Gustatory delights

World cuisines are defined by traditional ingredients, seasonings, and cooking practices that evolved within a particular geographic area, writes Sudha Madhavan

Gelato

Rice noodles

Churros

Cuban black bean gravy with rice

The endless possibilities of travel must have something to do with the fact that they are as much place-specific as they are people-specific. Travel to continents...countries, cities, towns, villages, valleys, vineyards, mountains, et al that from a spot on the map translate into people, cultures, costumes, cuisines, adventures, languages and friendships... I feel the food, like the tipple, should be had in the land of its origin to get its authentic feel and taste.

Tamales, churros of Mexico

Want to taste the tamales? The divine sweet corn sprinkled generously with raisins and wrapped in its own skin? Well, you have to sit in a local Mexican eatery and eat with the morning chatter in Spanish surrounding you. The taste is special, I can vouch for it. And it should follow a frijole gravy... And that can follow a local pan served with a freshly made tangy guacamole with a teasing mix of finely chopped onions, tomatoes and chillies and a squeeze of lime...

And all of these can be rounded off with freshly fried churros dipped in powdered sugar and steaming hot pots of cafe olla. The Tlayudas? Get it from one of the food carts that do the morning rounds in the streets of Mexico city. They are unbeatable. Every street corner of Mexico city and Oaxaca, every evening, will have baskets full of spicy chilli peanut mixes with chapulines. Or just plain roasted spicy chapulines. These are the local grasshoppers roasted along with garlic and chilli peppers and the gusano worm larvae salt. It’s a local delicacy. You can of course go for the groundnut mixes alone if you don’t particularly favour the chapulines!

Myanmar’s sesame treat

Talk of street food and I am besieged with ‘taste memories’ of the street food of Yangon. As we walk down to the Bogyoke Aung San Market we pass through on the right with snack vendors seated on squat stools with small stoves in front of them, dispensing freshly-prepared short eats. There are small plump pieces of rice noodles sprinkled with crushed groundnuts and roasted crushed spicy sesame seeds. There is the Burmese equivalent of the samosa, cut and served with onions and chickpeas and a thin spicy gravy. Much like in India but with a slight variation.

There is the fermented tea leaf salad, Laphet Thoke, mildly sour, served with nuts and cut tomatoes and onion and sweet-sour chutney. I am reminded of the fermented tea leaves pickle served to us in Majuli, the riverine island off Jorhat, Assam. Then there are the quail eggs sunny side up with a chickpea and herbs garnish, the Mont Lin Maya. There are also sweet rice jaggery coconut appams freshly fried. There’s also the open sandwich, crisp and lacy, sprinkled hot with cut onions, tomatoes and an egg fried atop that. It is perfect!

With varied influences from Indian, Chinese and Thai cuisines, Burmese street food is perhaps one of the most eclectic and abundant in the region. And street food as always helps define the culture of a country. Stepping out from our homestay and getting into a bylane led by the heavenly smell that grabs hold of us, we come up against the tiny makeshift shop run by a couple where fresh wraps are being fried with some very interesting spicy potato filling. We aren’t able to stop at one and go on for a while.

We looked for the shop in the evening but it was not there. ‘Twas a morning special. On the narrow lane leading from the jetty on Inle lake in Shan State, Myanmar, with the sun over the horizon and fisherfolk making their way home, we get our first mouthwatering taste of the Shan Noodles soup — boiled rice noodles broth with spices, seaweed, cut onions and greens similar to Bok Choy, with and without fish sauce, to one’s taste. It’s filling, nourishing and a perfect ‘eveninger’.

A stop over at a shoreline restaurant sailing along in the Inle Lake I get my first taste of the raw tomato salad, yum makruatad keow of the region. It has a topping of crushed groundnuts. These tomatoes are grown on the organic ‘floating farms’ on the lake and have a flavour all their own.

Say Datshi in Bhutan

En route to Thimphu driving on the highway, we stop at a lone eatery. Ravenously hungry, it being much beyond lunchtime, we are told that they have some leftover red rice and the Bhutanese staple Ema Datshi on offer. Our first-ever taste of the chilli and cheese national dish of Bhutan. Ema, chilli and Datshi cheese. The taste is unparalleled.

We later, through our travel in Bhutan, get to eat the Kewa Datshi, chillies replaced by potatoes, the Shamu Datshi, with mushrooms and the Semchum Datshi with beans and Sag Datshi, with greens. But the first taste of the Ema Datshi lingers.

Walking in the brisk cold air of the early morning, the temperature around 3-4 degrees celsius, with long clean shadows on the Norzin lam, the arterial street in Thimphu, capital of the Kingdom of Bhutan, we meet a smart friendly cop on duty and get talking.

The road is clear except for a couple of vehicles. Yet, to have his morning tea, he invites us to his regular haunt. We walk down a side lane and into a small shack where we bow our heads to enter. The taller customers stand outside the entrance and their snack is passed on to them in a kind of relay till it reaches their hands. Two fat bread slices are slapped onto piping hot mirchi bajjis... Tea follows.

Hoentey, the buckwheat sweet is a festival special of the Bhutanese. It is a rustic sweet and highly nutritious. Our homestay host prepares it for us.

Roaming in Rome with gelatos

In Rome, we walk into the much-recommended Gelateria Fassi and stare goggle-eyed at the gelatos on display. Nocciola, zabaione, amarena, arancia rossa, fragola...the list of flavours goes on and on. It takes us a while before we can make up our minds. Around us are men, women and children carrying humongous gelatos to their tables drooling in anticipation...

As we take our carriable gelatos out on the evening walk along the Via Principe, relishing it and the equally enjoyable late evening air is an experience par excellence...

Cuba’s nourishing moros

In Cuba it is the Frijoles negros, black bean gravy with rice, referred to as ‘moros’. It never jades on you. Anytime hungry you can bet on this winner. Nourishing, pleasing and easy on the wallet.

Closer home...

In Sri Lanka, the customary dessert is thick curd with honey. The food is in many ways similar to Kerala cuisine. Iddi Appung (idiyappam) with veg stew in coconut milk is as pleasing to the palate as back home. There are fish and mutton variants to everything.

Pol sambol, a spicy coconut chilli and lemon mix that goes with rice rather well. Sri Lanka is a land where the coastlines fringed with beaches are for the asking. You are never far from the ocean. And that means an abundance of seafood. While there, I find surging crowds in winter months from European countries (where it is bone-chilling cold at that time of the year). With families in tow, literally living on the beaches.

Most hotels and shacks sit on the beaches. Enchanting weather, great food and the ocean at your call. And all of this for a pittance. Food is certainly a crucial ingredient of travel. It completes a sojourn. It enhances the element of adventure and therefore behoves a traveller to explore the cuisine of the land travelled to, experiment with the taste, understand the nuances and the wisdom that set it apart and not go looking for the familiar as one comes back to that anyway!