I talked about the wonderful sweetness of Jalebi in an earlier post, but I think these golden, almost-pretzel like beauties deserved another entry, all to themselves. 

Like so many dishes in India, these sweets were almost too pretty to eat. Almost.

I'm surprised they lasted long enough for me to take a photograph.

It's always interesting to read about world cuisines, especially something as popular and well-known as street food. But I'm not convinced that Daulat Ki Chaat from Chandni Chowk is the finest street food available in India - in fact, the choice is even something of a mystery to the Delhiites that I've shown this article to. I'm sure it's worth a mention as part of a comprehensive list of India's street foods, but India's best food is its fried food. And street food, in India at least, is piping hot and if not fried - always served alongside something which is. 

Perhaps the author of this piece was trying to provide an example that was a little more out of the ordinary than samosas, naan, breads, puri and jalebi... but when they all taste as good as they do in Chandni Chowk, they definitely deserve to be noted as quintessential Indian street foods. Especially when the author is reporting from an area with a lane known as the Paranthe Wali Gali, literally: the road of fried breads.

Almost too beautiful to buy: fruits and spices for sale in the gulleys of Chandni Chowk. 

Eight of the plumpest, tastiest chicken dumplings you could imagine - from Yeti, The Himalayan Kitchen, in Hauz Khas Village, who specialise in Nepalese, Tibetan, Khasi and Bhutanese cuisine. 

They followed a complimentary plate of Bhuteko Chana (an extremely spicy chickpea dish covered in a Nepali spice mix) and preceded a plate of Jadoh, a rice and meat dish (you can choose from mutton, pork or chicken) cooked in stock with onions, spices and chillies. 

With the waiters in traditional Nepalese clothing, and Tibetan prayer flags hanging from the walls, this fifth floor restaurant perched at the very edge of Hauz Khas village and overlooking Deer Park, has the ability to make you feel as if you are up in the mountains  and not a few metres away from the Green Park traffic jams.

Pomegranate | Pune Market | India | Maharashtra (by Dan Romeo - Photographer & Traveller)

Street Food in Chandni Chowk

Chandni Chowk is in Old Delhi. Old, dirty, obnoxiously loud and almost unbearably busy Delhi. And it's wonderful. You will be shoved out of the way more times than you can possibly count over the course of a day there. And if, like me, you are so pale that you blend into the crowd with all the subtlety of a 1000W lightbulb you will be approached by someone every 60 seconds or so asking if you would like to buy a sari / peacock feather fan / small drum / map of India / string of beads... But all of that is worth enduring not only for the chance to shop in the bazaars of Old Delhi, but to eat there as well. And the street food in particular is not to be missed. 

Street food can be really tricky in India: it's prepared outdoors, cooked outdoors, and at the mercy of the flies and various other insects outdoors. No-one has any idea how long the raw materials have been sitting out in the dusty air for or what the vendor's hands may recently have come into contact with. But if you can stomach the thought of all of that or, like me, happen to have been struck down with a gastro-bacterial infection within the first week of being in India and are now immune to more or less everything nasty that may end up in your stomach, read on.

The most common street foods are deep-fried, and are cooked in pans that look like the one above: black, charred and pockmarked and the fact that they don't appear to have ever been cleaned actually seems to add to the flavour of the food. In fact, I would be a little bit taken aback to see a street vendor with a set of gleaming silver pans and utensils. It would put me off, and it would feel incredibly sterile and inauthentic.

Samosas, puri and pakora are common street food and are dishes I was familiar with before I arrived in India. Less common to a British curry lover are dishes such as pav bhajee and papri chaat which both require a curry sauce to accompany either sticky, buttery bread rolls (the bhajee) or fried, crispy discs of potato (the chaat).

Bread is also readily available with street food and cooked in a tandoor: Rolled out in front of you on a floury board and then smacked onto the inside wall of this red hot, coal-fired oven to emerge fluffy, soft and ready to mop up your sauce a few minutes later. 

And for dessert, or just for the (very) sweet-toothed among you, there is also the lip-smacking, deep-fried jalebi which, when served warm, is a syrupy, chewy, almost pretzel-shaped yoghurt and flour based batter which has been flavoured with a cardamom, saffron and rose water syrup. 

