A visit to the Orient III: Philippines (1978)...Rekha Karmakar

Third of Mom's posts on the Orient from 1978...Philippines & its live volcanoes & fresh pineapples

"Our next destination was Manila in Philippines. Whenever I think of Manila, I remember its beaches with dwarf coconut trees. Usually, we were used to seeing very tall coconut trees in West Bengal.

We noticed on the roads of Manila, small mini bus types of public transport . These had some similarity with a jeep as the exit door was at the back. It was called ‘jeepney’. We too took a few rides on the ‘jeepney’. 

What struck me most, in Manila, were the living volcanoes around the city. I had read about volcanoes in school. Later, I saw volcanic eruptions on Discovery/ National Geographic channels on TV. Hot lava coming out of volcanoes, looked as beautiful as molten gold. Though it is a wonder of nature, people seeing it, in reality, are not that fortunate as it destroys everything around it.

We went to an elevated place like a small hill .Going up there, we could see from far, layers and layers of white smoke billowing out of the living volcanoes. These volcanoes, though living, were not active i.e. they did not erupt lava followed by ash. Luckily, that day, we could see the smoke coming out of the volcanoes as these volcanoes also sometimes become ‘dormant’.

 .

Sitting by a living volcano at 

Philippines

There was a beautiful restaurant on the small hill. Many tourists, mostly Europeans and Americans, thronged to the place to see the wonder of nature i.e. the living volcanoes.

Seeing and eating always go together. The tourists were having vanilla ice cream in green coconuts/ daab (in Bengali). The green coconuts were emptied of the water. Only the white thick layer of the green coconut remained. Ice cream was served in the green coconut to be eaten along with the soft layer of the coconut. The concept of ’daab-chingri’ (prawns cooked in green coconut) was quite unfamiliar at that time. However, the ‘daab ice-cream’ was beyond our means as it was highly exorbitant. Instead we had fresh, juicy pineapples, cut and sliced before our eyes, fetched from nearby pineapple plantations .Having it was a delight in itself.

Even after almost four decades, I am quite shameless to admit that the craving for that ‘daab ice cream’ still remains in my mind. Today I can easily afford a ‘daab ice-cream’ or even make it myself. But as fate would have it, I am forbidden by my doctor to have anything sweet. However, I do not mind it and take everything in my stride. I would, though, request the foodies to try it out and popularize this daab- ice cream as I have not seen any ice cream parlour serving ice cream in green coconuts.

Our journey to the East ended with our trip to Manila. From there, we proceeded to Iran, our home away from home. As it is usual after a long holiday, it took us some time to get adjusted to everyday life. Especially visiting India made us home sick. But, then, time is a great healer. We, too, very soon got entuned to the rhythm of Iranian life and started enjoying ourselves in Iran as before.

Good bye

R.K.

KOLKATA,

1/12/2011

A visit to the Orient II: Japan (1978)...Rekha Karmakar

The second part of Mom's Oriental Diaries from 1978. The first one was from Bangkok.  Now it's the second leg at Japan. The Sicot conference at Kyoto, bullet trains, green tea and the Nara Deer Park...

"We landed at Tokyo airport in time. From there we took a bus to the railway station. As we were delayed by a day, we could not spend any time in Tokyo. From the bus, Tokyo seemed a busy commercial city, vibrating with life.

After reaching the railway station, we took the ‘Bullet Train’. I considered myself very fortunate to be able to travel by ’Bullet Train’, popularly known in Japan as ‘Shinknsen’. Japan pioneered this high speed train. This train was quite new even at that time. As far as I remember, the interior of the train resembled the compartment of a very neat, clean and luxurious A.C. chair car. But while inside we could not feel its speed just as you cannot realize the fast speed of an aeroplane, while inside. Nonetheless it was a great experience.

After getting down at the platform, we felt hungry. We bought a rice preparation, which looked like ‘pulao/ fried rice’, from the railway vendor. But it did not taste like pulao/fried rice as the rice was very soggy.

From there, we took another train to Kyoto. The conference organisers had booked a hotel for us near the station. As far as I remember, it was called ‘The Station Hotel’. The room was very nice and what I liked most was that they provided us with ‘Japanese Kimono Style’ house-coats along with other toiletries.

