetable market to me and you. At the crack of dawn, dodging raindrops the size of wild peaches, a small delegation from the Doors9:JUICE urban agriculture workshop heads out for a reconnoitre of Delhi’s Sabzi Mandi, the wholesale vegetable market off Mehrauli-Gurgaon Rd. Through a haze of sleepyhead we wonder where the food that feeds Delhi comes from and if people working at the wholesale market think urban agriculture would be appropriate for a city like Delhi.
Finding the market is easy, trucks too big for the warren of windy roads all but cordon off the way. We park our car in an actual parking lot right next to a cow and head off for the wholesale market on foot. A tikka-dealing holy man runs the shrine at the market’s entrance, turning the humdrum of a day’s of food distribution into an auspcicious event. Tik, tik, tikka!
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A one stop shop for all your cauliflower needs, this is the happiest cauliflower salesman in the world. The trimmings are bagged and sold as fodder for dairy cows.
The Sabzi Mandi (vegetable market) ends up being one of only a few dotted throughout Delhi, and the Mother of All Markets ends up being somewhere else. But this mandi distributes vegetables to most of the local shops and restaurants all over (south) Delhi.
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The vegetable trimmings were constantly being collected into burlap bags and sold as fodder for dairy cows. The result of this was that there was zero litter, though the rains had produced a sea of mud, the market was spick and span.
Although when you first step into the market area your view is flooded with a wash of green and abundant produce, further observation reveals that the varietal selection is actually rather poor. Maybe it’s because it was the tail end of winter, maybe it’s because this market is supplied by conventional agriculture and not organic farmers, maybe this is not the sort of place you go to when supplying your corner shop with indigenous varieties of chickpeas. From stall to stall, there was only one sort of potato, one sort of carrot, one sort of cauliflower etc…
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Loving the burlap vegetable barriers
We were invited for a cup of chai and a chat by the market’s alpha male potato wholesaler who ‘received’ us in his tidy stall, where he reigned atop a throne clad in crisp muslin. After the introductions we just came right out and asked, ‘What do you think the effects would be of growing food in Delhi? Our host informed us that just 25 years ago, Delhi was completely self-sufficient in terms of produce, but that now Delhi’s food travels great distances because the bigger farms are farther and farther away from the city’s periphery. He told us that growing food within the city would absolutely be beneficial for Delhi, increasing access to food, increasing access of small-holdings farmers to (wholesale) markets, and greening the city.
Although this hardly constitutes thorough ethnographic research, breakfast was beckoning and we were pleased that this was start of the three day workshop exploring the notion of growing food for Delhi in Delhi. In the next few days I will post more of the group’s findings.
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Porter with hook is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick I mean a minivan.
debra at 12:15 | Comments (2) | post to del.icio.us
Food supplements
March 12, 2007
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In Ayanagar Village on the outskirts of sprawling Delhi, the urban agriculture workshoppers accidentally stumble upon a food supplement store. A result of the Green Revolution?
debra at 15:07 | Comments (0) | post to del.icio.us
Golgappa,
1 of the top 5
most sexy things
you can put in your mouth
March 10, 2007
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Try to imagine all of the sexy things that happen in your mouth. Now try to imagine a food that embodies these sensual experiences. You are imagining the Indian street food golgappa, unquestionably one of the most exciting things you can do to your body with food in public, a molecular gastronomic snack avant la lettre.
Eating golgappa is like a sweet and salty deep kiss exploding in your mouth, inside out and in slow motion.
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Golgappa is a delicate pastry bubble, one side of which is ‘double dipped’ and sturdy enough to transport some tangy liquid from hand to mouth for a 3 second maximum of non-bodily fluid exchange.
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Wet and sticky, salty, sweet and tamarindily tangy
Golgappa is a snack most often served in a streetfood setting by a vendor who gets off on tweaking what normally is considered an acceptable relationship between server and snacker. You keep swallowing, the vendor keeps ‘em coming and you have to beg him to stop serving you.
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Tik, tik, tik…
With your finger or the end of your fork, you poke a hole in the frail side. Fill the pastry with spicy tamarind juice and whatever else happens to be on your plate, put the entire bubble into your mouth, crunch and swallow. At the Doors9JUICE MediaWalla event, bartenders had spiked the tamarind juice with Northern European levels of vodka. Nasfuqndrovja!
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Scooping up juice with a golgappa shell
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Normally I look more composed when sexy things explode in my mouth, but on a hot day devoted to urban agriculture there’s only so much composure a girl can muster up…
debra at 13:29 | Comments (8) | post to del.icio.us
