Ashy's on-line vegetarian cookbook   more photos   recipes   stories   cartoons
© Ashy Macbean 2003. All rights reserved.

Pictures from India December 2002 - February 2003

Page 2

On the way back to Delhi from the south, we stopped off at Bharatpur for a few days. It's a fairly unremarkable town except for two things, the first of which is it's proximity to the famous Keoladeo Ghana National Park, which can be very spectacular in winter with thousands of painted storks and other water birds nesting in the trees. I say 'can be very spectacular' because it isn't always, and this year it wasn't. After a particularly poor monsoon, there was very little water in the park and consequently, very few birds.

The second thing I would remark upon regarding Bharatpur, if asked, is the fact that my friend Anil runs the Park View guest house there and is a very good cook. Here's a picture of Anil showing me how to make paneer butter masala. Being a restaurant cook, he is a very fast worker. You can see all his spice containers close to hand on the shelf above the cooker. He was shouting '..and now you add one of these, a bit of this, three or four of these, a little of this but not too much and then this..' all at top speed and half in Hindi. I got it all down though.

Here's a shot of me getting to hold the spoon all by myself. I really look as if I know what I'm doing, don't I? Anil is smiling at the camera but he only took his eyes off me for two seconds. Most of the time he was shouting, 'No, do it like this...no, too much..just a little of that..don't stir it now...quick stir it...don't let it burn..'

And here's the finished product going into a dish for Sveta and I to try. It was very good and I tried making it again on my own when we got home. I put my version on the site and here's the link again. I say 'my version' because Anil used an electric blender on his sauce and I don't do that kind of thing, but I stuck faithfully to Anil's list of ingredients.

After Baratpur, we went back to Delhi via Pushkar, but I don't have any photos of Pushkar to show you, as it is a holy town and photography is frowned upon. Not everywhere, but certainly in the areas that are worth taking photos of. You can see a picture of Pushkar Lake at sunset which I took years ago.

In Delhi, I did some shopping in Main Bazaar. You can get everying there including, the joke goes, anything you lost at the airport on the way in. In this photo, I'm negotiating the purchase of a kilo of fresh ginger. It was very fresh and the price I paid was lower than I paid two years ago. It's like that in Delhi. This guy had several different kinds of fresh chillies too, but there's only so much you can carry.

Here I am buying spices. This is a shop I go to each time I'm in Delhi. The owner has any spice you can think of and they are generally fresh. There are, of course, lots of similar shops in Delhi but this one is close to our usual hotel. As always, I had a list of spices I specifically wanted to buy but the shopkeeper managed to sell me another three or four bags of things I hadn't thought of. He's very good at that. I also got a supply of gram flour here for making pakora.

The last stop was for pickles. Indian pickles don't have vinegar in them. Instead, the vegetables are preserved using oil (often mustard oil), salt and sometimes by partially drying the ingredients. You can buy jars of pickle in any grocery shop in India, but this particular shop sells wonderful 'home made' style pickles which come in huge barrels and are decanted into jars according to customers needs. There's also a very wide variety. One of my favourites is ginger, lemon and chilli, but there's also sour mango, mixed vegetables, stuffed red chillies and my all time favourite, dry lemon. This is made without oil - only salt and spices (no chilli either).

On the way back to our hotel we met another vegetarian looking for delicacies in the bazaar. Sveta offered a banana which seemed to go down rather well. I saw someone else offering two Rupees which was also received with enthusiasm. I suppose it would come in handy for buying a couple of bananas later.

India photos page 1