Street food in India safer than other tourist restaurants

July 11, 2014

Street foodMelbourne, Jul 11: Dispelling the common misconception that street food available in India is 'unhealthy and unhygienic', a well known Australian culinary historian has said that she found street foods safer than restaurants catering to tourists.

Charmaine O'Brien, the author of the recently released 'The Penguin Food Guide to India', was talking during a discussion on 'Its not Curry - Eating India' at the University of Melbourne based Australia India Institute (AII) here yesterday.

She said the thousands of small regional food vendors or hawkers across India mostly sold freshly cooked meals using fresh ingredients during her culinary tour to the country.

However, she suggested dodging Delhi belly after eating street food in India could vary from person to person and that one should follow their own instincts.

Her latest book, launched earlier this year at the Australian High Commission in New Delhi, is the first comprehensive documentation of Indian regional food and could be read as a literary reference work on Indian food history and culture.

The book, a result of four years of extensive research, has illustrated evolution and development of regional cuisines across India.

Elaborating on Indian food cuisine and culture, O'Brien said Indian regional food was most complex and offered a diverse cuisine unlike known to outside world.

"Indian food is laden with history, culture, religion, economic conditions as well as weather," she said.

Even trade affected the development of Indian cuisines, she said adding 'In Madurai, the Chettinad cuisine has expensive spices like fennel, coriander, clove, cinnamon which reflected that people were wealthy and trade happened, O'Brien said.

"In desert like Kutch, there was an extensive use of millet as it was locally grown and was fast to grow so the Kutchi cuisine developed with very limited ingredients which were easily available there," she said.

"People of Kutch were mainly animal herders so they produced and used dairy products like Ghee which also suited the climatic conditions," she said.

O'Brien said that there were many regional sweet dishes where traces of Middle eastern origin could be found, apparently from Arab traders who came into India, she cited.

"There are different varieties of Halwa similar to Turkish delight which probably evolved because of Arab traders there," she said.

O'Brien said despite enormous variety of Indian food across all four corners, outside India including in Australia there was a very limited knowledge about it.

"Indian Restaurants and eateries overseas have been mostly serving similar dishes like Chicken tikka or Spicy curries that has reflected that India had a homogeneous national cuisine," O'Brien said.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
Agencies
March 3,2020

Facebook on Monday launched a new consumer marketing campaign in India titled 'More Together'. India is the first country in the Asia Pacific region where such a campaign is being rolled out.

It is also the first time that Facebook is rolling out a 'high decibel campaign of this stature in India', the company said in a statement.

It is also the first time that Facebook is rolling out a 'high decibel campaign of this stature in India', the company said in a statement.

"India is at the heart of Facebook and one of our focus areas this year is to tell the exciting story of a service that is deeply embedded in the fabric of India," said Ajit Mohan, Vice President and Managing Director, Facebook India.

The campaign would have multiple campaigns over the next few weeks in eight languages and the one will be set in the context of Holi.

Facebook in 2019 introduced a new company logo to further distinguish the company from the Facebook app.

The company recently announced the appointment of Avinash Pant as the Marketing Director for India operations, to drive the consumer marketing efforts across the family of apps.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
Agencies
June 9,2020

New Zealand's research institute in Antarctica is scaling back the number of projects planned for the upcoming season, in an effort to keep the continent free of coronavirus, it was reported on Tuesday.

The government agency, Antarctica New Zealand, told the BBC on Tuesday that it was dropping 23 of the 36 research projects.

Only long-term science monitoring, essential operational activity and planned maintenance will go ahead.

The upcoming research season runs from October to March.

"As COVID-19 sweeps the planet, only one continent remains untouched and (we) are focused on keeping it that way," Antarctica New Zealand told the BBC.

The organisation's chief executive Sarah Williamson said the travel limits and a strict managed isolation plan were the key factors for keeping Scott Base - New Zealand's research facility - virus free.

"Antarctica New Zealand is committed to maintaining and enhancing the quality of New Zealand's Antarctic scientific research. However, current circumstances dictate that our ability to support science is extremely limited this season" she said.

Earlier in April, Australia announced that it would scale back its activity in the 2020-21 summer season.

This included decreasing operational capacity and delaying work on some major projects.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
Agencies
July 2,2020

Paris, Jul 2: Several interacting exoplanets have already been spotted by satellites. But a new breakthrough has been achieved with, for the first time, the detection directly from the ground of an extrasolar system of this type.

An international collaboration including CNRS researchers has discovered an unusual planetary system, dubbed WASP-148, using the French instrument SOPHIE at the Observatoire de Haute-Provence (CNRS/Aix-Marseille Universite).

The scientists analysed the star's motion and concluded that it hosted two planets, WASP-148b and WASP-148c. The observations showed that the two planets were strongly interacting, which was confirmed from other data.

Whereas the first planet, WASP-148b, orbits its star in nearly nine days, the second one, WASP-148c, takes four times longer. This ratio between the orbital periods implies that the WASP-148 system is close to resonance, meaning that there is enhanced gravitational interaction between the two planets. And it turns out that the astronomers did indeed detect variations in the orbital periods of the planets.

While a single planet, uninfluenced by a second one, would move with a constant period, WASP-148b and WASP-148c undergo acceleration and deceleration that provides evidence of their interaction.

The study will shortly be published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.