Tastefully arranged, multi coloured, on a steel plate with alloted places for each dish and rice or roti (Indian bread) in the middle…that is what the Indian calls a thali.Sometimes the thali is served on a banana leaf.Each slot is filled with a different sort of spiced vegetarian food.A dish with curds is a must in any thali.You can have a North Indian or a South Indian Thali. In the coastal areas you can have a thali with fish curry also included or if you so prefer a chicken curry. But most of the dishes are essentially vegetarian.Most Indians eat with their hands. Every Indian washes his hands before and after every meal.
In many Indian restaurants a soup or a juice is served before the meal. So also pappads are served along with a salad of onions and tomatoes and cucumber is served with the starter.Pappads also have two different flavours.It varies if you order a south Indian or North Indian Thali.A must after any thali is a Paan. Paan is nothing but beetel leaf smeared with a little bit of lime and wrapped around a combination of spices like betel-nuts, cardamom, aniseed, sugar and grated coconut. It is a digestive and helps the aids the human body to assimilate the Thali well.
Many Indian dishes require days of preperation if done in the proper traditional manner. Indian have perfected the art of cooking and spend a lot of time on this art. Pounding and grinding are done daily though now electrical appliances do half the tough work. Many dishes need a lot of patience since they are cooked on slow fire. But there are also many easy everyday dishes which the Indian housewife prepares in a jiffy when it is required. varies from region to region and are distinct in taste though there is a fine thread of similarity in the food habits. Three thousand years of trial and error has gone into the present style of. It has evolved into a perfect art….about this there is no doubt.