Kyoto, the ancient city of Japan, is famous for its temple and shrines. In contrast to Tokyo, this city had a laid-back and relaxed atmosphere. The houses were built at the backdrop of natural scenery. The Japanese in Kyoto, cultivated rice paddy in their kitchen gardens just as we grow vegetables in ours.

The venue of the conference was quite near the hotel. The conference hall was very huge, having seating arrangements for nearly thousand delegates. Not only that, it also had a huge screen at the background, which had ’SICOT’78, Kyoto’ written in glowing letters. All arrangements were made befitting the grand occasion i.e. the 50^th anniversary of the World Orthopedic Congress.

The technical know–how of the Japanese was also superb. Each and every delegate, including his spouse, was provided with a lingua-phone so that he/she could interpret the speech of all the dignitaries in their language of choice. I, too, was very excited to get one such equipment.

My young readers may, at this stage, look down on my excitement at receiving a lingua-phone and think in their minds, ‘so what? ‘, ‘as if…’. They are probably right. But three and a half decades ago, these were very innovative things for us. It is unimaginable as to how much the work world has progressed in the communication sector in the last few decades.

After the inaugural session, the docs went inside to discuss important issues, while K and I went outside for a stroll and have a ’peep’ into the lives of the Japanese people.

I saw a young Japanese girl, almost of my age, going inside a restaurant with her child. As we, too, were hungry, we followed her inside the restaurant to have lunch. They ordered some boiled noodles and started having it with chopsticks with great dexterity. We, too, tried having noodles with chopsticks but gave it up soon and fell back on forks and knives. After seeing the Japanese mother and son duo, I realized that not cooking lunch at home and eating out with the child was quite common among the Japanese housewives unlike among the Indian housewives of the same time.

On the 2^nd day of conference, K’s dad read out his paper, which was followed by customary discussions.

During lunch- break, we were invited to watch the Japanese ‘Green Tea Ceremony’. Very few people had heard about ‘green tea’ at that time. We went inside a hall where they showed us how to prepare green tea. The whole preparation was conducted with the seriousness of a worship/puja. It was not just making a cup of green tea but also the rituals that mattered.

After sometime, they gave us some green tea in cups. It looked like liquid green paste of grass. I, too, tasted some but it seemed quite unpalatable to me at that time. I do not know if the taste of green tea has undergone any change or not because now-a –days I merrily sip a cup of green tea ( made with green tea-bag) every evening.

At night, they took us to a theatre to see the live performance of ‘Kabuki’. ‘Kabuki’ is a classical Japanese dance-drama. It is noted for the elaborate make up worn by some of its performers. You can, somewhat compare their make-up to that of the Indian Kathakali dances. As the whole performance was in Japanese language, we could not understand it very much. To be very frank, at that time, I had not even heard of ‘Kabuki’.

Later in the years, I came to know that it is the most popular form of traditional dance- drama in Japan. It has also been included in the ‘UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List’ in 2005.

The final day of the conference ended with the traditional banquet party, which we also attended for a while. The men were busy getting themselves photographed with the Japanese girls in Kimono.

A surprise was still in store for us. Later at night, the professionals started lighting up different types of fire- crackers. The whole sky was illuminated with those crackers. It went on and on. Different types of fire- crackers made myriad designs in the sky. The lights and the sounds left us spell bound. It was like Diwali in Japan. The Japanese sent off its guests with a bang!

After the conference was over, we decided to stay for a day or two and see the surrounding places, though Yen was as high as ever.

Next morning, we took a tourist coach and decided to go to Nara, another ancient city on the border of Kyoto. While going to Nara, we passed through the beautiful city of Kyoto and enjoyed each and every moment.

During the course of the journey, we noticed a canal, with multi-coloured water, in Kyoto. I was rather surprised as I had heard of the Blue Nile River and the Black sea but never had I heard of any water body having multi coloured water. On asking the guide, I came to know that there was a factory nearby which dyed Japanese silk materials. The excess coloured water was channelized through the canal. That explained the color of the water.

We reached Nara, the ancient Buddhist city, after sometime. It is famous worldwide for its temples and shrines. There is a Buddhist temple complex in Nara.

Out of all the temples in Nara, Todaiji Temple, with its huge wooden structure, is the largest Buddhist temple and a landmark of Nara.

Another important feature of Nara is its deer park. I still remember the velvet soft green grass of Nara Park and the tamed deers roaming about in the town.

