Wrong side of the bed…and some sunshine at Candies

Should I come back to the blog just to rant, rave, lament?

That’s rather needy and attention seeking if you ask me. But what’s life without a touch of drama?
Last night I saw this album that I put up on facebook sometime back, a charming Indo- Tibetan place at Mumbai’s Oshiwara called New Sernyaa. These photos were from last Saturday. It’s Thursday and I still haven’t written about it. Rarely happens when a place really delights me, as in this case, or puts me of.
Last night was also one when I finally didn’t feel too exhausted or groggy to write at the end of the day…except that my back pain was back…and don’t get me started on the trauma of trying to get back under the MRI…one day I’ll write a funny story about it..and please don’t tell me about yoga…unless it comes with a qualified reference at Bandra… and about the mattress…I got that changed…or about ayurvedic massages…I don’t want anyone jolting me now… or of dieting and losing 15 kilos…see I told you I am crabby

…and with the construction dust and the pleasant but unseasonal morning chill and the painkillers from the night before one woke up in a daze …sneezing away…thank god for Candies and its strong cappuccino which lived up to its billing…its multi -rain tuna sandwich and the sense of eating healthy, we will not talk about the odd mischievous bite of chips and the tiny petite four that I nibbled on…and the roast chicken I picked for lunch I’ve carried a bit of Candies to work today…and of folks like Cynthia at Candies, who after trying for many days to reimburse me for an omelette which went cold once managed to do so today when I wasn’t looking … you guys needn’t have…

And it was nice to see the blogadda pinterest board of ‘Bloggers worth knowing” thanks to this tweet, @thebongbabe:  You're right up there @Finelychopped :)) RT @beastoftraal: Another neat Pinterest use, by @blogadda http://pinterest.com/blogadda/bloggers-worth-knowing/

Of course the advantage of being the last to be interviewed is you feature right on top.

And one more learning today. This time from work. One looks a lot bulkier on a video-call than on a con-call

So bye for now but the Sernyaa story will be told someday

Goan pork fest … Bandra Gym via Ainsley’s Grills & More, Bandra

I am normally not secretive about my discoveries or sources.

Yet, I kept quiet about this one for a few days. I had my reasons.

I happened to go to Ainsley’s grills & More of the tongue moile fame, at Bandra’s Pali Market, a few days back. Ainsley’s is run by the same folks who run the restaurant at the Bandra Gymkhana. I thought that I would take a chance and ask for some of the traditional Goan/ East Indian/ Mangalorean Catholic community food classics – sausage chilli fry, vindaloo and sorpatel. These are not on the menu at Ainsley’s. Closest that they have are beef chilli fry and chicken vindaloo. None of the pork stuff.

That’s the irony of Mumbai. There are hardly any restaurants where you get any of these Catholic Indian West Coast preparations. You’ve got the tiny Martin’s and Snow Flake in South Mumbai and that’s about it. Yes, there is Goa Portuguesa at Mahim but I know of Goans who turn their nose up at the mention of it.

At Bandra there are a few cold storages such as Jude’s or Mark’s which occasionally keep frozen vindaloos or sorpatels but no restaurants as such. You can also buy Goan sausages here and cook them at home. Candies stocks sorpatel but only on weekends and they are usually out of stock. Your only other hope is the Christmas fair at Bandra Gym where Christian ladies serve home cooked pork delicacies and the club restaurant sets up a stall too.

So I went up to Anthony, the ever smiling owner of Ainsley…you can’t miss him with his white shirt and moustache, twinkling eyes and warm grin… and asked, hoping against hope …

Me: Do you keep chilli fry, sorpatel, vindaloo?

A short pause.

A: Not here. But I can get it from the restaurant

Me: Wow

A: You will have to tell me in advance though

Me: Oh, how long? (24 hours I thought)

A: 1 hour

Well actually he sent it over to my place next door in less than half an hour. Some sorpatel and chilli fry. Spectacular meat. Nice and hot. Fresh, visibly different from the frozen stuff. The chilli fry was slightly sweeter than what I am used to. Had a heavier proportion of garam masala and was not as tangy as it usually is. Anthony later said that this was apparently because they had made the East Indian and not the Goan version.

This was a great discovery. But I kept quiet for a few days. I wasn’t too sure about how stable this pork route would be…Bandra Gym…Ainsley’s…our house…and I knew of a few people who would love this. So I thought I’ll write about it after we were done. Didn’t want order clogging up the supply before we had had our fill. Yes, call me selfish if you want to. My friends got the first rights on this.

