Bad food fast

In Ahmedabad, the fast food business had reached its peak - by which I mean trough - in the humble jam bun.

Turfed very indignantly out of my dirty, expensive hotel at 7am (after having shouted and counter-banged to have it brought forward from 5am!!), a little roadside cafe was all I could find at that time from which to coax a breakfast.

Inside rows of tired white melamine tables and benches lined the room. The tables had been wiped clean so many times that the brown wood beneath was showing through in mottled patches, as if the tables' true identity and race was gradually being revealed.

On each table stood a small metal crate with a handle, holding four glasses containing water of dubious provenance. Although the clientele was entirely Indian, mercifully the menu I was presented with was in English. This seemed to be a juice bar of some kind, selling fruit juices, lassis, tea and coffee. A few snacks were also available - the simple sandwich being all I felt I could stomach at this time.

The waiter's English was not up to much so, with a combination of speaking slowly and sign language, I ordered a toasted cheese sandwich and a black tea with separate milk.

'No,' came the reply. This is what passes for polite customer service and manners in the Indian services sector. Sometimes the addition of 'possible' renders it more palatable; 'no possible', but on this occasion it was not to be.

With his fingers the waiter suggested 10 minutes, which I took to mean toasted cheese sandwiches wouldn't be available on the menu for 10 minutes. A brief scan of the menu offered 'jam bun' as the only alternative available, so by dint of a lack of other options I ordered one.

The tea arrived first. Indian waiter service does not appear to recognise the concept that food and drink are preferred to be consumed concurrently, so often the moment you have finished your drink - which you have sipped slowly in order to save some to go with your food - your meal arrives.

My careful explanations had only been partically successful. I always order black tea with separate milk as otherwise the brew that arrives is magnolia pale in colour and sryrupy-sweet. So I prefer to add my own milk to achieve my own personally acceptable colour range. The two items were indeed separate, but when I took my first sip, I realised I had forgotten to negotiate the sugar. It was there in abundance, undrinkable. I sent it back with the precision that there be no sugar in either the tea or milk, just to be on the safe side.

Thankfully my second attempt arrived, correctly this time, at the same time as my tardy jam bun. This confection was a delight to behold. A large fat, pappy white bun, it had been cut through horizontally into four fat fingers - jam bun soldiers if you will. It was like a grown-up verson of a child's packed lunch.

Between the halves of each finger was a layer of soft, thick white butter, almost the consistency of whipped cream. Under this a thinner layer of a neon pink jam. I have seen ladies wearing synthetic fabric sarees of this colour and I did not think it possible to re-create its radioactive hue in a foodstuff. I was wrong.

All around me, mostly men and and young lads, with a few ladies, were tucking into the same thing, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Not content to whip one up simply at home, they preferred to come to a scruffy cafe and pay someone else to dollop greasy butter and lurid jam onto bread, stick it together and cut it into convenient bited-sized pieces. I was bemused.

I took a bite. It was like eating an entirely synthetic English cream tea. Not unpleasant if you are desperately hungry (I was), but not a culinary treat by any stretch.

The jam had a sweet taste of unidentifiable fruit, such that its own mother would not have recognised it, while the deep, soft butter squished out the sides like a greasy Devonshire cream tea and had a taste and texture somewhere between raw cake mixture, whipped cream and wallpaper paste. Hungrily I ate the remaining fingers and realised by the time I'd finished, that it was actually quite pleasant!

I have to confess to a long-enduring love of horrendously over-processed foods. I blame my mother. Not becasue she fed us such things as children and so nurtured this peculiar obsession. Quite the reverse: we always had home-grown, home-baked delicious, freshly-made everything as children. Her bread was, and continues to be, divine and her home-grown, organic fruit, veg, meat, butter and even cheese was so tasty that I never had cause to taste or want the artificial things in life.

Consequently, like the acddict who discovers drugs later in life, ghastly synthetic foods, from processed cheese to artificial whipped cream, are my occasional drug of choice. The very unfamiliarity of their smell, taste and texture is a swift but short-lived high which, thankfully, never leaves me craving more or seeking out higher planes of culinary consciousness. Instead it's a food of opportunity. If it's there I will eat it, I will enjoy it and I will forget it instantly, until the next occasion.

So it was with the jam bun. I had 'experimented' with it. Its mild sugar rush was done and I doubt I will be tempted by it again - ever!