The historic monuments of ancient Nara have been enlisted in ’the UNESCO World Heritage Site’ List.

We liked Japan very much. Japan, though an Asian country, can compete with any Western country. Its most important asset is its human resource. Its citizens can overcome any calamity whether it is the explosion of the hydrogen bomb, nuclear radiation leak, tsunami or earthquake. Being an Asian, I basked in the reflected glory of Japan. This is the impression that I had of Japan when I went there. (This is purely my opinion)"                                                                                                                       To be continued

A visit to the Orient I: Thailand (1978)...Rekha Karmakar

This is the first a three post series by my mother from her trip to the Orient in the late 1970s. The first deals with Thailand and will be followed by Japan and Philippines. Hope you find this interesting and would be great if you write in with your comments. 

"We were in Iran when we made this trip to Thailand, Japan and Philippines. Things had started looking up and we had settled down reasonably well in Rasht, a city near the Caspian Sea in Iran.

It is not that we went to these oriental countries just to spend our holidays. It was a work-cum-pleasure trip. K’s father was nominated by the Iranian Govt. to represent Iran in a conference, named SICOT, at Kyoto in Japan.

This conference was to be held to observe the 50^th anniversary of the World Orthopaedic Congress (1978).

It was a great honour for K’s dad as he was to represent Iran, in spite of being a non-Iranian. Since all his expenses were to be paid by the Iranian Govt., he thought of taking us along with him by paying only for me and K. Then, if you were going so far, why not visit a few other countries on the way? After all, we are travel – loving Bengalis!

K was at that time four and a half year old. Thankfully, we did not need to pack his nappies anymore. He was also old enough to endure frequent flights.

So we started packing our suitcases. But the problem was where to keep my ornaments, whatever little I had. It was risky to travel with those. K’s dad suggested that I should keep them with the Mayor of Rasht, Iran. The Mayor was a man of about fifty. We were quite friendly with him. In our time, ‘husband was always right.’  So I handed over all my ornaments to the Mayor with butterflies in my stomach. Anyway, to cut the story short, I got all my things back on our return to Iran. At least, in this case, the husband was right.

Our plan was to go to Calcutta (it wasn’t Kolkata back then) first and then proceed from there to Bangkok, Kyoto, Manila and finally back to Iran.

On the designated day, we took a flight from Tehran airport to Calcutta. We spent about a week with our relatives in Calcutta and had a great time. At that time, Calcutta was in a very sorry state as the whole city was being dug up for laying the tracks for Indian’s first metro/underground railways. But the Calcuttans, bore everything with great fortitude, the fruit of which is being enjoyed by the present generation of the Kolkatans.

From Calcutta, we took Thai Airways flight to reach Bangkok, the capital of Thailand. It was a beautiful city with tall buildings and magnificent Buddhist temples.

Bangkok was not as popular as a tourist centre at that time as it is now. In the ensuing years, Bangkok has evolved itself as a major tourist destination. When my sons K and Sid grew up, they both went to Bangkok. On coming back, they told me about its ‘floating market’, ‘walking street’, Sukhumvit and so on. But when we went to Bangkok, at least, I had not heard about these places. The only common things, between the two generations are the Buddhist temples.

K with the Golden Buddha

The first and foremost among these is the temple of reclining Buddha. In local language it is called ‘Wat Pho’ temple. It is the largest Buddhist temple in Bangkok and famed for its huge and majestic reclining Buddha. It measures 46 meters in its lying position. You can well imagine how long it is.

When I went to Gurgaon last year, I was surprised to see a replica of the reclining Buddha in “The Kingdom of Dreams”, an entertainment centre, in Gurgaon. But the replica was not so huge or majestic.

You, all know, that Bangkok is now passing through its worst floods. In October, I saw a file picture of the reclining Buddha to the north of Bangkok in ‘The Telegraph’ .The lower part of the huge statue was in floodwater and the villagers were paddling past the giant statue of the reclining Buddha. This picture made me sad, as I feel all ancient temples and monuments should be preserved from natural calamities and man- made invasions for the sake of prosperity. It is a great loss to the mankind.