So we met on Wednesday night. I went earlier in the evening and placed my order I requested Anthony to do the Goan version of the dishes rather than what he called the East Indian ones. He said he’d try.

The dishes were delivered and our adda started.

That’s what I like about being a Bengali. You can spend an entire night chatting over Goan pork and yet feel at home. Well, that described the lone Parsi with us too.

(Talking of Bandra, its Christians and cosmopolitanism read this recent article by Dilip D’Souza. An interesting perspective)

The sausage chilli fry kept the adda going. This was different from the sweeter version that I got the first time. from Ainsley The one Anthony said was East Indian.

This one was nice and sharp. Tangy like a good Goan sausage chilli fry. Yet, not overtly so as someone pointed out. A ‘Bombaiya touch’ tempered it according to him. This had the inherent heat of fried chillies and tomatoes balancing it. Cubes of potato giving just that lil bit of starch loving that unites all food lovers. The only vegetable that our group of Bengalis and a Parsi always approved of.

Three portions of chilli fry with bread, along with Banu’s shammi kebabs kept us going till dinner at 2.30 am

The vindaloos were the stars of dinner. I am not a big vindaloo fan so had ordered only one portion of pork vindaloo. The meat cubes were so rich, good …. gave in lovingly with each bite… soft pillowy bites of sheer pleasure… and the curry…tangy, hint of sweet, burst of freshness…it was almost as if the breeze from the Arabian Sea of Goa drifted in and refreshed us at that late hour.

We called for one ‘veg’ vindaloo. Chicken that is for the soon to be mother in our group. Even that was so good…a group of people who look at chicken disdainfully and dub it as medicine…sneaked bites of the tender meat and joyous gravy….that night.

There was the sorpatel too. Finely chopped pork belly and innards, cooked in a sauce which is traditionally seasoned with pig’s blood … the taste always more woody,  more deep in comparison to the redder and tangier vindaloo…the quality of the meat once again celestial, juliennes of ginger giving it bites of sharpness… though as a dish I think the vindaloo overshadowed the sorpatel that night.

In my experience sorpatel is a bit like Rahul Dravid who retired from test cricket today. Always consistent. Never fails. Vindaloo on the other has a bit of a Sehwag around it. On a good day blows away all around him. On a bad day ….

With all of us satiated with our fill of pork I can now sit down and share my secret source to the Goan pork stash at Bandra Gymkhana.

Ainsley’s Grills & More at Bandra’s Pali Market.

And in case you are wondering, each individual dish costs around Rs 160-180 (3.5 USD). You can have any of this with local ladi pao of Mumbai’s vada pao fame. Or with sanas. The Goan fermented bread which looks like idlis. The sorpatel and vindaloo go well with steamed rice too. That night we had a mix of pao and rice,

Next day I went across to Ainsley’s to compliment Anthony on the superb dinner.

Anthony broke into a big smile and said “Glad you liked it. I went to the Gym myself and got the Goan chef to cook it. I told him don’t make the East Indian stuff. My customer has to be happy…and the vindaloo pieces were leg pieces.”

All this while the avuncular gentleman was sending one of his attendants to buy a small chocolate. A family had come to grab a bite. There was a tiny little girl with them. I guess this was Anthony’s treat for her.

Yes, this is the sort of place I’d like to give my business to.

Caveat: None of us that night were Goan, East Indian or Mangalorean… not the ultimate judge on the taste…but if we were we wouldn’t have to call in for this feast would we?

IceRocket Tags: ainsley's Grills & More,bandra,pali market,bandra gymkhana,goan sausage chilli fry,pork vindaloo,chicken vindaloo,Goan food,East Indian cooking

Not a pretty picture…a Bengali meal gone wrong

Well pictures don’t always tell a story.

What you won’t realise is that this fairly tasty mochar (banana flowers) chop had a strand of hair in it.

Replaced immediately by the staff when I pointed it out. The chop not the hair.

That while the luchis were good and the daal fragrant with ghee, the latter was under-salted.

That the lack of salt in the chholar daal was unfortunately compensated by the excess of salt in the alur dom.

And no, alur dom shouldn’t have koraishuti. Or peas for the uninitiated.

And that the tomato khejur and aamshoktor chaatni had only tomatoes. Worse still. Was served ice cold. Seemed wrong.

