food vocabulary

Originally Posted by spitze_udz

I agree with Steven, the food on train is good only in rajdhani and shatabdi. Getting food packed is a better option.
In most of the trains you have an option of Pulaav(vegetable fried rice), if you can manage with that then no need to get food packed.
I will advice to avoid meals served on train.

Originally Posted by machadinha

To expound some:


brinjal = eggplant

Originally Posted by SHIMLA

Purely a personal opinion, but now the food on the Rajdhani is also lousy!! In the last two months I travelled twice by the Mumbai-Delhi Rajdhani and each time the food (including the soup) was below average; as were the snacks served with tea! I was highly disappointed, as this was the first time in my numerous travels on the prestigious train that I found the food to be so.

Originally Posted by crvlvr

Spitze,

Which part of India will you be travvelling through? As you already know, India has a number of languages and the same dish will have a different name depending on the language of the area you are in.

Fish -- Machili, Meen, Chaapa, etc. etc. etc..

Originally Posted by Skinner

Can anyone please give me a short description of the most common indian food/drinks you get in restaurants so that i will be able to order quickly without having to study the menu card for an hour? I'm going to visit india next month for the first time and i only know what a chai and a lassi is so far. Thanks for any info.

Originally Posted by machadinha

As others have answered, the creaminess comes from the butter and the cooking method I think. For the green dhal, I'm guessing these are what are called mung beans over here, not a lentil at all (but dhal stands for more types of beans I think). The Indonesians call them katjang hidjau. If left to sprout (leave them on a layer of wet cotton balls for a while, or get a special sprouting box -- keep moist at all times) they will form taogé, often used in Indonesian and Chinese cooking (as a vegetable; eat raw or blanched or add in at the latest stage of stirfrying). A simple way to use them (the whole beans) is to cook them together with (brown) rice, say 1:1 or 1:2, both need 1.5 cups of water to 1 cup of the stuff and 45 mins. cooking and they're supposed to be very healthy (any whole grain will help to extract the proteins from beans for that matter).

A use for dhal that I've never come across in India, this is how the Surinamese like their rotis: Take what they call yellow split peas, cook and grind coarsely. Take a ball of chapati dough in your hand, push it in with your thumb to form a shallow hole. Fill with a little bit of the ground peas, close it up, then roll out the dough and bake as usual. The result should be a roti that consists almost of two or several layers with a coarse structure inbetween. (The same can be done with a potato curry mixture and you'll have filled roti.) In Suriname these are called dalbhari and alubhari, respectively, I've had the latter in India too (simply called "stuffed chapati" I think).

I haven't found back the Keralan sweet balls I was talking about (not rasgullah by the way, speaking of which, a sweets section might be in place here. Try barfi, gulab jamun, halwa, jalebis, etc. Basically, just walk into any sweets shop and order a box of different goodies, also great for trainrides -- better stock up good though as there's no way you'll be eating the stuff alone.) I did find the coconut lunch though so here goes, it's called wheat putt or something to that effect:

Mix wheat and flour with water; add ground coconut and steam. Serve with honey, ground peanuts and sliced bananas. Simple but yummy!

Anyway so much for today's culinaries folks.

Originally Posted by machadinha

I haven't found back the Keralan sweet balls I was talking about [...] I did find the coconut lunch though so here goes, it's called wheat putt or something to that effect