Delving into Delhi

My two week trip to Northern India began in Delhi/New Delhi where I spent the first 4 days with 6 women friends.  We jumped right into the culinary side of things with a dinner the first night at Bukara, one of the best Indian restaurants in the world where Barak Obama, Bill Clinton & Bill Gates have all eaten.  We ate with our hands and shared many traditional dishes including tandoori chicken, chicken tikka, tandoori prawns, paneer,  papadam & naan(breads) and daal!  We drank the local Kingfisher beer and some quite nice local Sula wines.

We got even more intimately connected to the foods of India the following day when we visited Old Dehli by cycle rickshaw and spent the morning in the vegetable market overflowing with spring fruits and vegetables.  

                                                                                                                           We also spent time in the wholesale spice market and were introduced to the basics of Indian cooking including the essential spices ~ cardamom, coriander, cumin, fenugreek seeds, mango and chili powders, turmeric, cinnamon, and saffron! WOW! A few other basics are garlic, fresh ginger, yogurt, paneer(cottage cheese), coconut milk and lentils.  After our great trip to the spice market we enjoyed a lunch at a private home.

We visited several temples in Delhi including the Sikh temple with a kitchen, called Langar, which feeds and nourishes the souls of anyone in the city for free.

We did not spend all our time eating in Delhi however.  We toured Humayum’s tomb, the India gate, a Hindu temple where a marriage was taking place and shopped until many of us dropped (more than we intended) on pashmina scarves made from goat wool in Kashmir, India.