Another Buddhist temple of great fame in Bangkok is the temple of Golden Buddha or ‘Wat Traimit’ as it is called in the local language. Inside the temple, there is a 3 meter tall statue of Lord Buddha in a sitting position. It is made of solid gold and weighs 5.5 tons. I do not know if it is made of 18 k gold or 22k gold. But I still remember that the huge statue dazzled in all its beauty.

We also tasted the street food of Bangkok, which consisted mainly of noodles, being sold mostly by women.

When we went to Bangkok, the Buddhist temple and the statues of Buddha were the most important tourist attractions. But nowadays, the present generation goes to Bangkok more for fun, entertainment and buying of ‘phoren goods’ at a reasonable price than for anything else.

As our Bangkok tour was over, we left for the airport at night to reach the next destination. But as luck would have it, our flight got cancelled. We spent the whole night at the airport. Next morning, we were taken to a 5 star hotel. On the way to the hotel, I saw a scene, so beautiful, that I have not been able to forget it even after so many years. In one place, we saw a pool in which bloomed lots and lots of lotus flowers. Being brought up in Delhi, I had never seen a lotus before. I was overwhelmed to see those full grown red and white lotus flowers. The scene was so beautiful that it seems like a dream sometimes.

After spending a day in the hotel, we went to the airport at night and reached Tokyo, Japan the next day without any further disturbances ...                                                                                 To be continued

Memories of chicken chaap...Arsalan, Mumbai



Chicken chaap Arsalan



I was about seven or eight years old when I first tasted a chaap. A dish from the Muslim restaurants of Calcutta serving 'Moghlai' food, a cuisine which sees its origins in Avadh. 

I don't remember if the chaap I had then was a chicken or a mutton chaap. I think it was the former. This was at Gol Park at Kolkata at the house of someone my father and I were visiting. We had just moved into Calcutta.

Three decades later the memory of that chaap floated in from nowhere tonight just as I opened the left over chicken chaap from the previous night's dinner. This chaap was from Arsalan at Khar, Mumbai.

In case we are connected on facebook or on Twitter then you would have seen me rave about this place a lot in the last few days. In fact this is my second post on Arsalan in a week.

But then consider the facts. A few days after I had my first dinner there, we had our Christmas lunch  at Arsalan too. And then called for dinner from there too on Christmas!

If it was the rezala, naan and biryani which wooed me on day one, it was the chaap which pushed its way up after that. The food was quite consistent and that too right at the beginning.

It was the left over chicken chaap from the Christmas dinner that I opened tonight. As I placed the small and tender leg piece of chicken on my plate, spooned out the granulated curry paste over steamed rice....as the melodious aromas of the chaap enrobed me, I was taken back thirty years.

I remembered the earthen pot or bhaar in which the chaap was served that night in the early 1980s as if it was yesterday. I could vividly remember the pasty curry base of the meat draped on to the red earthen pot, the slightly pinkish hue of chicken cooked just right ...the vibrant flavours with a hint of sweetness...the choppy rough primordial masala ... memories of an enthralled seven or eight year old awakened decades later in a city at the other end of the country...that's the power of great food.

I have had many chaaps after the one at Gol Park. One of the rare Indian meat preparations that I have come across which is all about texture. When it comes to chaaps I prefer chicken chaaps...a good tender and yet demure piece of chicken is just the right foil for the intricate choppy paste of the chaap...mutton being a heavier meat tends to offset this masala in my opinion.

Over the years quite a few chaaps at Calcutta have given me pleasure...ironically one of the places that messed it up was Arsalan at Calcutta's Park Circus...but tonight the chaap from Mumbai's Arsalan was special

With the Calcutta based Arsalan and Bijoli Grill putting up stellar performances at Mumbai...it is only the absence of phuckhas, lemon tart and chicken and mushroom envelopes of Kookie Jar and the strawberry cubes of Flury's at Mumbai that still causes angst.

Is Santa taking any more  requests?

Update: I called Arsalan at Khar this morning (9920222873) and asked for Mr Ahmad, the manager. I complimented him on the chaap and wanted to know what all went into it. This is what I managed to put together. Not the recipe but gives you an idea of what goes into the dish:

"The chicken is first mixed in 'garam masala'. The masala is roughly pounded. You don't want a smooth paste."

 On further questioning I figured out that the 'masala' paste includes cloves, cardamoms, cinnamon and black pepper, green chillies and dry red chillies too.

