Finely Chopped

The hunger for knowledge & khichudi… Saraswati Pujo, Bandra Notunpalli 2012

2012-01-29T22:05:00.001+05:30

“Anjali ta taratari koroon…kheede peye gechhe” (hurry up with the Anjali, we are hungry)

The plaintive cry of Mr Tapan Mukherjee, one of the founders of the more than fifty years old Vivekananda Club’s Notun Polly Saraswati Pujo, summed up the mood of the morning. For it is only after giving the Anjali can one eat.

It was Saraswati Pujo yesterday. The day of the prayers to the Hindu goddess of Knowledge and learning. Younger daughter of the Goddess Durga…only hope for students who didn’t study all year and hoped to be absolved of this by offering prayers to her… Veena player Goddess Saraswati whose preferred mode of transport is her swan, favourite colour yellow or Bosonto, skin complexion white. One of the most popular goddesses of Bengalis, a community where education and learning is put right up there in order of priorities.

Saraswati Pujo is a holiday for all in West Bengal but it is really a special day for kids. For that’s one day when you put your books to be blessed by the Goddess and you don’t study that day in reverence to her. Even if your exams are knocking round the corner. I never got the logic for that but why complain? Problem was we weren’t allowed to read story books either.

Saraswati Pujo happens in houses, used to happen at my father’s house and it was from him that I learnt about the Goddess when I was still a baby. There is a picture of me in a basket in front of a Saraswati Pujo at England. I was two. The pujo is held at schools and colleges at Calcutta…though not at the Protestant schools I went to…and at neighbourhood paras and at building societies too.

Saraswati Pujo is a festival of spring. Folks to wear traditional clothes. Girls walking around ladylike in yellow saris. Little boys might wear dhotis but as they grow older it is pyjamas and yellow panjabis or kurtas. It is a day for kids to be all self important…it is their puja after all… from collecting chanda or donations, getting the pratima for the puja, decorating the pandal, choosing the music to be played in the P A system (is it chikni chameli in Calcutta this year?), serving food to the devotees, cultural programmes….all in honour of the beloved Goddess Saraswati. All with a fervent hope to get in her good books and get the sort of marks in school which would get ones parents of ones back. For tiny tots this is when ‘haathe khori’ happens…the act of making a baby write words of the Bengali alphabet on a slate to start their journey of education.

The high point of Saraswati Pujo is the pushpanjali…where the priest or thakurmoshai leads the prayers and then those assembled offer flowers (pushpa) to the Goddess…the only hitch…you have to fast till this happens. In good Bengali style the prayer gets over by the morning and then prasad …sweets and fruits blessed by the Goddess…are distributed…

Which is just about as much of religious austerity that we can bear….specially the boys and men…it really is up to the women and girls to help observe the rituals in all seriousness….the boys want to to get over with anjali, have the prasad and get down to the carom boards, cricket matches or just plain adda or chatter…

And that sort of explains Tapan Babu’s cry of hunger. He had come all the way from Vasai.

I,on the other hand, had sneaked in a quick sandwich and coffee at Candies before coming to the Pujo but I am sure that Goddess Saraswati, with her kind and benign smile would understand. She did help me pass some tricky math exams in school after all.

This was my first Saraswati Pujo at Mumbai after more than a decade here. Unlike in Kolkata there is no holiday here. Saraswati Pujos come and go without one even knowing about it. This year was different. I had just got to know the folks at Notunpali after Sam wrote in on a post I wrote on Durga Pujo inviting me over. I met them all at the Laxmi Pujo and connected with this wonderful group of folks from all over Mumbai who come together at Bandra to celebrate various Bengali festivals.

I joined the Notun Polli facebook group and saw that a Saraswati Pujo would be held at the Bandra Hindu Association Hall which is opposite Hangla's at Linking Road. And on a Saturday this time.

I landed up at the Pujo like a homing pigeon. Met the now familiar faces Captain Mon Basu, Sam, Kaushik Saha the food organiser and then rushed in as I saw than anjali was about to start. I looked around and what I saw reminded me of the puja at our building complex at Calcutta. The men sitting in groups and chatting…some running around getting things organised…specially the community lunch…the women in saris near the prayer area helping the thakurmoshai, distributing flowers for the anjali, getting the prasad plates ready.

The sonorous anjali done, shantijal or holy ganga water sprinkled on by the thakurmoshai for the inner peace of all, blessings of the holy fire, the red tikka applied on our foreheads and it was time to get our prasad --- bonde, chal korma, oranges and the kul (Indian berries) …the fruit we had to wait for all winter as elders said that you could have it only after Saraswati Pujo happened. I sat in a corner….and scooped in bites of sweet memories from my makeshift plate.

I joined Kaushik in the cooking area behind. A community lunch would be served to all who came in…free of cost…funded by donations and corporate ads. A part of the food was offered to the Goddess first by the priest while a couple of ladies covered the pandal with a sari so that the goddess could eat in private…her food is then mixed to the community cooking pot so that everyone gets a bit of the ‘bhog’ or food blessed by the Goddess.

The food at the Notun Polly pujo is cooked by Gobindo Babu and his team. Gobindo Babu apparently came to Mumbai years back when actor Mithun Chakraborty got him to work in his house. Eventually Gobindo became the cook at the Notunpalli pujo. As I watched the wizards at work I saw some of the ladies, organisers coming in with tiffin boxes to take some for those at home…reminded me of much rancour which this led to in my building puja…all part of the fun and festivity…for us guys at least

Kaushik is the commander in chief of the food committee. He is rumoured to come to the puja premises at 5 in the morning to wake up his troops. He takes feeding people very seriously.

The afternoon lunch was as traditional a Saraswati Pujo fare as it gets… khichudi, labda, papad, tomato chutney and chaaler payesh. The last swirl of the cauldron done, the last sprinkling of garam masala and ghee into the khichudi, the last adornment of coriander garnish and Kaushik and team his team were ready at the counter. A serpentine queue formed and bhog was served.

I hovered around took photographs then suddenly went to the volunteers and asked if anyone needed a relief. The gentleman at the chutney counter did and I jumped in….I had grown up helping serve food in our community pujo at Calcutta. Rued not being able to do this for years. Here I was finally doing something I had missed for so many years. Carefully pouring out the liquidy chutney in plates after Bonnie at the next counter served the labra. I was quite insistent and made sure that even those who were dieting took some chutney. Those who wanted seconds were my favourites. I was there by the bucket of chutney….much to the surprise of the odd reader who was in the queue and some friends of ours who didn’t expect to see me here.

Food served we volunteers sat down to eat. Kaushik had a special treat for us. Alu bhaaja and begun bhaaja I ditched the plastic spoon and plunged my fingers into the khichudi …it was steaming hot and I smiled as I impatiently waited for the food to cool in my fingers so that I could slowly scoop up the hot khichudi with a bite of the labda.

The khichudi was phenomenal …hot nourishing with the occasional fiery surge of green chilli heat. Our conversation turned to how the khichudi at a puja mandaps taste special. Of how you can never recreate this at home. A conversation which gets repeated every time here. Someone rationalised and said that the sheer volume of khichudi and the inherent heat created magic which made it special. Someone else said that the first lot of khichudi is the best. It is cooked over three to four hours and is topped with the goodness of garam masala and ghee…the second lot ordinary and the third lot the poorest as the cook hastily puts together something depending on how many were left according to his conspiracy theory. Profound matters discussed as we dipped into the ghee filled blessed goodness of the steaming khichdi … this was the loveliest meal ever.

The chutney with papar was a tangy tart taste breaker before one moved onto the ‘milk of human kindness’ payesh or rice pudding which was full of the richness of raisins and cashews…one of the best payeshes that I have had.

It was as if the entire meal was cooked by a grand mom. That’s how much the food tasted tasted of home and of the wonder years.