It's amazing what you can have delivered to your door in India. The number of restaurants that will deliver whatever you like - a single portion of chicken soup, a palak paneer and some roti, a McSpicy Burger and fries - in Indian cities is huge. Something which is immensely comforting to know when you're awake in the early hours of the morning with jet lag and a rumbling stomach. 

Land of milk and Chai.

Bananas, peeled, battered and deep fried in the kitchen onboard a 35 hour train ride to Goa. Every few hours someone would walk through the carriages with a fresh tray of these babies, and every few hours I would buy and eat two. So much tastier than anything I’ve ever eaten on a Virgin train, and at Rs. 15 (20p) much cheaper as well.

My favourite fruit in the world and, I think, the most beautiful. I loved seeing mounds of these ruby-red beauties all over Delhi.

A CHRISTMAS APPEAL

Where oh where can I get a pint of the black stuff in New Delhi? Does anybody know? Will I have to throw myself on the mercy of the Irish Embassy?

Something wonderful has happened: I accidentally ate a whole chilli that was mixed in with a vegetable dish I was eating the other day.

Wonderful because even a relatively spicy dish, never mind a whole chilli, would usually have resulted in watery eyes, a streaming nose, a burning tongue, a face redder than saffron and the inability to talk or eat for at least five minutes. But I barely noticed this chilli, and I kept on eating and talking, and had wiped my plate clean with a paratha before I even realised what I had just ingested.

After many perilously spicy months here, my stomach is finally becoming Indian!

Just as each ruler left his architectural mark on Delhi, so each bequeathed to it a culinary legacy.

Flavours of India

Today Naivedyam prepared the best thali that I have ever eaten in my life. And I have eaten an awful lot of thalis in my time.

Located in the first lane on the right as you enter Hauz Khas village, you can't fail to miss the exterior of this southern Indian restaurant with its jet black stairs and temple-like entrance. As you sit down you will be served a glass of clear tomato and tamarind broth, and just before you leave a beautiful tray of saunf will be brought to the table as well. Stinginess is a quality that I could never associate with any Indian, but Naivedyam's food seems to represent absolute abundance from beginning to end.

The menu is entirely vegetarian, and includes the usual dosa, uttapams, and everything else in between. But if you're interested in tasting a wider variety of Tamil and Keralan food, I would suggest choosing one of the thali dishes.

In keeping with the spirit of abundance, I ordered the Maharaja Thali - the largest on the menu, and sat back with my sweet lassi and waited for it to arrive. And what a sight it was when it did: in the different bowls on my tray were: pickles, papad (a poppadom to us Brits), chatni, sendige, curd chilly, pakoda (little fried onions with beans and potato), curd, butter milk, chitranna (mango, rice, mustard, coconut) , white rice, malabar, parantha (the breads in the middle of the tray), sambar (a vegetable stew), and a sweet, rich soup with sultanas.

Every single item was delicious, and although living with a family with roots in Mangalore and Chennai had exposed me to some wonderful south Indian cooking already, each dish was still a surprise. But, despite my delight at being able to try all of these subtly different southern dishes, the best thing about Naivedyam's thalis is that they refill each dish as many times as you like until you're full - for no extra charge to the already reasonable Rs. 260, and that includes the paratha and the papad as well. And if you ask especially nicely, it might even extend to your glass of lassi as well.

I spent my birthday this year in Old Delhi where I visited the spice bazaar for the first time. I am now head over heels for Khari Baoli, and if you know me personally and understand how important food is to me/just how greedy I am, you can probably begin to imagine just how exciting and how beautiful this little corner of Delhi seemed to me.

I bought some saffron, imli (tamarind) chewy sweets and a tava (a pan made specifically to cook roti on). I was particularly thrilled by the fact that the saffron was kept under the counter and had to be specially requested, and even more delighted by the fact that it I could buy 10g of the beautiful ruby-red strands for £15. 

More street food from another visit to Chandni Chowk. These little butter biscuits are actually cooked in the ashes in the hot pan above. Simple and sweet, and served by the handful in a little bag made of newspaper.