Prolog

I started my career in Mumbai in what seems like eons back. The city will always be seared in my memory for teaching the basic tenet of being a professional – being dependable. Mumbaikars will go to office in such pouring rain, that in any other city would be considered an emergency flood situation. But that is not why I remember Mumbai fondly.

Signature Foods

During one particularly lazy weekend, one of my friends told me that i have to go eat Bhel Puri at Vithal’s Bhel Puri shop near VT  - considered to be foundational to the chat phenomenon that has taken over the country. Then the list extended slowly over time to  Sardar Pav Bhaji, Haji Ali Juice Center, Karjat Vada Pav, Parsi Dairy Kulfi and so on..

Ever since, i have been on a quest to discover the “Signature Food” of every city of the world i visit. Once i went to Madurai (in Tamilnadu) and discovered Raja Barley’s Macroons – they have been making that stuff for 100 years now per the shop keeper. I was surprised to later find that many of my relatives who hail from Madurai had never heard of Raja Barley!

When we were in New Jersey, myself and my wife Priya Raju used to hunt down the signature foods whenever we could – H&R Bagels’ signature bagels, Lombardi’s Pizza…

What started this particular Signature Food trip down memory lane, was my recent visit to Pune where i made sure i brought a huge package of Chitale’s Bakarwadi. I also had a chance recently to visit Hyderabad and got the famous Karachi Biscuits for my family. Yummy stuff.

Googling

As is customary, i did some research to see if someone has talked about Signature Foods in detail. I found this excellent quiz on Signature Foods of various American Cities. I also chanced upon this nice article on the qualities of a Signature Food. On the whole, it appears, from the somewhat sparse Google results compared to other popular topics, Signature Foods aren’t top of the mind for people.

“Social” Signature Foods

As a passionate Social media advocate, i was thinking about how Social Media could make the quest for Signature Foods easier. Maybe one of the hot location startups like Foursquare, could introduce a new “Signature Food” feature, which will notify  you of the city’s signature food(s) as soon as you check-in to any location in that city. Wouldn’t that be cool?

Epilog

What are your thoughts? What are your favorite signature foods? Which cities are those from? Please chime in.

This is a follow-up to Sukumar’s post on Why can’t you make toasted bread and crisp dosas in your microwave oven?

A week ago, I saw an ad on the television about a new microwave. Whirlpool India has introduced MagiCook 22C Grey 22Ltr Convection Microwave with a Micro Tawa option, which can make a Dosa, Pizza, Parathas etc. This convection microwave uses Combination cooking method which combines traditional cooking(bottom up heating) with the microwave technology for shallow frying. For the CRISP mode, it is a combination of Microwave and Grill together, when the Tawa is set to a certain power level the active layer of the dish is uniformly crisped and browned to perfection thus creating the Maillard Reaction.

I started my research to understand the basic Oven and its types.

An Oven is an enclosed compartment used for heating,baking or drying. The earliest known ovens existing in the Indus
Valley Civilization and the proper front loading ovens were used in the Ancient Greek for making breads.

Now let’s see what is the difference between Microwave Oven, Conventional Oven and Convection Oven.

A microwave oven works by passing microwave radiation through the food.A conventional oven has heat radiating from a single or multiple sources and heating the internal area of an oven and cooking your food.

A Convectional Oven uses a fan and a heating element to create air flow patterns inside the oven, thus ensures optimum browning of the food in the fastest possible time, sealing the juices and prevents drying out of meats.

Look at the picture below, let me now tell you about a Convection Microwave.

Convection microwave ovens combine a convection cooking with microwave oven to cook food with the speed of a microwave oven and browning of the convection oven. Convection microwave ovens are more costly than the regular microwave ovens.

A convection oven will have about a 25 to 30% reduction in cooking temperature, and a 21% reduction in cooking time, compared to a conventional oven. This comparison will vary, depending on factors including, for example, how much food is being cooked at once or if airflow is being restricted by using an oversized baking tray.

