It's lunchtime and..

I'm going through all the blogs that are listed on the right hand side of this post (*gestures with Vanna White-ish motion towards list*). I find that my friend from college Hob Gadling very kindly tagged me on the 20th of December and true to my procrastinating self, I'm only getting around it today.. almost a month later. Sounds about right eh?

So here goes...drumroll please (I'm suffering from watching the Golden Globe presentation show twice and the first episode of American Idol; 2 hours long; twice as well..) This is Vikster's list of his Top Ten favourite things to eat. And no, the rump of a Midwestern farm boy does not count.... Does it?

10. Alu Methi : Potatoes and Fenugreek (for my 4 readers in Israel and South Africa and ... Borneo?) to be more precise. I can eat about a ton of this at a time if I have some steamed rice and dal (sheeth ani dali toi in Konkani) to go with it. Everyone's happy. My dad cause I'm eating vegetarian, my mum cause I'm eating green stuff and me...cause I like it!

9. Tiramisu : I'm not a huge sweet things fan usually but I'll do anything for some good tiramisu (Did you know there's a tiramisu candy bar now?). Sadly haven't found any good stuff in Bombay .. besides the stuff made by the Italian chef I was schtupping for a while. So I guess store-bought Trader Joe's stuff still rules in my book.

8. Chicken Shawarma : I share a love for Chicken Shawarma along with Ariel Sharon and Saddam Hussain (food of choice for ageing overweight Middle-Easterners!) I thought I'd never eat good shawarma once I moved out of Brookline (Shawarma King on Beacon Street rocked my life for the 2 years I spent at Coolidge Corner). And guess what? Biona in Bandra (Hill Road) has quite a similar quality. OK, so here it's saltier, the tahini is not as good and the cook isn't a hot Arab hunk from Nablus...but so what?

7. Chicken Cordon Bleu : To be more specific, the one at Cafe Mocambo in the Fort. Deep fried chicken fillets, stuffed with ham and cheese in a creamy mushroom sauce with bacon and truffle garnish. Thud.

(That was the sound of me collapsing as the giant ball of grease traverses my blood vessels and f's up my brain)

6. Garlic Pierozhkis : To the desis who dunno what a pierozhki is .. it's a Slavic dish that sorta looks like a stuffed karanji - if the karanji was made of maida, stuffed with garlic mashed potatoes and boiled. I can eat it any which way. Just boiled with some olive oil dressing, smothered in pasta sauce or deep fried with ketchup. I think I once went for 2 whole weeks eating nothing but pierozhkis. And drinking nothing but plum brandy. And watching Tarakovsky over and over again as I debated how to slit my wrists. Ooh Slavic depression, how I love thee!

5. Kaanda Bhajiya : Onion Bhaji as the Paki restaurants in London call it...The perfect accompaning dish to a hot cup of ginger tea. It's the quintessential Bombay monsoon meal. You get soaked on your way back home, you wade through 3 feet deep gutters, you dodge drowned rats and homeless people, you come home to a leaky 300 square foot house, put your feet up and enjoy your Kaanda bhajiya! The typical Bombay guy experience.

4. Chicken Pot rice : I'm addicted to the one they make at 5-Spice in Bandra. People who know me in person will know why 5-Spice is my new favorite hang out place in Bombay (hehe!). And their pot rice is total paisa vasool. 180 bucks for a meal for two? Awe-bleddy-some as Diandra Perolina Elvira Soares-Figueriedo aunty would say (If she could afford the restaurant to begin with..)

3. Bombay Duck fry : At Gajalee, Vile Parle E (I'm secretly proud of being one of the first people to eat there..we went there on the opening day. Us from Bandra and the Deshpandes, Sahasrabuddhes and Mashelkars of the area). For a Tuluva place, they sure make very good Bombay Duck (*takes break to point out to 3 readers in Ottawa that Bombay Duck is a fish native to the Arabian Sea near Bombay*). Best way to eat it? Squeeze some lemon juice on some well battered, deep fried bombil and you're good to go.

2. Mackeral Rechiad : The only (food-related) reason to go to Goa methinks. Fresh mackeral stuffed with vinegary spicy Goan masala and fried, eaten with some hot steamed rice and perhaps some gravy from your friend's xacuti. Awesome. Mackeral being a very oily fish to begin with has that smooth gamey texture that makes it so tasty with rice...plus it's Goan food which I love anyway!

And the number 1. thing I love to eat is...(Johnny Depp! oops..wrong list)

1. Crab in Coconut curry : Amchigele (Konkani) style! It's been my favorite dish since I discovered what a mess i was allowed to make at the dining table while eating it. Now that I've mastered the art of shelling a crab with the tips of the fingers of my right hand alone (woohooo! Resume-worthy skill methinks!), I demand this all the time from po' ol' Amma who realized soon enough that the cons of being a good cook are the incessant demands from me!

So there you have it, my top 10 favorite things to eat. A prepondrance of fishy things pays homage to my Konkani heritage, the random foreign maal on the list is thanks to my years in random foreign lands (Or "vilaayat" as I like to call it).

It's been 2 hours since I started this post. It's made me so hungry, I've had to order in a couple of burgers to fill up that nagging, gnawing, gaping hole in my stomach. Munch.

Current Music:
Laissez-moi dancer - Dalida

If I was a drag queen performer , this would be the song I'd sing. But then I'd have to shave my legs...and there's not time enough in this epoch for me to get anywhere with all that hair!