One of the unalloyed delights of being here is discovering the wonders of South Indian vegetarian food, especially as served in the ubiquitous darshini restaraunts. There are vades and idlis, the wonderful gobi manchurian and channa battura and king of them all: the masala dosa. Mmmm. Delicious at breakfast, lunch or supper that's what I call a versatile dosa.

Long gone are the days when I would only order something when I knew what it was. Usually this results in serendipitous delights. But every now and then it doesn't go so well. And today I noticed a pattern. The not-so-well days tend to occur when I order something with Kashmiri in the title. I know that's not South India but neither is the Manchurian in gobi manchurian and that is yum (and I HATE cauliflower traditionally). So I decided not to split hairs.

The first problem occured when I ordered the Kashmiri Biriyani a few weeks ago. Little did I expect my dish to be a blend of rice and erm, pineapple chunks. Not only that but the rice was served red and spread out in a heart shape on flat round dish! Potentially very romantic you'll agree but it didn't seem to work on Rajeev, my date.

Today I ordered Kashmiri Naan. Actually I ordered Peshwari Naan (yum!) but after some gesticulating and head wobbling the guy who took my order seemed to indicate that the PN was off. He pointed to Kashmiri Naan and operating under the (perhaps false?) notion that Peshwar and Kashmir aren't that far apart I thought why not. The result turns out to be a roll of fresh naan bread, spread with strawberry jam! It's certainly tasty, but definately very, very wrong. Especially as a side order to a helping of gobi manchurian.

So I've deduced that much in the way that dishes with spinach in are called florentine, anything called Kashmiri means that it's a recognisable dish GONE MAD!