Memories of food

n;t This post is triggered from Shirsha’s question “do you have memories of taste?” I have the weird memory system. I never know what will be correlated with what. I have vivid memories of smell, like I had posted here. So is true about taste/food. I like to call them memories of a die-hard foodie.

Like with the book I read, autobiography of famous Marathi writer P.K. Atre(fondly known as ‘Acharya Atre’) called “Karheche Pani”, huuuuge book, I remeber taste of ginger. I read that book during summer vacations of 7th or 8th class along with ‘aalepak’. This is an interesting thing made of ginger + honey, to be eaten as mouth freshener. My aunt had got loads of packets for us. And I had them accompanying me all the time while reading the book. Whenever I see that book, the gingery taste lingers on my tongue. Yeah… I like ginger and garlic too, they are regular performers in my food preparations. Do you know that garlic is very good for heart patients (or people having hypertension problems) and they are advised to have it raw? And plain daal with garlic tadka in ghee tastes heaven :-). We are digressing here... no !

Another taste one is the sweet-sour taste of pani-puri (aka gol-gappe, puchka) that we used to feast on during college days. None makes pani-puri like that guy makes, puries stuffed with cooked black chana and filled with cool sweet water plus sour liquid with hint of pudina… yum! The sour taste is overpowering but the sweet would play little games with the tongue. I still remember that taste! I haven’t tasted pani puri like that anywhere else. There were days when we had only pani-puri for dinner. Or hint of dinner and loot of pani puri. Sometimes we would carry them all the way to hostel. Now I must tell you how far this place was from our hostel, it was like going to other town altogether. My college was some 20 + km away from that place. The best way to get there was the college bus which was available only when we were toiling (??) in college. Otherwise we would have to share auto ride and change at least 3 autos (yeah autos used tun like city-buses. ‘We will go only from this point to that… aana hai to aao nahi to jao’) which would cost around 12 to 16 bucks one way. (It was very very big deal for us those days). So we had to spend around 25 to 30 bucks to have pani puri worth 10 max 15 rs. And we had the back-to-hostel-by-7:30 restriction so we were always in short of time. Many times couple of us would go to get pani puris for all of us. Best part used be when we would gulp on the pani after having pani puris. It would burn our throat, bring tears to eyes but we were not the ones to give up. I still can picturize 5 of us huddled in my room, using paper as carpet, the paani-puri stuff spread all over and gulping down puris one after another.

Ahhh… those were the days. Another food thing I remember from college days is the yummiest tandoori-chicken. Yeah yeah yeah… I was non-vegie once upon a time and tadoori chicken was my beloved dish. Studying in a city with abundent Punjabi peoepl, we had access to most amazing Punjabi food. There was a dhaba called A1 tandoor which served best of all tandoors better than any of the 'star'y hotels around. One fine day me and a roomie decided to have chicken and ventured our way to it. With full josh we ordered for full plate of tandoor, chicken 65 and rice. The tandoor was really really huge. We were hell bent on not wasting single piece of it and ended up eating for hours to finish the tandoor. Not to mention we skipped food for next two days. Tandoor smell always reminds me of that session.
There were couple of dhabas behind the Gurudwara which served thick Punjabi parathas. One paratha would be enough for a meal. But the taste I remember more is the chai they served. They would give it in big lassi glasses, made with more milk and boiled a lot. It had the dhaba smelll… I want that chai!

Another weird memory is of the aloo sabji. In Mumbai, we used got dabba(tiffin) in office. Our dabbawala was very fond aloo (like all other mess-walas). He used make boiled potato sabji, the way we make for masla dosa, but with less spices. So it tasted like boiled potatos with salt and oil. Guys called it masala sabji and always used to joke that this guy wants to give us joy of having masala dosa.

Well... I can go on writing forever about these foodie memories. May be some other time :-)