Book of Yum

Hot Coffee Drinks
I’m a Seattle girl through and through, and life just wouldn’t be worth living without espresso, or at least some good strong coffee. Thanks to the dot com boom and globalization, India has hopped on the gourmet coffee bandwagon and has several chains that are relatively easy to find, at least in Bangalore and other big, cosmopolitan cities. My favorites are Cafe Coffee Day and Cafe Barista. There was a Cafe Barista down the street from our hotel. There was also a nearby Cafe Coffee Day but to get there you had to cross one of the busiest streets in Bangalore, literally taking your life in your hands. (There are very few crosswalks in India.) I prefer the coffee at Cafe Coffee Day but Cafe Barista is pretty good as well. They all offer lovely iced beverages that are off limits to tourists unaccustomed to Indian water. A hot coffee, tea, espresso beverage should be fine. Wikipedia entry on Cafe Coffee Day

If you’d rather have something more uniquely Indian you can have a masala coffee or other heavily sweetened milk coffee. I accompanied DH to his Bangalore office and typed blog posts (and academic papers) like a little mouse in the corner. The kind man in charge of refreshments always brought me a lovely, heavily sweetened milk coffee in a pretty porcelain cup that I enjoyed with some of the GF biscotti I’d brought. (photo on left) Coffee break time was my favorite part of the day!

Hot & Juicy Corn Snacks
Who would have thought that India would be a great place to find steamed corn available as a snack from kiosks? Hot & Juicy has stands all over India, including outside the Forum shopping mall in Bangalore and outside the domestic airport terminal in Delhi. Some of their larger kiosks may diversify, but the small ones just have steamed corn, available in a variety of flavors from masala, chili, to plain butter. Probably the safest thing to order is steamed corn without any seasonings (not on the menu but you can try asking for it), or their “butter” variety, as spices may contain small amounts of wheat. At some kiosks they use one pan to mix the corn with whatever seasonings you order, so IF there is gluten in any of the spice mixes, there is a cross-contamination risk. I walked on the wild side and ordered one with butter and the spicy chili or masala flavor. they were both good. Some of the other seasoning are, um, interesting.

Rice Idli for breakfast
Two dishes that South India is most famous for are the delightful and naturally gluten free snacks idli and dosa. Both snacks are made of rice and urad dal lentils that have been ground and fermented into a batter. When thinned, it is used for dosa, a thin and crispy rice crepe made on a large hot skillet, usually seasoned with oil or ghee, clarified butter. Potential for CC is high if the restaurant also makes Rava Dosa, the same batter with semolina wheat added, on the same surface. A thicker batter is used for idli, round rice disks that are steamed and then eaten with chutney and sambar soup. These are ideal hangover, food-poisoning, or gluten-recovery food, as they are very bland and easy on the stomach. Idli are steamed in metal molds that should be washed between batches, so this dish should be safer than dosa even if rava idli are prepared with the same molds. Also the idli should not contain (much) oil or ghee, although the mold MAY be oiled. Uttapam is another similar gluten-free bread that is made from the same ingredients but cooked into a flat pancake, usually with vegetable toppings. Again our hotel was out of control with the oil they used, but this can be a delicious snack. Just check ingredients for safety, especially if dining at a fusion restaurant.While I love a good dosa more than anything, our hotel dosa oozed with oil and was so greasy I learned to avoid it. Also, coconut chutney is my favorite, but their chutney was heavily watered and gave me traveler’s stomach issues. ahem. So, I stuck with idli and sambar soup for breakfast. *some sambar spice blends may contain hing or asafoetida, a spice often cut with wheat flour. ask your server or read label carefully.* I paired that with the lovable baby bananas and amazingly fresh pineapple offered at our breakfast buffet. Occasionally they had vegetable dishes that were tasty- a corn and green pea dish and a cauliflower rosemary dish were the stars of our stay.