"What about curd?" I asked.

"All Mughlai dishes have cream and curd. That is understood and we don't even mention it"

Well to be fair Ahmed wasn't really giving me the recipe. I just wanted to know what went into the dish.

Ahmad told me that crushed kharbuja (melon) seeds were added to the mix after these were dried overnight. And, the big surprise, crushed coconut! Though the coconut is quite subtle and more for the texture.

"You cannot taste or smell the coconut unlike in Goan curries" said Ahmed.

The meat is marinated for about an hour and then placed in a very broad round pan typical of Muslim restaurants at Calcutta. Cooking oil is added to this. This is then covered with a lid which is sealed and slow cooked. This is the 'dum' method of cooking. About 45 minutes for chicken and more than an hour for mutton. They serve only leg pieces of chicken in the chaap at Arsalan Mumbai. The mutton is cut into small boti pieces.

When a customer places an order, the cooks take out a portion of chaap out, finish it in a small pan over a fire...they add some rogan here... fat from mutton fat which is the red film at this stage.

But that's what Ahmad and I could put together over the phone.

Ahmad said that the chaap is best enjoyed with plump tandoori rotis.

I agree.

Merry Christmas

The luscious limited edition Christmas cake

The most Christmasy thing that I did today was was biting into a slice of Christmas cake in the evening with coffee.  I had unwrapped and cut the cake in the morning so the rum spread more evenly by evening. The cake was dark and moist with plump raisins bursting with each bite. 


No, I didn't bake it. It was a surprise limited edition cake baked specially for me.


And our neighbours had come in the morning bearing local Christmas sweets. Plus lunch at Arsalan. Dinner from Arsalan.

And it all started with a Christmas eve dinner at The Royal Bombay Yacht club. The liver pate there was the piece de resitance. Light and butter. Excellent ham and some pretty good suckling pig. Thanks Jameshed Uncle.

Fort, Fountain, Colaba looked so dead on Christmas Eve as we drove to the Yacht Club. Wonder how things would have been when the British were there. Only Hill Rd and the inner lanes of Bandra speak to an ex Calcuttan on Christmas now. For Borodin, as Christmas is called at Calcutta, is very much a part of the city's social fabric

Hope you  had a merry Christmas.


Here's to Christmas 2012.




Traditional East Indian Christmas sweets



The P Word... Feeding The Foodie

“So what have you cooked for us?”

“Hmmm er hmmm well….basically…sort of . ..er meat tossed in Asian sauces in a wok”

“Nice, I can see you have put some star anise, chilies…and some onions too”

“No, that’s crackling. It’s meat with crackling”.

Kunal Vijaykar and I had just been rapped on our knuckles for rhapsodising about pork on camera. Apparently the channel had decided not to use the words ‘pork’ and ‘alcohol’ on their food show after viewers had written in complaining about this.

Kunal looked at me wistfully and said "you are lucky, you are on the internet".

We were at the house of Rushina of A Perfect Bite. They were doing an episode on food bloggers with Rushina dishing out her story and some recipes too for the show.

Pic credit: Harini Prakash

She’d invited a few of us to join in. Nonchalant Gourmet Nikhil, Tongue Ticklers Harini and Saee with her ‘My Jhola’.  The three of them were sitting inside quietly like good children while I reached, rung the bell, and like the proverbial bull in the china shop walked into the drawing room as Rushina cooked prawns for Kunal in front of the camera.

Kunal was nonplussed by this as I shook his hands introduced myself and went into the ‘children’s room’.

We took out the stuff we had got for the last segment – a food blogger’s potluck Rushina invited us to – and did our own little shoot as we played Foodie Foodie while Kunal and Rushina shot outside.

I commandeered Harini, who apart from being a vegan food blogger, is a great amateur photographer too to take photos of the food. She sportingly shot the stir fried p#*$ that I made though understandably taken from a distance.

Here’s the picture she took. Straight out of a glossy mag if you asked me.

Pic credit: Harini Prakash

 I didn’t have much faith in the food photography of the show and hence the request for the snaps. That’s one area The Foodie needs to work on to make it a really good food show.

There was some pretty great food out there. Saee had got a pavlova which looked like it belonged to a picnic table in a garden at Italy. It was all about meringue and whipped egg whites and the sort of stuff you hear about in Masterchef Australia. Tasted like it too.