And then a Hindi film moment happened as I heard someone call out for me. It was a very close friend of mine from my college days. He often used to come to the Saraswati Puja at our building at Calcutta for the community lunch. We lost touch over the years. And hear we were meeting again over a Saraswati Puja lunch.

We broke away after chatting for a while…well fed…happy

I came back to the pandal at night. There was going to be a lucky draw and then dinner too (sixty bucks a plate). I knew this feeling from the Pujos at Calcutta. You just didn’t want the day to end. I guess for some at Notunpali, getting together in the evening for a bit more of adda was in this spirit.

And the food was the centrepiece of course. There was koraishootir kochuri or puris stuffed with peas. People apparently complained in the past that these would become tough so Kaushik tried adding ghee one year. Didn’t help. This year he added curd to the dough. It worked!

Sam and I went to the kitchen and sneaked the odd kochuri while the food was piping hot…bursts of crispy goodness.. and some amazing vegetable (beetroot carrot and potato) chops (croquettes)….the best chops that I had in years. They were so light that they just floated in your mouth.

Gobindo and team did a stellar job. One of his assistants took the name of the blog page so that he could look up the pictures on facebook. He begun tapping his phone while his boss fried the kochuris.

Soon Koushik was out with the food and we queued up. The food tasted amazing once again. Along with the kochuri there was alur dom and a laddoo too.

My plate had more than what one could eat … deep fried, white flour, sweets, binge eating…everything that the doctor would shudder at…but we used good old Bengali logic …it’s the thakur’s proshad…blessed by the goddess…all will be good.

For more pujo pictures with descriptions check out this album on the finely chopped facebook page.

There is a link to a part of the Mumbai street food shot on The Travel Channel page. Unfortunately you can’t open the link from India but apparently can abroad. Here’s the link. Please let me know if you could open it.

IceRocket Tags: Saraswati Pujo,Notun Polly,Bandra,Bengali customs,khichudi,bhog,vegetable chop,prasad,kochuri,alur dome,chutney,payesh,labda

Topkapi Tales: Possibly a Mediterranean Roast Chicken legs recipe

2012-01-26T01:54:00.001+05:30

I know that calling something a ‘Mediterranean roast chicken’ is as banal as calling something an ‘Indian fish curry’.

This dish was very simple to cook. Rather tasty and I suspect healthy too. The condiments used were largely Mediterranean or Arabic. I thought I should share it.

We eat so much chicken at home that one has developed a certain degree of confidence about cooking it. Ideally pork is what I would like to play around with. To get to know better. I’d rather experiment and create with pork rather than chicken though. One can’t because of health reasons. Perhaps I should do that whenever I feel like and then tweet for people to be guinea pigs and come and finish the pork.

But I digress. Here’s the roast chicken recipe:

Prep:

Cut some slices of onion and place it on a baking dish. On top of that put slices of potatoes (optional plus doesn’t cook in time) and cover those with chopped vegetables. I used chopped sweet corn, carrots, button mushrooms, tomatoes and olive. You can use whatever.
So you have a bed with three layers. The veggies are to be eaten with the chicken and would be flavoured in the juices of chicken,
Place 2 chicken legs on the vegetable bed (leg and thighs joined). Slit the surface of the chicken so that the flavours go in
Rub on the spices on to the chicken after this. I used black pepper powder and two Turkish Arabic spices…sumac & zatarpita. A friend’s brother got these from Dubai. I have seen these spices at Nature’s Basket Bandra
I then wrapped the chicken with fresh herbs – basil & oregano (I had all these herbs and chopped vegetables from the previous day’s soup ingredients) and salt
I then doused this with a liberal dose of balsamic vinegar (1/2 a tea cup) and put it in the fridge for about six hours

Cook

Brush the exposed side of the chicken with olive for the glaze
Preheat the oven for 10 min at 200 C
Put in the tray with chicken
Roast at 200 C for 35 min (no need to cover in between. the potatoes won’t cook though so just act as a stand)

The end result is that of a succulent and well flavoured chicken and the goodness soaks on to the veggies too.

Note: The programme I shot for sometime back airs on the Travel Channel US.

STREET FOODS INTERNATIONAL

Street Foods International

World travelers know that eating street food is the best way to get a taste of a city's culture. From traditional, to gourmet, to adventurous, we'll explore the street eats that give unique flavor to seven cities across the globe. TV-G, CC

I did the Mumbai part of the episode. I haven’t seen it myself so hope it turns out OK…I’ll get to know once I get the DVD

IceRocket Tags: roast chicken recipes,OTG recipes

Tales of chicken soups, soft breads and kind innkeepers

2012-01-24T15:26:00.001+05:30

We were floored by the folks at Cafe Basilico Bandra last night.

We went there to buy the bread that they had sent with the superb pasta & soup we ordered the the previous night. Turned out that that bread was not for sale. Crestfallen we went through the other breads on sale. That soft bread was so good for my tonsilled throat but alas.

Suddenly the gentleman at the counter asked us how many breads we needed and then packed two and gave them to us.

He refused to charge us!

We had not come to buy anything else. We were not even regulars there.... Will be now.

It reminded me of an evening in 1990 when I took K to a chocolate buffet at at the Sea Lounge at the Taj. The buffet was about Rs 1,300 or so then and I could barely afford it. I wanted to treat K as she is crazy about chocolates. A chocolate buffet at the Taj seemed right up there with a solitaire.

The buffet consisted of various forms of chocolates and coffee. You could not share the treat I guess. That’s not how buffets work right? You don’t share plates.

So we had dinner outside and went to the Seal Lounge. The plan was K would have the chocolates for dessert. I would skip it. Except when it came to the coffee. K didn’t drink coffee those days so I requested the elderly waiter at the Sea Lounge to give me the coffee instead.

He got me the coffee.

And a side plate. Beamed at me like a genial Santa, put the plate in front of me and left us. The only people who were less than thirty, or fifty, at the buffet that evening. Guess we struck a chord somewhere.

And I had my own plate too :)

And then I heard this story from K about the folks at Gloria Jean’s at Oberoi Mall.

There’s a girl who is new to Mumbai. She goes to Gloria Jean’s for dinner everyday. She hates the idea of going home to have dinner. Even the presence of strangers in a coffee shop makes her lonely. She likes to read the newspaper every night or a book with her cappuccino and croissant before going home.

This is her daily routine.

One day she walked in, upset about something, didn’t feel like anything. Ordered just a coffee for dinner.

She settled down with her book. Her order came. A cappuccino.

And a croissant.

“But I didn’t order a croissant”.

“That’s ok ma’am” said the Gloria Jean’s waiter. “We know you have a croissant everyday. You looked rather sad today. So this is from us. You’ll feel better”

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Well if you have any stories like these of restaurants where you felt touched by an unexpected show of warmth, gestures that made your day, then please write in through comments and give as much details as possible….would love to put these up in the post. Or in a later post.

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Talking of ‘chicken soup’, I have been down with fever since last Thursday. Will save you the gory attention seeking details but am a lot better now and should be up and about tomorrow. It was a tonsil related attack and at one point swallowing was a problem.

Chicken soup was the most commonly suggested remedy after gargling.

Well I tried a couple of locally available packet soups. Tasted like rotten runny cow dung, I tried calling for a soup from Mr Chow but they said they will deliver only above Rs 150 and not just a soup. Given that most of their fare is sub-optimal I didn’t want to torture myself. Acting on a suggestion from twitter I called for a chicken rezala from Arsalan. That was the perfect Kolkata version of the cream of chicken soup. Except this had ghee not butter.

Here’s something I put together yesterday. I assume it is healthy. Tasted all right.

