Food tastes best when ......

Recipes, Cooking tips and maybe some 'Home Made' secrets !
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fabindia
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Food tastes best when ......

Post by fabindia »

.... eaten in the place it comes from.

I was thinking about this when writing my post about chapatis. We've been to lots of India restaurants in UK and mostly the food isn't that special, and almost without fail, the chapatis are terrible. Here in India, the chapatis just taste excellent - even the rather rough looking ones prepared by hand (no rolling pin or the like) and cooked over an open fire when we were in the desert.

There's probably a lot of psychology in how food tastes. You've probably noticed this yourself; Germany white wine tastes best overlooking the Rhine, French cheese tastes fantastic on a warm evening in the south of France (it goes without saying accompanied with a glass French red wine) and Guinness tastes best in a pub on a cold winter's evening in Dublin with an Irish band playing.

And of course, there is only one place to eat a decent chapati and curry ......

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Homemade Shahi Paneer with Dal and Chapatis - not quite round but not too bad either
Michael
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albertajune
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Re: Food tastes best when ......

Post by albertajune »

)like(
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Richard
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Re: Food tastes best when ......

Post by Richard »

Indeed I agree.
I've never been to India, but my experiences with food in Nepal were all great.

Maybe it's that most Indian Restaurants here are run by Bangladeshi's, so may have a slightly different taste.

I don't drink now, but I way preferred German Beer in Germany compared to here and the Wine from the Farm next door to my second wife's Father's house was out of this world.
You could almost stand a spoon up in it.

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manda
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Re: Food tastes best when ......

Post by manda »

Yes ...Yes !!!

There is nothing like something as simple as a Greek salad sitting on a Greek island ..it's never the same at home.
I even think picking fresh oranges that have just arrived off the truck gives them a whole different taste to buying them from the store.

I've never been to India (bucket list destination for sure) but given my love for indian food (I try to use recipes I've found off the net from Indian recipe sites I've always looked forward to the experience of eating the food in the country but that has only been reinforced by you :-D
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saint-spoon
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Re: Food tastes best when ......

Post by saint-spoon »

I have travelled extensively in my years and mainly away from the touristy bits. Simple things like tapas in a dockyard taverna in Cadiz dock, humus and flatbread on a roadside by the dock in Haifa, grilled jerked fish in the Caribbean, a bag of North Atlantic prawns straight out of the boiler on Norwegian trawler. Magical memories. In Vietnam they have Pho which is their national dish, a sort of consume with noodles and bits of fish or meat and vegetables, I used to have this at least twice a day, every day when I was working there (including every breakfast). My favourite was the one with flakes of dried fish in it.
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saint-spoon
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Re: Food tastes best when ......

Post by saint-spoon »

Ooooo, I nearly forgot, sheep brain soup in Osaka Japan, fantastic stuff (didn't know what it was until after we had eaten it, delicious and very lamby. And the chilli beef noodles I used to get regularly from a tiny street restaurant in Hong Kong back in '90, the Chinese in China doesn't resemble the western version at all.
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fabindia
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Re: Food tastes best when ......

Post by fabindia »

Lunchtime today we wandered up our back lane, no more than 800 metres, to this street food joint. We ordered two dosa masalas. The cost for the both? About 90 UK pence!

If this was in UK of course this place would be closed down. Let's put it this way it won't win any of those hygiene stars you see in UK. The place is dusty and you sit at a scruffy table on grubby stools. But as with many things here in India, you pay your money and take your chance. All I would add is they tasted amazing :-D

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Meanqueen
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Re: Food tastes best when ......

Post by Meanqueen »

Some of you must be very brave to eat strange looking food in a different country, I couldn't do it. 'Scruffy table, grubby stools, in a dusty place, take your chance', no thanks very much. Give me home cooked from my own kitchen every time. I'm not very adventurous where food is concerned.
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manda
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Re: Food tastes best when ......

Post by manda »

Some of the best food I've ever tasted was in a Taverna high up in the hills in the backyard of a family who wouldn't have scored stars in any way shape or form. The eating area was under grapevines in the back yard, the plastic table cloths had seen better days ..the food was however amazing and their kitchen was clean (maybe not clinically clean) - hey they were eating out of it so it was good enough for them..good enough for me.
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(¸.✰´¨(¸.✰ Manda

Living our version of the Good Life with 4 dogs, 6 cats, a cow, a few sheep, Angora Goats and ???? chooks.
Don't get your knickers in a knot..it solves nothing ~ just makes you walk funny
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