Pic credit: Harini Prakash

Harini had got vegan desserts. Kaju barfis without milk which had us moaning in joy, the gajar ka halwa which worked well without milk as one intuitively felt it would and brownies which defied the laws of nature. Brownies that didn’t seem to have anything –  no milk, eggs or flower – but there they were on the plate.

Pic credit: Harini Prakash

Pic credit: Harini Prakash

Nikhil the gourmand came with a tom yum soup and potato gnocchi. Gnocchi has never worked for me before but this I liked and took repeated fork-fulls off…the sauce was ephemeral.

Pic credit: Harini Prakash

Rushina cooked some citrus chicken for telly which were braised beautifully, vodka prawns which were quite succulent and a smoked cheese infused chorizo spirelli which she dedicated to me on camera because of the chorizo. Something the world might not get to know of once the channel figures out what chorizo is. You"ll have to wait for the show to see how these looked.

I had marinated the pork belly in sriracha, soy, fish sauce & honey the previous night and the skin in salt. Roasted the two separately next morning at 200 c for 30 minutes. The skin crackled but was quite tough so I still need to work  more on cracking the crackling.

I prefer to get closer to the food when I shoot...different schools

I tossed the rest of the pork in a wok, on the morning of the shoot, and stir fried it with with star anise, ginger slices and threw in some sliced red chilles and bokchoy at the end.

The flavours had come out well but I wish the meat was more tender. Saee said that not roasting it before the wok toss might have helped. I want to experiment a bit more on this before I share the recipe.

That morning I realised that Kunal is not as big as he looks on TV. “The camera adds on twenty kilos” he said as I told him about my observation. I later saw that he tasted all the dishes but didn’t finish them as I earlier thought he did. He is a man who loves to eat and talk about it.

And was sporting enough for me to cheekily tell him “I used to think that you ate up all the food they showed you with on TV”.

Pic credit: Harini Prakash

We chatted about food and meat as the shot got ready. He told me to try out the kheema at Grant House while I got him interested in Arsalan which has just opened at Khar. Kunal’s a Bombay Boy and predictably only likes the biryani at Jafferbhai. "There's no such thing as chicken biryani". 


We both agreed that we loved Ling’s and had a similar view on a ‘Chinese’ restaurant he has reviewed on his show… ”my problem with them is that how can you be a Chinese restaurant without serving pork and beef”.

Luckily the producer didn’t hear us.

I think the episode will come out early next year.

Harini couldn't fit Kunal and me into the same frame but these were taken during our chat before the shoot:

And this is from the finely chopped facebook page later at night:

Kalyan Karmakar

How do you describe a stir fried without using the word pork? Apparently you can't talk about pork or alcohol on food shows on Indian channels because of viewer complaints. Not that free a country eh?

· · Tuesday at 19:13 via Facebook for BlackBerry® smartphones ·

• • 
    

    Shubhranshu Das Well one way would be to call it the "other white meat" and a "fermented joyful" ?
    

    Tuesday at 19:37 ·
  • 
    

    Sue Cope can you use the word pig perhaps?!?! What a joke!
    

    Tuesday at 19:40 ·
  • 
    

    Siddhartha Karmakar Wtf???? Really...unbelievable..
    

    Tuesday at 19:46 ·
  • 
    

    Finely Chopped The anchor kunal v got rapped too and we both looked like truant schoolboys. He looked at me and said you are lucky on the internet
    

    Tuesday at 20:09 ·
  • 
    

    Soumik Sen make sounds like 'oink' 'oink' like an 'ahem'
    

    Tuesday at 20:09 · · 1
  • 
    

    Subhasree Basu Reminds me of the film 'the village' where the jungle monsters are referred to as 'those we do not speak of'.
    

    Tuesday at 20:14 ·
  • 
    

    Tanuja Goyal dukkar perhaps?
    

    Tuesday at 23:43 ·
  • 
    

    Finely Chopped mom spotted a typo...shd have been stiir fried pork
    

    Tuesday at 23:59 ·
  • 
    

    Pritam Roy P**k!
    

    Wednesday at 07:02 · · 1
  • 
    

    Marryam Reshii As Pritam says, p**k, ham, jamon, jambon, bacon, oink oink..... Don't worry, where there are fanatics on one side, there are a bunch of people with fertile imaginations on the other. Like my friend who owns a Korean restaurant in Delhi who doesn't want to offend local sensibilities, so she's got "tender" bulgogi on the menu.
    

