Indian Street Markets
Nothing is quite as picturesque as the
Indian Street Market. Street Markets are
just about every where. Every locality
has it’s grocery shop which stocks pulses/lentils, flour, ground wheat, sugar,
washing soaps and powders, spices, oils, toiletries, matches – you name it and they probably have it!
Then there are the vegetable shops, and
most probably the butcher for mutton and chicken; utensil shops, the local
sweetmeat shop, more often than not called ‘Aggarwal Sweets.” There are cartloads of fresh fruit bought
daily from the wholesale fruit and vegetable market, interspersed with
cartloads of spices in their small sacks.
There are plastic utensil shops and stainless steel utensil shops, paint
and hardware shops, chemists, shoe shops, and ofcourse inevitably jewellery
shops all crowded together on the same road, not to mention street food
vendors. Cloth shops (yardage) and
clothes shops jostle with carts laden with glass bangles. Traffic crawls through these narrow lanes,
and brawls about the right of way. Carts
and cycle rickshaws, as well as scooters and bikes bully, push and inveigle
themselves through the most intricate snarls.
Every single vehicle on the road is marked or dented in some way, or
it’s lights have cracked glass. That’s
just the way it is – and no one is really bothered about the labyrinth effect!
Fresh vegetables are picked up by
households from such local markets in the mornings around 11 a.m. – the best
produce is available then. In the
afternoons gunny sacking is used to cover vegetable carts with liberal
sprinklings of water wetting the gunny, while the vendors siesta nearby, and in the evening after 6 p.m. is when m the
market comes really alive with raucous calls announcing prices of vegetables to passers by,
soliciting business and steadily dropping prices as the evening progresses into
early night and petromax lights come on – or strings of light bulbs stealing
electricity from nearby electric poles.
And the varieties of fresh vegetables is
incredible. Potatoes, onions, tomatoes
are the basics of any Indian cooking, combined with garlic and ginger,
garnished with green chillies and coriander (right through the winter months,
bouquets of these are put in free with
your bag of veggies.) Lemons, and
when in season, raw mangoes are ingredients for chutneys as are coconuts.
Summer vegetables include every variety of gourd, ladies fingers, brinjal, and
greens. Winter is bountiful with cauliflower, special (non-genetically
improved) sweet, red carrots; radishes red & white, every variety of
spinach and greens, turnips....no wonder India produces the best and most
imaginative vegetarian cuisine in the world!
Winter sees carts laden with a variety of toffees made out of jiggery (molasses). The jaggery is embedded with jewels of peanuts, or puffed rice; there are balls of molasses coccooning almonds or walnuts with trails of anise as the after-taste. Other carts have sacks of dry, roasted “channa”i.e. chick-peas, one of the healthiest possible snacks; roasted peanuts; starting July/August, sweet, tender corn-on-the cob roasted to perfection on live coals, rubbed with a tart lemon/salt combination. There is “channa jor garam” – pounded gram, flattened into chips dressed with hot, red chilli powder,salt and “gun-powder” (saltpetre – innocently called masala) , always sold in cones of newspaper, with the vendor ringing his bell and chanting or singing “channa jor gara” (gram very hot!) . Rich or poor, these delicacies are enjoyed by every Indian off the street, almost every day. Children feast on plastic wrapped candy floss, called “buriya ka jhaata” literally translated as “old woman’s hair”. There are melt-in-your-mouth juicy “rasgoolas”, a Bengali concoction of cottage cheese balls soaked in sugar syrup, served absolutely chilled.
There are any amount of juice stalls,
freshly churning out juices from fruit of your choice, in combinations that you
personally prefer i.e. sweet lime (mosambi) juice, orange juice, carrot juice –
combined perhaps with pomagranite juice, fresh pineapple juice with no traces
of sugar syrup, tomato juice , bhel juice – you name it, and voila, you have
it! Tell the vendor not to add ice,
though, because all water borne disease bacteria nestle in the water used to
make ice.
In winter, over-sweet sugar cane juice is
vended at every street corner, and again, carts lined with red plastic cloth
vend peeled and chopped sugar cane, so juicy, that it provides instant energy
to the most weary labourer. Who,
however, has a naturally built-up immunity to the liberally sprinkled
water-from-a-jerrycan that keeps these roundels so moist.
