Getting lost in the alley-ways of an Indian city like Jodhpur led us to surprising finds such as an incredible local cuisine workshop. Mad Max vibes guaranteed!
Hello fellow foodies! You’ll find this article is as rich in fried food as it is with informations.
On a huge terrace towering over the street, stands an open yard, used as a cooking workshop.
Caramel smells guided my steps, for good reason it seems, seeing the amount of food getting out of there.
Other than this - admittedly obvious - clues, nothing could prepare me to the massive, varied, food processing of the place. Only once seated do I start discovering the overall ambiance.
I greet everyone, make small talk with the workers , while they all get busy under the stern stares of their boss, who alone remains impassive towards my usually good socializing manners. That’s when I decide to start blending in.
I tried to be as discreet as my 1m84 in India would allow me. The boss remains stone cold, and I feel that despite being allowed to watch, I am not welcome here.
His son, who seems a bit more opened (at least for a short while), takes a few moments to quickly explain the whole process. A dozen men work up to 13 hours a day, 7 days a week, to keep the production going.
He then dryly hints I should stop disrupting the process any further.
I remain seated and obedient for a while, before resuming my sneaking around (Yes yes, I know it’s wrong, but...), it’s the first time I can witness the baking process of Ghevar.
In a Karhai (some kind of Indian wok), the oil is set to boil. A steady stream is poured into the Kharai until it covers all its surface. I would learn afterwards the dough is baked with wheat flour and liquid sugar.
Kharai Boiling the oil leads the - then floating - dough to the sides of the Kharai. When agglomerating, the bits end up gathering into a tick disk.
I’ve also seen it called Malai Ghevar (with milk cream), but I now know it also exists with almond and/or cardamom. Now, I would not go as far as calling it a treat...
The proper term would be filling, leaning on the stodgy side.
It’s a sweet Indian treat baked with besan (dhol flour). Droplets of dough are fried in clarified butter .
The droplets take a grainy like shape.
This little balls, sticky and crumbly, are hand molded into a bigger ball, but not before adding other ingredients, like for example raisins, almond bits or coconut.
The texture is really interesting: not giving in right away when you start chewing on it, mixed with a crumbly effect. I was really fond of it before realizing it’s fried...so long Laddu.
Unlike its western cousin, wrapped in a rice cover, the Indian samossais covered with wheat dough (sometimes spiced with cumin). The stuffing is usually spicy mashed potatoes with masala (mix of ingredients selected amongst a list of 35 spices.)
As to the vadas , those are basically donuts, only their dough includes a part of besan flour.
Of course, it’s then fried! What els...ok this joke is old now.
Sevs are mostly italian pastas, but again, baked with besan flour, and...you guessed it by now, it’s fried.
Flavored with pimento, curcuma, and coriander seed powder. As crisp as it gets, they fit very well in the addictive crackers role.
My presence (and more importantly my camera) tend to distract and amuse the workers, so I leave with my head and camera full of memories, before overstaying a welcome no one even offered!
On the way back, I stumble upon a seller baking the widespread jalebis. To add insult to a sweet injury, it’s really fat, with a caramel after taste!
We knew those already from Madagascar et Maurice..
The dough is baked with semi wholemeal flour.Fried, the cake, still hot, will be plunged into a syrup bath (the cake, right out of the oil still sports a healthy 175 to 185°C/ 347 to 365°F). The syrup instantly caramelizes around the dough, giving the donut a crispy texture, the syrup dripping inside when you happily take a bite! :) :)
Since I wasn’t too far from the neighbourhood, I decide to check back on the team to show them pictures I took with the camera, transferred on my smartphone.
The boss, still stern, is more inclined to have a chat, or as close to a conversation as gestures, a few hindi words and pictures on a phone can muster. I show him pictures of my family and of Delphine. Now he’s a bit more interested.
Milk keeps coming in, and I finally understand where all these milk shipments I kept seeing in the streets are headed. Cyclists, whose trajectory relies more on the weight of their load than on their driving skills, and 150cc motorcycles completely squished under their charge.
It’s sometimes up to 150-200 litres being moved at the same time!
The milk is steadily stirred in the Kharai until it thickens.
A lot of dairy products seem to take shape: whey, cream, cream cheese, yoghurt...clarified butter
Delphine meets up with us, and wow! now the owner remembers how to smile and feels a sudden burst of generosity: he offers us both a taste of lassi in a gilaas (coming from the word glass, but really made of stainless steel).
We can feel the soft hint of cardamom and curcuma, giving this lassi quite the perfect balance between texture and taste.
After this, we never truely managed to find lassi as good as this one. Without knowing it, this modest business owner had turned our lassi taste on its head.
We even stopped drinking it, without any kind of remorse whatsoever, just happy to look back fondly at this magical moment!
ET VOILÀ!
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