Lucknow's Saath Paani Wala Gol Guppa

Now all those familiar with my blog know about my huge fondness for Chaats...

Time and again, I have told you about my cravings...While on my academic exile in the UK, the need to taste Chhole Pattice had even made me team up with the pretty decent combination of the Oh-so-very-English Hash Browns ( Batata patties to the desis) with Chhole straight out an MTR pack and garnish with finely chopped onions and a generous spray of chaat masala. Home sickness can gather new dimensions on a grey gloomy winter evening in England and any bit of home - some well-brewed strong adrak chai and chhole pattice can be a great remedy!

However, my all-time favourite has to be the panipuri or the gol guppa - depending on which part of the country you profess your allegiance to..My first tryst with the little puris filled to choking brim with tangy tamarindy-masala water and some potatoes/boondis and sprouts was in the form of gol guppas...to be precise gol guppas gulped down in glee at the Karol Bagh market while on a vacation to Delhi during my school days. Chaat till then was only something I'd heard of. Talk of Mumbai and tales of bhel-puri evening and panipuris would follow from cousins and aunts based there, while we ( bloody villagers) in Kerala could just try to imagine what this must really taste like. Now in Delhi, you have to tell the chaatwala to add sweet chutney, if the spice of the imli paani causes a choke in the throat. Unlike in Mumbai, I later learnt where UPwala chaat-bhaiyas learnt to automatically add it to the panipuris prepared in a way to win their way to the hearts of their ever sweet-toothed Gujarati customer. So while my sister completely shuns the meetha chutney in her paani puris, I get mine custom made, with just a delicate drop of the sweet - kind of to balance the yin and yang, you could say!

Now I could have gone on and on about the differences in the Punjaabi chaat masala in the gol guppa and the UP-flavoured Gujarati-moderated version of paani puris popular in Mumbai. Even the puris, by itself taste vastly different! But I can't be bothered to nit-pick on these two for I have found a new favourite to add to my growing list of chaat loves - Lucknow's Saath Paani Wala Gol Guppa.

The Nawaabon ka Sheher believes in doing everything with an innate flair and style. I was being hosted in the land of the nawabs and the kababs by two feisty women who knew their way around their chaat. One of them has told me a number of times that once I had had chaat there, I'd refuse to try anything else before proclaiming Lucknowi chaat to be at the top of the charts! I was willing to give it a go, but wanted to keep such declarations to the minimum - we can't promote sycophancy, can we now?

So there we were, four women at about eight thirty at night, in a dimly lit galli(street) somewhere in the heart of the old city. And as we approached a rather busy chaatwala standing under a highly jaundiced streetlight, the smile that lit his face made me realise he knew his customers. One flimsy leafy saucer in hand, we took our positions bracing for the gol-gulping session that came with very very high expectations!

Were our chaatwallah Ravi to turn enterprising and re-package and market his wares, he could have easily called himself a gol-guppa designer. There was mastery, finesse and a method to his art that makes him fit for the title. The moment our little saucers were in hand, he warned us that we would never have had gol guppas like this before. The first three appeared to be like dabbles in the basic palette - one a plain one just dunked in the pani to set the premise, then a puri dunked in paani with a bit of jeera in it and another with hing.

Now so far in my chaat journeys, I have either been silently fed by chaatwalas who ensure a new puri takes the place of the one you have just gulped. Or else, if it a posher place, where you sit down to eat the paani puri, it would come in separate bowls, leaving us to make our own golguppas ( this I hate, I'd rather see some dirty hand-dunking and mouth-plopping than the sterile use of spoons and plates!)

So here was our gol-guppa designer, not just designing new flavours in each puri he was feeding us, but he kept a stream of running commentary on! So even before he prepared your next puri, you knew just what was coming....imagine combinations like kachcha aam and jeera or kachcha Aam, hing and jeera? There were about ten to twelve puris in all and seven flavours and a mix and match of them as well. The designer never says its over, its upon the connoisseurs to decide when to call a halt to the gulp-fest.

We grudgingly said enough at the end of the first round of ten or so...and then he produced his piece-de-resistance - a leaning tower of puris delicately balanced against each other, filled with a bit of a lot of things as a dry palate cleanser....Sighhhh, just revisiting that evening while I write about it fills my mouth with a pool of longing....

