This is a fine bujea. One never cares for meat when this is served. Fry a large sliced onion and a mango pepper together until nicely browned. Remove from the pan and fry in the same pan six sliced not too ripe tomatoes. These should be dipped in batter and then breadcrumbs before frying. When tomatoes are nicely browned add onions and peppers. Do not add any water to this bujea. Heat very slowly until well blended.
Eggplant, okra, pumpkin, string beans, cauliflower, in fact most any vegetable may be cooked in this way. One general rule will suffice: Fry the onions first in plenty of crisco or oil. If desired, fry also top of onions. Then add prepared vegetables and a little water. In most bujeas, peppers or pimentos are used. Cook slowly. Vegetables like eggplant had better be soaked in weak salt water before cooking.
VI.
Breads.
Bujeas are always eaten with native bread. For these breads the flour is always ground in the home. The mill used is exceedingly primitive. It consists of two large circular stones, one fitting into the socket of the other. By revolving the upper stone over the lower the grain which is poured between the stones is crushed. It is the women of India who do the grinding, and "two women grinding at a mill" is a familiar sight everywhere throughout the land.
The bread made from this home-made flour differs very much from the bread we know. It is not made into loaves, but into little flat cakes, which are baked over coals on a griddle. No yeast is used.
Although India is one of the greatest wheat countries in all the world, the great majority of people in India do not eat wheat bread. They are too poor for that. They eat bread made from the flour of coarser grains. Some of these grains, such as millet and rye, we are familiar with; others are quite unknown to us. Corn and oats are but little used in India.
The bread made from these coarse grains is hard to digest. It is made by simply mixing the flour with water. The dough is then patted into little cakes. The bread made from wheat, however, is much finer, and Europeans living in India soon grow to be very fond of it. Some of the varieties would not be practical in this country. However, a few forms of Hindustani bread are quite easily managed here, and will well be worth a trial.