in longing for the tomato cheese toast sandwich

I miss having tomato cheese sandwiches. After I knew I was lactose intolerant, I dint miss not eating all the lactose rich foods. I have a craving for very few foods. I don’t miss, pizzas too much, nor ice creams, nor normal chocolates, nor rabdi or kulfi. What I end up missing at times is curd and at times buttermilk. Yes – the sweet buttermilk at Dadar. The one that my dad introduced me to. That was the awesome thing that I introduced Jispa to. There is this shop at Dadar west, very near the station (opposite nakshatra mall). It’s a nondescript place which only serves lassi. There is no board outside announcing the place. It probably grew by word of mouth and is at best 5 feet wide. At the entrance itself is the proprietor making lassi with a made to order contraption which is basically an old wooden style lassi churning device attached to an electric motor. There is room only for people to get in or get out in sequence, not simultaneously. The shop is around 20 to 25 feet long with narrow benches on both sides. And he serves only one thing – lassi – full or half. Typically, there will be a line outside his shop as one batch finishes their lassi. They come out and the other batch goes in. You go in and sit along the sides and wait for the server to come in with a massive tray with lassi glasses. Full or half. You choose and drink. Every glass will have a scoop of cream of curd on top of it. Thick sweet, creamy lassi, deeply India style. And on the way out, declare what you drank, pay and leave. I introduced this to Jispa and she loved it as well. I miss this. I am making a sad face right now. And I miss Tomato cheese toast. I love Tomato cheese toast sandwich. With some herbs in in.

Recently over the long weekend, I was helping Jasmine with some chores at Dadar. It was really hot and I took her with the car to finish the pending work. It’s one of those things that is a mighty bore to do alone. So, we parked the car somewhere and roamed around doing the chores. Then I took Jasmine to a place I knew from before which served some nice Misal Pav. Misal is the ultimate Maharashtrian dish and this road side eatery was good at it. After having some missal we were going back to the car when I saw some laal bhaji being sold. This is to is something that I saw some Maharashtrian friends of mine get for their lunch. I urged Jasmine to buy some and while she was buying, I saw that there was a restaurant at the side that seemed interesting. A very basic simple restaurant, non air conditioned and with a menu written in Marathi on black boards. It was serving interesting dishes that I had not even heard of. I told Jasmine that I was going in and checking it out. To cut a long story short, the restaurant was ‘Tambe Arogya Bhavan’ and served some of the best Maharashtrian food I have ever had.

The most amazing thing about this place is that I have passed this place upteen number of times. It is on the main road in Dadar and I have never ever even realized that this place exists. It has been under the radar and hidden from everyone, food critics, foodies and aficionados alike. It was a serendipitous discovery and a lovely cheap place to eat. I wrote about it on FB and tried to spread the message to whoever who cared to listen. It’s a place I would love to go to, again and again. Dadar trips are now going to be fun – taking people to this place and then to the lassi guy who is stone’s throw away.

But the story is not this – the story is how I am amazed at myself turning foodie. I was never a foodie. Food was simple to me – it’s something you eat and not something you go fancy over. Take anything and put cheese in it and voila – you are done.

Two things happened to me – first I realized that I was lactose intolerant. That one thing sent me on a trail of understanding food and the body and how we react to it, interact with it and live with it. And the second - I got a deeper understanding of the evolution of food and our food habits. A deeper understanding that has more anthropological roots in it. And it has been an eclectic journey. It has helped understand who I am and what I eat. It had helped me understand who others are and what they eat. And in the end, it has helped me what others will eat and hence what they will become.

I don’t know when and where and reading or listening to what not, did I realise that our food habits were dictated by world war 2. This is an interesting story. The fast and quick version of this is simple – Europe retained it culinary traditions through word war as the supply lines were relatively short and they eat from the farm lands and fresh food. US fought the war across the oceans and had huge supply lines. They are a large continent to start with. This ensured that any transport of food had to be processed and tinned. All tinning makes food mushy, slushy and easy to eat. After the war this industry was channelized for the people and that’s why you have such food. Over time as they exported culture and food to the world, we realized that this food is fast (hence fast food) to eat and gave us instant calories and protein – essential to survival. We developed a taste for it and slowly we started making all food easy to eat.

The most popular foods today in Mumbai are idlis, dosas, pastas, McD and margarita pizza. Basically nothing to chew. When I realized this, it changed my taste and my passion for food completely. Now, I look for joy in food when I go to eat. Sometimes we go to just eat. That’s filling your tummy. But some times, I love to go and eat for tasting, for feeling, for texture and for anthropology. To understand the culture and people behind the taste. What is it that makes us, us?

