Food For Thought!

They say necessity is the mother of all inventions.
So when it came to cooking, it was pure necessity which made me take up cooking
Ever since it has been a great journey.
Experimenting with various ingredients made me discover a great hobby in cooking.

I was in Secunderabad when it all began. The egg masala and the Tandoori Roti outside the Secunderbad station was my first tryst with Hyderabadi food. Wow!! I had never seen such big Tandoori Rotis in my life and as a matter of fact I have never seen them anywhere else so far. The egg masala was boiled eggs in a thick gravy. This takes me to another incident with Tandoori Roti. We were roaming around Hyderabad when we came across a restaurant named "Mezbaan" which we believed would be serving good North Indian food. Two of us ordered for murgh mussalam and six tandoori rotis. An elderly gentleman who was serving the food laughed at us and said - "First you have 2 rotis and then if needed I will serve you more"...Soon we realized that we were going to be served with those King sized Tandoori rotis.

In and around Secunderabad there are a host of eateries which serve a variety of food - starting from Biriyani to the Softee ice-cream. Parathas with Keema was part of breakfast and seeing the oil draining out from the keema was to be seen to be believed. Thanks to one of my roommates - I had the pleasure to have such a breakfast one day and as they say...the rest was history.

The Biriyani at Paradise was an experience in its own. It was simply amazing.The combination of spices, the rice, the color, the flavor all made it all so memorable. However, the Biriyani was too spicy for most of us. So when we wanted to have something at the lighter side we went for the Chicken Shashlik at the Paradise. It was an Indian version of Chicken Shashlik - with a pulao served with barbecued chicken and vegetables.

The Supreme Biriyani at Paradise was meant for four people. Served in a boat shaped dish it was a huge amount of food one could get. One of my room-mates was a die hard foodie. For him the quantity of food was more important than the quality. He took six of us for Biriyani at Paradise and ordered for 3 Supreme Biriyanis. When the Biriyani was served to us, we were completely perplexed. It should have been called Superman Biriyani instead of Supreme Biriyani. So all of us started digging into the Biriyani mountain and soon we gave up. We could barely finish 1.5 of them and the third untouched one lay on the table glaring at us. We asked the waiter to pack the remaining Biriyani - dividing it into 6 parcels. We came out each carrying a parcel. But what to do with this we had no idea. Maybe we can have it for next morning breakfast or lunch - someone suggested.Once again Biriyani in 24 hrs? Hell not even in 48 hrs would it be possible to have Biriyani again. There were few beggers on the street and we knew what to do next. We did not wait to see what happened next because people watching us were surprised at our generosity.

Next to the Hussain Sagar, there were few eateries where you would get the best fried fish.
Dipped in a reddish concoction and deep fried thereafter, the fish would taste amazing.

After almost a month trying to adjust to Hyderabadi food, we got desperate for Bengali food. Thanks to the Secunderabad station we found a restaurant which served fish. The masala papar, the fish fry the phulka roti, the plain yellow daal....we loved the place.

When I was coming to Hyderabad - fresh from college, I had never been out of my state so far ever.
My mother was always worried that I would not be getting good food at Hyderabad.

But Hyderabad introduced me to my hobby -cooking
But before I begin to speak about my cooking I want to continue a bit on my experiences about food across the country.