I was in a Pakistani/Indian grocery store at one point
during my jaunt to Philly. Besty and I stopped in so she could get some stuff to make kombucha,
which may get its own post in the future. I noticed that the majority of the
products were vegetarian and flour-based. I hadn’t really expected that but
I don’t know much about Indian food and almost nothing about Pakistani food. Naturally, I had to try at least one thing there. I had a hard time picking a snack food because it seemed like all of them were essentially flour in a variety of different
shapes. Flour twists, flour wheels, flour wads, etc. They were actually kind of
cool looking but they didn't seem very distinct from one another. It wasn’t like there were barbecue flour
wads and sour cream and onion flour wads and buffalo flour wads. When I found one that advertised
itself as made of flour and spicy I went for it. The real clincher is that the
packaging reads “Nutritious & Hygienic!!!” on the top, with “SPICY STUFFED
BALLS” across the front, which made me think fondly on my first post.
Cost: $1 - $10
I was kind of expecting it to be crunchy but it’s actually soft. The outside is flakey layer of pastry. It’s spicy in that it tastes like someone mixed together the contents of
an entire spice rack with some water and molded it into a wad. The most
prominent flavor is fennel, which is generally not a flavor I like to be
prominent. Not that it’s bad, it’s just kind of bland and disappointingly
fattening. The bag is about the size of a small bag of chips, the bag
has 10 servings, and each serving is 110 calories. Damn. If you though I was
exaggerating the “wad o’ spices” aspect, the ingredients are: refined wheat
flour, gram pulse flour, vegetable oil, sugar, salt, tamarind, red chili
powder, fennel, coriander, sesame seeds, cumin, ginger, nutmeg, mace, cinnamon,
cardamom, and asafetida. Eating it reminds me of potpourri or a shop in one of
those stupid colonial recreation towns where every place that sells anything
has a bunch of dried herbs on the walls. I guess the take away message is that
hippies, hipsters, and sad bastards who pretend to be worldly to get tail should
take note. Stay queer!
I've heard that there's actually a tradition in Indian cooking that basically says that the more distinct flavors you mix into something, the better the result. Or at least, that's how they excuse the ridiculous (delicious) variety and density of spices.
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