Mumbai Foods Part 2 – A Giant Dosa & The Street

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In Mumbai, I think I ate the largest dosa ever with my friend Fiana. Dosa is a South Indian crepe made from a fermented batter of rice and lentils and then cooked on a skillet. You eat it usually with sambar and coconut chutney. We had the dosa at Shree Krishna in Worli –

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Walking the streets, you get to see and try so many different foods. Here’s some of what I saw.
This vendor is making bhelpuri, one of the most popular street foods in Mumbai. It is a type of chaat or snack food consisting of puffed rice, sev (little tiny noodle threads made from chickpea flour), tomatoes, onions, chilis, sometimes boiled potato and roasted dals, sweet tamarind chutney, spicy mint chutney and cilantro.

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Served in some recycled paper with a cardboard spoon –

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This is another chaat vendor or wallah. The mound of yellow in front of him is his sev and the bag on the right is papri, fried dough chips. There are also green mangos in his stall that give a sour taste to the mixture. This vendor was making several kinds of chaats.

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We ordered the papri chaat from him – papri chips on the bottom and layered with chickpea, potato, chutneys, chili powder, chaat masala, onion, tomato, sev and cilantro.

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And then watched him make some bhelpuri –

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Next door to the chaat wallah there was a man selling tender coconut – which you drink first and then scoop out the flesh with a spoon cut from the coconut.

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We came across a little hole in the wall place making pav bhaji – spicy mashed veg curry and bun –

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This stand was selling spiced cucumbers and lemonades –

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In the street markets I saw these green and black varieties of chestnut –

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Several vendors were selling mixed fruit cut into really decorative shapes –

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This was a shop selling Ayurvedic digestives called churan, which are made from dried fruits and spices. In India, there is a huge variety of these that come in powdered form or little nuggets. I like the anardana variety, which is made from dried pomegranite seed and pulp and have tasted one called hing goli – which is a churan made from asafoetida.

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Mumbai Foods Part 1 – Chowpatty Beach

I just came back from a trip to India where I visited Mumbai and Goa with some friends and then headed to Delhi to hang out with my family. In the next few posts, I’ll share some of the foods and cooking from this visit. The first 2 posts from my trip are on Mumbai, which I really loved and definitely want to go back to. These photos are from Chowpatty Beach, which is famous for its variety of fast foods.

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Spicy Tzatziki @ Drawing Class

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My friends Dan and Nate host a really fun model drawing class every two weeks in Nate’s art studio in Gowanus called +DRAWING+MODEL+MUSIC+BEER+.

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Taro Root Curry

This is what taro root looks like. There are leaves too with these plants, but my father just bought the root or corms as they are called. I had previously eaten a purple variety of the root in a Chinese restaurant at dim sum in the form of dumplings and taro cake. I really liked this preparation and was curious to try and cook the root for the first time according to an Indian recipe my father had learned while in Delhi. We had filled this curry into our samosas but I thought it tasted really good on its own, kind of a nutty, sweet flavor to it. We cooked a variety that is white on the inside of the skin.

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Samosas – 3 Kinds

Over Thanksgiving, me and my Dad made samosas together for the first time. He had just learned from his Aunt in Delhi how to prepare them and wanted to teach me how. My family was in San Francisco for the holiday and my Aunt had decided to invite us all over for Thanksgiving so we prepared three varieties to bring to her house with a coriander chutney.

 
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Winter Vegetable Soup with Coconut Milk and Chillies

I prepared this soup for my friend Busayo‘s birthday dinner. She was leaving for Nigeria and would be gone on the actual day, but I wanted to give her a little celebration before she left. I brought this soup over with a beet salad, baguette and one of my favorite cheeses – Prima Donna, which tastes like a sharp Gouda. And of course there was cake – red velvet from Cake Man Raven.

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Persimmon Salsa

Last Sunday, Sabra and I served Indian tacos at a 3rd Ward Moviehouse event that featured music from Kodomo which I loved! I wanted to make a special salsa to go along with our tacos so I made one from persimmons I had brought back from my favorite grocery store, Berkeley Bowl and farmers at the Ferry Building in San Francisco.
 
Posted in Appetizers, Autumn, Chutneys & Pickles, Easy, Gluten-Free, Lunch, Recipes Index, Sides, Snacks, Vegan, Vegetarian | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment