Food, Clothing and Shelter

I seem to like to blog in themes. First the food...

South Indian food differs from North Indian especially in the breakfast foods - which can also be anytime foods and snacks. If you are a vegetarian, India is heaven. So many here are vegetarian for religious reasons. If you can't eat wheat, oats, barley and rye (I can't really, even tho I'm not a celiac) it's heaven for that reason. All the foods below are linked to Wikipedia articles for a more in-depth look, but I explain them in simple-ese here.

Idli is a small rice sort of pancakey/mini-chappati-looking item. The ratio of the contents is 3 parts white rice to one part white lentils (to form a complete protein), finely ground together and left to ferment overnight before forming into the little pancakey shapes and being steamed to cook. They have a very slightly sour fermented taste - not usually noticeable because they are served with a sauce called sambar which is spooned over the top, or the bites dipped in. The Indian way is to put the rice on the dish and ladle the sambar or dal next to it. Americans are more likely to want it spooned on top and they think it's a little odd.

The Sambar sauce is like a soup in consistency and is mildly spiced and very pleasant - made of dal with some vegetables and other things.

Chutneys - come with idlis, dosas (see below) and vadas (see below) and just about everything. The typical three which are brought out are a tomatoey variety, unsweetened coconut, and a mint that may have coriander and/or chilies in it. The coconut is especially yummy. Unsweetened coconut is used in so many things and it's a wonderful taste when it's not overwhelmingly sweet as we're used to it.

Vada, or Vadai (plural) are small fried mini-doughnuts made of lentil flour. There are a zillion variations besides the plain ones, spiced with various things. Wikipedia says "Served in a bun with fresh spice/sweet chutney, a vada becomes a vada pav, a street food like the hot dog."

There are idli variants - with vegetables added. There are many things battered with chickpea (garbanzo) flour as well.

Sometimes they do little pancakes with just herbs and almost no flour. Bit dry, those.

This is a rice dish with unsweetened coconut added - very good! I don't know if it's typical South Indian - there's a flag on the label and couldn't find much Google data on it.

Crunchy Dal (lentil) balls, deep fried.

Dosa - another mainstay - is made from varying proportions of rice and white lentil flour like the idlis and cooked as thin as a crepe. They can be plain or filled with various goodies like a potato/sambar-like mixture. There are the regular-size dosas...

Or the rilly RILLY big dosas that take up an entire plate.

And - they also eat Congee here! Only spell it "Kongee." Congee is cooked rice that has extra water added, cooked some more - maybe veg or broth are put in too and it's served as a gruel or porridge in Japan, China, and other Asian countries. Quite tasty!

Then there is typical British breakfast fare (tho the bacon is actually a vegetarian substitute in many places). Bangers - small rather tasteless sausages...

Grilled tomatoes - very good when done correctly.

Baked beans - also available on toast - you don't need a picture of that one. Never understood the lure of that for breakfast.

Always some kind of cubed or sliced fried potatoes and onions.

"Jacket" Potatoes - these are on a bed of salt in little aluminum foil covers. Jacket potatos mean baked potatoes with the skins on.

Then, if you are either French, or still starving, or both, you can count on pastry. Since Pondi was a French colony there are always croissants....and pan au chocolat....

My breakfast plates on two different days.

Then at other meals there are the 100 ways to fix rice pulao, the thousand faces of dal, and the many many types of chilies, cardamom, spices that are added to each dish. You may already know that curry is not a readymade single spice in a jar, but a careful mixture of spices that can have a zillion different faces. Usually made with a high proportion of turmeric. I didn't know 'til I came here that the curry leaf is a whole different thing - it's mild and thrown in whole in many dishes. Masala is a name given to many dishes with a mixture of spices. The root words for Congee and curry actually originated in South India.

I had this idea that the green chilies were not as hot as the red chilies. I was wrong...so very wrong. Now I watch out for what Mr. Chirpspicy and I call "sneaker chilies;" little green guys that are slipped into an otherwise unassumingly-spiced dish. They look a lot like chives...but they're noooooooootttt!