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The Punjab
Appears in
By Keith Floyd
Published 2001
From Calcutta we flew to the Punjab, the rich, fertile plain in the north of India. The Punjab produces wheat for breads (bread rather than rice is the staple food), sugar cane and milk for dairy products. Fat (and I may say incredibly ugly) water buffalo are milked by hand and give a rich milk that is used to make tea, yoghurt, butter, cheese and ghee. About 85 per cent of the region is under cultivation and 70 per cent of the population work in agriculture.
The Punjab is probably best known in England, and in India, for its tandoori dishes. The food is cooked in a tandoor, an oven shaped like a conical tube made of sun-baked clay, heated with wood or charcoal to produce a fierce heat that cooks food very quickly without drying out. The origins of the tandoor remain unclear, but they have been around in the Punjab for many centuries.