My post on how to make dosa at home
My post on how to make stuffed idli from scratch at home

*The food court at the forum had a dosa and idli stand with onion, cheese, masala (a delicious potato filling), and a cheese masala option, among others. The inside of their cheese masala dosa was brushed with tomato sauce, covered in cheese, and then filled with masala potatoes. It tasted like pizza! I would probably leave off the masala potato and just try a cheese tomato sauce basted dosa. Very, very yum. Gotta love fusion food. (see photo on lower right)

Long-grain White Rice
Rice, rice, how I love you. Even the “bread” culture of North India offers patrons the option of rice with their curries. Plain steamed rice should be one of the safest dishes in any restaurant. If stress over CC’d spice blends are getting your down, or you’re just not feeling well, a big plate of steamed rice soothes the crankiest of tummies. You are unlikely to find short grained rice unless you go to a Japanese or other international restaurant, and brown rice can be hard to come by, so enjoy the loose, long strands of rice for their own merits. I ate mine with a variety of delicious “wet” and “dry” curries, and also enjoyed it in Paneer pulao, a pilaf dish with cheese cubes and mild seasonings. Yum! There’s no culture like a rice culture for the gluten-intolerant traveler.

Salads of Raw Red Onion, Lime, and salt
It sounds strange, but one of my favorite things in India was the salads, and I don’t mean a wimpy lettuce salad. (Probably not a good idea with traveler’s water concerns anyway.) I found the simple salads offered at places like Tamarind Restaurant in Bangalore refreshing and tasty, especially paired with a rich dish in gravy. My new favorite way to dress raw vegetables like tomatoes and red onions is to sprinkle salt on them and add a squeeze of lime. So tart! So refreshing. Yum. BTW we enjoyed our dining experiences at the Tamarind in Koramangla very much but the seafood is not recommended. Like many restaurants in India, power and refrigeration can be an issue.

I hope you’ve enjoyed traveling along with me to India. I’d love to hear your feedback, either if you’ve visited India, or are thinking about visiting the country. Do you feel more or less like India could be a good destination for the gluten-free traveler? I hope my story gives you confidence to travel to India, and also offers some helpful survival tips once you arrive.

As with any dining experience, there are certainly risks of CC, and there seems to be little general awareness of allergies and food-intolerances, making it difficult to convey dietary needs even if everyone speaks the same language. It is however a wonderful place for the vegetarian traveler, and sometimes you can couch requests as strict vegetarian requests and they will be taken very seriously. For example, one posh Bangalore lounge we visited had a green thai curry on the menu. When I asked it turned out that although there was no soy sauce, it contained fish sauce. When I hesitated, they offered to leave it out. I got the feeling other vegetarian diners had made this request before. It turned out to be one of the most delicious things I enjoyed. If you are planning a trip to India, I would highly recommend learning as many words for gluten ingredients in Hindi and other regional languages as possible. Also, research the food of the region you will be visiting. If you’re planning an extended stay, consider an apartment with a kitchen- preparing your own food really is the safest way to go, and then you can have more control over the number of dining risks you take. It took a little time for me to learn what foods worked for me, mostly by research, trial and error- not only because of my restrictions from Celiac, but also because of normal travelers issues in India. It helped to compare notes with friends along on the trip. I often found that the same things (seafood, watery chutneys) affected my non-Celiac friend that affected me, allowing me to (mostly) rule out gluten as the relevant issue.

This is my last post on India, so, for the last time, Farewell, India! Farewell, Bangalore, and Agra, and Delhi. Thank you for the delicious flavors, gorgeous sights, and the memories.
I’ll never forget this trip.

-Sea, January 2008

Coming up next…

Gluten-Free Vegetarian Bento: Gobo Kinpira Recipe, Lotus Root Sesame Stir Fry Recipe, and Inari Zushi Recipe
Posts on Gluten-Free travel in Austria and reviews of GF Reformhaus products in Europe

And, BOOK OF YUM is remodeling. Watch over the next week to see our brand new look unveiled!

