PrintGrocery Ninja: Chaat, Moochers, and Some Pretty Radical Ideas
The Grocery Ninja leaves no aisle unexplored, no jar unopened, no produce untasted. Creep along with her below, and read her past market missions here.
So I've been peeking into other grad students' offices and using this column as a way to not look like the resident moocher. (You know, the guy who wanders around the office cadging a fistful of chips here, a cookie there, and when you ask him why he doesn't keep food in his own cubby, his response is always to pat his tummy and say: "Oh, I couldn't... I'd polish it off in seconds!" before reaching around you for an extra caramel.)
Anyway, a new discovery I've made: The leverage you get when you've got a professional-looking SLR on your arm is considerable. It's like, "Oh, look at your spiffy camera! I see you are on a quest to further the bounds of human knowledge. Here, try this x-y-z I traded a monk my GPS in Timbuktu for, carted back via camel, and smuggled through customs!"
Anyway. The one thing grad students, especially international grad students, can always be counted on is to have food in their office. And it doesn't matter how busy they look, they're always happy to talk about food from home.
On this week's "rounds", I strolled by the computer science department with Indian "snackythings" in mind (my colleagues in the English department tend to guard their animal crackers and fair-trade chocolate rather zealously), and literally walked into an impassioned debate on chaat.
Rhyming with knot, chaat (from what I could gather among the flurry of voices) is India's fast food. Street vendors hawk a variety of fried dough-based snacks—samosas, puffs, patties, fritters, rolls, you name it—which go to filling rumbling bellies any time of the day. Prepped as you wait and usually handed over in a banana-leaf bowl (now, how's that for ecologically sustainable?), each city has its own specialty and, of course, legion of devoted fans. Similar to how most of us hold our grandma's chicken soup as the ultimate in chicken soup experiences, chaat-lovers, I've learned, are extremely vocal about the superiority of their favorite vendor's offerings.
In this case (unfortunately), I was not promptly shuttled around to various chaat stands in some wondrous Indian city so as to act as unbiased taste-tester. I was, however, offered handfuls of snackythings—and while I loved the homemade cashew chikki (a stick-to-your-teeth brittle made with jaggery), crispy murukku (coiled, bean and rice flour "chips"), and wispy sev (fried, tumeric-stained "vermicelli" made of chickpea flour), I had to fight to keep from inhaling the moong dal—green beans that had been skinned, split, and roasted. Almost like Rice Krispies but with more body—deliciously nutty, not too salty, and very, very moreish, I was assured it was "very nutritious." And while I'm convinced all that protein will grow me more muscles (or some such), you have to be careful about serving sizes when eating stuff with foreign labels—several oceans away, they have pretty radical ideas about them.
Fortunately, thanks to my ability to read Hindu-Arabic numerals, I managed to decipher "10g" right on top, followed by a "3g" below.
Me: "That's not 3 grams of fat for every 10 gram portion, is it?"
Them: "Nah, it's probably just a typo—you know, copywriter left a zero out somewhere."
Me: "OMG. That's 3 grams of fat, right there. I've had like… 10 handfuls, at least!"
Them: "But it's good, no?"
By this time, I had started running on the spot. But yeah, it's good. Really good. And I'm sure it's just a typo.
About the author: Wan Yan Ling is an impoverished grad student and sourdough finger-crosser living in Rhode Island. She can usually be found in the kitchen procrastinating on "real work" or online tracking down obscure recipes. Ling thinks eating alone is no fun, and she still believes in hand-mixing.
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3 Comments:
I never met a chaat I didn't like. I've used the "hot mix" at parties, and it causes panic - people either flee in horror or shove others out of the way to scarf down more. I do add a few more raisins or dried cranberries, just because that sweet-spicy-hot thing is The Best.
lemons at 8:55PM on 10/15/07
The fried snackies you mentioned are NOT chaat. Chaat generally refers to a mixture of sev, puffed rice (mumra), or chickpea flour chips mixed with any/some/all of the following: yogurt, tamarind chunney, green chili and cilantro chutney, chickpeas, potatoes, tomatoes, pomegranate seeds, green apples, cucumbers, sprouted mung beans, red onion, fried okra, and about a billion other things.
That being said, Indian fried snacks are awesome. I hate fried foods, but I can't say no to murukku.
charm city cupcake at 12:16AM on 10/16/07
hmmm.... okay, I just polled a grad student office of 6 Indian computer science engineers. 4 of them feel the Indian snackythings fall under "chaat" because they view all snacks as chaat. Another 2 are with you charm city cupcake. I guess the answer may depend on how homesick you are!
onedaylingers at 10:17AM on 10/16/07