Kitchen therapy … Thai styled rawas + Chinese egg fried rice

There is something incredibly therapeutic about a mortar and a pestle, Oriental spice and condiments.

I had bought some rawas fillets, a sea fish, from Jude’s Cold Storage at Pali Naka, Bandra recently at Rs 200 (4 USD) for the lot. This fish was fresh and they said was from the day’s catch.

I sautéed some of the fish with South African Peri Peri sauce, SA red pepper and Australian bush salts the other night. The pairing turned out to be pretty good and the quality of the fish excellent. A quick fix dish after work.

Today I decided to cook the rest of the fish in a Thai style. Not from any recipe. But using sauces, condiments and herbs which are used quite a bit in Thai cooking. And the mortar and pestle that I lugged all the way back from Chiang Mai. 

I tossed up a quick egg fried rice to go with it.

Here are the recipes:

Thai Styled Rawas

Prep

• Take about 200 g rawas fillets. Now the thing with rawas is that it breaks very easily. So cut it into small cubes for sanity. Use a flat pan while cooking as the fish becomes easier to manage
• Marinate the rawas in about 3 tablespoons of Thai Sriracha sauce. Sriracha is an allegedly hot Thai chilli sauce which is actually kid stuff for most Indian palates. I picked up the Sriracha at an Asian Store at Sydney but you would get it here too.  Add a tablespoon of Thai chilli paste and a teaspoon of honey. The Thais use palm sugar to sweeten dishes. I bought the chilli paste at Chiang Mai but saw it at Oz too.  Most of the sauces would be available at stores such as Regal, Sante and Vijay Stores at Pali Market, Bandra and Nature’s Basket too. Keep the marinated fish in the fridge for half an hour.
• Thai paste – put about an inch of finely chopped ginger, 7,8 basil leaves, 7,8 round Thai eggplants and 2,3 Kaffir lime leaves. I got all of this at Lallu’s at Pali Market. Pound these in the mortar and pestle till you get a rough paste

Cook:

• Heat 3 tablespoons of oil in a pan. We use rice oil these days. It’s apparently healthier
• Once the fish is hot put the fish in the pan. Rawas breaks easily so use your fingers or a spoon to put them gently on to the pan. One at a time
• Turn the fish cubes over one by one after it cooks on one side and add in the Thai paste and season with some fish sauce
• Let it cook on a high flame for 2 min.
• Reduce the flame and turn the fish over one by one again.
• Another two minutes and you are done

 

My heart is never into ‘eating’ fish. The small portion that I tries gave me a fair bit of creative satisfaction. K, the fish eater in the family, lapped up the rest even though it was a tad salty. The saltiness was due to adding salt AND fish sauce. Just the latter would do

Chinese egg fried rice

• Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a wok. I used rice oil instead of the Chinese favourite of sesame oil
• Once the oil heats add some crushed garlic
• Then break an egg in it and scramble it by stirring it with a ladle
• Add a bowl of cooked rice
• Then add a teaspoon of shrimp sauce for seasoning, a pinch of ajino moto, a teaspoon each of soy sauce and vinegar. I didn’t have any vinegar at home so used some Lebanese lemon powder. You could use salt instead of shrimp sauce
• Stir the rice for a minute
• Add some crunchy vegetables. All I had at home were spring onions and a few bits of capsicum. Shredded cabbage & carrots would be nice
• Stir for a minute and you are ready

I’ve been making a lot of stir fried Hakka noodles off late as they are so quick to put together. The rice was a nice change.

Dining like a Pune Warrior … Potoba, Kalina, Mumbai

Note: Sorry but this post has got nothing to do with cricket but hopefully does more justice the cuisine of Pune than Dada (Saurav Ganguly) did to its team, The Pune Warriors.

“This is exactly how my dad cooks it” he said as he broke into a big smile.

Well, that’s high praise for a dish from someone in the Prabhune household as Papa Prabhune loves to cook and  cooks every day. The lunch he packs for his son, Chinmai, is often gobbled up by the rest of us at work in true Kindergarten fashion.

