Monday, April 30, 2012

Bhuja / "Bhujia" Update


Update: On Monday evening, I took the bag of Bhuja to work and placed it on the table of the conference room where we usually meet with members of the HSC team to review their processes.  In the midst of a conversation, the Team Lead suddenly noticed the shiny red bag and said, "Oh, you brought Bhujia."  She said that in India, it is called Bhujia with an "i".  When I asked if it was her "family's favorite" according to the advertisement on the packaging (see my post on April 14), she said that people in India like to eat it when drinking alcohol because it is a salty snack.  The bag said that it has sultanas, so I asked them what that was, but they did not know.  Later I discovered on Google that sultanas are a fancy word for raisins.  The HSC team tried the Bhuja and said that by comparison, the Indian version is very spicy because they use more masala, which I don't doubt.  I tried some, and although there are flames on the packaging of the Bhuja, it was only mildly spicy.  As I was eating a handful, I wondered why there were so many "multi-grain noodles" compared to the peanuts, raisins and peas. After checking Google, I realized that actually, traditional Bhujia is only the noodles.  The website I read described it as a "famous crispy snack", dating back to A.D. 1877. There's even a recipe for how to make it on wikipedia, and traditionally, the primary ingredient is "gram flour" (not sure what that is) along with moth dal (not sure what that is either), vegetable oil, salt, red chilli, black pepper, cardamom and cloves.


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