once bitten twice shy

last week i got invited to a cocktail party to celebrate a engagement. Cocktails and curiosity are too heady a combination for me to resist; also not the one to let go of any party invitation easily, so i made my way to the Grand Emperor.

i am pretty good with mojitos, margeritas and the not so infrequent glass of scotch although i prefer my indigenous planters punch, call it seaman tendencies. that day i had to drive back, so i sat sipping a beer and watching people, something that i havent done in a long time.

hors de vours, canapes, tapas’ were being passed around, and i was keener than ever.
the food was interesting, but more interesting to me was that everyone around seemed to be a chef too. tortiglioni, casereccia, promodoro and some other more unpronouncable names filled the air, everyone knew how many minutes cooking required for al dente and blue cheese. no one seemed surprised about the coconut sprinked on the bruschetta though. maybe they all knew about the malayalee settlement on the italian coast, what intrigues me is the influence our kinsmen would have had over italian mammas in picking ingredients

dont mistake me, i love food and new tastes and i am very experimentative in eating, as long as someone does the cooking. From my eating experience, most of the italian has been fresh food, made with local ingredients.The essence of their food, if you ask me is its simplicity. and somehow in indianising it, we seem to missing that very essential theme.

what also i have never been able to do very well is forget the our old tastes, there have been many that have bitten the dust in this world. i am pretty sure our own indigenous and very south indian murukkus, varieties of sundal, bajjis and pakodas can give any finger food a run for their money, not to mention the slightly exotic parrupu vadai and kothu parotas. Also sure, there are enough and more from items that qualify from each nook and crany of our country.
Maybe, they are very low on the popularity charts on snob value.

the culinary invasion is changing India, the normally taste wise fastidious indians are to outdo each other in eating bad alien food. but it just might be a start and we might get discerning soon, but can we keep the flag for our own delicacies flying high??

While i wandered around looking for something to eat, there were a few more-middle aged people than me trying to figure out what the fuss was all about. you could tell they would have given an arm and a leg for bajji, sojji and some filter coffee. but thats a different discussion, and a different occasion. afterall, it was an engagement party remember?