Page 271 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - India

INTRODUCING EASTERN INDIA  269

other cuisines. Typical dishes
are prawn cocktail, roast lamb
with mint sauce and the ever-
popular caramel custard.

Sweets
Both Odisha and Bengal are
known for their infinite variety
of milk-based sweets. Sandesh,
made from chenna (an Indian
ricotta), is by far the most
popular. Cottage cheese
and syrup are also used to
Women working in paddy fields in Odisha create many varieties of
sweets including kancha
in mustard, fried crisp, smoked iromba, made with fermented gola, chumchum and danadar.
to melt its innumerable bones, fish, vegetables and bamboo Peda and kalakand are made
steamed in a banana leaf (ilish shoots. Other dishes include with condensed milk and
macher paturi) or cooked in akshi aong (a delicious pork chopped nuts.
a light sauce of yoghurt and curry heavily seasoned with
ginger (doi maach). Other great chillies) and anok pongsuem ON THE MENU
regional inventions are the (steamed fish from Nagaland).
delicate daab chingri, where In Kolkata, food from the Bhapa illish Hilsa marinated
prawns are cooked in a tender Raj still reigns supreme among with mustard and chillies and
coconut (daab) and chingri steamed in a banana leaf.
malai curry (prawns cooked Chholar dal Yellow split gram
in coconut milk). seasoned with cumin seed and
garam masala.
Other Favourites Kamla kheer A pudding with
oranges and thickened milk.
Sikkim’s distinctive cuisine is Kosha mangsho A spicy
influenced also by Nepal and mutton curry eaten with rice
Bhutan. Some popular dishes or fluffy fried breads (luchi).
are the Tibetan-style thukpa Mishti doi Yoghurt sweetened
(thick noodle soup), momos with molasses and garnished
and the diverse ways of cooking with chopped nuts.
local cottage cheese made with
yak’s milk (churpi). Assamese Saag bhaja Stir-fried spinach,
garnished with coconut.
food combines pungent
ingredients with fermented Basket of freshly caught fish being carried Shorshey maachh Fish cooked
in a mustard sauce.
foods, such as the Manipuri to the market

Prawn malai curry has Aloo posto, common to Caramel custard, a Raj
prawns cooked in coconut both Bengal and Odisha, favourite, is a milk mixture
cream with crushed mustard are potatoes cooked with a baked in a dish with sweet
seeds and red chillies. paste of poppy seeds. caramel lining its base.

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