Then there is chaat to be had, every vendor
easily recognizable for his wares by the type of gear he carries. The “gol-gappa”man will set up his “adda”or
station at a particular time in every locality, so every one knows where to go at
a particular time. He comes along from
his own home base, with a relatively tall X shaped “moora” – a firm contraption
made of dried reeds. On his head is a
round cloth pad on which to rest his box as he travels, the box containing the
light puffs of deep fried hollow balls made either of white flour or wheat
flour. Separately he carries a concoction
of boiled potatoes and white gram soaked overnight, various masalas, and the
piece de resistance, irresistible to all teenaged girls – tamarind water laced
with spices, the hotter the better. He
rings his brass bell when he has arrived and set himself up – the announcement
that business has commenced. Pretty soon
he is surrounded by small groups, to whom he dispenses a plate made of a couple
of dried leaves held together with a local type of toothpick. He asks his customers who wants what i.e. the
puffs made of flour or whole wheat, more chillies or less chillies, and what
type of filling. The crackling dry puffs
are dispensed one at a time, with his thumb cracking a hole in the middle while
his other hand puts in the filling, then dips it in a chutney, then the
tamarind water, and puts it onto each customer’s leaf plate, who then opens
his/her mouth wide and pops the whole concoction into it, remaining total speechless while the
delectable mouthful explodes on the tastebuds.
Only then can he find his speech to ask for any variation in the mix
that is being handed out to him.
Similarly, chaat, at a chaat stall, can
consist of a “papri pakori” chaat – cool, deep-fried flour disks combined with
light balls of lentil batter which to have been previously fried, but which are
immersed in (hot) water to squeeze out the residual oil from each. This combination is dressed with yoghurt,
topped with a sweet tamarind chutney, perhaps some fresh pomegranate seeds and ofcourse masala combinations. The presentation is laid out on a small
dry-leaf platter, with another piece of dry leaf acting as a spoon (now
ofcourse paper plates and ice-cream spoons have taken over). This makes for an excellent evening snack on
the way home from work. Then there are
“dahi barras”- larger lentil dumplings with similar dressings. There is the “aloo-ki-tikki”or potato cutlets
warmed over a large flat griddle, served with mint chutney. The variety is endless. There is “Kolkatta moori”, a dry puffed
rice concoction, garnished with a salad
made of finely chopped onions, cucumber, tomatoes, grated coconut and
coriander, dressed with virgin mustard oil the whiffs of which go straight up
one nose, clearing up all sinuses! The
Mumbai version is “Bhel Puri”with additions of chick-pea straws and a sweet
tamarind chutney, combined with chilly-mint chutney, all tossed in front of
you, crisp and delicious to eat. Mumbai
also has a heavier semi-meal called “pau-bhajji” which I will translate as spiced
vegetable stew mopped up with bread buns. The South of India (east coast)
offers morning tiffins of idlis, vadas and dosas with coconut chutney , and a
red chilly chutney – steamed preparations of soaked and pounded rice, or
combinations of rice with lentils. The
North East offers momos – steamed dumplings of minced chicken or mutton, or
pork, or of vegetables like cabbage combined with carrots. And never forget the
hot samosas and delectable jalebis being made “hot, hot”(garam, garam”) all at
live counters on cold north Indian winter days!
Indian street cuisine has an amazingly vast
range, and variety. The items listed
here haven’t even touched the tip of the iceberg!
Street
food: Chaat Sand
roasted Peanuts
Dosas
Moori -puffed rice Cut fruit , veggies – best avoided.
Corn
on the cob Charcoal roasted
on hot coals, dressed with
Lemon
juice, salt and chaat masala.
Winter
toffee carts
The
paan wallah and the paan stall.
The
fine art of eating with one’s hands without implements!
Vegetables to try: In summer:Jack-fruit, bitter gourd (kerela), snake cucumber-Kakri.
Fruit not-to-miss: Lychees
in May
Mangoes, mangoes, and more mangoes.
May, June, July, August – possibly September.
Phalsas
Bhel
– the juice.
Musumbi
juice (sweet lime) possibly combined with anaar (pomogranate) …..tell the
hawker to omit the ice…the water for making ice could be conti
Jamuns
(richly purple – excellent for diabetics)
Sharifas in August (custard
apples from Hyderabad….in the old days they were transported by train in cool matkas (terra cotta jars) packed in layers of straw because they are so fragile.)
