Ingredients:

1. 3 chicken breasts.
2. 350g Egg noodles. I used thick ones.
3. Vegetables. (I used spring onions, red pepper, mushroom, chinese broccoli and bean sprouts)
4. Spices, seasoning and condiments. (Here’s the master list: Salt, pepper, lemon juice, turmeric, fennel seeds, chili flakes, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, coconut milk, coriander, basil leaves)

Preparation:

1. Marinate Chicken breasts overnight in a mixture of: Lemon juice, salt, ginger (अालं), garlic (लसुण), turmeric (हळद), chili powder (तिखट), and fennel/anise seeds (बडीशोप).
2. Boil 1 litre of salted water and add raw egg noodles to it. Cook for a couple of minutes until the noodles are firm but not hard. Drain and wash noodles with cold water.
3. Chop vegetables of your choice. I have used spring onions, red peppers, white mushrooms, chinese broccoli, and whole bean sprouts since they were in the fridge today. But I am guessing that carrots, baby corn, bok choy, broccoli etc will also match nicely

Cooking:

1. Heat oil in a pan and fry some red onions in it until transparent. Place chicken pieces (minus the marinating sauce) and cook completely until the pieces are tender but not hard.
2. Heat oil in another pan and fry spring onions, ginger and garlic until you can smell the flavor. Throw in your vegetables and fry until they reach your desired texture. I prefer not to cook my vegetables to death.
3. Add the marinating sauce that you saved from step 1 above. Add bean sprouts and spoonful of soy sauce for flavor. Add some coconut milk and stir the vegetables in the gravy for a couple of minutes.
4. Mix the three together – Noodles, chicken and vegetables
5. Add chili flakes, salt, pepper and lemon juice. Garnish with coriander and basil.

As you saw, there is no rocket science involved here. That’s how my food looked like finally. It was not only healthy but was also yummy.

Ingredients:
- 2 Chicken breasts (I use boneless, skinless)
- half can (175 ml) Coca Cola
- 2 tsp soy sauce

Coca Cola Chicken with some fried rice

Recipe:
1. Place chopped chicken breasts in a bowl and cover them with a mixture of coca cola and soy sauce. Leave the bowl in the fridge overnight (say 8 hours) for the chicken to thaw and marinate.

2. Heat a pan and simmer the chicken in coca cola until the food is cooked (about 20 minutes).

3. Season cooked chicken breasts with a seasoning of your choice. I simply used pepper and parsley.

The chicken has a mild cola flavor and goes well with potatoes or rice. I quickly made some ginger-mushroom fried rice from leftovers. It was delicious!

Finally, whats the point of making coca cola chicken if you don’t have a glass of coke to go with it!

Fried spicy moong daal (alternate spelling: mung dal, मुग डाळ) is one of the favorite snacks that Indians love to munch as a pastime while doing nothing. It is often used to accompany alcohol drinking sessions although I don’t prefer it that way. Moong Daal is grown in tropical Asian countries: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Philippines, Southern China and Indochina. Germinated moong daal (bean sprouts) are used a lot in Asian cooking. But in this recipe, we will simply fry it the grain.

Fried Moong Daal – I love this snack

Ingredients:
Split (‘yellow’) Moong Daal, Cooking/Baking soda (Sodium Bicarbonate), Oil, Water, Salt (black salt preferred), Lemon juice, Chaat Masala (optional).

Recipe:
First, soak the moong daal for 8 hours in water and add soda bicarb to it. I kept it overnight. Dry it when done. Next, heat oil in a frying pan until it is close to smoking. Deep fry dried moong daal until the color changes and the beans look crisp. Remove the fried mung dal and spread it over a napkin to soak excess oil. If you are paranoid about too much greasiness (like me), multiple oil soaking rounds will be required.

Mix the crispy daal with salt (to taste), lemon juice and chaat masala (चाट मसाला) – if you are a fan of spiciness. Note: My mom-made-spice-mix is the best in the world, but unfortunately you cannot have it!

That’s it. Enjoy your snack – its great when you are hungry for ‘something’ but not ready for a meal yet.

Fried Moong beans – i am salivating already!

Further experimentation: Since I like roasted peanuts, I’m going to try roasting moong daal too (instead of frying it). You can try broiling it in the oven. If you do it, please let me know how it worked.

Shantanu asked me to write something about Peruvian food. Now unlike him, I am not a foodie, so I don’t really enjoy food by the same magnitude as he does. In fact, for a long time I thought that eating food is a waste of time and there must be ways to avoid it. hmm… sounds strange, I know.

