Better Half Gujarati Movie Free Download
Latrisha Adan
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Vir Sanghvi has written a really interesting article in the Hindustan Times on Gujarati food which underlines why I think he's probably the best regular food writer in India. I really like this one because I'm half Gujarati myself and have shared Sanghvi's mixed feelings about Gujarati food.
I have eating the most amazing Gujarati food, both in homes and in some of the excellent thali places in Mumbai. It can be so good, and Gujaratis really obssess about their food so much (as opposed to, say, Maharashtrians who never seem to particular like eating all that much) and they have the money to really spend on their eating and there at least they do not stint. And yet...
Well, Sanghvi spells out the problems with Gujarati food and also does full justice to its outstanding qualities - its relatively light use of oil and masalas (this applies to home-cooking, restaurants go overboard on the oil. I simply cannot eat oondhiyoo in restaurants, while I adore it when made in homes), its wonderful way with vegetables and, a really excellent point, that makes SO much sense, its appreciation of the importance of contrasting textures in food.
I am always accused of being insufficiently respectful to the cuisine of my forefathers. A month ago, Rajiv Desai, a fellow Gujarati, berated me for daring to suggest that the food of Gujarat would not make the first division in a listing of global cuisines.
It's always too sweet, there is a hint of sugary aftertaste to virtually everything you eat except for the breads. All those vegetable dishes mentioned, the shaak, eseepecially the kadhis - it all has been sugared.
This is so true, and we've been discussing this on another thread - the brown/yellow/green glop nature that makes photographing (north) Indian food difficult. But I am just tasting (mentally, alas) Gujju dishes I've eaten in the past, and Sanghvi is so right, the textures are always an important element. Like the slightly slippery pasta quality of dhal dhokli, or the the soggy lightness of kanji-vadas, or above all, oondhiyoo, which is basically all about sealing a bunch of veggies with contrasting flavours and textures in a pot and then cooking it while tightly sealed (in the villages they put the pots in hay and set fire to the hay). So you get the mealiness of kandh (purple yam) with the squashiness of aubergines with the firm little flat beans with the muthiyas (dumplings) and the raw bananas, cooked to softness, all mellowed while cooking by the garlic chutney. Bliss! And unfortunately a winter dish, so many months to go.
The point of a farsan is only partly its taste. It derives its place in the thaali from the texture it adds to the total meal. Whether you eat puris or rotis with the shaak (the Gujarati word for sabzi), you need something that is firm and starchy to complement those textures. Farsan fills that slot.
This is also very true, although the practice can be a real pain to do. Gujarati Jain's reinforce that by going into the cutting of vegetables in their usual, slightly obsessive way. Their principle is that their commitment to not killing animals extends eve to the tiny ones you sometimes see in fruit and veggies. I remember seeing a Gujju Jain friend of the famly sitting in his kitchen one day, painstakingly slicing his way through a pile of cauliflowers so as not to kill the really tiny insects that burrow their way in. A big pile of cauliflowers was soon reduced to tiny florets and stem shards. And when cooked, they were done almost at once and had such a wonderful, fresh taste.
And that goes for me too! In general I like Gujju food a lot, but there are many items I don't like much and feel no loss in avoiding like I've done since I was a boy. Tinda. for example - small little gherkin like gourds, or the shrikhand that Sanghvi attacks a little later, and I'm all for that too, shrikhand is just too creamy and sweet.
it seems to me that sanghvi (at least early on) is setting up an opposition between gujarati home food and punjabi "catering" food. it may well be that punjabi home-cooking has all these elements of texture etc. that he bemoans in the wedding reception cuisine. certainly almost everything he says to this effect about gujarati food is true about bengali food (doesn't make sense to distinguish much between bengali home and restaurant food). texture, light cooking, a balance of sweet, spicy and sour flavors--all these things obtain in bengali food, and i suspect other indian cuisines might make the same claim.
and what's wrong with behala? calcutta snobbery about these suburbs is not unrelated to the fact that they often had large populations of east-bengali refugees. i'm not sure where sanghvi comes by his.