Herbed chicken & vegetable clear soup for the tonsilled throat

Saute100 g boneless chicken (leg pieces) and 100 g mushrooms in olive oil in a wok
Add 3 coffee mugs of water
Add 100 g sweet corn
Bring to boil
Reduce flame
As the soup simmers add 1 teaspoon of chopped ginger. I didn’t add it earlier as I wanted the sharpness intact. Good for the throat
Add a teaspoon each of salt and pepper powder and some chopped tomatoes
Let it simmer for ten minutes
At the end add some chopped carrots (you want the bite and you don’t want it to become squishy). Add the juice of half a lime
At this stage I added some fresh basil and oregano leaves which I bought from Lallu’s at Pali Market. Transformed the taste completely. The basil dominated though. You could try lemon grass or even coriander. You add the herbs at the end because you want the flavours and cooking might kill that
Add a dash of balsamic and soup was done. We had had it with some of the Basilico bread. (the basil in the pic looks a bit dark as we had the soup an hour after it was cooked)

IceRocket Tags: chicken soup recipes,great restaurant service at mumbai,cafe basilico bandra,sea lounge at the taj,gloria jean's oberoi mall

Breaking the bread block

2012-01-16T01:51:00.001+05:30

After a million months of procrastination I finally got off my butt and did it.

I found a trillion reasons not to so far. Excuses from various angles. All very logical. I turned a deaf ear to those who said I should do it. Who said I could do it. That I would love it once I did it. That it wasn’t as difficult as it seems. Experts who were kind enough to encourage me. They even said that they were sure that I would be a natural at it to egg me on. People kept telling me to get over my misgivings and trepidations. To break away from the sense of inertia and ennui and go ahead and do something about it. To make a move.

I did take a few steps. Made the occasional preparation. Often I prepared to take a step ahead. Then went back. There were always other things to do. Reasons to put it in the back burner.

Then a new year started. A year in which I resolved to make things move.

Then things seemed the same as the new year set in and life continued. There were more important things to do. And then even making justifications seemed too much of an effort and not worth it. The old order continued.

Till today. A day when I finally shook off a sense of ennui and decided to do something about it.

I made bread.

All my excuses had come to nought for a while. K gave me an oven. Then I actually went to a bread baking class at Le !5 Patisserie. Broke my mental block to following recipes and baking by actually doing so in class. Then I came back home and did nothing about it. Didn’t practice what I learnt. There were always reasons.

There was no butter at home. Then I bought some. There was no yeast. Then Rushina gave me some yeast. Then I felt that there wasn’t enough space. That I needed to be at peace. That I had lost my cooking Mojo. Then I cooked.

Then one day mom suggested a bacon and sausage dinner from Kalman. I thought I’ll bake bread. Banu bunked. The kitchen was too messy. The bread plan was shelved. Then Banu came to work. The kitchen was clear.

I went to buy flour. The packs were 500 g onwards. The recipe said 225 g. The gentleman at Vijay Stores said “for measurement? No problem I’ll split the pack in to two portions.”

I headed home. Read the recipe. Got hold of everything. I started

I started kneading the dough the way we did it on class. I started to see it form in my hands. The powder began to clot and then as I continuously added water the dough started to form. I switched on the TV to Cyrus and Kunal’s The Week That Wasn’t and happily kneaded away for half an hour like a grandma knitting a jumper.

Massaging the dough. Pushing it. Pinching it. Patting it. Stretching it.

I left the dough to prove and had lunch and then went to sleep. In the evening I went to check the dough. I looked at it proudly as I saw that it had really grown. And how. It actually had begun to crawl out of the bowl. The dough had a life of its own.

I went out and bought a glaze brush. Formed little balls of dough. Some attempted snake-like strips for rolls. A few balls that I stuffed with a bit of bacon and cheese. I put the balls of dough on the tray. Tried to roll them with flour powdered hands. I glazed them with eggs. Sprinkled a bit of water on the dough.

I looked anxiously at the eight misshapen wobbly babies as I headed out for a walk.

Came back. Heated the oven. Put in the dough. Went for a shower. I came out and heard the bell of the oven.

Went to the kitchen took the tray out. Eight balls. A reassuring hollow sound when I tapped them with my fingers. Looked rather pale though possibly because I used the lowest rack.

I added a bit more egg glaze and then put the tray in with the oven on a toaster mode for five minutes so that the crust of the buns could brown.

Five minutes and the breads were golden outside. Took the bread off the tray, The base of the bread looked right too. Broke a bit. The inside seemed all good. Looked fine, would it taste like bread?

Ladled out our dinner of fried bacon and potatoes and sausage that K fried onto the plates. Special mention here of the smoked bacon from Kalman. Outstanding and juicy.

Broke bread, took a bite. Smiled.

Yes. This was the real deal. The shapes weren’t uniform. The results of the cheese and bacon stuffing mixed as the cheese had oozed out but good otherwise. A touch of sumac on top to mark them out.

But the bread was pretty good. Pretty satisfying at the end of the day.

Cooking time… seven hours. With breaks of course.

Finally a start had been made to a year in which I wanted to move out of being ‘stuck in the second gear’.

Now for the next thing in life that I wanted to tackle for a while and haven’t done anything about yet.

Brownies.

Note: Not giving the recipe as I followed the Le 15 recipe. This post is not about the recipe in any case. Still you will get an idea from the photo of the hand-out. Couple of things to keep in mind. Keep moistening the dough to help it form. Use wide vessels which gives the dough and then the bread space to grow. Use one of the higher racks of your oven so that you get a nice brown crust. Plus the recipe says sugar and butter. It should actually be salt. For the record, my measurements were approximate.

And also thanks to Nadia who tweets as @saffron trail for pointing out that Finely Chopped was mentioned in the Bangalore edition of DNA. Here’s the link

What was the fuss all about? Bar B Q/ Flavours of China, Park Street, Kolkata

2012-01-15T00:46:00.001+05:30

If you are alone on a Sunday afternoon at Kolkata then Bar B Q at Park Street is probably not the best place to go.

I don’t think they approve of unaccompanied diners. Or so it seemed it when I walked up the stairs of Bar B Q last Sunday. I had just landed at Kolkata. I was there on work. Hence alone. I checked into the hotel and after three room changes, turns out that the Park at Kolkata is not a patch on the one at Hyderabad, I headed out for lunch.

I thought of going to Bar B Q next door. The much sought after Chinese restaurant in the late 90s at Kolkata. Its popularity continues till today. My attempts to go there during recent visits came to nought. There was always a long queue and we always went away.

This time I was by myself. I had time on my hand. There was a queue but I thought that this was the best opportunity to make it to Bar B Q. So I waited. I waited even when the manager looked at me disdainfully when I asked for a table and kept pointing out that I was alone. He showed me a sari clad lady who was sitting with a glum expression and told me that she was alone too and was there before me. He once shunted me to a tiny chamber above the restaurant. It was too gloomy and I decided to leave that table and wait. The menu prices would be the same after all. The restaurant was packed. Obviously still very popular. I finally got a table at about 3.20 pm after about half an hour’s wait. I was seated. Two waiters came and asked me if I was “one person”. I don’t think they were commenting on my weight.

I glanced through the menu card and realised that there was a subtle difference at work here. Bar B Q actually referred to the Indian section. The Chinese section, which is what I came for, is called Flavours of China. We always knew of the restaurant as ‘Bar B Q’ when we were in college. Wonder if things have changed.

I placed my order. Salt and pepper prawns which I remembered from one of my last trips to Bar B Q after I had moved to Mumbai. I saw a pork section in the menu, got excited, ordered a double cooked pork. To go with these I chose a mixed Hakka noodles which was recommended to me on twitter.

I placed my order and waited. And waited. And waited. There was no sign of the food. I was hungry, gum and killed time by taking despondent photos of myself.

Finally the prawns arrived. Large juicy. The batter very light. Cooked just right. Everything was right except that one couldn’t catch much of a flavour of the prawns. The dish was fine when eaten with the accompanying marinade. A dish that was acceptable but nothing to write home about.

After another long wait my mains came.

