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Monday, 21 May 2012

Sampling Delhi Food at Chandni Chowk


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

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