For starters, he refers to Punjabi cuisine as though it is the hallmark of all things 'North Indian". Passing references are made to Rajasthani cuisine. What about Kashmir, Haryana (not a very popular state it seems), Himachal and UP?
For a start, we actually eat vegetables. We are not like Punjabis who eat paneer and alu. (Paneer, I am proud to say, is unknown in the land of Gandhi and Sardar Patel.) Nor are we like Rajasthanis who make wadis out of daal and aata and pretend that they are vegetables.
Case of give the dog a bad name. why not paneer i say? well made paneer has a texture all its own. ever tried tari wala matar paneer? or paneer bhurji - with onions, tomatoes, green chillis, turmeric, salt and a squeeze of lemon? my friends from the south and west, have some sort of a chip on their shoulder about paneer.
Then, we cut our vegetables small. When I first went to school in north India, I was horrified by the size of each sabzi. In Gujarat, cauliflower was cut into delicate bite-sized portions. >>>>>>>>>>>
I adore Gujarathi food too - I love its simplicity, the textures, everything about it that the article describes so well. But I have to agree with Bhelpuri on the sweetness issue. I have eaten some fabulous Gujarati food with no hint of sugar in it. But most of the times, I find everything sweetened too much to my taste. In one of the homes, all the vegetable dishes were sweeter than the kheer I normally make ! It made me wonder if the kids could ever learn to love savoury food.
Last week one of the top Indian chefs in London said to me "Gujarati food -- that''s the real Indian food. " I totally agree. It will be interesting to see whether these upscale Indian restaurants start adding real Gujju dishes to their menus -- not just horribly overpriced bhelpuri.
So the sweeteners in the Gujarati food, does it cause issues with tooth decay in kids and adults if most things are sweet, or are there other things done to the food which mitigate or prevent cavities?
First, Gujju thali places in Bombay. My favourite one at the moment is Friends, Union Joshi Club, popularly called FUJC (and that name sounds a little less odd when you realise its a literal translation of Joshi Mitra Mandal). Its a simple, but excellent place (and also very well priced). You have to go down the Kalbadevi Road and if you're coming from the Crawford Market side it'll be on the right hand side, on the first floor of a building.
After that Rajdhani near Crawford Market and, er, that's about it. Chetna is too heavy (though admittedly delicious), Samrat, Panchavati Gaur and Golden Star too pedestrian and Thacker's (upmarket one near Marine Lines station, corner of road to Metro) is just ridiculously rich, they don't use milk when cream will do.
Also it makes me shed bitter tears for the long lost and wonderful Sri Thacker Bhojanalaya in the back lanes of Kalbadevi. I have recently been told that this has restarted but I've been reluctant to go and check since (a) my cholesterol levels are too high and (b) I did try once and found that there was a pathetic excuse for the old one which was being run the old owner's son, and it was the best proof that culinary skills aren't genetic.
I don't know about tooth decay, but diabetes rates in Gujarat are soaring. In its current form it is really not a very healthy cuisine (and you can see why Parsi cuisine is REALLY unhealthy, since to Gujarati food, its adds lots of rich meat and egg dishes). And yes, there's too much besan eaten.
I do say in its current form, because one can see how orginally it wasn't that rich. As Sanghvi notes it goes easy on the oil and it also uses lots of wholegrains, in particular jowar. Gujarat borders on the deserts of Rajasthan and parts like Kutch are quite barren, so the food was originally quite simple and healthy.
But as Gujaratis have prospered with trade, they have spent their money on food and don't stint on the rich and sweet parts. Its a defining characteristic of Gujjus to do whatever they do to excess. Lots of Gujju food today is simply too rich, which is why I'm ambivalent about it.
I concede the point on Bengali food and this isn't just from a desire to co-opt Mongo. I did think while reading Sanghvi's article that Bengali food was another example where extreme care was taken in cutting ingredients into small sizes - if anything, it goes even further, because there are all sorts of obsessions about the precise shapes and sizes in which different veggies have to be cut for different dishes. And what's wrong with Behala? Well, maybe nothing much, but please try and find many things to say in favour of this, or any of the other ramshackle neighbourhoods all the way down the Diamond Harbour Road?
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