The first time I came to India two years ago, we stayed in an unpretentious guest house with an extensive room service menu of inexpensive, naturally gluten-free Southern Indian dishes like Dosa, Idli, Sambar and Upattham. (Don’t worry, a post on Southern Indian cuisine will follow soon!) However, for this, my second trip, Justin’s work put us up at a more posh hotel called the Nandhana. It’s a lovely hotel with much more privacy than the guesthouse, but the only unfortunate thing is that the connecting restaurant, Ebony, focuses on international cuisine and Northern Indian cuisine more than my favorite (and safe) Southern Indian dishes. However, while Northern Indian fare is more difficult for the gluten-free diner, as it relies on wheat-based flatbreads like Naan and Roti, you can still find reasonably safe and delicious veg dishes with some care. Unfortunately besides the very well known classics like Saag Paneer (spinach with paneer homemade cheese), Channa Masala (Chickpeas in Masala spice sauce), and Mattar Paneer (green peas and paneer homemade cheese), I’m not all that familiar with the name of some of these dishes, so our hotel room service menu was a bit of a mystery to me. I thought this might be a good opportunity to learn about some Northern Indian specialties and the gluten-threat offered by each dish, as servers are not always well versed in specific English terms for gluten (or for that matter, the content of each dish), and as they say, forewarned is forearmed. For those of you following along on my gluten-free adventures in India, I thought you might enjoy learning about these dishes along with me. Learning about these dishes may also help you make informed decisions in Indian restaurants at home OR abroad, or inspire you to make them at home in the safety of your own gluten-free kitchen. Many of the dishes I was unfamiliar with on our hotel menu originated in the Punjab region, so this has served as a crash course for me in Punjabi cuisine.

India is one of the best places in the world for vegetarians, as caste and religion informs many aspects of diet, including vegetarianism. Vegetarian food is referred to simply as “veg” and non-vegetarian food is referred to as “non veg.” Simple enough, right? The tricky part may come into play for vegans, as veganism is not a natural part of the “veg” dietary scheme. There is a delineation for a “true veg” but this just means someone who doesn’t eat eggs. It may be difficult to explain a vegan diet to restaurants, and dairy products including ghee, butter, milk, cream, curd (yogurt) and paneer cheese are found in many, maybe even most, dishes. The Lonely Planet recommends street vendors as a source of food, but this may be problematic for those who must also follow a gluten-free diet. One food which immediately comes to my mind is the simple idli, a steamed rice and urad dal cake, paired with sambar soup and coconut chutney. This should be suitable for vegans and those who are gluten free (just avoid rava idli!!! rava=semolina/wheat), but many of the delightful dry and gravy “curries” will contain dairy. Nut allergies would also be tricky in India, as some sauces rely on the cashew nut or peanut for their body and flavor. Unfortunately it is often difficult to discuss allergies with servers, as even someone quite fluent in English might not be well versed in “wheat, rye, oats, or barley.” Here is a very good article about dealing with allergies in India.

Items on the Menu likely to be Gluten-Free
*barring gluten elements in spice mixes, and cross contamination factors. One unavoidable issue with ground spices and flours (even GF ones) in India is that they may be ground on a mill shared with gluten flours. This also applies to imports… Asafoetida is a spice that contains either rice or wheat flour and should be avoided if possible. Read comments for where you might find this ingredient, and check out this interesting article on asafoetida/hing.

Rice Dishes
“People often can’t differentiate between biryani, fried rice, and pulao. ‘For the first, one needs to fry the rice first, in the second the cooked rice is fried with the other sautéed ingredients. In the pulao, everything is cooked together.’”(source:hinduonnet article)

Pulao is a rice pilaf that is probably gluten-free but unlikely to be dairy free.
Variations: Jeera Pulao is a Jeera (Cumin seed) pilaf dish. Recipe for Jeera Pulao. Paneer Pulao is a pilaf dish made with homemade Indian paneer cheese.