I checked on twitter. It was. *

And then there was the malpua…heated so much in the micro that it was shrouded in steam when the waiter got it to our table … and promptly disintegrated while serving. I didn’t even bother photographing it.

Pity had to happen on a day when I finally took my friend, who became a proud father just two days back, for a long promised Bengali vegetarian meal.

I must have had at least five great meals at Bijoli Grill Powai if not more. I am sure that this was a rare bad day.

I hope so.

* Twitter outrage against cold chaatni

10hKalyan Karmakar ‏ @Finelychopped

Should Bong tomato chutneys be served cold in restaurants? Like fridge cold?

9hJarna Gandhi ‏ @jarnagandhi

@Finelychopped chaatney ! Should be room temperature na?

 

9hKaniska Chakraborty ‏ @kaniskac

@Finelychopped never. Slightly chilled is ok. Never in extremes, hot or cold.

 

9h Aritro Chatterjee ‏ @arichatt

@Finelychopped Na Dada gorom gorom better lage !! Mone hoy :-)

9hSatbir Singh ‏ @thesatbir

@Finelychopped noooooooo! oshombhob!!

In reply to Kalyan Karmakar

Brown Sahiba ‏ @Rajyasree

• @Finelychopped Nope. I used to serve it at room temp though, not warm. Although I was told Oh Cal serves it chilled.

A kitchen workout – Mediterranean spiced multigrain bread recipe

My first attempt to bake a bread loaf led to what could politely be called a sausage and basil pesto pie.

I had mixed the dough and all the previous night and put it to bake in the morning before going to office for breakfast. I think the problem was that the dough didn’t prove properly and hadn’t risen enough.

This is how it looked.

Still I had baked bread for breakfast and was proud of it…even if one had to live with its unconventional good looks

But I had to give bread another shot. The bread baking class that I attended at Le 15 Patisserie couldn’t go to waste. Plus the bread rolls that I tried at home had turned out to be closer to what we had in class after all

So last Saturday night I hit the ring again. This time a bigger challenge. A whole-wheat bread. Even tougher. Multi-grain.

Got the the multi-grain idea when I saw the Pillsbury multi-grain atta pack at Vijay Stores. Was disappointed to not find whole grains in it. I guess this must be because the atta is meant for making chapattis.

Shamim or @butsandifs on twitter suggested adding walnut flax seeds. I added some chopped walnuts along with chopped olives. The walnuts took the bread to another level in the final analysis. I also seasoned the dough with spices such as sumac, zatar and baharat to give it a Mediterranean flavour.

The commonly held belief is that commercial whole wheat bread has a portion of flour in it. Some even say that ‘brown’ bread in shops is regular bread coloured with caramel. And apparently there was a sign at a local Irani Bakery once which once  said “real whole wheat bread cannot taste good”.

Well the thing is, as we saw in class, pure whole-wheat bread comes out a lot more dense than regular. Quite tightly packed.  But that’s not the tricky part of making whole-wheat bread.

The kneading bit is a lot more trickier than when using soft well behaved processed flour. All thoughts of kneading being ‘therapeutic’ went out of the window as the flour stubbornly refused to come together. One had to keep feeding it water…little clumps formed but not a nice pillow-like dough. Finally what I did was make three ball of dough as the entire mass refused to come together at one go. Once the three dough balls became a bit firm I gently joined them and made a larger dough ball. Some frustrated punching was part of the process though not in the recipe.

I remember that the other problem the last time I made bread was that the dough didn’t ‘prove’ (rise with the yeast and heat and increase in size) enough. I guess the outside temperature wasn’t warm enough in the evening. So what I did this time was switch on the oven and then place the dough on top so that it rose in the warmth. Did work. And after the second proving I even went for a walk late at night before the bread was ready to make.

When I came back I put the dough in the oven with another tray beside it. The second tray had a leg of chicken and some mushrooms marinated in Lenny’s barbecue sauce. Both got ready in the same time. Multitasking as they say.

As I sat down for dinner at midnight I wondered if the the 3 hour long cooking process was a tad elaborate and whether it was worth it. I could have just roasted the chicken and bought bread.

But as I munched on more than 2/3rd of the loaf I was pretty sure that there was no bread in the world that would taste so sweet at that time of the night.

Metaphorically speaking.

So here’s the recipe for the Mediterranean themed multi-grained bread  which is grounded on Christina Fernandes’ recipe at the Le 15 Patisserie baking class.

