If You’re Stuck With Bad Weather Might As Well Eat Something Deep Fried
If You’re Stuck With Bad Weather Might As Well Eat Something Deep Fried
Buns in Bangalore
I only need to shut my eyes for a brief moment, and I can almost taste the hot morsel of crispy flatbread cradling the spicy, glossy gravy of chickpeas, and I am transported to the little tea house in Panjim, where I first tasted the Goan breakfast my friends had been telling me so much about.
There’s no better time than during drizzling and overcast skies to indulge in deep-fried goodness of any kind. And in Goa, I was introduced to a particular type of buns. A round, flat, mildly sweetened bread, fried in a large hot wok of oil until only slightly puffy, dotted sparsely with a hint of cumin. Crisp (but not crunchy) on the outside, puffy on the inside.
One morning, it was pouring, the rain coming down in sheets, and we ducked into the little teahouse. Inside, the air was warm from the sheer number of bodies gathered for their breakfast of snacks and tea.
It was a grey week in the beginning of June, and the monsoon had been threatening to hit for a few days, and it was the first time I tasted the dish that assuaged some part of my craving for a breakfast from back home. In the years that followed, buns and bhaji (the spicy gravy) became my go-to comfort food.
There’s something about the delicate balance between the subtle sweetness of the bun and the richly flavored curry it typically accompanies. Whether it was the mixed vegetable curry, or the slightly indulgent chickpea variant, or black-eyed peas, or the simplest of them all, made with sliced and wilted onions and tomatoes, the gravy always packed a punch. Runny, but slightly textured thanks to a ground base made from coconut and whole spices, it is the perfect accompaniment to the bun, in form and in function.
Last week, my Facebook feed was filled to the gills with gushing updates about the monsoon that had just hit Goa. As I scrolled through it, sitting at home in the city I have now moved to, I was filled with the inexplicable urge to immediately find my way to the tea-house where I’d breakfast at least once a week, but especially so when the monsoon first struck.
The smell of the wet earth following the first rains will forever stir up an intense craving for some fried buns.
Since the teahouse is now about 500+ miles away, I did the next best thing. Replicated it in my kitchen, while the rain came down in a feathery drizzle, as people call it in Bangalore. All this, so I could dig my teeth into a puffy bun, the steam escaping through my lips, and chase it with a cup of sweet milky tea.