The pork, served sliced, could have been any meat. It didn’t have the fatty sweetness of pork. It was a lean cut but was cooked too dry. The seasoning seemed to be a Hoisin one. Waste of pork if you asked my opinion. Very very pedestrian. Even the Indian cricket team has had better days during its current test tour of Australia.

The Hakka noodles is a dish unique to India it seems. The closest I have come to it abroad so far is in the Hokkien Mee of Singapore and Malaysia.

As Hakka noodles go the one at Bar B Q, I can’t call it the “flavours of watchacallit”, was one of the best I have had at restaurants. Seasoned in soy. The noodles nice and separate. The vegetables had a nice crunch to it. Had it in it to carry itself alone. That’s what a good Hakka should be in my opinion. It’d difficult to get “Hakka’ noodles wrong but most Chinese restaurants at Mumbai manage to do that with consistency.

A friend warned me on bbm that the waiters are not very excited about doggy bagging the food at Bar B Q. For the record I didn’t attempt to finish the food and two waiters did ask me by themselves if they should pack the rest.

Well, what do I say? Bar B Q is no Ling’s Pavilion. Far from it. Definitely not a place I am going to waste a precious Kolkata eating out opportunity in the near future. The list has been ticked.

The discovery of Ling’s at Colaba and the exposure to the Chinese food in China Towns across outside India has killed the ‘maya’ of Calcutta Chinese for me. Bar B Q didn’t change this.

IceRocket Tags: Kolkata restaurants,Bar B Q,Flavours of China,Kolkata Chinese,Park Street

Kolkata’s meaty Hungarian legacy … Kalman, Free School Street

2012-01-14T03:19:00.001+05:30

I admit that the I got to know about Kalman, the seventy year old meat shop or charcuterie at Kolkata, embarrassingly late in life.

Even my Bengali friends at Mumbai, ex Kolkatans too, were unaware of Kalman. We first got to know about the shop when Bonnie got a potato, peas and chopped sausage stir fry to one of our addas. The sausages had a bewitching taste. Sharp, with the rough granulated texture of good minced meat and a good scrunchy bite. Bonnie explained that these were Hungarian sausages from a shop called Kalman at Kolkata. She said that it is a hole in the wall just ahead of Princess and Kathleens at Kolkata’s Free School Street. It was started by a Hungarian circus guy years back.

A few days later Bonnie got me a stash of those sausages when she came to a dinner at our place. Breakfast the next day and I knew that I had to go to Kalman during my next trip to Kolkata.

That trip thankfully happened soon.

I set off one morning on an aimless walk after my breakfast at Park Street’s Flurys. I walked down the misty roads on a wintry Kolkata Monday morning when I suddenly realised that I had almost reached the New Market. I decided that II might as well look for Kalman as I was almost there.

Well Kalman did turn out to be a hole in the wall. Literally.

I walked up and down the pavement four times. Past old LP shops, second hand book shops and shops selling Christmas decorations. Each time shopkeepers pointed out Kalman to me. Yet I could not spot it. Once I even stood in front of Kalman and then moved on.

And then the sky cleared, the sun came out, birds began chirping…I realised I saw the board that said ‘Kaman Cold Storage’.

I walked in through the narrow door of the very humble shop. The shop more like a long passage than a room. Very basic.

The shop was pretty full and there were two gentlemen slicing meat. The shop begun to get crowded. A portly gentleman came in and picked some ham. A leg of ham from which his portions were sliced. He left looking happy.

There were a couple of Anglo Indian ladies from Guwahati in the shop. They had dropped in to pick meat loaf before they took the afternoon flight back. We started to chat. The were in quite a jovial mood. As was I. We were in Aladdin's cave of meaty treasures after all.

I spoke to the the owners, Sujoy and Ananda, as I placed my order of Hungarian sausages. I was assured that these travelled well even if kept out for a while.

I tasted a bit of the sausages. These were ready to eat Sujoy told me. Again that divine scrunch with a taste of garlic and pepper which conjured up visions of the romance of the Magyars.

Sujoy told me that they spice and pack the sausages and smoke them overnight at their workshop at Beleghata. Their pork is apparently sourced from farms at Krishnanagore and Allahabad. A doctor checks the meat for quality.

I asked Sujoy if there were any other meats that I could carry back with me. Sujoy said that the smoked bacon would be good. The ham unfortunately had to be frozen and wouldn’t work. I had a bite of the bacon and was convinced. The flavour was compelling…fatty, seductive…the smoked flavour just right. This too was left to cure overnight I was told after being injected with spices dissolved in water.

Sujoy began to slice the bacon for me. Seeing this the Anglo ladies, my new friends, added the bacon to their list too

My order, a kilo each of Hungarian sausages and the smoked bacon. 500 Rs (10 USD).

Sujoy told me that the shop was started by a “Hungarian shaheb’ in 1940. He passed away after about 40 years of running the shop. His family moved to Australia. The Hungarian had apparently said that after his death his Bengali manager B P Dhar should get the shop. He would look after it well.

Mr Dhar ran the shop for about thirty more years before he passed away recently. Sujoy is his brother in law. When I asked if Ananda was related to him, Sujoy said “we are all related”.

I pieced the shops story further from writes ups on Kalman in local newspapers put up on the shop’s walls. Arundhati Ray wrote that Kalman Kohary was apparently a Hungarian trapeze artist who came with a circus to Kolkata in 1940. When the war ended he realised that Hungary had become a communist country. He decided to stay back at Kolkata.

The rest, as they say, is great meat.

While I chatted and photographed everyone and everything in sight I saw a rather familiar looking gentleman waiting patiently in the queue. Ananda looked at us and said “aapanara keo Bangla gaan shonen?” (Do any of you listen to Bengali songs).

Turned out that the gentleman was Bengali singer and film director Anjan Dutta. Mr Dutta happily agreed to pose for the camera and insisted that I give the camera and join in too. Turns out that he lives close by and he told me that he is a Kalman regular.

Kalman evidently is not that big a secret for Kolkatans.

I headed out with my stash of bacon and sausages ready to head back to Mumbai. Wondering what discovery awaited me when I next visited Kolkata.

A seventy year old charcuterie started by a Hungarian, a bakery started by a Swiss family five generations back…at a time when Mumbai gets all excited about expat chefs coming to work here these days…I can only think of the old adage “what Bengal things today…”

IceRocket Tags: Kalmans,Kolkata,cold storage,cold cuts,bacon,sausages,Free School Street

Roots…. Flurys to Kasturi, Kolkata

2012-01-13T03:07:00.001+05:30

Caveat: an introspective, meandering, self-indulgent post

Added to the bench by the door at Candies, Mumbai, and the table on the pavement outside the Guylian Cafe at the Rocks, Sydney…I now have ‘my’ seat by the window at Flurys at Kolkata.

Spots at cafes where I find the ‘inner peace’ that Poh, the Kung Fu Panda, searched for.

I twice had to struggle a bit to get this table at Flurys. The window tables there are much sought after. When I went there the third time, I saw my table. Empty. Waiting patiently for me.

What I eat at Flurys is immaterial. The ‘heritage’ baked beans, ‘heritage’ sandwiches with rather stiff bread, the acrid brewed coffee, the ‘heritage’ pastries – strawberry cubes…chocolate cubes…to me it’s all about the past at Flurys. Munching on a menu from Calcutta’s halcyon days at prices which are quite modern Mumbai.

Gazing out. People watching. Dreaming as folks march past me while I sat at my table by the window at Flurys where time stands still.

Well it would not be entirely correct to call Flurys a part of my past. I started frequenting Flurys only after it was refurbished. I had left Kolkata by then. Flurys became a part of stops home.

So I sat there on Monday morning languorously taking in Park Street. Sipping on coffee.

My mind wandered and yet sharply pointed out the incongruity of me eating my meal of nostalgia while grounded in the present. For the book I was reading was “Breathless in Bombay”.

Sitting at Kolkata.

As I read through the book’s lines on Mumbai’s familiar street names, names of train stations, its beaches jumped at me through the pages…reminding me of home.