Chinmai and I were at Potoba. The new Maharashtrian restaurant opposite the Kalina campus of the Mumbai University. A branch of the Pune based restaurant which our friend Harshad recently told me about. "Finally a place near my house where I can get my sort of food"

Chinmai is a Maharashtrian himself and I was hoping that he would help me navigate the menu.I left the ordering to Chinmai who looked down to the bill of fare, looked up and said “this is the best menu card that I have ever seen”

Me: “Are the dishes authentic? “

C: “Yes. This is Punechi food which people from Pune would cook. My grandmother used to cook these dishes while I was growing up “

Me “Is this the sort of food that you eat at home? “

C: “Everyday “

Me: “Then why would you want to eat it when you are out?”

C: “That’s because I never get to eat this outside. I always end up ordering something else. I have never had the option of ordering any of these dishes at a restaurant before”

And therein lies a story. The story of the mystery of Maharshtrian food. Not the easiest to discover in Mumbai, the capital of Maharashtra. For Mumbai takes its ‘cosmopolitan’ tag very seriously. You will find it a lot easier to find Thai or Italian or Lebanese at Mumbai than authentic Maharshtrian. Unless you are willing to walk the streets of Dadar and Lalbaug which are still haunted by the souls of the Maharashtrian mill workers long after the mills have shut down. 

‘Potoba’, from what I understand, means ‘worshipping the tummy’ in Marathi similar to the Hindi ‘pet puja’. The restaurant is a good place to experience the vegetarian dishes of Pune, the erstwhile capital of the Marathas. It is run by Parag Inamdar who set up the chain  around five years back at Pune. He launched his first restaurant at Mumbai four months ago. 

The menu card at Potaba  promises us home-made masalas. Parag said that the masalas used here were mixed by his mother in the beginning and now directed by her as his network of restaurants grew. They are made at Pune and sent to Mumbai for the restaurant here. Parag said that he is focussing on vegetarian food for the moment so that they can specialise in one thing and get it right.

Turned out we were the only folks who ordered Maharashtrian food that afternoon. There were noodles at the table to our left. Punjabi paneer makhani to our right. Chhole bature to its right. Tamilian Curd Rice at the table behind the noodles. Everything but Maharashtrian. On asking, Sagar Bhonsle, the manager told me that this was because the afternoon crowd consisted largely of those who worked in the offices nearby. They preferred ‘Indian’ food according to Sagar. He went on to qualify this by saying ‘Punjabi’ obliquely referring to the tragic phenomenon of Punjabi food cooked by non Punjabis coming to represent ‘Indian’ food all over the world. Sagar said that nights were different as patrons then were local Maharashtrians and orders placed then were for their Punechi dishes.

I sipped on a cooling Kokum Serbat made with kokum (a local fruit) seeds while Chinmai went into a serious discussion with Sagar as he placed the order. Chinmai later told me that the kokam sherbat here tasted the way it does when made fresh at home and different from the ones one can buy at shops in small jerry cans. The onions in the accompanying salad cut in an ‘authentic’ way apparently!

And so we waited for our lunch as Chinmai regaled me of stories of Chhatrapati Shivaji the Maratha hero whose navy only the Portuguese could match while the Brits didn’t even try taking on him. All this and more were tales Chinmai had learnt from the books he read about the great war lord and guerrilla leader. Stories of bravery and valour that I had grown up learning at Calcutta at the eastern end of the country.

We started with Bharli Vangyachi Bhaji or stuffed brinjal. Tiny aubergines split into four served on a bed of desiccated coconut and masalas. The masala bed lived up to the promise of ‘home made masalas’ and sparked off visions of loving Hind film mothers from the 70s who would sacrifice everything to bring up their sons. It was coconuty but not overtly, very mildly sweet, delicately flavoured and not hot or spicy at all.

Now the thing about aubergines is that when well cooked they lend themselves as a very good base for whatever you want to conjure. They warmly welcome the spices or sauces that you might slather on them and result in some great food harmony. I have experimented recently with baigan bharta or Indian babaganoush, aubergines steamed in a mustard sauce in Bengali style and a Mediterranean hung curd salad and was quite pleased with the results. The trick is to cook the aubergine properly. Unfortunately at Potoba they hadn’t showered the aubergines with the love and attention that the vegetable demands. As a result that aubergines were under cooked and seemed quite redundant in the dish as the masala hadn’t infused in to them. 

