Street Food & Improvised Oven

Design Sense: India's pride, the world's envy

Oven design

The “nankathaiwalas” of Delhi are pretty well known, and popular. On their carts, using their  improvised ovens,  generally they bake fresh, crisp “nankathais”—cookies if you will—on the spot. If you happen to bump into one of them before 2 pm, you can see them make the cookies, using no more than a broken end  of a serving spoon (karhchi) as a mould, and the mix that they have prepared and brought in tins that would have held 16 litres of  oil or vanaspati. The 16-litres tins themselves are called “pipa” !

The rest of the day, they sell the kathais that are ready and kept. One of the boys selling them told me that people rarely have the patience or time to see them being made. They are content to hurriedly buy the quantity they want, and move on. But yes, they want to taste and see if the kathais are warm and crisp from the outside, and soft inside. So, the oven is “on” all day.

I was surprised to discover that there is nothing uniform about these kathaiwalas’ ovens. Before I began this blog, and started clicking pictures, I had seen one wherein he used two tawas, a frying pan that had seen better days, and two thirds of the cylindrical part of tin cans in which Dalda, a popular brand of vegetable fat, used to be sold.

But I "borrowed " a picture of one guy using a tin, but not of Dalda :(  .

Tin-based "oven"

  The above picture is thanks to Chowder Singh

Then I noticed one nankathaiwala, whose “oven” was made of an old tyre  and hubcup, and I posted  some pictures .

Tyre-based "oven"

Yesterday, my husband saw one nankathaiwala, whose oven design left us totally impressed.  It looks like a chimney…and it looks like the old copper bath water heater, a hamaam. It also looks a bit like the “sigris” of Himachal. And possibly like an unpainted  post box, the kind used in India, but chopped off from the bottom.

Take a look… starting from the one right on top.. if only for the design sense that has gone into it.