I consider myself comfortable in the kitchen. I'm no master chef, but under ordinary circumstances, I am very capable of cooking edible food and baking impressive-looking cakes. But since moving to India, I find myself losing confidence in my ability to feed the family. This has nothing to do with a waning of my abilities but everything to do with just how hard it is to shop in Mumbai.
On the surface of things, it should be easy. We live in an area which is well-serviced by delivery apps. The IndiaBulls community has WhatsApp groups for specialist deliveries - everything from fresh coconuts to dry cleaning. I'm a member of the ‘Blu Fruit Order from Breach Candy’ group (Breach Candy is a different neighbourhood where apparently, they have better fruit vendors) which means I can choose from a list of fruits every Monday and Thursday and they are delivered to the compound. Because I am usually around at 5pm when the vendor arrives in his little white van, and because he parks his van right at the bottom of our tower, I pop downstairs and collect my fruit. I join the throng of house boys to await the handover of my bag of goodies. I have never seen another resident collect their fruit. On the days when I am not available (if I am at one of Jasper’s classes, or on a work call), I ask the fruit man to drop the bag outside our apartment door, so perhaps this is what many of the other residents do. Or perhaps we are the only household without a house boy.
Besides deliveries, we live well-placed between two small grocery stores - Nature's Basket and FoodHall - which style themselves as supermarkets but I don’t find them all that super, if I’m being honest, and which stock some international brands. The walk to either is equidistant, but the route to Nature’s Basket takes in a 5-and-a-half-spoke intersection, at least 25% of which is under construction at any given time. The construction brings its own chaos of hoardings, diggers, temporary pedestrian walkways and holes in the ground, which only add to the pre-existing madness of a fast-moving crossroads where nobody obeys the traffic signals or the madly whistling policemen. I have walked it once, and learned my lesson. Fortunately, Nature’s Basket is easy to stop at on the way back from Jasper’s school and is (as far as I can see) the only shop in the whole of Mumbai to open at 8am. So, as long as I have the time and the enthusiasm for heartbreak, I can stop there after dropping Jasper. I enter the shop with very little hope, and more often than not, I leave with even less and none of the items on my list. For the past two months I have been searching for Bran Flakes, which used to fill the shelves there before they vanished, at the exact same time that Jasper took a liking to ‘mummy’s cereal’. I am also wondering if the Italian salad dressing will ever reappear. Or the mini macaroni pasta or Bon Maman marmalade. Nature’s Basket does at least have a reliable supply of unsalted spreadable Lurpak and cheddar cheese. And just recently, a stock of a local blueberry and beetroot yogurt drink which Jasper has tried once, when I spotted it as a way to ensure he meets his dairy quota, and which he now demands be restocked in our fridge. With a commanding, open-palm thrust of his hand, he asks “Where Japper fruit drink gone? Buy more at supermarket.”
Nature’s Basket does have an app, but I don’t have the patience to wait the 3 hours it takes for a 90-minute delivery (which I have to pay extra for), nor for the poor interface which sees a spelling error message pop up as soon as I type one letter. Yes, I know that ‘C’ is not a word…but if you’ll let me write ‘cheddar’ without interrupting, we might get somewhere! Dylan orders from the app sometimes, but for him, the ‘C’ is for Cadbury’ and he has deemed the chocolate worth the 5 hour (sofa-based) round trip from app search to delivery. I actually believe that some people call the supermarket and give their order over the phone, but given that the people in the store can’t understand me reciting my phone number at the cash desk, I can’t think of anything more painful than trying to communicate ‘Old El Paso taco mix’ over the phone.
Photos: So many items that I don't need or don't want to pay fancy prices for - such as ghee. or flour.
On the other side of our compound is the FoodHall, which is in the Phoenix Palladium Shopping mall. I walk there at least once a week - sometimes for a change of scenery and some caffeinated sanity, sitting with my laptop in a brasserie cafe, surrounded by strangers. Other times because Nature’s Basket didn’t have the one ingredient I needed to make the dinner I have in mind for the evening. On those occasions it’s more of a stomp than a walk. This shop stocks a similar range of items to Nature’s Basket (dried pastas, bagged tea, olive oil and breakfast cereals), but from slightly different brands, and in some ways luckily, the two never seem to have the same thing available at the same time. If there are tinned tomatoes in Nature’s Basket, FoodHall will be out. If there are Mexican wraps at FoodHall, Nature’s Basket will be out. It’s nice to have a back-up, but it does mean that I have never successfully completed a shop at just one of these stores. Every single time I go, I come home with a list of leftover items which I will have to go out again for whenever I muster the strength. FoodHall sells acceptable bakery items, and these are available via the local delivery app Swiggy. Sadly, it’s ONLY the bakery items that are available for delivery, despite it being but a short walk down the aisle for the picker to grab me some much-needed English Breakfast Tea bags and pop them in the same bag.