Ingredients

 

• Whole-wheat/ multigrain (processed flour for white bread)   250 g
• Dry yeast 10 g or 1 teaspoon
• Sugar: 10 g
• Butter/ margarine: 10 g
• Salt: 5 g
• Filling (optional): chopped olives, chopped walnuts (the best part), spices – sumac, zatar, baharat (you could even go Italian and add oregano and chilli flakes which come with pizza deliveries) You can find all these ingredients for a good price with

Bake:

I.

• Add the sugar and the yeast to 4 tablespoons of warm water (shouldn’t scald your fingers) Let it begin to fizz a bit
• Mix the butter and the salt with your fingers and keep separately

II.

• Put the flour on a tray/ working surface
• Make a hole in the flour. Pour in the yeast mix into the whole
• Knead this – get the flour to mix with the yeast liquid and try to form little lumps…will be pebble-like initially---keep adding spoons of water to moisten and lubricate – whole-wheat is much tougher to knead than processed – punch it if it gets to you…letting steam out helps…expect a fantastic wrist and forearm workout. What I forgot is that one should lukewarm water to knead…Christina had told us this at class… food blogger, Sharmila, of Kichu Khon, reminded me through her comment
• When the dough begins to hold and looks like a dough then add the salt and the butter mix. Knead till it’s a polite smooth ball

 

III.

• Put the dough in a bowl. Cover with cling film. I just couldn’t take mine out of the roll so used a cooking foil.
• Keep in a warm area for an hour. I kept it on top of a warm oven
• This is called proving. At the end of it should double in size

 

IV.

• Take the dough out flatten it on a working surface. Press it a bit.
• Add the fillings. In this case – olives, walnuts, sumac, zatar, baharat. In an ideal case whole multigrain's – oat, flax seeds, wheat grain etc
• Make an envelope. Fold in the the horizontal ends first. Then the vertical ends – the two sides next
• Then roll the envelope till it looks like a log. Pinch it all over
• Put it in a greased loaf tin
• Put the tin on a warm surface to prove for an hour. Warm oven top again
• The dough needs to rise
• By which time you’d be physically exhausted and brain dead…a walk by the sea is a good idea. even if it is 11 pm

V

• Preheat the oven for 10 min at 200 d C
• Put in the dough in the greased tin and let it bake for 35 min at 200 d C. I roasted a chicken leg at the same time in the OTG

VI

• Take it out.
• Let it cool
• Upturn bread tin on a flat surface. It will be hot be careful
• Pat base of tin and ease out bread
• Slice
• Eat
• Feel good about life

 

The one thing I learnt at the end of this, with apologies to Mary Antoinette, is that it is easier to bake cakes than bread.

 

IceRocket Tags: recipes,baking class at Mumbai,multigrain bread,le 15 patisserie,OTG,Christina Fernandes

Mumbai’s Malvani marvel… Chaitanya, Dadar Mumbai

If you are fine with waiting for more than half an hour for your meal because a restaurant has only two and a half tables, has a queue of locals waiting patiently for a place inside and because its owner personally puts your meal together after you place your order then Chaitanya, the Malvani restaurant at Dadar, is where you should head to.

The ‘two and a half table’ bit might not be for long hopefully. I believe that they are moving to a slightly larger place close by soon.

Chaitanya is difficult to spot. It is opposite Aswad at Dadar, slightly ahead of Sweet Bengal. Tiny but air conditioned. It is about a year old. The one at Mumbai that is.

The original Chaitanya is in the town of Malvan. It is close to twenty years old. Run by the Walke family. Oh, and in case you didn’t know, then Malvan is a town in the coastal region of Maharashtra. Seafood and coconut rule the cuisine there though they do some seriously good stuff with meat too.

Chaitanya at Mumbai is managed by Mrs Surekha Walke and her young son Mitra while her husband looks after the flagship Malvan branch. I got to meet Surekha at the end of a rather memorable meal on Sunday. She was quite busy though so we chatted in her kitchen as she put the orders together. The kitchen was tiny and yet looked quite organised, modern, clean and well planned. I asked Surekha if she was professionally trained. She smiled and said “No, but I’ve been doing this for about twenty years now”.

A plate of Bombay Duck fry got ready. Surekha explained to me “We don’t fry them whole as they break”.

