Traditional delicacies ranging from Mysore dosa to litti chokha as well as specialties like 'garlic kheer' and 'tash ke kabab', typically found only in street corners across the country comprised a festival that celebrated street food.
The National Street Food Festival organised by the National Association of Street Vendors of India (NASVI), which was inaugurated at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium recently as a grand affair by celebrity chef Sanjeev Kapoor, saw over 800 street vendors from 25 different states cooking over 500 recipes.
Tahira a street vendor from Dharwad, Karnataka, who sold 'Aknee pulav' and 'dalacha' (a type of dal), 'jigri' (a vegetable cooked with brinjal, fenugreek and potatoes) says, "I learnt to make these dishes from my mother. At the festival I made this dish for around 50 people each day and students are my most loyal customers."
Apart from the quintessential dosa, idli, upma and sambar, there are hawkers who are showcasing speciality dishes from the south Indian states. The array of lipsmacking non-vegetarian items from South, were giving competition to the 'Gilaouti kebabs', 'biryani, parantha' and 'Nahari kulchas' from Lucknow. A quite modern dish 'Chicken 65' a hybrid between Indian and Chinese styles and sold by sold by Akbar from Dharwad was seen as one of the most sought after dishes at the event.
In yet another cross-breeding of cultures and geographical regions, Dileep, a hawker from Chandigrah offered 'Honey Special Gobhi' as his stall's speciality. The dish, a twisted version of Manchurian, makes use of cauliflower in making the fried Manchurian balls. The street vendor, says, "I normally used to cook in weddings and learnt this dish from seeing other cooks."
An original dish, 'tash ke kabab', Ganesh Prasad from Motihari, Bihar seemed to get a lot of takers. 'Tash' in the language spoken in Motihari, means a pan or 'tava' where the dish is cooked. Prasad says, "The fact that my dish is becoming so famous among the people of Delhi is giving me immense happiness." The hawker says he had been dishing out the preparations for the past 30 years.
Specialities such as 'Lal-peda' and 'Makdal' from Varanasi, 'Mishti-Doi' and 'Rasogulla' from Kolkata and 'Mysore Pak' from Mysore took care of the sweet-toothed. A stall that seemed to attract customers was the 'lahsun ki kheer', a kind of dessert made by boiling and grinding garlic, sold by a street vendors from Lucknow.
According to Ravi one of the visitors, "It is really tasty and I can't even detect the smell of garlic that this dish is made of."
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