Jasper and I actually went on a school field trip last week, to a different supermarket which I have never visited before - the Reliance Smart Bazaar. Even while it was under siege by 20 toddlers, I saw potential in it (if you disregard the dairy section dedicated to something called an 'analogue Food Block'). I will be returning there alone to properly assess its ability to streamline my grocery shopping. At first glance, it seemed to sell snacks, breakfast cereals, fresh fruits, (although the current stock is probably riddled with toddler bite marks) store cupboard staples AND nappies, which already awards it some bonus points for variety. Nature's Basket and FoodHall both have the ability to appear helpful - there's something about the way they are laid out which makes them look, at first, as though they will sell the things you need. But they really don't. They offer lots of local staples in fancy packaging, labelled organic and at inflated prices. Smart Bazaar on the other hand looks like a discount store, but it appears to have a far more practical inventory than its fancier, more superficial cousins.
In between physical (and emotional) trips to the disappointing not-so-super-markets, I oversee an endless stream of deliveries. A diary of a typical shopping week looks like this:
MONDAY:
Order bin bags from amazon (only place I have found the right size for the bathroom bins) - for delivery in 3 days. Roughly 2 days after we will run out.
Stop at Nature’s Basket and pick up Lurpak, Jasper’s yogurt drink, salad dressing (a new Hellman’s one appeared - Honey & Mustard - remind myself not to get attached as it almost certainly won’t be there next week) and tinned tuna. Dug through tuna-tin display to find only two cans of John West. How are there so many tins of something which looks like it would be tuna but is somehow not tuna? No taco mix, no Bran Flakes. Add to list for FoodHall later in the week.
Delivery of potatoes, sunflower oil (they only had a 5L bottle, rather than the 1L I actually wanted) and carrots. Remember to order toilet paper from the non-express app.
Order toilet paper (checking carefully that it’s not kitchen towel in the identical packaging) from non-express app. Select delivery time for 10am - 12pm Tuesday.
Choose fruit from WhatsApp fruit group - send pre-approval for fruit man to enter compound because I will be at yoga class when he arrives and needs me to approve on the app.
TUESDAY:
Order fresh pasta from Cacio e Pepe. Remember to ask for last week’s focaccia which wasn’t available due to the change in the weather.
Order nappies off amazon - delivery in 5 days. Luckily still have enough supply until then.
If time, walk to shopping mall to look for mexican wraps, taco mix, toast bread and see if Weet-Bix are back. 3 months and counting on them…
Look out for gate approval request for toilet paper.
WEDNESDAY:
Order buffalo mince from Meat Brothers (halal meat provider who work via WhatsApp). Delivery next day.
Order chicken from Pescafresh to roast for Sunday. Delivery same or next day - seem to disregard specific request but at least everything comes on nitrogen/ ice.
Order sausages from Sweet Stuff to make sausage rolls for Dylan. Work out where pork mince came from for previous batch, as mix of sausage and plain mince worked well.
Remember to look out for pasta delivery from Cacio e Pepe. Last week it arrived at 9:30pm, but luckily I had forgotten I ordered it and had made something else for dinner.
Order hydroponic veg from Seedle Farms - yellow and red cherry toms, mushrooms, guava and proper lemons (not lemons that look and taste like limes), fresh basil for pasta dinner tonight. Oh - no - delivery for tomorrow. Will have pasta tomorrow night instead.
Look out for gate approval request for pasta.
Seedle Farms' delicious hydroponic veg.
THURSDAY
Look out for gate approval request for Meat Brothers, Pescafresh and Sweet Stuff (all usually some time between 10am - 4pm).
Order emergency supply of juice boxes before Jasper runs out. Delivery in 15-20 mins. Check that boxes have straws still attached.
Check Chef Frank menu on WhatsApp to see if we want to order for weekend. 4th weekend of the month means Dylan will be off Saturday and Sunday, so maybe chef frank meal on Saturday evening?
Ask Seema to call number to order more of Jasper’s Indian snacks. Masala makhana running low.
WhatsApp order from pharmacy of cough syrup for Dylan, paracetamol for Milla, shower gel and mosquito patches for Jasper.
Order fruit from fruit man - give approval at 5pm for delivery.
Photo: Chef Frank's weekly menu - always roughly the same, but a nice change from sourcing and cooking my own meats!
FRIDAY:
Unknown delivery called ‘Chheda’ - wonder what that is? Did I order cheese? Oh, it’s Jasper’s snack order from yesterday. Scramble for cash to pay delivery fee.
