[kombuchakid]

a favorite Busybee review-perfect for a soggy day like today


IF you want to eat bara handi (literally, food from 12 pots), you have to be at Valibhai Payawala’s shop at 6 o’clock in the morning. Make it 6.30, if you are a late riser. The shop is in the inner city, the Muslim quarter of Bombay, and, within the Muslim quarter, Bohri Mohalla. The Bohris are good trenchermen, they love their food, and they eat meaty breakfasts. By the time you reach Valibhai Payawala, the shop will be full and the handis half empty. They come after the morning prayers at the nearby mosque, first pray to Allah, then pate (stomach) puja.

It is a peculiar shop, the cooking is done at the entrance. But that is a middle east custom, you see the food before you enter the shop and eat it. The food is cooked all night, in 12 handis sunk in the ground, their lids sealed with flour dough, to ensure the steam does not escape. And it is cooked on slow coal fires, various meats in their own juices, and some lentils.

Two of the handis have payas (trotters), one beef and the other mutton, the meat sticking to the bone like gelatin. Another handi contains topa, the meat around the neck of the animal, what fancier people call salami. Next, pichota, the rump of the animal and the tail, it is meat and bones, not as good at topa, but also in demand.

You may have suka, dry meat with gravy from another handi, and to get away from meat, there is the handi with harisha, three lentils mixed together with chickpea flour, besan and milk. And there is a handi with a rich soup, guaranteed to remove cold from your chest and nose. A couple of handis are not buried in the clay but kept on top of the platform. One of them contains the marrow, which would melt if put next to the fire.

And don't forget to get your lamba pau from outside. The breadman sits outside with his lamba pau. It has a touch of sourness about it and a taste of wood smoke, having been baked in wooden ovens.