One of those moments when you wonder where is home.

The city where you have lived for more than a decade? Or the city you have grown up in?

Simon Majumdar's words on Calcutta in his book ‘Eat My Globe’ came back to me.

“I always compare Kolkata to an ex lover, one who you know is bad for you, but about whom you cannot stop thinking”. (Kolkata: Land of my Fathers….Eat My Globe).

Breakfast done I strolled out following the trellis-like paths of self introspection and philosophising. I ambled out into the grey, misty, Darjeeling summer holiday like weather at Kolkata that morning.

Past workers grabbing an early bite…deem paruti, dosas, rolls…fresh off carts on the streets.

I walked on streets that were wet. Spurred by weather that was pleasant….inviting you to walk while people bumped you as they marched on…a bit of a Park Street tradition I figured out this time as people brushed me aside and walked by whenever I stepped on to the pavement.

The city seemed short of patience.

Or civility.

Park Street which looked so grey, grand and gorgeous the previous day, Sunday, was busy, frenetic and traffacked on Monday.

I walked across the inner lanes that went past Mocambo, past what once used to be Jamuna Cinema, on to Free School Street or Mirza Ghalib Street as it is now known, the lanes leading to New Market…I remembered a mission and was finally managed to locate a needle in the hay stack. A tiny meat shop called Kalman.

A shop that I got got to know embarrassingly late in life. But this post is not about the meat shop started by a Hungarian trapeze artist 70 years back and now run by the family of his Bengali manager to whom he bequeathed the shop after 40 yrs.

That is a story for another day.

For this is a story of connecting with my roots. Through food.

As I stepped out of Kalman’s with my stash of Hungarian sausages and smoked bacon, I saw an alley and then a signboard.

Kasturi Restaurant. Dhakai Bengali Cuisine.

I had zeroed in on Kasturi for a while after my last trip to Kolkata. Then they featured it on Rocky and Mayur’s Highway on My Plate too. I had to go there.

And there it was finally in front of me. Kasturi and its promises of meals from Dhaka. The capital of the country which didn’t exist when my parents were born there.

I hadn’t planned to eat lunch so early. I was heading back to the hotel for a shower. But the one thing I’ve learnt is not too be fussy when a food opp comes up. You never know when your next chance will come.

I stepped in. You had a Bengali sweet shop like food display in the front of the shop. Except that the shelves held various food dishes which you could see through the glass and chose. Not sweets.

The waiters at Kasturi are completely on the ball. They can expertly tell you what is in each dish, what goes into it and give recommendations too. In Bengali of course but still such a pleasant change from Mumbai where waiters in most restaurants have no clue about their menu.

From what I gathered later, Kasturi was set up about 12, 13 years back. It is owned by a gentleman known as “Babu’. He is from Bangladesh.

The seating at Kasturi is very functional. There is one section downstairs and two tiny sections upstairs. Possibly a total of 8 or so very basic tables and chairs. It is one of those eat, burp (oh I heard too many of those that afternoon) and move on sort of places.

The way the system works at Kasturi is interesting. The waiter shows you a tray with an assortment of bowls of vegetables and side dishes – alu sheddo, korola bhaaja, lau, laita maccher bhorta, chingri maachher bhorta, alu bhaaj and so on. You choose what you want. Then you look at the glass display case and choose your meats or fish.

You are charged by the dishes you choose. There is no menu card. A bit like a Malay Mamak restaurant except that the food is served fresh out the pots here and are not left to stand in open counters.

The waiter then gets a plate of rice. And, if you look out of place with a camera, jeans, collared tee, scruffy hair and with a jacket and not pullover, then he gets you a bottle of packaged water.

My order that day: Kochu paata diye chingree that two waiters told me were a speciality here. I also chose a loita maachher bhorta. Loita is what we know as Bombay Duck in Mumbai. I wanted to taste the Bengali preparation of it. Neither of these dishes looked familiar to me. For the mains I took the safe option…shorshe ilish. It had been a while since I had a good ilish and this one looked quite big.

Sweets? There are no mishtis at Kosturi. Kosturi serves Bangal, East Bengali or Bangladeshi food. This is pungent, hot and never sweet unlike the food of the Ghotis from West Bengal. Kosturi with its Bangal food is unique as the menus of most Bengali restaurants are Ghoti dominated.

The kochu pata chingri was indeed the star of the afternoon. The sharp sting of mustard oil blending with finely chopped kochu leaves galvanised you. Tiny yet plump juicy shrimps the perfect counter- foil for the inherent heat of the dish. The kochu pata chingri made me pant and sweat on a rather cool Calcutta wintry afternoon. You knew that the dish was special.

Frankly it would be tough for anything to match the energy of the kuchu paata and the loita maachher bhorta had a tough act to follow. The dish seemed liked a version of smoked and then mashed (bhorta) Bombay duck. The texture and taste that of the fillings of the fish chops of Kolkata. The loita maach was seasoned with garam masala which was a spoiler if you ask me. Bombay duck is a very delicate fish and garam masala is too strong a seasoning for it.

The ilish shorshe was quite competent. The fish quite fresh and steamed just right. It gave in beautifully to each anxious and impatient bite. The ilish wasn’t over cooked at all. The creamy shorshe or mustard curry was comparatively docile after the kochu shaak. Not fiery or pungent.

The folks around me who were unable to take the heat and spiciness of the kosha mangsho that they ordered would have been more at home with the shorshe bhaapa ilish. They kept perspiring and groaning thought meal as they spoke of acidity, allergies and Benadryl. Usual Bengali table talk.

Some of the other mains on offer were golda chingri malai curry, curries of small fresh water fish such as Bele or Parshe, chitol maachher muthiya…rui kaalia.

The lunch I had that afternoon was truly satisfying. In its familiar tastes and yet, in some cases, unfamiliar forms I found just what I needed to end a morning of cartographic angst.

Kasturi was packed with content and happy diners spanning across ages and gender. All speaking in various degrees and intensity of Bangal…the Bengali patois of Bangladesh. Different from the Bengali spoken in West Bengal just as the English of the US and the UK differ.

A strain of Bengali that would have perhaps been my own had geo-political realities and urban migration patterns not made my ancestors move out of Bangladeshi.

So this was my story of an afternoon centred around food which is mine and yet not entirely so. Around a language which is mine and yet not entirely so.

An afternoon where I blended in…and yet stood out on the perimeter … photographing away like a tourist.

IceRocket Tags: Flurys,Kolkata,Kasturi,Free School Street,Kalmans,travelogue,Bangladeshi food,Park Street

2012 wakes up … Kepchaki Momos, Carter Road, Bandra, Mumbai

2012-01-07T01:55:00.001+05:30

I decided to take advantage of the pleasant weather at Mumbai this evening and went for a walk. My route, up Pali Hill then down the Carter Road promenade and back.

I hit the Carter Road food street after Pali Hill. I walked past the restaurants and stalls as I headed towards the promenade. And then I stopped. Walked. Stopped again. Turned back.

The signboard at a food cart caught my eyes.

‘Pork Momo’.

To someone who encountered his first momos at Darjeeling and then at the Tibetan shops at Bhowanipore and recently at the Chinese market at Tiretti Bazar at Kolkata, momos have to be pork. Yet, the odd momo shops at Mumbai peddle chicken momos, even vegetarian momos, whatever that is, but not pork momos. Unlike Calcutta, or even Delhi, Mumbai doesn’t have much of a momo culture. It is only recently that these Tibetan dumplings have made an appearance on the Mumbai food canvas.

I never stop during my walk. I usually look at all the food on the way in the eye and walk on. But the promise of pork momos held me in their spell.

I ordered a plate.

Six tiny ones for Rs 80 (1.2 USD). That' wouldn’t spoil dinner.