Before leaving, my Peruvian friends told me that Peru is not easy on vegetarians, so I started preparing weeks in advance in Toronto by eating meat – chicken, pork, ham, various kinds of fish.. While a vegetarian guy can comfortably survive in Peru, this meat eating did help me get around.

Breakfast, lunch and dinner:
Govinda chain of restaurants which is present in almost every city. They make simple food that is fully vegetarian, nutritious and cheap – just what a backpacker needs. These restaurants are managed by Hare-Krishna (ISKON) people and if you are Indian you will get a royal treatment.

Lunch at Govinda: Mixed spicy vegetables with rice. I love lemonade. (Everything on table – $3.5)

Potato and rice is the staple diet and most meals have a potato soup, potato vegetable and even a potato dessert in a typical 3 course meal. In one of the villages I stayed, the house lady prepared lunch which consisted of about 10 varieties of potatoes – different tastes, shapes, sizes and colours. Potato is native to Peru and there are about 2,000 varieties cultivated here. When the Spanish conquerors first came across the potato, they called it ‘food for Indians and animals‘ (Indians i.e. natives). The potato has gone a long way since then.

Potato Soup

A couple of times I ate at cheap restaurants where Peruvian worker class (taxi drivers, laborers, sweepers etc. and uh, backpackers who have no money) eats, I ordered a five course meal which cost me S/. 5 ($1.6 or Rs. 60). This is extremely cheap food by Peruvian standards. The first course was a potato salad, followed by starters (fried potatoes), Potato soup, and then the actual meal was simply cooked potato’s with rice. It tasted very similar to what’s called उपासाची बटाट्याची भाजी (potato vegetable made during fasting days) in Marathi. Just when I thought this was over, they brought desserts – yes, made of sweet potato. Oh God!

Potato with rice. (5 course meal at a cheap restaurant – $1.6)

Other than that, I am big on breakfasts and I have a gigantic breakfast early in the morning. Eggs, bacon/ham, bread, butter, jam and tons of caffeine. That’s the recipe for a great day. I usually snack on some fruits – bananas, apples etc during the day which is convenient if you are traveling in a bus or a combi. It can be shared with fellow passengers and is great tool to strike conversations, afterall everyone I met loved sharing food with a foreigner. Remember to carry your own knife, always peel the fruits and never wash them with tap water.

Typical Breakfast ($2.5-$4)

Peruvian eating style is very ‘western’, probably influenced by Spanish. I never saw anyone eat but with forks and knives. Table manners are fun to watch, esp in cheap eating places – people talk loudly, call the waiters loudly but in a friendly way, share food with each other and are not overly concerned if a few bits are stuck around their lips. Tipping is not very popular except in touristic places.

Mint sauce (chutney)

Alpaca – the Andean sheep, Llama – the Andean camel and Guinea pigs are meat specialties. I had Alpaca and Llama only once and while it was not bad, there is only so much meat I can happily eat. Ceviche the seafood is something I liked a lot and is very hardcore Peruvian. Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of Llama and Ceviche dishes.

Alpaca meat. (Dinner at upscale restaurant – $6-$8)

Desserts are my weakness and cakes, pastries and icecreams are available everywhere. So are fresh fruit juice and milk shake stalls but avoid them if you are worried about your stomach.

Desserts and dark coffee – nothing like it really. (Dessert bars – $3-$5)

Street food:
There were a number of roadside vendors in most of the cities making barbecue meat or kebabs. This is hugely popular among the tourist crowd, especially the Israelis who are all over the place. I kept away from street food mostly except for Chicken kebabs until the last day when I committed the sin. Only 6 hours prior to my return flight, I ate fish on the street with a newly made friend and that was it. Within few hours, I was sick with diarrhoea and my whole return journey was ruined.

Its strange to write about food because unlike many travelers, I am not curious about food. Do let me know what you think. Maybe some day I’ll discover the joys of eating!

cheers,
Priyank.

This blog post is part of my Peru travelog series. I was in Peru for some time during Apr-May’08 and all my travel stories and pictures are recorded on this website. Please visit the Index page by clicking here to get complete Peru travelogues. I look forward to your comments. Thanks

Picture taken: May 2005, about 10,000ft in Garhwal Himalayas. Here is the travelogue of my trip.

One of the interesting things about high altitude camping is the unique taste of the food. Above the tree line, water becomes more-or-less tasteless. Since Indian cooking involves generous use of water (from stewing vegetables to preparing dough), food cooked here does tastes funny. जेवणात चव उतरत नाही (the taste doesn’t sink into the food). Even before you hit the tree-line, cooking yummy food becomes increasingly difficult.

