Beverages

In North India, lassi is the most popular drink may it be sweet or salty, made from yoghurt. The south and the west offer fresh coconut. Cold coffee, hot coffee or tea is available in all the parts of India, as Indians have tea at any time of the day, but coffee is more popular in south. Fruit juices are available fresh and also in bottles or packs. Liquor stores abound in major cities.

Indian Breads

India offers a variety of breads like roti, parantha, puri, nan etc there are over 50 varieties of them you name it and you have it and all of them have a different taste.

The commonest bread is the chappati or roti as usually called, which you can see Indians making in any odd corner over angithis or chulhas using wood or charcoal. Basically, the chappati is just flour and water dough rolled very thin and cooked like a pancake on slow heat. These are hot and fresh and you can eat several of them with your vegetable or meat curry.

A richer version of the roti is the parantha, which is cooked with butter. It comes out soft and delicious. Indians also make paranthas stuffed with potatoes or other vegetables. Stuffed paranthas are complete meals and are eaten with plain yogurt and pickles or even with ketchup.

Puris are made from the same basic dough rolled out thin and round with a wooden roller and deep fried in clarified butter or vegetable fat. Similarly, a hot bread made of slightly different dough is called a luchi in Calcutta.

In the south dosa and idli substitute for bread. Papad, spiced with pepper and aniseed, go with every meal. They taste very good when served hot from the oven. They go better with drinks also.

Dessert

India is a country of sweets, and Indians, if they can afford, would like to have sweets with almost every meal. Each region has its own specialties. Basically, various regional recipes are different forms of rice puddings, milk puddings, vegetables & fruits dipped in sweet syrup. Besides, there are varieties of milk -based Barfis and pastries. Combinations of all these offer hundreds of varieties. These are decorated with raisins, almonds, pistachio and the like.

Some other popular Indian sweets are :-

Kheer, Halwa (pudding), Rasgulla (spongy cheese balls, dipped in sugar syrup), Gulabjamun, Rasmalai, Sandesh and many more. Different flavours of Ice creams can be availed of in any part of the country. Well known brands of ice-creams are Kwality, Gaylord, Vadilal and Dollops. 'Kulfi' is the Indian version of Ice-cream.

Most Indian sweets are made by boiling down milk to remove the moisture. It is called khoa. Adding butter, sugar and many other flavours, these are turned into barfi, malai, kheer, rasgulla and sandesh.

As the meal comes to an end there is this item 'Paan' which is a betel leaf wrapped around a variety of ingredients. The paan-seller is to be found in every nook and corner of not only cities and towns but even in villages and other smaller places. He is omnipresent in the sense that one can find a paan shop at railway stations, outside the theatres, or bus stops. Every paan seller has his special recipe to make. There are as many styles of paan as the states of India but the one made in betel leaf is more popular as it is concidered to be digestive. You may try one if you do not mind your lips coloured in blood red. There are lots of varieties of paan but four famous varieties of paan are Banarasi, Calcutta, Meetha and Sada.

The variety of refreshments available is as diverse as the country itself. Each region has its typical and local speciality but some common features are that they are ususally spicy, easily available, and inexpensive. The most popular and commonly known is 'chat', a spicy mix of different ingredients, topped with tangy chutneys (sauce). Indians are very fond of chat and it is available across the country in one form or other. 'Bhel puri' is type of chat famous in Mumbai. Chinese Food is very common and easily available in major cities. Delhi, Mumbai and other big cities have very good Chinese restaurants. For those who do not relish spicy flavour, do not get disheartened, there is a choice of sandwiches, pancakes, burgers etc. available as well.

Some other well known snacks which can be savoured are:-
'Samosa' 'Pakoras' 'Alu Tikki' 'Kachori' (very common in Uttar Pradesh) 'Pao Bhaji'(very common in Maharashtra) 'Gol Gappa' 'Dhokla' (very common in Gujarat) To relish these snacks, one should develop the taste for them.

There is a whole range of curry dishes from different parts of India each having its own distinct flavour as for the matter of convenience, we can broadly divide Indian food into four different regions -- North, West, South and East. Food in India has now become an All -India affair. One can eat any kind of regional food in major cities of India.