I took my first bite and then slowly broke into grin. Suddenly life seemed so beautiful, sunny and cheerful. A very thin layer of steamed flour encasing such juicy, tender, flavoursome meat. Each bite more wondrous than the other. The sheer simplicity of the dish held me in its spell. The casing of the momo was the perfect demure foil for the true splendour of the meat to sweep you of your feet.

There was a chilli sauce which was pungent and hot on the side…perfect on a cool evening … except that the simple momos were so complete that they didn’t need any aiding.

And then there was this one bite of scrunchy fatty gristle…it just exploded in your mouth making all your senses dance in drunken pleasure. This was food hedonism at its most primal.

I got tempted and a bit greedy and asked for a prawn momo to taste. I have never had prawn momos before.

Well, again the thin casing did its job to perfection. Thee prawns…minced not whole.

The flavour and taste of the prawns swirling through the momos shrouding you with their poetry. The prawn momo was everything that the overcooked rubbery prawn in green mango curry that I recently had in a five star food tasting wasn’t. For the prawn momo at the Kepchaki Momos cart was all about the prawn and nothing else.

Just as the pork momos were all about the pork.

I know that this is very early in the year but the momos that I tasted tonight have set the bar very high for 2012. It will need a truly spectacular taste experience to match up to the pleasure that the momos at Kepchaki Momos gave me.

Turns out that Kepchaki Momos is about a month and a half old. It is run by Milan Thapa, a Nepali who came to Mumbai about eight years back. A hair stylist who wanted to open a momo stall for the last couple of years. Finally got an opportunity when a friend of his shared plans to take up a food cart outside a tattoo shop at the seaside end of the Carter Road Food street. Thanks to the help of his assistant, and his mom who helps in the cooking and makes the sauce, the ever smiling Milan manages to run his momo cart along with his job as a hair stylist to film stars.

A market researcher who followed a dream and became a hair stylist, a hair stylist who followed a dream and set up a momo cart … Mumbai has a way of sneaking in and prodding you in your comfort zone.

IceRocket Tags: Carter Road,Bandra,momos,pork momos,Milan Thapa,Kepchaki Momos

A stale tale … Oven Fresh, Shivaji Park, Mumbai

2012-01-03T01:18:00.001+05:30

Brain kachu from Navsari via Jogeshwari...Kaya jam, laksa box, kai yang paste, prawn crackers from Singapore via Dadar plus Korean noodles soup, two big blocks of Aussie cheddar and plum jam from Harrods Changi, a special very limited edition Christmas cake...my Christmas santas have been very busy and kind...and all of these went into making the festive season special...thanks Prashant, Arati, Manisha, Bhavna, Gia

My problem with Oven Fresh at Mumbai’s Shivaji Park isn’t the fact that they have moved from being a non vegetarian restaurant to a vegetarian one.

Nor that the memory of the chicken wings, egg and chicken salad sandwiches that we used to order from Oven Fresh from work when I was new to Mumbai would remain just memories.

It is just that the food I had there recently really sucked.

Oven fresh was an integral part of my initial stint at Mumbai. We used to order birthday cakes from there at work. Black forest every blessed time. Hungry PGites like me would polish these off. Their nutty loaves were a part of Christmas at work. Their sandwiches, chicken wings and soups provided succour on many despondent late nights or weekends at work in the salt mines.

I knew that Oven Fresh had turned rogue almost five, six years back and became a vegetarian restaurant. I went there a couple of times after that while I still worked close by. I remember eating quite an indulgent chocolate pastry from those days.

I returned to Oven Fresh a few days back after almost half a decade. I was meeting Bhavna, a Mumbaikar now based at Perth. Our choice of place to meet was dictated more by the convenience of the location than anything else.

Oven Fresh was packed that Friday afternoon. There were folks thronging the confectionery counter. The tables inside were all full though we managed to get a two seater soon.

I scoured the menu and ordered a mezze platter. Normally a safe choice and something I opt for even at full service restaurants. I decided to give the full meal menu a miss. The sight of sizzlers with milky white unbraised chunks of paneer with soggy noodles and stodgy pastas that went past me were rather traumatic.

Our mezze finally arrived.

Both our faces fell when we saw the platter. There was something that looked like the Maharashtrian bharela baigan (stuffed brinjal) on the plate and some other stuff that looked like they would be more at home on the railway tracks of Mumbai. I thought it was only me who thought so and kept quite till Bhavna articulated the same thoughts.

We dug into the mezzes with the accompanying pita. A few dabs of each and we decided to leave the plate unfinished.

Yet around us there were people looking content as they ate. The buzz was that of a happy place. I usually try to avoid running down such places. Just as I dislike the idea of calling food ‘bizarre’. Sauce for the goose as they say.

The problem is that the mezze at Oven Fresh was bilge in absolute terms.

We then went for what we thought would be a safe choice. A popular choice here. Cheese nachos. A plate of the same at the next table looked appetizing.

The cheese nachos were indeed a big improvement over the mezze. Yet, after a point the sheer unidimensionality of a very basic melted cheese over crackers got to us. Dish number two remained unfinished too.

We thought that we’d give the desserts a shot as we had heard a lot about them. We stepped out to the dessert counter to place our order.

There was a huge array of pastries there. Problem was that they all had a Mrs Havisham-like decrepit, tired, wasted and withered look to them. Most pastries looked rather unwieldy and stiff.

After crossing out all options we settled for a cherry baked cheesecake. Eighty rupees versus the two fifty odd of the Moshes and Basilicos of the world. The waiter came and unceremoniously plonked it on our tables.

We set upon the cheesecake with our spoons. We tried chiselling away at it for a while to no avail. The cheesecake was unbreakable.

Three unfinished dishes and the message was loud and clear.

Oven Fresh was rather stale.

So we did what seemed to be the smartest thing to do at Oven Fresh, we headed to the neighbouring Barrista for coffee.

The lunch wasn’t a washout though. Thanks Bhavna for the huge blocks of Aussie cheddar and the plum jam from Harrods :)

IceRocket Tags: Oven Fresh,Shivaji Park,Dadar,Harrid food in Mumbai

A walk in the clouds… Cafe Excelsior, Fort, Mumbai

2012-01-02T01:26:00.001+05:30

Thought I’ll start the new year by writing a happy post. About a happy afternoon. In a happy place.

I headed to Fort a couple of afternoons back. Thought it would be a good place to unwind. There are few things as de-stressing for me as some good old Fort therapy. Just walking around the place helps me unwind in a way very few other things do.

I weighed my options on where to eat as I headed to Fort. Which of my old favourites should I head to ... Or should it be something new ... I thought aloud on twitter.

Which is when Amit or @fossfan, the Bengali who cycles around the city passionately with stops at various restaurants, suggested ‘mutton burgers. Cafe Excelsior’.

A tweet which took me back to a night more than a decade and a half back when I was first introduced to the cutlets and gravy with bread at Cafe Excelsior by a colleague. We were waiting to watch a movie at the New Excelsior Cinema that night. Face Off perhaps.

I remember liking the dish enough to in turn introduce Excelsior and its cutlets gravy to a couple of others too.

And then for some reason I never went back to Excelsior for more than a decade. I had nothing against the place I guess. It’s just that I had moved on.

The mention of the burger at Cafe Excelsior brought back memories of its cutlets and gravies from my first year at Mumbai. I decided to head there once I was done with my work of checking out for cameras and lenses.

It was about 4 pm when I stepped in for lunch. Cafe Excelsior had a lazy, languorous feel to it. The place was half full. College kids, couples, colleagues…sitting back on a balmy winter afternoon at Mumbai. The pace was for from frenetic. An oasis of calm as the fans creaked from below the high ceilings….gently nudging in a sense of stupor.

I looked at the menu that the waiter got me. I was looking for the cutlets when I suddenly saw a section of Parsi food. I had always thought that Excelsior was a Muslim restaurant. Turned out it was a Zoroastrian Irani Cafe. One of the last few such cafes left at Mumbai.