There are other operational issues:

• Due to low atmospheric pressure, boiling point of water reduces. So, water boils at a much lower temperature, for example, at the place where this picture was taken the BP would be approximately 90° (Rambodoc would say: “Its cool to boil water”)
• The only source of ignition is firewood. The three basic factors required for a fire are – (1) source of ignition, (2) Oxygen and (3) heat. The last two being less available, it takes long time to light a fire.
• More water needs to be used to compensate faster losses (moisture in the air is very low).
• Finally, food needs to be cooked for a longer time.

Why??

Consider boiling an egg. In the plains, water boils at 100° and it takes 5 minutes for an egg to boil (assume). At 10,000 ft however, water boils at 90°, and in order to equalize the heat (calories) gained by the egg, it has to absorb heat for a longer time. The cooks that I spoke to told me that it takes 25 minutes to boil one egg (boy! thats a hard-shelled egg).

Turning up heat will not make a difference. Figure out why

Baking food needs even more care, such as leavening gases in breads and cakes expand more, or an extra egg may be required to enhance bonding and strength. I have no knowledge about cooking meat though.

Can I cook the same taste food somewhere else? I tried using Distilled water once, but thats just one factor. Perhaps in a laboratory simulation, cooking few grams of high-altitude tasting food would be possible!

Until today morning, I hadn’t eaten a bagel (I was a Bagel-virgin). I am generally fascinated by bakery products – cookies, muffins, cakes etc. There was this Bagel shop I passed by every morning and naturally I got attracted to it.

Previous week:
Toronto is usually laid back except for the morning rush hour which is very Mumbai style. So the maximum time I take to zoom past the shop was 3.2 seconds, grossly insufficient to see what was inside. Determined to investigate, last week I paused in front of it just to get a better look

“Hey there, good morning”, yelled the lady behind the counter in a machine-like tone.
“I’m just looking”, I said defensively. (Somehow I feed odd to browse or window shop)

She nodded and I started checking out. The smell was good (I’m talking about the shop, not the lady). There were round bread-like donut type objects of different shapes and colors. I looked at the price – “Single Bagel – $ 0.85.” Was it that cheap? Awesome!

Today morning:
Incidentally I woke up late today and couldn’t afford to eat breakfast. So I went to the shop and asked for a bagel.

“Bagel? Sure, what kind?” the lady said (another one today, this one had a thick Turkish accent)
“Ugh… any kind” I looked around clueless.
She simply stared at me.
“Raisin Cinnamon” I quipped (I am attracted to both).
Then she asked me something that I didn’t understand. I asked her to repeat twice. Finally she went to a toasting machine and pointed at it:
“Bagel Toast or no Toast”
“Aha! Yes Toast please” I was satisfied. She let out a grunt (probably thinking – ‘these, foreigners… can’t they learn anything before coming here?!’)

Then there was this Chinese girl in the subsequent counter. She was saying something which I didn’t understand so I presumed it was for someone else and I conveniently ignored her. After about a minute of shouting and yelling with gestures, I figured out she was indeed talking to me.
“What toppings?” (totally different accent)
I gave her the most puzzled look I ever sported. I thought a bagel was something like a cake or a muffin.
Re-framed.
“umm.. anything…”, I looked around to find an array of meat boxes and some green stuff in a corner, “Anything veggie please” (I had no intent of eating raw meat)
“Ok Lettuce? Tomato? Cucumber? What else?”
“Olives, Pickles, cheese – no not the slices, give me this shredded one” I said. This was getting confusing. What exactly was a bagel? a sandwich?
“And honey-mustard sauce, salt and pepper” I spoke like an expert.
“Here you go” she handed me a neatly wrapped pack

I proceeded to pay, but it was at the other end of the shop attended by a huge African girl.
The receipt read $4.10
“WHAT!!??” That was the scream inside my head. Thankfully I stopped converting everything to Rupees, else I’d have fainted. Externally, I just smiled at her while swearing never to come here again.
“No card, only cash” she said pointing to some obscure note on the counter. (She reminded me of Hidimba)
I paid, grabbed the change and escaped back into the crowd. Phew!

The first thing I did at work was to read what a Bagel was.
Wikipedia says: “A bagel is a bread product traditionally made of yeasted wheat dough in the form of a roughly hand-sized ring which is boiled in water and then baked. The result is a dense, chewy, doughy interior with a browned and sometimes crisp exterior. Bagels are distinct from the similarly shaped doughnuts and from the similarly textured bialys, primarily because of the cooking method amongst other differences.”

You may want to read the the (w)hole story, or bake one yourselves.

PS: This story is so unlike me. I generally don’t do anything unplanned, unresearched.