Seedle farms delivering again? Oh, the subscription salad box. Forgot about that.
Random stream of amazon deliveries addressed to Dylan. Wonder why they can’t consolidate into one delivery?
Quick order of veg to make buff & veg lasagne for dinner and weekend, freeze leftovers for Jasper.
Photo: Jasper's epic Indian snack selection.
SATURDAY:
Chef Frank delivery - ready to plate at 7pm.
SUNDAY:
Day of rest, unless Dylan has been amazon shopping again.
It’s a good thing I don’t have a social life, because between Jasper’s class schedule, working 3 days a week, trying to finish writing a book, a new attempt at a bi-weekly yoga class, at least one jog and the grocery shopping schedule - I am pretty squeezed.
Photo: Big Basket App - hardly inspires dinner choices.
There is absolutely no walking around a supermarket, seeing what’s on special offer this week and deciding that’s exactly what we’d like for dinner. A week of meals requires me to make a schedule, work out where to buy or order all the ingredients from, and then we hold out for some luck that at least some, never all, the ingredients are available somewhere. I try to keep the freezer well-stocked for emergencies which happen when I have literally lost the will to even try and shop for stuff, in which case we all have a portion of smileys with ketchup. But even stocking the freezer is hard. I thought fish fingers were a quick and easy source of protein, until I started looking closely at the ingredients on the boxes here, and discovered that after fish, chilli is almost always the second item on the list. These things are spicy. And they’re not the only things…chicken nuggets too, are made from chicken, chilli, breadcrumbs and some other stuff. Spice is something we wish we could predict here. It’s not that we don’t enjoy spicy food, but there are foods which are meant to be spicy, and then there are those which are not.
Take a chicken parmigiana, for example. Or even just the nice, breaded chicken cutlet that lies beneath all the cheesy, tomato-ey sauce. It is not meant to be spicy. I tried a few times to make it at home but each time I ended up in a cloud of smoke, with all the fans on and all the windows open only to discover that there is no ventilation in our apartment. Giving up on home-cooking the cutlets, or ‘smashed chicken’ as we call it on account of the stress-relieving qualities of our preparation method, I found a supplier who, I assume, has a well-ventilated deep fryer. The first time we ordered it, it was delicious. And the second time. Jasper too was hoovering up his chicken cutlet, washed down by a cup of ketchup. But the third time it came…snuck in between the chicken and the breadcrumbs was a layer of SPICINESS! Why?! How?! And what?! It was a hidden paste of chillis, ginger and garlic, and it did NOT belong. But it was there, and so that ended our relationship with that particular restaurant. We have been disappointed by spicy burgers, spicy fries, indian-tasting spicy chinese dumplings from a chinese restaurant, and even a spicy iced lolly. Give an Indian chef an inch, or a minute unsupervised with a recipe, and he will take a masala-drenched mile.
My biggest run in with unexpected spice was when I recently tried to make a sausage stew - an old one-pot family staple made with sausages, onion, potatoes, and tomato. Notably, no chilli. Sausages, or at least, good sausages that we recognise as containing real meat are hard to come by here, but I thought that I had built up enough of an emergency supply that I could risk actually cooking some of them. I dutifully donned my cooking apron and compiled my pot of stew, and then took to my usual evening activity of waiting in the house until someone came home to eat something; Dylan in this case. As I opened the pot, alarm bells rang. The sauce was not tomato red but danger red. And the smell didn’t hit my nostrils, it burned its way into them. My eyes wept with the sting of the stew and the hurt of the betrayal. Digging back through the bin, I found the offending sausage packet and turned it over to read the ingredients: (1) pork, (2) chilli. The stew was inedible. It roared with a fiery fury that neither Dylan nor I wanted to revisit on its way through, as it were. And so smileys for dinner it was, with a side of utter dejection for me - the time wasted, the ingredients so hard-sought, and the dinner so completely ruined.
I am getting quite used to failing at cooking things, and this is what’s beating down my confidence. At least one dinner out of seven is rendered borderline inedible by some ingredient or other failing me. And Dylan doesn’t hide his disappointment at coming home from a long day’s work and being served a bowl of fire. It's a convivial, commiserative disappointment, but it’s disappointment nonetheless. I am grateful for my most enthusiastic cheerleader - Jasper. He marches around the apartment complex telling anyone within earshot that his favourite food is ‘zagna (lasagne). My only concern there is that he will get us thrown out of the compound for telling hardline vegetarians that he is off to eat Buffalo-Gruffalo ‘Zagna for dinner. I haven’t dared to look up whether it’s possible to over-’zagna oneself but I am assuming for now that it’s not. Jasper’s lasagne supply is pre-cooked, portioned, frozen and then heated in the microwave - to the absolute horror of the Jains who only eat freshly cooked food each day. Jasper’s nanny Seema tells me that there is a lot of interest among the nannies about what Jasper eats and just how much we use the microwave in our household. I assume that interest turns to gossip as it makes its way to the mums and ultimately, the mother-in-laws. But I don’t mind. Jasper has a good diet, and until he’s old enough to be sent out on long-winded shopping errands, he’ll eat what he’s given.
