Monsoons not only bring good/pleasant weather but also the urge to eat for me. The thought of eating dal pakoras with green chutney and tea in the evening or hot samosas or onion kachoris during monsoon makes me drool anytime of the day or month or year. Yesterday was my lucky day as not only it rained but I was invited for a prasadi/gote. In other words I was in for the most mouth watering daal baati. For people who haven't tasted daal baati I would say- Dude you eat non veg and you haven't tried laal maas yet. I may be a little bias but trust me in North India and especially in Rajasthan this is epic. I still remember the days when I was in college, how everyone from all over the nation started liking daal baati and even after graduation when people came to Rajasthan they would ask me where can they get daal baati. Anyways coming back to yesterday's meal, the love of my life- my wife (who has not been brought up in rajasthan) also went with me and it was her first time trying daal baati. To be honest I was more excited about her experience than the whole meal and at the end her experience of eating daal baati and me enjoying my favorite meal both turned out to be quite amazing. Traditionally they make you sit on the floor and serve you in a pattal (disposable plate made out of some kind of dry leaf or something) but fortunately for many, there were tables and chairs yesterday. The moment you are seated people start serving you and its not just one or two persons serving you, there is a whole of lot of people serving you. Its like when you go for a buffet the dishes are static and you keep moving but in this case you are static and the dishes keep moving. The menu for yesterdays meal was 4 types of churma including pineapple churma, plain baati, masala baati, sweet baati, daal, gatte, bhindi, fried mirchi, kadi and rice. I personally love masala baati with fried mirchi and gatte. As it was my first gote of the season I tried everything and enjoyed every bit of it. The meal is very heavy as the baatis are soaked in ghee and churmas are also quite rich with sugar. Any experienced daal baati eater will never have lots of water right after the meal. I would suggest, to know the reason behind it you should go and try it for yourself. We all ate as much as we could but I wonder whether everyone was really satisfied or kept craving for more and cursing their tummies why it got full so fast. In the end we had kulfi for sweet dish and it felt like cherry on the cake. The meal came to an end, the satisfaction will last for couple of days but the experience shall last forever as this one was really a special one because of my wife. I hope you all get a chance to enjoy daal baati soon. Happy eating.
NOTE- all the non veg lovers you can try plain baati with mutton (laal maas). Finger licking good.
its like i can almost taste the food while reading!!! just want to reach out to that picture and take a big bite!!
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