North India

In North India, there is abundance of meat, vegetables, almonds, dairy products, chilies and wheat therefore, we find people have a preference for wheat bread in the shape of nan, roti, puri or parathas. Contrary to the belief North Indians are meat-eaters, a meat dish is only an additional dish while a vegetable curry and dal (lentil curry) are generally a must in a total meal served in an Indian home.

Cooking medium in the North is pure ghee (clarified butter) though it is now used sparingly due to its high price. Other vegetable fats are now more commonly used as cooking media. North Indian cooking is the most succulent in India. The Mughlai food, associated with northern India, derives its name from the influence of Muslims. Bread is more commonly eaten than rice. The omnipresent chappati is the common man's fare, Nan is kind of a luxury and goes well with tandoori food. Another variety of bread is parantha, a rich bread of wheat flour made with clarified butter. It is tasty and soft.

Foreigners are familiar with India's tandoori food as most Indian restaurants overseas serve it. Tandoori chicken or mutton is a barbecued food, which is spiced and marinated in yogurt for a few hours before it is cooked. Tandoori chicken with Nan, green salad and a dessert is really the food for a maharajah. Foreign visitors to India cannot resist its temptation. It is not overly spiced and is nearest to western cooking.

Delhi is also popular for kababs, they come in many varieties, some of these are: Boti Kabab, Reshmi Kabab, Pasinda Kabab, Seekh Kabab, and Shammi Kabab. The last one made with a spiced paste of ground meat mixed with spices and fried over a low fire.

The other delicacies of the Northern Indian cuisine are biryani, which is a dish of rice saffron and marinated lamb or chicken. Pulao is a slightly less complicated version of biryani. There is another exciting version -sweet pulao-made with rice, coconut, Almonds, mangoes and papayas. If you are not eating Tandoori dishes of mutton, fish or chicken, other choices are Rogan josh, lamb curry, Kofta, Korma, or Dopiaza. Dopiaza is made with lots of onions. Korma, is particularly rich and Koftas are meat-ball curry. Koftas come in many forms. The large ones are stuffed with boiled eggs.

Accompanying the North Indian meal well be a small helping of dal (lentil soup). Options for vegetarians, there is a choice of paneer (cheese), Sag paneer (Cheese with spinach), Bharta, a delicious vegetable made from egg plant and several other curry dishes combining cauliflower, potatoes and other vegetables. Cauliflower and cheese dishes are also cooked in a tandoor. The dessert often made is Kheer, firni (pudding) or halwa. Kashmiri food has also been influenced by Mughlai food. It has more varieties of meat dishes. There is plenty of lamb in Kashmir. Kashmiri food is a little more spicy than the typical North Indian dishes.

Tea time snacks include stuffed pastry, samosas, fritter-like pakoras and any number of sweets made from milk paste, i.e. Rasgulla, Gulab Jamun or Barfi.

Western India

In this part of India rice is the staple diet. As fish is plentiful most dishes revolve round this raw materials. Food in Mumbai is different from food in the rest of the country may be because of the presence of small but influential communities of Parsis and other minorities like the Sindhis, Punjabis, Goans and Khoja Muslims.

Dhansak, a contribution of the Parsis, is a dish made with chicken or lamb and cooked with generously spiced puree, on a mixture of lentils and vegetables. Dhansak is served in many restaurants of Bombay, specially on Sundays.

The Portuguese influence is evident in Goan cuisine. One of Goa's best known dishes is Vindaloo chicken, pork or fish cooked with spices and vinegar. Unlike other Indians, Goans eat a lot of pork and Vindaloo is often cooked with pork. Their fresh sausages have also a special taste. They also eat a lot of fresh seafood.

The Sindhis, who migrated from Sindh in Pakistan, has brought their own cuisine, it is very popular and is more often meat based. Bombay Duck is the nick name of a seafish, very tasty when curried or fried.

The Maharashtrians and the Gujaratis, the original natives of this region, have their quota of meat-eaters, but the majority of them are vegetarians. Their cuisine involves subtle spicing and light cooking using sprouted lentils. Gujaratis favour sweet and sour dishes. People in the western region eat, both wheat and rice, though more rice than wheat.