Vegetable Handi Biryani is a heavily spiced Punjabi rice dish. Often served with salan, a spicy thick chutney/gravy like sauce, and raita, a cooling yogurt sauce, often with cucumber or other fruits and vegetables. Apparently “A traditional Hyderabadi salan is made in a shallow wide flat bottomed handi. The salan is a sealed in this handi and kept on low fire to cook with all the flavours trapped inside to give that authentic rich taste.”(source: tarladalal.com) tomato salan recipe. Various raita recipes.

Curd Rice seems to be a Southern rice dish made with liberal amounts of yogurt and other dairy products. Spices and additions seem to be a matter of the creativity of the chef, but this simple recipe evokes nostalgia for many bloggers.
Curd Rice at IndiaCuisine. Curd Rice Recipe from Vineela.

Vegetable Dishes
Aloo Jeera is a delicious dish of aloo (potatoes) seasoned with jeera (cumin). It goes well with rice and is highly likely to be gluten-free, barring any suspicious spice mixtures added. Here’s another simple Aloo Jeera recipe, as well as an authentic Punjabi version from Sanjeev Kapoor

Aloo Mutter, or aloo (potatoes) with mutter (green peas) is a tasty, and hearty dish that should be safe, with the usual caveats. Aloo Mutter Recipe.

Aloo Gobhi is a recipe for aloo (potatoes) with gobhi (cauliflower) in a spicy, flavorful sauce. Ahaar’s recipe for Aloo Gobhi. Here’s a recipe by our own Gluten Free by the Bay

Bhindi Do Pyaza is a dish of Bhindi (okra/ ladyfingers) with “Do pyaza” (twice the amount of onion than you might find in other dishes). A Okra with Onions recipe with yogurt.

Dairy-centric Dishes
Paneer Tikka is a snack of marinated, spiced paneer coated in yogurt cooked in a tandoor that is often associated with Punjab cuisine. This appetizer looks so tasty I can’t wait to try it, and seems to not usually be coated in flour, although you should always check with your server.Gorgeous and Tasty Paneer Tikka recipe from the Manpasand blog. And, another Paneer Tikka Recipe.

Paneer Makhani is a recipe for paneer (homemade cheese) simmered in a rich, creamy buttery sauce (makhani) that often has a tomato component. Not exactly low calorie but likely to be gluten free and very decadent. Paneer Makhani Recipe from Arad-daagh an unconventional low-fat recipe for Paneer Makhani from Archana And a recipe for paneer makhani from a Bangalore local!

Soup (Shorba in North India)
Tomato Shorba a tomato water soup which may or may not contain coconut milk but may contain ghee. It does not seem to usually be thickened with flour, although I found one recipe calling for a tablespoon of besan (chickpea flour). Tamater ka shorba recipe Variations: Tomato Dhaniya Shorba: Dhaniya=coriander, so it may have fresh cilantro or coriander seeds added to the soup.

Dal/dhal/dahl/daal is “a preparation of pulses which have been stripped of their outer hulls and split. It also refers to the thick, spicy stew prepared from pulses [lentils]. . . In South India dal is used to make the [spicy] stew/veg soup called sambar. The word Dal derives from the Sanskrit term to split.” (Source: Wikipedia, Dal entry)

Variations:Yellow Dal Tadka Tadka/ tarka (or chaunk/baghar) is a combination of (regionally determined) spices fried in oil. Spices may include: “cumin, chili/cayenne powder, onion, mustard seeds and garlic, asafoetida, fresh or dried chili pods, cilantro, garam masala and cumin seeds.” Like with some chutney preparations, the tadka oil is poured over the cooked dal for serving. (Source: Wikipedia, Dal entry) Fabulous Video and Yellow Dall Tadka recipe

Variations:Dal Makhani (see entry for Paneer Makhani, above). Hearty Dal Makhani from the Punjabi region is composed of black lentils and red kidney beans in a creamy butter, onions, tomatoes, and ginger-garlic sauce. A lighter recipe for Dal Makhani (use lowfat yogurt).