I missed the prawns and crabs with which our friend Harshad’s mom would put into a similar masala and send for us. The aubergines could have done with a bit more cooking if you ask me. I thought that the dish had a lot more potential.

On the other hand the Bharli Vangyachi Bhaji made Chinmai smile with delight and remember that unlike me he knows how the real thing tastes.

Next on was Matkichi Usal which was a dish made with sprouted moth beans. This had a very sharp and near rancid taste. I could see Chinmai wince too. I asked him if the dish was always so acidic. Chinmai told me in a very sombre Homer Simpson-like tone that the sprouts were soaked overnight and could go bad in the heat.

The manager Sagar, assured us that the dish hadn’t gone bad and ascribed the sour taste to the tomato base. Well, in all fairness, we didn’t have a bad stomach after that in which case I guess it was the taste and not the quality that didn’t work for us.

Pithala, which was a runny gram flour based dish, completed our first round. I quite took to this which had the taste and texture of a thick well cooked daal despite being made of gram flour. It was quite light and yet flavourful and perfect for the sunny afternoon.

We mopped these three dishes with Maharashtrian flat breads called bhakris. One was made of rice, Tandoolachi Bhakri, and the other of Jowar, Jwarichi Bhakri. I guess the mummies or tais of Maharashtra knew of the value of multi grains well before it became fashionable in the posh areas of Bandra and Peddar Road. 

The two curries came with a phenomenally potent dry chilli pickle which would give any self respecting wasabi a run for its money with its sting.

Reeta of @delhifoodiesDFZ told me on twitter: "thecha is what u call dry chilli pickle.various versions available..some with garlic.chillies married to the best flavours!!!"

We then moved on to a snack item, Missal. I have eaten missal before and wanted to try things I hadn’t tried earlier. But Sagar, the manager told us that the missal here is different as they use dehydrated green peas instead of the normal mung beans and that the farsan used on top was brought specially from Pune.

Well I am glad that we tried the missal at Potoba. It had the same familiar orange coloured gravy and yet was not as oily, toxic and lethal as the missals one gets in office canteens at Mumbai or at New Sardar at Chinchpokli. In fact this was not oily at all and the curry was mildly sweet and soothing. Chinmai told me that the sweetness was distinctive to missals at Pune. 

With which we went on to the next dish that Chinmai recommended after a deep conversation with Sagar. Fodnichi (tadka) Poli à Scrambled Chapati. A dish that smacked of the ingenuity and resourcefulness of a middle class housewife who has to balance the family budget. Rotis from the previous night, shredded and refried the next morning with onions, tomatoes, chillies and spices. Everyone eats up without a fuss. Food is not wasted. The effort of making fresh rotis are saved. Get a B school grad to beat that. 

The concept reminded me of the shredded rotis dipped in milk sweetened with jaggery that my mom said she had while growing up. The fodnichi rotis at Potoba reminded Chinmai of his grandmother’s cooking and he munched on it happily. What I noted was the interesting mix of fibre, which gave the dish a sense of wholesomeness, and the blend of spices and condiments that livened it up. The dish brought to live the creative brief that all food brands in India give to their ad agencies. ‘Healthy and tasty too’.

We wanted something sweet to end the meal with even though we were stuffed. So we decided to share a bowl of amrakhand or mango shrikhand. Chinmai told me that the dessert is made by straining whey through a piece of cloth. The ones that are commercially available apparently have a very silky and smooth texture. The one at Potoba was rougher and more home like. It had an incredibly light and fluffy feel to it and the zest of fresh mango pulp was heady.

A fantastic end to my introduction to Punechi cuisine. All at the princely price of Rs 305 (6 USD).

So go to Potoba. learn more about Mumbai, Maharashtra, its culture, its soul, its heritage and its people. And for God’s sake don’t order an chilli milli cheese paneer Schezwan spring dosa!

