Wednesday 3 November 2010

Delhicious!

Oooooh Plummy Mummy's greedy heart is so very happy today as I have just returned with plenty of savouries and sweets. On an exercise walk last month (once a month is quite enough thank you), I passed Delhicious on Plumstead High street. It the new vegetarian Gujarati food shop that has been there for 3 months and I've never noticed as I don't often go further than Daddos on the High Street.
Traditionally, Gujarati housewives cook masses of savouries and sweets in preparation for Diwali.
Gujarati snack shops are common in India and also in areas of London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leicester with large Guju populations. I remember fondly going along to Wembley High Street to scoff up stuff or my dad coming home with bags of goodies from Kingsbury. It's also a part of celebrations to have these colourful box of sweets.
Today my shop came to just over £21 which isn't bad considering what I bought
  • a large box of mixed barfis - indian sweets that are often ghee and milk based. The different flavours are achieved using nuts and spices such as cardamon and saffron. Mr P.M. enjoys barfi so I'm going to have to ensure he doesn't sneak any out of the box before Friday. 
  • a box of sev - great for eating with tea or for a break from the sweet.
  • a box of bhusu - a mixture but with nuts, sev, channa and moong dhals. Tastes great with a bottle of cold beer
  • a very small box of sticky jalebis which are made of fried flour mix that is then completely soaked in sweet water to make them sticky and sweet. In our family, we often bought these on a Sunday morning to eat hot with tea and ghatia. They are my older brother's favourite and every time I eat one I think of him. Kids love them. 
  • some samosas and a few kachoris. Kachoris are balls of fried flour filled with a very spicy dhal mix.  I'm have to admit I'm not a big fan of shop bought samosas as my mother used to make the most divine ones (a recipe I soon hope to perfect myself) so in future may give those a miss but the other stuff will more than happily satisfy me. 
The people in the shop are really friendly and were happy to explain what the different sweets contained. It was also a quick chance to use my fast fading Gujarati. I'm pretty sure they will be busy in the next few days and I'm certain I'll be returning to stock up again too.  They told me they will also do special dishes at the weekend like chili paneer. If you do go along, take some cash as they don't take cards yet.

Delhicious
98a Plumstead High Street
tel: 0208 855 8832
Opening hours 9 - 11
CASH ONLY


4 comments:

Emma said...

I think I'd better send the other half to do a bit of shopping there this w/end!

Steve said...

Yum! Can't wait to try it.

Plummy Mummy said...

Hmmm go easy on it though. My tummy has taken a bit of a knock thanks to the heavy spicing. :(

Raven said...

That shop looks fab. And your descriptions of the food make me feel very nostalgic - we don't have anything like that down the road in Eltham!!

My kids love jalebis (of course!) - my favourite is rasmulai (not sure of spelling...)