Food , spongy fermented rice cake, lentil flour pancake filled with potato masala( gorgeous). There are so many adverts on tv and billboards talking about diabetes, heart attacks and obesity. I had previously thought that Indian food was healthy and Indians on the whole slim. Not any more I don't. Not if they eat any of the food on offer outside their front doors!
On the end of my wee suburban street are 2 bakeries. They sell nothing but bad, bad calories and the smell is gorgeous. You can buy cakes of all colours that would make a French patisserie green with envy or traditional indian sweets like gulab jamuns ( deep fried balls of milk based dough, steeped in rose- flavoured syrup or those deep fried orange coloured squiggles with syrup inside (jalebis). There are cookies made with oil rather than butter. The ones I have eaten are glace fruit and fresh coconut pastries, lentil and paneer pastries and the scotch egg pastries ( hard work but I am a slave to authentic research). In a 5 minute walk to my regular restaurant there must be 20 more stalls selling hot chips ( fat in various spicy guises), cakes and more jalebis. They are all stacked in huge glass jars and bottles on display at the front of the stall. They all have lots of people buying them all the time. In between these food stalls are guys ( and it is usually always men doing the cooking on these) making fresh pakora, bhajis and alloo tikkis and again tons of guys standing around eating them fresh out of the sizzling fat. They don't come fresher than this.
However the point is people buying these are eating fat and sugar and plenty of it. Everyone eats these as snacks before an evening meal and as a lunch time meal. Go into a supermarket and there are more choices of fatty savoury snacks than types of rice. And that's another thing- in shops and restaurants you can only get white rice and white bread. I have not seen wholemeal, never mind rye bread since the day I arrived.
I couldn't work out why so many men were hanging around and eating from these food stalls but the penny has dropped. There are hundreds of thousands of people in Bangalore living away from their families who live in rooms ( often shared) in hostels or lodging houses. Like me they perhaps don't have kitchens (watching indian cookery programmes is the closest I am going to get to cooking anything never mind authentic Indian fare for my whole stay in Bangalore). So they will both get a meal and meet friends by hanging round a stall.
When I go to someones house for breakfast I will be offered rice based food or idlis or a dosa and coconut chutney. For lunch at school we have mostly rice with a veg side dish and a sambar ( diced vegetables in a thin dhal based sauce). The portions of rice that people eat are pretty huge. At school they also have a very dark brown millet based ball which has a consistency of slightly uncooked dough. I have a little of it bit it is pretty tasteless. At night people will eat about 8 or 9 and have lots more rice and a few vey or meat dishes. I have a good appetitie but I can only eat half the rice that most people eat.
I have found some wholemeal crisp things and really like them.If you read the advert and not the ingredients you would think you were eating diet food.
"NutriChoice the snack that loves you back.... zero cholestoral, low fat..low calorie" But on the ingredients it says they are 20% fat and 500 calories per 100grams! In teency writing it says " when compared to other fried snacks"!!!! not exactly diet food eh! Though again for research purposes I am eating as many of them as I can find to see if I can eat myself slim!
I suppose India is suffering the same epidemic as all developing/developed nations. We are sitting down more and doing less manual labour. I really hope that the men and women on the building sites are getting triple portions though. They are always really, really thin to the point of emaciated!
When I order food at a cafe no matter how good or bad a waiter's English is they always comment unbidden on whether something is spicy or not. They really have this idea that white ( or western folk) don't like spicy food. I am not a huge fan of very hot food but am trying to disabuse people of their views and will order fairly hot food. I usually regret it a teency bit next day but am willing to sacrafice my colon to break a few stereotypes!
Also when you go to peoples houses there is no strong smell of food as there can be when you make spicy food in the UK. Peoples kitchens here are much more open with many more windows and open doors so you just get a mix of lovely smells out on the street. The dish washing area will often be outside or in a very open area too. It makes me realise that when people come over to live in UK style houses which are so enclosed they must hate the smell staying around the house too. And people here wash their dishes in running water. No plugs for the sink or washing up bowls. Much more hygenic I assume.