I am always tempted to try out the dhansak at a Parsi place. Which posed a problem one faces if one eats alone. The problem of choosing between plenty. I couldn’t manage a dhansak with its meat, daal and rice AND a cutlet with gravy and sliced bread.

So I placed my order. Mutton cutlets…dry…and a chicken dhansak…leg piece.

The memories of cutlets and gravy could wait for another day.

Except, life had other plans for me. There were some kids from Xavier’s college sitting at the next table. They had apparently ordered cutlets and gravy.

With the unabashedness that I have inculcated over three years of blogging I went up to the boys and asked them if I could photograph their food. The kids thought it was best to indulge the old man. So I did get my pics of the cutlets and gravy even though I had not ordered the dishes.

I didn’t know that this wasn’t the end of my gravy trail that afternoon.

My food arrived.

I took a bite of the cutlet first. It seemed quite perfect. Spicy minced meat packed in tightly, infused with chopped green chillies and masala, coated with eggs and deep fried. The egg forming an intricate design which led to the name ‘lacey cutets’ or ‘cutlace’.

It never makes sense to order a chicken cutlet at an Irani place. Apart from the Parsi disdain for white meat, there is a basic structural conundrum too.

They use minced meat in mutton cutlets. Therefore the masala and spices spread evenly through the meat to give you one hot and spicy bite of unbridled pleasure after another in mutton cutlets.

The chicken cutlet, on the other hand, is a passive aggressive way of the Iranis to push you back to your senses. To push you back to red meat.

Most Irani restaurants use strips of shredded chicken in the cutlet rather than minced chicken. Therefore, the taste is uneven, the meat often chewy, the end effect leaves you feeling quite miserable about life.

So my reco is to either order a mutton cutlet at a Parsi restaurant or to not order one. Unless you are the sort of person who goes to a kebab joint and orders paneer tikka or goes to a Malvani seafood joint and orders tandoori chicken.

Now any red blooded Parsi or Irani would be outraged at my choice of chicken for dhansak. I am sure the Parsi Panchayat would have a thing or to say about it in the Jama, the Parsi newspaper. Forget the Parsis. Even the Bengalis wouldn’t accept me into the Durga Pujo committees or trade unions if I chose chicken over meat.

But these are not the best of times. Till the medical sciences do the sort of volte face they have done on mustard oil, red remains a bad word in world of meats. To be honest a good chicken dhansak is possible from a non Parsi’s POV.

Yes, the daal or lentil sauce does lack the flavours of a good hearty robust cut of meat but is still fairly acceptable to us heathens. Things fall in place if the chicken is as tender as the one at Cafe Excelsior. You could almost peel the chicken off the bone here with a fork. And, as you did so, you could see that the masala of the daal had gone deep inside the chicken making each bite as flavoursome as prime meat should be.

The daal or lentil curry in which the meat was cooked was nice and hot. It had a nice domesticated feel reminiscent of musty kitchens with toothless Parsi grannies in nightgowns stirring the pot.

The only problem was that this was a bit too much like ‘grandma’s cooking’ which, as Bourdain says, is not always perfect. The dhansak lacked salt.

Adding a few grains of salt from the shaker on the table and a squeeze of lime brought the smile back on one’s face. The smile which is what grandma cooks for after all.

The rice looked slightly greasier than normal. But the first bite made me fall in love with it. I probably have the lack of salt in the daal to thank for this. This allowed the delicate flavours of the rice to waft out and enshroud me like a mystical Sufi hymn and held me in its spell. The rice drew its flavours from the barks of cinnamon in it which lent this amazingly bewitching sweetness to it.

This was sheer poetry and the dish came together in a truly humbling way. I always look for delicacy in cooking over in your face loud favours…the dhansak at Cafe Excelsior, with a touch of salt, was near bespoke.

I couldn’t end a meal at an Irani Cafe without a caramel custard. I ordered one at Excelsior.

The first bite ice-maidenish bite chilling and sweet…I thought I would have a few healthy polite nibbles and daintily push the rest away … and then I saw that I had wiped the plate clean. It grew on you.

Meal done I walked up to the counter. The owner was sitting there. The ever smiling Ardeshir or Adi Mazkoori.

His grandfather, the late Ardeshir Mazkoori, has opened Cafe Excelsior in 1919 when he came to India from Iran. His grandson, who shared his name, was running the place now. Unlike other Irani joints, I found out that Excelsior is open seven days a week and from eight in the morning to eleven at night. Most other Irani Cafes in town go to sleep by the afternoon and are not open for dinner. Thankfully Adi is comparatively younger than most Irani Cafe owners and plans to run his place for a while…touch wood. Hopefully at Excelsior won’t add to the increasing list of Irani Cafes that have closed down at Mumbai.

Adi insisted that I join him for a cup of Irani chai. His manager Nityananad joined us with a smile which was as big as that of Adi’s. On hearing that Nitya was from Hyderabad, I asked him which his favourite biryani place was.

Cafe Bahar was the answer and not Paradise. Didn’t require much thought at Nitya’s end. Nityanand nodded in approval when I mentioned Shadab too. Good to see the findings of ones biryani digs at Hyderabad vetted by a native.

Adi was tickled when he heard about my memories of the cutlet gravy at Cafe Excelsior from a decade back. He immediately called for a plate of gravy for me to taste. I took a spoonful…creamy yet edgy…an initial soothing sip followed by a slow but resounding hit of chillies. A very elegant and yet passionate sauce. I liked it so much that I finished the contents of the saucer. Onions, little tomato, garam masala, chilli powder, salt, no coconut, poppy seeds or khuskhus and occasionally almonds went into this sauce according to Adi.

Seeing the delight on my face Adi insisted on packing some cutlets and gravy for me to take home…and some slices of bread too….the bread turned out to be as soft as Cupid’s cheeks.

I pointed out the lack of salt in the dhansak to Adi.

"Well that's good for old proplr no with BP? others can add salt." said Adi with a smile.

I requested Nitya to give me a spoonful of the mayo, which they make specially here, to taste. Sassy Fork kept telling me about the chicken ‘rolls’ here. I was too full but was happy to have tasted the luscious mayo that went into these.

Nitya told me that there most popular dishes were the cutlets, the burgers and the chicken rolls.

It was time to bid goodbye to my new friends at Fort as I headed back down the boulevard opposite the CST down the New Excelsior cinema … sheltered by lofty trees and old Parsi buildings which were run down… and yet amongst the near ruins were intricate balconies which told you stories of a glorious past.

I reached my last stop. Yazdani Bakery. I wanted to buy some bread and Christmas cakes for folks.

I stepped into Yazdani and met my old friends, if I may call them so from my visits to Yazdani last year. Tirandaz Irani and his uncle Rashid or Haroon al Rashid as he calls himself.

Tirandaz insisted that I join them and have a cup of chai as we chatted about food, England, why I had left it, Sydney, Opera House, NCPA, recent murders at London and Bandra and other stuff which make for a nice Irani Cafe chaier dokaner adda (tea shop chat in Bengali).

As I headed home I wondered if I was the only non Parsi to have been treated to Irani chai by two Irani Cafe owners in less than hour. Perhaps Kunal Vijaykar, apparently a regular at Cafe Excelsior with Cyrus Broacha, would be the other.

Well here’s wishing you a great new year and here's hoping for many such sunny food afternoons.

IceRocket Tags: Cafe Excelsior,Yazdani,mutton cutlets,irani cafe,dhansak,caramel custard,Fort,new excesior cinema,yazdani bakery,mumbai,parsi food

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

2011-12-30T00:42:00.001+05:30

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 ofpublic transport . These had some similarity with a jeep as the exit door wasat the back. It was called ‘jeepney’. We too took a few rides on the ‘jeepney’.

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

We went to an elevated place like asmall hill .Going up there, we could see from far, layers and layers of whitesmoke 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 alsosometimes become ‘dormant’.

