Brown Motion

As I ate some wonderful Gulab Jam (fried flour dough balls in simple syrup laced with Saffron) today I thought of some interesting and complex foods that I have had the fortune to enjoy growing up in the western state of Maharashtra in India. Each place has its tradition and food is big part of it.  Maharashtra itself has a lot of variety moving inland from the coastal plains with its abundant rice production along with what the sea offers (used to offer much more like any place on the planet) over the Sahyadri mountains and into the warm heartland farm country (or what used to be anyway). What grows locally is best had within miles of where it is produced.  That reveals the true taste of the ingredients and the art and science that went into making it. Here then are top X items that I thought of this evening over the bowl of Gulab Jams... Kharvas - to a westerner this dish is impossible to imagine - some sort of cheese perhaps is the closest analogy th...