This one was
a really satisfactory walk! At six in the evening at Chandni Chowk on a Sunday
(when it is a little less chaotic) I get to taste some finger licking Delhi
food!
I was a part
of a group and a total of six of us participated in this journey of sorts. We
began at Haldiram's with the Raj Kachori (puffed bread made of semolina and flour, deep fried,
stuffed with boiled chick peas, potato, lentils, topped with spicy mint &
coriander chutney, sweet & sour tamarind chutney, sweet yogurt, sprinkled
with salt and red chilli powder). We broke the flour shell and let the mixture
run out and then tucked in huge helpings. Too delicious to describe!!! YUMMMM!!!
Next, Gol Gappa were served, more to inform our foreign friends what this was all about. So you
make a hole on top of a puffed bread, similar to raj kachori, only smaller,
stuffed in some potatoes and chack peas and then immersed it into a bowl of
spicy green chutney diluted and without wasting a moment, pop it into our
mouths.
Onion Kachori came
next which is deep fried thick puffed bread filled with onions and some spicy
masalas and we had the Matar Samosas, only these were stuffed with green peas and not
potatoes (as is usually the case). Prabhat, our leader, made sure we did not
have more than a couple of bites of any of the delicacies (what a waste of good
food L).
We then
moved on to our next destination, Natraj's, where we had Dahi Bhalla (soft non-flavoured
doughnuts immersed in sweet yogurt spiced up with both sweet and sour chutneys)
followed by Aaloo Tikki, or you could call it potato cutlet, the taste of which
I assure you, cannot be captured at home.
Now we moved
onwards towards Parathe wali gali or the Indian bread lane. All the food joints
here sell various kinds of stuffed parathas which are rolled out circles of
dough stuffed with whatever filling you can imagine and deep fried in clarified
butter. At Baburam Devi Dayal, we tasted parathas stuffed with Okhra (Lady’s finger), Green chillies
(I avoided this one!), Bananas and Mava (dried fruits and nuts). These were
accompanied with banana and sweet tamarind chutney, mashed pumpkin vegetable
and spicy potato vegetable.
To cool the
almost smoking tongue we had Jalebis at Old and Famous Jalebiwala. These are yummy sweets made out of a
flour paste which is pushed through a thin funnel into a smoking vessel full of
oil, and round squiggles are made quickly. The pattern hardens to a lovely orange colour and is picked up
in a strainer and put into another vessel full of sugar syrup. These are sweets
to die for!
Next a
rickshaw ride towards the Town Hall and close to this we have a very old eating
place (will not degrade it by calling it a restaurant) called Asharam Foods, earlier known as Nirmal restaurant. We had the best Paneer (Indian
cottage cheese) paratha here with a dollop of butter and a refreshing cup of
cardamom flavoured tea.
You would
think we were done, but no! We marched on like soldiers towards Jama Masjid and
took our positions at another well known eating joint, Al-Jawahar. The starters were Mutton
Sheek Kababs (skewered mutton prepared by mixing with herbs and spices and
barbequed) followed by the most amazingly huge and soft Rotis (rolled out dough
and cooked in a tandoor) with Palak Paneer (ground spinach with Indian cottage
cheese cubes), Mutton Korma (mutton cooked in spicy Indian curry) and Changezi Chicken
(a spicy chicken with gravy) made up the main course. The dessert comprised the
delicious Phirni (ground rice cooked in sweetened and thickened milk).
Then, we
decided to call it a day J
