Pav Bhaji

Location: Bhuj 03/02/11

Description: This was a soft white roll filled with potato curry (tomatoey, heavy with mustard oil and slightly sweet). This was slathered with sweet chilly sauce and finished with crushed peanuts. This made for a sweet and spicy experience.

Pani Puri (Gujarati style)

Location: Admedabad 30/01/2011

Description: This snack is traditionally associated with Mumbai and Chowpatty beach but never being one to bend to convention I tried them in Gujarat. For the uninitiated a puri is a small hollow ball of batter (well in this context, as previously referred to in my post about puri and chutney they can also be much larger). This ball is filled with a potato mixture and then the wallah dips the whole thing into a peppery soup with fills the ball. This is then passed to you and you have to pop the whole thing in your mouth at once and chew. This experience was described by a friend as an extremely unpleasant alternative to oysters. Whilst I can claim to love this experience I do like the ritual of the whole thing as you stuff the whole thing into your mouth and you get a sudden explosion of spice.

Fried Snack (Namkeens I think) Samosa, methi balls, aloo & chilli pakora

Location: Ahmedabad 30/01/2011

Description: This breakfast (picture to follow) of fried snacks was both familiar and strange. The samosa was beautifully made, light and flavoured (as so much is in GJ) with mustard seeds. But paired with this was an unusual little snack that I've not seen before of methi (or sweet) balls of batter dough flavoured with coriander leaves. The meal was rounded off with what appeared to be fearsome chilli pakora which instead of being firey was instead friuty and bitter like a green pepper. This was all accompanied by salted green chillies and a cucumber salad.