PS: Some of my earlier Maharashtrian fav eats on Finely Chopped:

• Purepur Kolhapur: food from the hills of Maharashtra
• Malvani Aswad: Malvani coastal cuisine
• The Koli fish festival: What the natives of Mumbai ate
• Prakash: Vegetarian snacks

The Riviera comes to Mumbai’s Mill Lands. The Tasting Room, Le 15 Pâtisserie. Raghuvanshi Mills

The story of Mumbai’s mill lands, its mill workers, their life in chawls, the trade unionism that followed and the lock outs have been chronicled by many a historian and of late by Marathi film makers. This is a tale of the Marie Antoinette world of cakes and macarons that have replaced the ladi paos and modaks of yore.

We went to the Tasting Room at Raghuvanshi Mills for lunch the other day. I went there after quite some time. We were at the erstwhile mill lands of Mumbai and were looking for a place to eat after a meeting. My team mates included a Sindhi vegetarian who used to be a non vegetarian before, and and likes trying out new cuisines across the world. And a Malayali who is passionate about food and has explored quite a bit of Europe when she was studying in the UK for a couple of years.

The Tasting Room, with its promise of Continental and Mediterranean fare seemed a good bet given the audience. It is located at the Good Earth complex at Raghuvanshi Mills at Tulsi Pipe Road. I remember it being better than most food options at the adjacent Phoenix Mills. Was happy to see this hold true two or three years after I went there the first time. And I was using my old camera after a while too. (Just saw the post that I wrote in ‘08. Want to hide it once I stop cringing)



The Tasting Room has a nice hacienda like feel. It is very tastefully done up. Confirms to the images one has of a Mediterranean Bungalow. And as the Sindhi in the group cattily observed, ‘you don’t have to spend money and paint the walls’.

We were there after 2 PM so missed the afternoon rush. I remember that it used to be quite packed during lunch time and we would usually avoid it when I used to work close by.
They add a service charge here but I must say that the waiter earned it as he was not only efficient but also had a strong point of view on our order which added to the experience. He was the one who insisted that we choose a multi grain bread over focaccia for the toasted vegetable sandwich that the two vegetarians in the group ordered. I took a bite of it and quite liked the concept of grilled vegetables with no heavy dressing which all added up to the waiter’s summation of the dish as ‘healthy’.



One of our group, a regular here, ordered a watermelon and feta salad. This intriguingly presented dish won me over with its combination of sweet fresh watermelon, salty crumbly feta and woody pine nuts. I later had feta and soft Amex bread rolls when I returned home and then feta was there in one of our mezzes in our dinner at Moshe’s. I love feta and anymore and I guess you could have called me ‘Kalyanapolous’ at the end of the day as Cheryl said.



The other dish that the vegetarians ordered was a cold tomato soup. The bowl of soup was placed in a dish with ice in it. It tasted as unappetizing as it sounds. A very pale shadow of the hot soup that we had at night at Moshe’s which paired the tanginess of tomatoes, the zest of basil with wholesome feel of grains of barley and green peas. That was inspired. Take a bow Chef Moshe Shek.



The other meat eater in the group went in for a corn flakes incrusted chicken breast. I loved the effort that went into plating the dish. The look of the dish tempted me to have a bite despite my general disdain for chicken breasts. The tenderness of the meat, which is so rare in breast pieces of chicken, had me purring in delight.



I chose a braised chorizo with mash for myself. The chorizo was nice and sharp and was delectably braised in a caramelized onion sauce which gave it a touch of sweetness. The meat and sauce come together in a passionate tango and the accompanying virginal mash helped reign in the passions that the meat stirred. A well conceptualized dish with a creative use of the dialectics of diverse textures and meats.




The meal came to about Rs 2000 (USD 40) for the four of us with a fresh lime and complementary bread basket which was a quite a good deal for a restaurant of its class.

We stopped at the Le 15 Patisserie on the way down. Pooja Dhingra of Le 15 is the one responsible for making the macarons the new cup cakes of Mumbai.

We had macarons for desserts. Well, I must say that I missed the ‘collapse in your mouth’ quality that help me in a spell the first time I tried them. The macarons this time were a bit stiff with the taste of the filling being rather over powering. Wonder whether the fact the macarons had been in the fridge for so long caused this. My heart broke when my half eaten macaron fell on the floor. Being an 80s man, 50 Rs for a biscuit sized dessert hurts specially when it doesn’t dazzle. Still the thrill of my first encounter with the Le 15 macarons is something I cherish.

Hopefully I will get third time lucky some day.