    Wednesday at 18:26 · · 1
  • 
    

    Finely Chopped tender bulgogi ha ha...i said this is meat with crackling :)
    

    

    Wednesday at 23:13 · · 1

Naam hain Arsalan. Khar, Mumbai

This post is for the scores of Calcuttans who have been scarred by the rocket fuel doused biryanis of Mumbai.

Help is at hand. The rumours doing the rounds of the Bengali network over the past few weeks did turn out to be true. Yes, Arsalan has finally opened at Mumbai. At Khar SV Road. Many had asked me about this recently. Then I saw a restaurant coming up, with the Arsalan board on it, as I headed to the Khar fish market a few weekends back. It was work in progress.

I forgot about it tell Tublu texted me the day before. ‘Arsalan has indeed opened. Phataphati (fantastic) biryani’.

Soumik checked and confirmed to me. “Yes, it is the same Arsalan”.

I rounded up a posse and headed there the next night.

Arsalan is not the first Bengali restaurant at Mumbai. There was the ‘mess’ at New Bengal Lodge, now the lamentable Howrah. Only Fish which became Oh Calcutta. The stellar Calcutta Club at Oshiwara. The street food chain Hangla, the original roll stall Bheema’s, the new Bong Bong. My current favourite Bijoli Grill at Powai. The rather disappointing Bhojohori manna which I hope has got its act right... you get a decent Calcutta Biryani at most of these places. The one at Bijoli Grill is really good and Calcutta Club was super but have not been there in a while.

So Arsalan is not the first Calcutta biryani place here either. To add to this I belong to the pre-Arsalan generation at Kolkata. Was rather under-whelmed when I finally made it to Kolkata’s Arsalan at Park Circus  recently. For me biryani at Kolkata is defined by Shiraz.

So why was I so excited by Arsalan opening at Mumbai?

Well the sheer presence of a solid Kolkata based restaurant so close to home at Khar...not at Tardeo, Powai, Oshiwara, Versova...  but almost next door is so reassuring and comforting...so soul satisfying...the equivalent for me of curling up with a Satyajit Ray novel with some Bengali Rock playing in the background.

The excitement with which our group we headed to Arsalan from different corners of the city was electric this evening. There was no ifs or buts, plans were made and executed in a day. Monday be damned. Bad stomachs, acidity, distances forgotten …we had biryani on our sights.

The nine of us landed there on Monday night. Kolkatans of Mumbai dreaming of our roots of biryani and rezala and chaap.

After a vigorous debate, that’s what we used to do in college fests… not cat walks, I was cornered into sitting in the spacious outdoor section. I looked wistfully at the AC section, grumbling about how the only thing faker than the biryani at Mumbai is its winter, while the waiter whispered promises of a mist fan.

The ordering didn’t take much time. Four special biryanis (special means extra rice, meat, potato and an egg), rezalas, chaaps …largely mutton with the odd chicken ones…naans…the kid just back from his college at Manchester ordered a curry house like chicken kadai…and then what I call the Great Crab Scam of Mumbai happened. If you have been to places such as Gajalee and Mahesh you would have seen the waiters wave large crabs below your nose till you buy one ludicrously expensive one. The same happened at Arsalan with the promise of a raan today till Maity bit the bait and we ordered this rather non Calcutta dish too.

The raan which was slow cooked delayed our order. What saved us from starvation was the mutton roll I ordered much to the bemusement of others. “Arsalan is not known for its mutton rolls”.

We found out why. Nice paratha, the onions fried as per my specs. A bed of chopped green chillies the way its meant to be. And then the downer. Ketchup. The ‘laal shos’ (red sauce) which is used in suburban roll stalls at Kolkata but never at the Muslim Central Calcutta stalwarts of Nizam, Badhsah, Kusum or Shiraz. Completely drowned the meat for me. Hangla still rules when it comes to mutton rolls here.

A feedback which I Iater gave to Mr Bhutto, one of the owners of Arsalan who had flown in from Kolkata. “Please ask your guests at the beginning if they want sauce”. He agreed and noted it down.