Speaking of cooking failures, a recent one which I shouldered alone (well, almost alone, apart from my poor guinea-pig Jasper) was my attempt to make hot cross buns. I blame The British Shop for advertising a hot cross bun to me months ago, and then telling me that the delivery timelines from the UK to India were such that they couldn’t guarantee the order would arrive in peak condition. After my attempts to recreate them, I would have paid extra for some beaten-up buns. I have made hot cross buns before, in China and in Myanmar, and while they haven’t exactly been light and springy, they have at least tasted about right. So again, I went into this experiment with some confidence. My first attempt was a disaster because I bought the wrong yeast - I had ‘active dry yeast’ when what I needed was ‘instant dry yeast’. My mistake, and my lesson to learn. The result was a large batch of rocks which tasted and smelled like off beer. On my second attempt, I googled how to properly activate my lazy dry yeast, and the result was some more rocks but this time ones which didn’t taste of beer. Inedible, but getting closer, I felt. For my third attempt, I ordered some ‘instant dry yeast’. Feeling prepped and ready, I began my mission and for the first time ever, the dough rose. I kneaded in the fruits and spices and the dough rose some more. I photographed my success, balled up my dough, painted on my crosses and it rose some more! Into the oven they went and soon the apartment was filled with the smell of…yeast. But wait, there was still 15 minutes left on the timer, in which time yeastiness would turn to yumminess and I’d be as happy as someone who has successfully made their own hot cross buns. The timer pinged and the yeast smell bulged out of the oven, but I still felt optimistic. I tried one. I put some more butter on and tried it again. I gave a piece to Jasper after his nap and his face said it all. They were revolting. Like drinking the dregs at the bottom of a day-old beer keg. But heavier.
There comes a point in all of us where we accept defeat. And this was it for me. Three attempts, three failures. People (mostly Indian) I spoke to about my baking failures cited the poor milk quality, poor butter and poor flour as the culprit. Someone told me I should have kept the yeast in the fridge. There is at least a solidarity in other people believing that the ingredients here make it very hard to succeed at baking. I was left with a bitter, sour, rotting, yeasty taste in my mouth and perhaps, unsurprisingly, my lust for hot cross buns was dampened. Or so I thought…
On Sunday morning, Dylan came home from touch rugby with a gift: fresh from the shelves of M&S in the UK, carried carefully (read: squished up) in the suitcase of an old friend but new arrival into Mumbai, were eight perfectly soft, spiced hot cross buns. Not just any old hot cross buns…M&S hot cross buns! I opened a pack and hugged them, inhaling the scent of juicy raisins, delicate cinnamon, mystery spice and freshly baked bread. I gazed at the toaster as it gently heated them, and I dolloped on the butter that would sink into the pockets of airy, fluffy teacake. I didn’t share the first one I cooked. That it was Mother’s Day and I felt more love for those hot cross buns than for either my husband or my son speaks volumes to just how much I had hankered after a taste of home. Life as an expat is challenging: while the lows can be quite low, and the highs can be dizzyingly high.
Perhaps fortunately, given the rollercoaster I am apparently stuck on, once a week I also get a message from the wine and beer merchant. A silver lining to all this ordering and delivering. I have never been on first name terms with a booze merchant before, but every week, the message comes:
Hello Ma’am good afternoon Siddarth here from Living Liquidz.
Let me know if you have any requirement for wine or liquor this week. (wine glass emoji)
I go for a bulk order strategy, in order to reduce the number of evenings in a month that I spend waiting for a delivery of beer and wine (and the number of times the Living Liquidz delivery man is seen coming and going from our apartment, which again, in a predominantly dry community, does nothing to rehabilitate the image that Jasper is damaging with his very public buffalo-gruffalo consumption). Sometimes when this message appears just days after ordering a 32-can case of beer and 8 bottles of wine, I wonder if he thinks we have a problem. But he assures me it’s just their protocol to ask every week…even if we’ve ordered a month’s worth of alcohol just days earlier. Perhaps he imagines we have friends. Perhaps if Dylan and I did consume our order within a week, my cooking would taste a little better, or at least, disappoint a little less.
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