And as I walked away from the place, I bowed to the wise women from Lucknow, my hosts, who predictably grinned as if they just won a popularity contest!!

In the Name of Chaats, Masalas and Holy Cravings....

Many warned me about the abject lack of imaginativeness in British cuisine...I thought they were exaggerating...I still do, because the cakes and other bakes in Britain are to die for... And I have had some reasonably good stuff at pubs here...But well, when it comes to the meat...they rather leave things a little less flavoured or seasoned...the salt has been drastically reduced from the national cuisine, I think, rather consciously...I remember one of the first outdoor campaigns that I saw, while on route to London from Brighton on many buses was the exhortation to make the already bland food blander still....Cut down on the Salt and Save your Life or something to similar effect was the slogan on the buses and just about everywhere else... Everytime I raise a fine point on cuisine, the problem is I try to drive it in with all the subtlety of a battering ram. But then I'm never allowed an easy point for, I have friends who love rubbing it in my face, that as an Indian I have no voice to complain. For isn't Indian food all about 'over-cooking, masking the flavour of meat or vegetables totally with about a million masalas and then deep frying the rest of the stuff'....And even as I protest vehemently, I think to myself....pooris and pakodas we fry...the meat is always 'cooked till tender' in our careful lexicon...which means there is no concept of lightly tossing the meat on a skillet with the bare minimum flavours or seasoning...and we can put just about anything in about 5litres of oil and chilli powder and pickle it for posterity...if that's not all, we can kill just about anyone with diabetes with the amount of sugar and condensed milk we empty into our desserts... Hmmm...that as it is...the reason why I'm willing to eat 'humble pie' is as follows...the friend, who I feel would gloat till he chokes, used to begin any conversation he ever had with me by asking me what I ate/ was having for breakfast/lunch/dinner. When I was in India, surrounded by everything that I gastronomically consider heavenly, I was of the opinion that food is merely for subsistence - ie, to give me enough energy to pull through a hard demanding day as a TV professional. Barring the occasional craving for something exotic, I would be hard pressed to remember wanting something specific for any meal... So asking me about what I ate, was like the most irrelevant, out of my interest area beginning to any conversation...and something I remember telling him quite pointedly too... These days, he often smirks at my status updates on facebook or my tagline on google messenger...It's either about craving chai or wanting pakodas or missing something else specific in the wintry loneliness of Brighton...And while I would have protested till I turned blue before admitting it, for once I feel the 'devil needs to be given its due'... For the past two days, I have been in a state of urgent want....for chaat...In fact, I was so sure I'd miss chaat so much that for nearly a week during my last month in Mumbai, all I had for dinner was assorted chaat.... If you haven't heard of panipuris and aloo chaats and ragda pattice and bhel puris...then there is a big chunk missing from the education your tastebuds deserve... For those unfamiliar with Indian street food, chaat is as unhealthy as it comes...well, atleast most of it is....but the speed with which it can be slurped and the immense satisfaction it leaves the eater with, is unparalleled...most of the ingredients are deep fried, dunked in sweet and sour sauces and garnished with starchy yummy potatoes and sprinkled liberally with salt and spices...and if potatoes are not the garnish, then they are the shallow-fried base for masala-infused lentils called chhole...Just writing about chaat makes me drool.... And then there is the pani puri...it's the simplest of them all....but in my book, the king of all chaats.....my chaat routine begins almost always with it...they are deep fried dough balls, the crust is lightly broken and filled with potatoes and other fillings, then dunked first in sweet date sauce and then dunked in tangy tamarind water before it is plopped into a bowl you hold...and as soon as the first one plops into your bowl, you gulp it down in one go and then drain the water that has escaped out of the dough ball into your bowl..... There you go....I am having foodgasms....I empathise with my friend I considered loony...In fact, I think I have gone three degrees loonier than him....I dream food, I crave food and when I manage to overcome the fierce pulls of laziness and inertia, I actually try to make some of it that I miss sorely in England... But the water is different....the ingredients lack the smell of India...and then there is the sterile prettiness to England, that leaves me feeling a little cheated when I try to recreate the food orgy that India alone provides.... And now after writing this post, I have just managed to increase my craving for chaat by about ten notches....Talk about therapy boomeranging!!! Hmppppphhhhh......