Sort of thing one would do at home right? I guess they were not striving for restaurant-like ‘perfection’ here. It is more about the substance than form at Chaitanya

The catch is fresh. Surekha herself often goes herself to the VT market to shop for fish every morning. No, they don’t start cooking only after you arrive at Chaitanya. Restaurants don’t work that way. The preps are done but the dish is put together only after you place your order.

Surekha was preparing a crab curry as we spoke while  others were plating a pomfret and a prawn tail.

  

Her son, an aspiring hotel management student, Mitra, looked at me and said “We marinate the crabs in the masala. Can stay as long as you want that way. The curry is prepared separately. Mummy cooks the two together when the order is placed. The two are not mixed in the beginning. Do you know why?”

“Because the crabs will go soft…” I said.

Young Mitra broke into a big smile of approval.

  

So what did we eat?

Well I was brought here by local food blogger and friend Sassy Fork who strongly recommended Chaitanya over a couple of other options that I gave. In a scenario like this I put myself in the hands of the person who chooses the place. So Sassy ordered.

We started our meal with a nice and cool sol kaki made with the fruit kokum. A drink typical of Malvan and its neighbourhood. One of my favourite Indian drinks apart from butter milk.

Bangda or mackerel fry followed. A dish I  never order as I find mackerel to be too chunky and wooden for my taste.

This one I bit into apprehensively.

A very thin crisp semolina crust which gave way to the most incredibly juicy and well flavoured bites of fish that I have had in my life. I was stunned by the culinary wizardry that had gone into this rather humble fish. The simple Banda after all doesn’t command the reverence that a pomfret or even a surmai (king fish) commands at Mumbai. Yet they had conjured such magic with the Banda at Chaitanya that I was converted into a fan. I happily munched away as bits of fish gave in so demurely with each bite.

 

After the Banda we moved onto the darling of Mumbai and pretty much the whole world…prawns.

Again fried. Again with the typical Malvani rava or semolina coating. Again the crust very very thin, delicate and crisp. And the prawns once again stunning.

Juicy, bouncy. So fresh that they almost made you blush.

The secret to the freshness and perfect texture to the fries? Shallow frying and not deep frying explained Surekha.

We were still on safe territory. The fries at Malvani joints, whether it is the pomfret fry at Malvani Aswad at Andheri E or the prawn fry at Highway Gomantak, are always a safe bet. However, the fish curries at Malvani restaurants usually don’t work for me. They seem to lack the punch or sharpness necessary to combine well with the thick rice that these curries are eaten with. Our seafood curry at Chaitanya arrived.

Not fish though. Oysters!!!!

I have never had oysters at Mumbai before but have had curries made with mussels, clams, crabs etc. My problem with these is that that masala douses the taste of the meat. I expected the same here.

I was wary. Prepared to underwhelmed.

The first sign that things would be different was from the look of the curry. The sauce looked thinner than usual. The preparation looked different too. Light brown like a Bengali curry and not the usual red. We ordered chapattis and not the standard rice.

I took my first bite of the curry. I almost swooned.

This was celestial. The curry drew its flavour and creaminess from the richness of the oysters. The taste heady, indulgent with a hint of bitterness…each bite of the oyster was like lolling on a hammock…soft, playful, pliant, relaxing…this was serious vacation stuff…far removed from the concrete outside…and yet princely in a way. More Monte Carlo perhaps than Malvan. Figuratively.

To end the meal after the soft lullaby-like silken notes of the oyster was the drum roll of the chicken shagotti.

Shagotti, as Surekha explained, means curries or dishes made with small bits of chicken. The chicken shagotti here was cooked in a bed of coconut based masala which was hot, spicy and yet not over-poweringly coconutty. Blending beautifully with the rough edgy masala were tiny juicy bits of chicken with some scrunchy organs thrown in too – stomach, kidney and the ever sombre liver.

‘Meat feast’ is a term serious meat lovers rarely use for chicken dishes.

The chicken shagotti at Chaitanya is one of those rare ones that qualified for this accolade.

I don’t know about you but folks who tweet or write in facebook about places and add ‘go’ or ‘go now’ really irritate me with their rudeness.

But I would still recommend that you plan a trip to Chaitanya, or keep a watch out for their new location, for this seems to be a good place to try out a simple, fresh, near home-cooked Malvani meal.

 

 

  

IceRocket Tags: Mumbai,Malvani,Seafood,Dadar,oyster curry,bangda fry,prawn fry,chicken shagotti,Surekha Walke,Chaitanya