North Karnataka Delights
Anyone reading or following this website, by now would have realized, how important family and friends are to me. And yes, I have plenty of them. There is no denying that sitting in pajamas all day, writing about feelings, activities in the kitchen, random thoughts and ramblings of everyday life, all out and into the Internet, flooded with mostly strangers, is uncanny for a person who claims to have so many friends and family. But, when caught up in the travesty of life, where for the most bizarre reasons I’ve chosen to move thousands of miles away from home, this is where I manage to find at least one lending ear at the oddest of hours. It may be of a friend or of a family or of a total stranger. It doesn’t matter. Every time I so long to talk to someone, nothing in particular, just something I have to say at the moment, and it is too late to call a friend or too early to call home, there is someone always waiting on me bright eyed and bushy tailed – The Internet. And thus I write here.
Sorry to digress, I started off about friends, right? Ah yes, like I was saying, I really treasure my friends, old ones and new. And there is this one friend, Shilpa, that I met long time ago, when I was in class 3. Now that I’m 33, you can guess how long time back that must have been. We were like two peas in pod. She was my best friend. Beautiful, smart, soft spoken and intelligent, she was the total opposite of me. Since I mentioned opposite you can but imagine what that left me out to be. In our small world of reasoning that didn’t matter. We were great companions to each other and quite inseparable for 3 years. Then, facts of life shook us. Causing great grief to our little worlds, her parents moved and she had to change schools in class 6. That, hit us real bad. We weren’t blessed with the Internet then, and in India since the phone services during those days were pretty expensive, we found it difficult to keep in touch. We tried really hard initially, though. Through snail mails and all. But, it didn’t last long and both of us moved on. No one is really inseparable, are they?
Recently, thanks again to my dear friend, the Internet, we found(solely goes to my credit) each other and met up after 20 long years. And like all good friendships can, we picked up from were we had last left off.
A wife and a mother to a beautiful baby, a successful super talented architect today, Shilpa is a terrific cook too. Don’t ask me how I manage to churn out all these supermom-supercooks from my gamut of friends and family. The universe has its own ways! So, for our first meeting Shilpa served me this fine spread of North Karnataka cuisine that my big bottomless tummy couldn’t have enough of. A vegetarian herself, she was a little skeptical that my carnivorous taste buds could be appeased by her vegetarian spread. But I put all her angst at ease as I devoured the four parathas, a big mound of mixed rice, asked for more sides, lapped up my aamras, chugged down a tall glass of fresh herbed buttermilk and then said I could do with some more dessert! Twenty years is a long time my friend, but when it comes to food, I still might steal your lunch.
This dish is similar to the Dharwad style Stuffed Brinjal Masala popularly called Badne Ennegayi. The only difference here is the use of Ridge Gourd instead of Brinjal (Eggplant). This dish pairs amazingly well with rotis..[read more]
These spicy lauki parathasand soft sooji parathas, unlike the usual paratha’s are pretty light on the tummy. They don’t weigh you down like the usual parathas do. [read more]
This delightfully tasty dessert is perfect to cool you off on a hot summer’s day. If you havereally over ripe mangoes that are not going look too great to serve ..[read more]
Disclaimer: None of the pictures of the food I had in India does justice to how they actually looked. Roy was being mean and refused to leave his SLR behind. That left me with no choice but to use a less effective camera. So, you have to try these dishes to know how good they are in real.
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