Culture 1: The Indian Cuisine

One of the main benefits of living in a multi-cultural country is that you learn each other's cultures, which of course includes food. Growing up in a quite traditional chinese family, I've been taught that I am supposed to prefer Chinese cuisine above all others. Unfortunately for my parents, I have always been a strong character and chose my own ways especially when it comes to food.

Today I am going to blog about the very first ethnic cuisine I learned about in Suriname: ROTI. I still remember how it happened. It was within a year when we arrived in Suriname that we had to move to a new neighbourhood. On that very first day, our Indian neighbours brought a newcomer's gift for us. My parents accepted as a nice gesture of course, but after that, traditionally as they were, looked at it and surprisingly tasted it, but they didn't like it back then. And I think, my neighbours were not such good cooks either. The only thing I remembered from that scene was that the food smelled really strong and it smelled like nothing that I knew of back then.

Now, more than 20 years later, the roti is an indispensible food choice in Suriname. As easy as you can grab a burger at Mac Donald's or Burger King, so easy is it for us to grab a roti at Roopram or Chris. Without a doubt, if you talk about Indian cuisine, you can't leave out their snacks. Some of my favorite snacks are:

Bara : It is like a very soft and savoury doughnut. The dough is made with spices like Oerdi, Cumin and Curry. I like this best with potato chutney. Chutney is a kind of pepper sauce mostly made with fruits.
 
Jalebi : It is like a very crispy pretzel, filled with lots of syrup. This is one of those snacks you can't stop eating. Every time you want to stop and there is still some left, you'll continue till it's finished.

Last but not least, the samosa. This is the definition wikipedia gave me: "A Samosa is a fried or baked pastry with a savory filling such as spiced potatoes, onions, peas, lentils, ground lamb or chicken." and I think that's the best explanation I can give of a samosa.

However I do cook Indian food, but all recipes are taken from the net. So for those of you who would like to try out some of these snacks, I chose these websites:

For these Indian recipes in dutch:
http://www.sranangkukru.net/skphp/start.php?menu=recepten&categorie=hartig&naam_recept=Samosa&id=247
For these Indian recipes in english:
http://apickyeatersquest.blogspot.com/2010/05/bara-surinamese-savoury-doughnuts.html
http://indianfood.about.com/od/specialoccassionrecipes/r/jalebi.htm
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/samosas/detail.aspx