This has made me into an interesting foodie, and a food snob of sorts. I like to taste the food and analyse all of it. Not simple gobble it down. Keep it for a few moments in my mouth, understand why I enjoyed it or not, what is so interesting about it, what is the chef trying to do. Once I understood this, it made a better chef myself, as I treat friends with flavours and textures with my fun stuff on salad and deserts. It has become an enriching experience.

As Dharen said, you can write a book on hunger, but to really experience hunger, you have no option but to be hungry for a day. Being lactose intolerant made me miss my cheese and curd and ice cream, but it opened my palate like none other. It made me understand the role of food in my life, in our lives. It made me understand what it did to me. Today I understand what foods I like for lunch and what I like for dinner, I know what makes me play better and what doesn’t. How my energy levels move according to the food I eat. This has been an amazing enlightening condition. I look at all the so called gujju foodies and feel sorry for them. They are what I was. “I will eat it as long as you can cheese it’ is the gujju philosophy. Recently we went to a place called Spesos. It is a gujju orgasmic paradise. It had cheese on everything. That’s why all of the gujjus were in full force there. We went there and ordered for myself the only two things that were lactose free on the menu. By default, those were the south east Asian items. After my condition, this cuisine is the best for me. Authentic SE Asian cuisines are naturally lactose free and they have become the family haunt. In 30 minutes of having the food, I got severe bloating and a mild migraine. The jokers must have put some cream or something in the soup or gravy. Why else would the damn gujju eat there? Jokers. But hell – I just had to sleep through it. Luckily it was dinner time.

But still no complaints. People ask me all the time about my condition and feel sorry for me. I don’t think they need to. I feel happy for me. Some talk about cures available and some talk about tablets that allow you to eat the stuff. But I am happy. This has meant a healthier lifestyle, less sugar, less fat and by that logical consequence less salt. All of which is good.

But the knowledge that I gained thanks to this has also been amazing. The simplest of which being – you will find milk when you least expect it and you will find it missing where you expect it – tomato flavoured ready to cook and eat noodles have milk solids in them and Oreo cream biscuit doesn’t. People wonder. Especially when they think about it and ask – then what is the white thing in the Oreo. Well – that cream biscuit you are eating has no cream. It freaking hydrogenated vegetable oils. And that stuff is bad for you. Really bad for you.

Frozen desert that Walls sells masked as ice cream is also that – it doesn’t even legally qualify to be called ice cream, and that’s why recently an ice cream maker Amul came up with an ad that called it just that – NOT ICE CREAM. They took them to court.

People don’t realise why there is so much sugar, salt and fat in their diet. Neither did I, till I got affected by it. That’s a good thing. Such a beautiful cultural extravaganza from a stupid condition. And now thanks to me I am teaching Jispa to eat and understand. We started reading ingredients on wrappings and understanding their impact. We started understanding a little bit of good food. When we travel, certain restaurants come with very interesting foods and certain local places are true to their roots. It has become an interesting family discussion. Food food, glorious food. But not as a means to grow fat but as a means to understand one-self and ones roots. Because if you don’t know where you come from, you are not going to know where you are likely to go. Deep nah?

And yes – I still miss tomato cheese toast. But I think I am going to get some lactose free cheese from US (Jasmine’s brother) and I am going to savor it, without sharing it. Lactose free cheese? Yes – I figured that aged cheese is lactose free as the lactose is shed in the whey and then the process ensures that the lactose is already digested in the curing itself. See – shit you would never know till shit hits you man. And just yesterday, I was talking to another swim parent whose kid is lactose intolerant. I told them about the cheese which is certified as lactose free. He didn’t know that. The poor kid obviously didn’t have pizza, but now it could. Thanks to this information. This also came to me once when my fiend was having some cheese that he had bought for himself and he saw the wrapper that said ‘lactose free’. It’s crazy how the information spreads. I feel like starting a community of lactose intolerant people.

Such is the way of life. Knowledge doesn’t come by itself. It must have meaning to you in your life. It cannot be aimless. You have to find its purpose. Food now has purpose for me. The books I read on sport have purpose for me. What I understand in history has purpose for me. Because of this purpose I can understand it, appreciate it, apply and therefore have a greater passion for it. Purpose can come from anywhere and can help you, but I am not so sure that real knowledge can be gained without purpose. At least not for me. I lose interest and it wouldn’t seem to really help. That was the problem in school and is the problem with boring teachers. They may have had amazing expertise but the ones that I loved was the ones that connect that to my lives or inspired it as a story in my life. I loved those and hence that’s how I teach. My marketing class tries to connect stuff that happens to things that happen in my life and hopefully it tries to connect to things that will happen in their life as well. Then only will they listen and then only will they understand and that will make an impact. Not otherwise.