Non-Veg Menu Items of interest to a Pescatarian:
Achari Fish Tikka (boneless fish marinated in yoghurt and pickle spices), Ajwani Fish Tikka (traditional fish tikka with ajwain), Pomfret Amritsari (pomfret fish with the chef’s secret spices) and Tandoori Goalda Chingri (tiger prawns in traditional kebab spices).

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May Contain Gluten
Kadhi Pakoda is Pakoda/Pakora (Chickpea flour/besan deep fried fritters) served in or with Kadhi, a Punjabi tangy gravy based dish made of gram flour(lentil/dal/pulse flour) and yogurt. In an ideal world, pakoda/pakora wouldn’t contain gluten. However, even if the chickpea flour batter hasn’t had wheat added, it will probably be deep fried in an oil vat with wheat battered items. Ask your server lots of questions, show him or her an allergy dining card, and proceed with caution. Recipe for Punjabi Kadhi. Siri’s Kadhi Pakoda.

Veg Seekh Kabab, a grilled or fried vegetable mash on a kabob. Recipe for Veg Seekh Kabab Note the usage of corn flour, which in British usage may indicate any “regular” flour, including WHEAT flour but alternatively might indicate corn flour or cornstarch. It is probably best to ask your server about this dish, and if possible to provide an allergy dining card. Other recipes I found online called for breadcrumbs or Rawa/Rava (Semolina=Wheat) flour coating.

Hara Bhara Kabab, a fried vegetable mash with potato and spinach as the main ingredients. Has same issues as the Veg Seekh Kabab- may be dusted in flour or breadcrumbs and possibly fried in a gluten-contaminated fryer. Hara Bhara Kabab Recipe

Harechanna Ka Kabab refers to a kind of green gram/dal/lentil vegetable kabob that may have potato and possibly paneer in some permutations. As with the other veg. kabobs, may be dusted with flour or deep fried. Green Channa Kabab Recipe

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Absolutely Contains Gluten
Pretty much any of the Northern flatbreads, including roti, naan, paratha, pori/poori is made from gluten-containing flour.
One exception may be the rural roti of North Karnataka, Bhakri, made with sorghum, AKA jowar. Because these roti are more difficult to make due to the absence of gluten in the dough, I would be very careful to confirm that a particular restaurant’s Bhakri is made solely with sorghum and is not baked on a wheat-contaminated surface. Too stressful? Try making your own:
Aayis’ recipe for Bhakri
The Cook’s Cottage’s Recipe for Bhakri with Jowar
Nandyala’s recipe for Sorghum Roti/ Jonna Rotte/ Jowar Roti

[Note: according to Aayi, if you are in Bangalore "don’t miss the “Jolad rotti oota” in Kamat Minerva (at Minerva circle). The taste is superb there. They serve jowar roti with 2-3 sides, one of them is always ‘Ennegayi (stuffed brinjal)‘, and butter." I am dying to find out if they are truly gluten free..]

Southern Indian cuisine also offers some naturally gluten free “bread” options, although they do not tend to be much like flatbread. These include the dosa, idli, and upattham, among others. Post to follow.

*I’m just a novice at sweets, but tend to err on the side of caution. Even the dairy based rasgulla cheese sweet may contain minute amounts of flour, alas.. And gulab jamun, India’s milky answer to the donut, contains unadulterated gluten. Right now I’m more inclined to make them at home than to trust sweet shops… but I’d love to try them if I could find some safe varieties.

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Just for fun: List of non-wheat flours commonly used in India

Whew. Figuring all this out has made me realize how much I DON’T know about the diverse food cultures in India… But at least now I can handle our hotel room service menu like a pro- as long as I’m ordering veg! Just don’t ask me about non-veg dishes… ;)

This information was the result of extensive internet research, but there may be mistakes. Please ask your server extensive questions and explain your dietary needs, with the help of travel cards if necessary. You may find that North Indian restaurants in the US are more likely to add wheat flour as a thickener than they are in India- or even that some chefs here add wheat where you wouldn’t expect it. Be careful and if in doubt- just don’t eat it! If you have additions, corrections, or compliments (tee hee) please post in the comments!