South India

South is predominantly vegetarian except places on the coast. A whole lot of vegetarian cuisine has been developed over the centuries. There is so much of variety that a visitor is dazzled by the choice offered to him. South Indians eat a lot of rice as For vegetarians, south India is a heaven. Their vegetarian food provides a lot of variety especially the Brahmin cuisine, which is different from the non - Brahmin food. An orthodox South Indian Brahmin is a strict vegetarian steering away from even garlic, onion and tomatoes. Tamarind grows here and so do chilies. Coconut is freely available. And the lentil that grows here is 'arhar', a yellow lentil, it is a combination of this with tamarind, spices and vegetables which makes Sambhar their staple dish and is eaten twice a day, Rasam (Mulligatawny) is a lentil - based soup, taken at both lunch and dinner. A typical meal in the South consists of sambhar, rasam, two or three vegetable preparations, often cooked with grated Coconut and yogurt and eaten with boiled rice.

However, the most popular dishes that have come out of the South are dosas and idli and dosa eating joints can be found as far in the Himalayas as Leh in Ladakh or in Sikkim, Bhutan and Kathmandu. Both are made with a mixture of ground-fermented rice and dal. They are served with Sambhar and Coconut chutney. Dosas are griddle-fried pancakes; idlis are more like steamed cakes, prepared in a specially casted vessel. Though there is a measure of similarity between the foods of the four states of South India, but the cuisine of Hyderabad. Typical Hyderabadi food has Muslim overtones and includes dishes like Baghara baigan, a distinctive dish of mutton. The biryani in Hyderabad also tastes different.

East India

In Bengal, food has a tendency to be sweet and depends on rice as the mainstay of the meal. Catering is perhaps the most serious business in the life of a Bengali. The first thing he does in the morning is to shop for food and vegetables.

For most Bengalis, seafish is infra-dig. Their preference is for fresh water fish, fortunately there is an abundance of it in many homes in rural Bengal having their own fish ponds. Mustard seeds and mustard oil are generally used in cooking their fish dishes. Bhetki, special fish of Bengal, specially lends itself to Western style of cooking and is recommended while you are in Calcutta.

If Bengali's first love is fish, then without doubt the second is sweets. Special and typical sweets that come from Bengal are Sandesh and Rasgullas, made in different ways from cottage Cheese. One notable exception is misti doi (sweetened yogurt). Bengali cuisine is unique in India where plain yogurt is missing.

Traditionally sweets are prepared at home. However due to the pressures of modern life this has now changed so that it is only on special occasions that sweets are prepared at home. Otherwise they are bought at a confectioner and this goes for misti -doi also.

If the preparation of food is important to Indians, its presentation is no less significant. Traditionally Indian food is served either on a well washed large banana leaf or in a thali (large plate made of brass, steel or silver). On it several katoris (little bowls) are placed to hold small helping of each dish. Porcelain plates are a Western innovation which was introduced in affluent Indian homes in recent years.

The most commonly used spices and herbs in Indian cooking are asafoetida (hing), cardamom (elaichi), clove (laung), cinnamon (Dalchini), cumin seeds (jeera), corriander (dhania), garlic (lahusan), ginger (adarak), turmeric (haldi), green/red chilly (mirch), aniseed and various peppers.

Turmeric is used almost in every dish as it helps to preserve food and gives the dish a pleasant, natural yellow colour besides it also has digestive properties. Ginger is considered good for digestion and many people like it not only in their food but also eat it as a salad and also in tea with tea masala. Coriander seeds or leaves (for garnishing) are used in most Indian dishes as they have a cooling effect on the body. Cardamom is strong and sweet, it has a nice flavour and is used in most dishes and curries, also helps in digestion. Saffron, the most expensive spice, presents a large effect and fragrance with a little quantity. To produce one pound of saffron, several thousand flowers are needed. It is grown in the valley of Kashmir and is used for its flavour.

Mustard, cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, cloves, poppy and caraway seeds are also used in Indian dishes. Masala is the name given to a blend of many spices. It may be dry or in a liquid paste. Garam Masala is a blend of fragrant spices only, it can be prepared in advance and stored. Now a days, various blends of packed Garam Masalas are available in stores. The packet tells you for what kind of dish it can be used. The Garam Masalas generally contain cinnamon, cloves, cumin seeds mace, coriander seeds, nutmeg, and black pepper.