The rest of the food took a while as they waited for the raan to get ready. Something which flummoxed us as biryani is normally served instantly. A bit of hungry ‘bawal’ or raucousness and our biryanis were brought to our table.

A tad cold I suspect because the biryanis were waiting for us on the stand as the blessed raan got dressed.

But forget that false note for what we had was that night the best Calcutta biryani in town and the best biryani in absolute terms too. Even better than what I had at Arsalan Calcutta. This was of Shiraz standards.

The Calcutta biryani is the polar opposite of the kachhi dum biryani of Hyderabad which were meant for the Nizam’s soldiers and have a rough martial hue to them. Which in turn is no relation to the bastardised form of the Hyderabadi biryani served at Mumbai, a city whose citizens are so busy with work that you need some pretty bold, loud and overt flavours to keep them fuelled..

The Calcutta biryani has its origins in the decadent majesty of the courts of the Nawabs of Oudh…with a final artistic sheen added in Bengal…the land of the languorous genteel bhodroloks  … a land of people who believe in savouring life at a leisurely pace.

The biryani at Arsalan Mumbai was an example of the best of Calcutta biryanis. The rice of the biryani at Arsalan fine grained, separate…artistic and delicate…potatoes almost baked in the subtle fragrances of the rice…boiled egg …

And the mutton … so sensuous, busty, full bodied and curvaceous…a touch of tantalising fat with the ‘inner thigh wobble’ that Nigella once said cheesecakes should have.

I have never come across these voluptuous blobs of chorbee (fat) on mutton served at Mumbai …a city where Spinning and Sumba are the latest buzzwords. This was sheer meaty indulgence…a tactile near erotic pleasure … it was all about passion and of throwing restraint to the wind… it was all about love handles

And what do I say about the sheer artistic wizardry of the rezala?

Meat, both mutton and chicken versions, cooked to pliant submission. What complexity of notes in the sauce that came together for the perfect raga.

The faint slightly sweet flavours of onion paste, the wicked temptation of oodles of ghee, the sensuous essence of meat in the sauce….a celebration of a pleasure that was so adult…an experience that had us wistfully murmuring ‘rezala, rezala’ as if one was calling out for a lost love while one spooned out the silken sauce and meat and savoured every lingering bite.

And then there were the flour or Maida naans. Fluffed up in a tandoor and brought hot to our tables. Each bite filling us with its the warmth…the heat of the last embrace of lovers who knew that their time was up and yet they didn’t want to let go. This was such a mood uplifter. Carbs at their very best.

As the naans got over we ordered more and more as we kept breaking them, dunking them into the sauces and chewing on them dreamily.

The chaap at Arsalan Khar so much better than the chaap I had eaten at Arsalan at Calcutta’s Park Circus. The spices granulated and slow cooked, the mutton tender. The chicken leg I had called for was petit and not gargantuan. My order of chicken invited quite a few raised eyebrows amongst our table of Bengalis. Why not mutton!!!!

Its just that I strongly feel that the coarsely pounded spices of a chaap are best brought out by the contrast provided by the lighter white chicken meat than a more robust red mutton. 

The cuisine of Calcutta is all about subtlety and demureness after all….not about overwhelming you or being in your face.

The kadhai chicken and raan? Frankly I’d rather order those at Shalimar or Persian Darbar. The raan added 900 bucks to our bill but otherwise all of that, Thums Ups for the others and a Coke for me I was heckled for (Kollaner ki hoyecche aajke?), three stodgy cold frinis and we were at 400 (7.5 USDs) each and without the raan Rs 300. That’s a very good deal indeed.

So why this fuss about biryani, chaap and rezala amongst us?

 

Well for those of us who grew up in the 80s and 90s at Kolkata the Muslim biryani restaurants were the first ‘resturas’ we could afford and for most of us these defined our first experiences of sit down dining. So with each bite of biryani, chaap,rezala one bit into memories of carefully saved up pocket money, movies at New Empire, Chaplin, Elite , Lighthouse, Jamuna and Globe, first crushes and of slowly forgotten romances that were meant to last for ever, of hopes and aspirations and of waiting to grow up…so many flavours and memories that went into a meal that was rather superlative in absolute terms too.

So roll over Jaffer Bhai … the Shahenshah is here.

     

IceRocket Tags: biryani,calcutta biryani,arsalan,khar,rezala,raan,chaap,firni