Convection Microwaves were initially considered to be high-end kitchen appliances. They were more expensive than a conventional oven. Over time the price of convectional microwaves has dropped and can be bought for around the same price as a conventional microwave.

Please share your experience if you have tried it already. Does it really make good dosas and Parathas? 

Of course, all of them are common vegetables that are a part of our diet the world over. What else is common? Would you believe if i told you that all of them are the same species! Priya Raju told me this bit of amazing information. Wikipedia’s page on Cabbage confirms this. All of them are different cultivars of the same species. But then why do they all taste so different from each other? I am currently reading Jared Diamond’s brilliant book Guns, Germs and Steel and came across the answer on page 122:

Ancestral cabbage plants, possibly grown originally for their oil seeds, underwent even greater diversification as they became variously selected for leaves (modern cabbage and kale), stems (kohlrabi), buds (brussel sprouts), or flower shoots (cauliflower and broccoli) .

In other words, all of these are different parts of the same plant known to us as different vegetables through millenia of cultivation and artificial selection.

Have you ever wondered how a dosa become crisp or how a bread toast is made brown and crisp? Of course, to do any of the above no knowledge of chemistry is required. But a man named Louis-Camille Maillard in the early 20th century decided to investigate. What he discovered is so fascinating that the complex chemical reaction is now called the Maillard Reaction. In normal english, it is called browning. Heat is the key to producing the Maillard Reaction and the resultant torrent of appetizing flavors and aromas. Through this reaction hundreds of new flovor compounds are produced which give the distinctive brown color and taste of the toasts, dosas, roasted meat etc. You can read the Wikipedia page on Maillard Reaction to see how complex it is. The reason I got interested is because I read somewhere that Microwave ovens can’t produce the Maillard Reaction. These days Corning does sell a browner/crisper aid for the microwave. I have tried using this aid and it does do a reasonably good job but not as good as a gas stove. But why is it that something as modern as the microwave oven can’t produce something a common fire or a gas stove or a electric stove can produce? If someone knows the answer please comment.

Ever since I read Vinod’s post on Kakada Ramprasad, i have been wanting to go there and taste, what he described as chennai’s best badam milk. Past Sunday, got a chance to visit the place and slurp down a delightful glass of rich creamy badam milk – really very yummy.  Now, going there was a hassle (germophobes and neatness freaks may find this trip not to their taste). The narrow streets, the grime and traffic in the sowcarpet area was a bother. Kakada Ramprasad is a sweet shop on Mint Street. We found it after asking a few people around. It is 50 buildings away from the interesection with Audiappa Naicken Street (or simply Audiappan Street).  In the intersection, there is a lodge/hotel and you need to face away from it and head down Mint Street.  What a difference 20 years make? Sowcarpet and the whole Georgetown area was the place to go, whatever you wanted to buy 20 years ago. All the wholescale and major retail outlets and businesses were in this area then. Now Sowcarpet looks decrepit. Sad.

Then we went to the Triplicane area because Priya Raju wanted to check the place out. Another congested/grimy area of the city. We decided to visit the famous Parthasarathy Temple. As we parked the car, we noticed the Bharathiar Illam – the firebrand poet Subramania Bharathi’s residence converted into a museum. It has a lot of pictures of Bharathiar with fellow freedom fighters including one rare photo of Mahatma Gandhi taken in 1919. Lots of poems and letters (copies, of course) written in Bharathiar’s own handwriting. The exact room in which Bharathiar stayed also is part of the museum. It is sad that Bharathiar died at the age of 39 without actually living to see India’s independence. “Endru Thaniyum Indha Sudhandhira Dhaagam” (translation – When will this thirst for Independence be quenched?)  gives the goosebumps even today when i hear it.

After that we checked out the famous Parthasarathy Temple. It is a famous Vaishnava Temple. Couldn’t help wondering why it is not as prosperous looking as the Kapaleeswarar Temple in Mylapore?

On whole a delightful sunday.