Sitting by a living volcano at

Philippines

There was a beautiful restaurant onthe small hill. Many tourists, mostly Europeans and Americans, thronged to theplace 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 (inBengali). The green coconuts were emptied of the water. Only the white thicklayer of the green coconut remained. Ice cream was served in the green coconutto be eaten along with the soft layer of the coconut. The concept of’daab-chingri’ (prawns cooked in green coconut) was quite unfamiliar at thattime. However, the ‘daab ice-cream’ was beyond our means as it was highlyexorbitant. Instead we had fresh, juicy pineapples, cut and sliced before oureyes, fetched from nearby pineapple plantations .Having it was a delight initself.

Even after almost four decades, I amquite shameless to admit that the craving for that ‘daab ice cream’ stillremains in my mind. Today I can easily afford a ‘daab ice-cream’ or even makeit myself. But as fate would have it, I am forbidden by my doctor to have anythingsweet. 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 creamas I have not seen any ice cream parlour serving ice cream in green coconuts.

Our journey to the East ended with ourtrip to Manila. From there, we proceeded to Iran, our home away from home. Asit is usual after a long holiday, it took us some time to get adjusted toeveryday life. Especially visiting India made us home sick. But, then, time isa great healer. We, too, very soon got entuned to the rhythm of Iranian lifeand 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

2011-12-29T00:58:00.002+05:30

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

2011-12-28T01:01:00.000+05:30

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 thistrip to Thailand, Japan and Philippines. Things had started looking up and wehad settled down reasonably well in Rasht, a city near the Caspian Sea in Iran.

It is not that we went to theseoriental 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 aconference, named SICOT, at Kyoto in Japan.

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

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

K was at that time four and a halfyear old. Thankfully, we did not need to pack his nappies anymore. He was alsoold 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 riskyto travel with those. K’s dad suggested that I should keep them with the Mayorof Rasht, Iran. The Mayor was a man of about fifty. We were quite friendly withhim. In our time, ‘husband was always right.’ So I handed over all my ornaments to the Mayor with butterflies in mystomach. Anyway, to cut the story short, I got all my things back on our returnto Iran. At least, in this case, the husband was right.

Our plan was to go to Calcutta (itwasn’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 aflight from Tehran airport to Calcutta. We spent about a week with our relativesin Calcutta and had a great time. At that time, Calcutta was in a very sorry stateas the whole city was being dug up for laying the tracks for Indian’s first metro/undergroundrailways. But the Calcuttans, bore everything with great fortitude, the fruitof which is being enjoyed by the present generation of the Kolkatans.

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

Bangkok was not as popular as atourist centre at that time as it is now. In the ensuing years, Bangkok hasevolved 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 ‘floatingmarket’, ‘walking street’, Sukhumvit and so on. But when we went to Bangkok, atleast, I had not heard about these places. The only common things, between thetwo generations are the Buddhist temples.

K with the Golden Buddha

The first and foremost among these isthe 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 andmajestic reclining Buddha. It measures 46 meters in its lying position. You canwell imagine how long it is.

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

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

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

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

When we went to Bangkok, the Buddhisttemple 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 foranything else.

As our Bangkok tour was over, we leftfor the airport at night to reach the next destination. But as luck would haveit, 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, sobeautiful, that I have not been able to forget it even after so many years. Inone place, we saw a pool in which bloomed lots and lots of lotus flowers. Beingbrought up in Delhi, I had never seen a lotus before. I was overwhelmed to seethose full grown red and white lotus flowers. The scene was so beautiful thatit seems like a dream sometimes.

After spending a day in the hotel, wewent to the airport at night and reached Tokyo, Japan the next day without anyfurther disturbances ... To be continued

Memories of chicken chaap...Arsalan, Mumbai

2011-12-27T01:29:00.002+05:30

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

2011-12-26T00:50:00.002+05:30

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

2011-12-23T19:37:00.000+05:30

“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

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

2011-12-20T02:53:00.001+05:30

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

For the love of chocolate… Chocolate Walnut Fudge at Cooper’s, Lonavla

2011-12-19T02:22:00.001+05:30

If you are lucky then the Parsis would have let you in on the real secret of Lonavla. The place they all head for the moment they land there. Not the Bushy dam. Definitely not the million shops, with boards that scream out ‘Magganlal Chikkis’, on the main road at Lonavla… but a treasure trove called Cooper’s and its chocolate walnut fudge

You have to get off the main road and head to the Lonavla market which is beside the station to find Cooper’s. A market, which I am told, looks exactly the same as it did decades back. Lonavla, the rather ambitiously dubbed ‘hill station, next to Mumbai, has become more crowded over the years. The Maganlals have multiplied. Smokin Joes and Baskin Robins have entered Lonavla. There’s a Lonavla square now where Ronald McDonalds has set up base. Not stuff I remembered from my last trip to Lonavla.

Yet, if you do down a bit from the main road then you are at the original ‘market’ of Lonavla. A place still frozen in time with the local constabulary chasing off cars which try to park there.

Towards the beginning of the market, just ahead of the circle, is a tiny shop.

Cooper’s fudge and chikkis.

A shop that yesterday looked exactly the same as it did when I first went there over a decade back. Just as it did, I suspect, about seventy five odd years back when the late Hoshi Irani set up the shop.

This time I met Rashna Irani at the shop. Third generation owner of Cooper’s. Hoshi Iran’s granddaughter. She had a slightly melancholy look on her face as she doled out fudge to us and the number of Parsi customers who revved up on their motorbikes.

Her father, Homi Irani, son of the founder Rusi Irani, had just passed away a couple of days back. Cooper’s was shut for a few days and they had just opened for business again the day we landed there. Her father’s memory honoured and sweetened by the fudge the fans of Cooper’s so loved and had queued up for that evening.

It’s not just the appearance of the shop that has remained the same.

As I bit in to some fresh warm chocolate walnut fudge I was taken back to that day, a decade back, when I first tasted the fudge here. Sweet, chocolaty, walnutty, cuddly, lovable, huggable simple, uncomplicated, something you could spend hours with in a happy place…you have seen the look on Winnie the Pooh’s face with a pot of ‘hunny’? … Yes, that just about describes the look on the face of anyone with a box of Cooper’s Walnut fudge.

Rashna kindly allowed me to go inside the shop to take a look at a fresh pot of fudge. From what I gathered from her, the walnut fudge is made with a mix of crushed walnuts, cocoa powder, drinking chocolate, ghee, possibly milk and sugar…slow cooked…put into a vessel and then taken out and put into the paper boxes….which look the same as they did ten years back.

The consistency is amazing. Cooper’s might shut between 1- 3 pm everyday. And, after opening again, once stocks run out. Everything is sold fresh here after all. But for all its whimsicalness, the taste of the walnut fudge at Cooper’s yesterday was the same as it was ten years back…same as it was all the times in between when we stopped at Lonavla for office off-sites…trips during which colleagues I recommended it to became Cooper’s fudge loyalists just as I had once become.

Cooper’s makes chikkis too and other fudges, sweets, but I’d recommend the chocolate walnut fudge any day, A lesson I learnt from Kainaz, a Cooper’s walnut fudge loyalist from adolescence.

Cooper’s is not the only place that sells fudge at Lonavla. Every shop at Lonavla does. The fudge at Cooper’s is probably more expensive than those in the fancier shops.

Yet, if were to you ask me, then the chocolate walnut fudge at Cooper’s is THE single biggest reason to visit Lonavla.

IceRocket Tags: Cooper's,Lonavla,chocolate wanut fudge

The romance continues…Cafe Military, Fort

2011-12-16T01:36:00.001+05:30

The thing about Fort is that it continues to charm one with new delights long after one has fallen in love with it. Like it did with Cafe Military Restaurant and Bar the other day.

We were headed to Fort for a meeting after a long time. Even my colleagues were excited and were making lunch plans from the day before. As we set off from office we were trying to decide between Ideal Corner for Parsi and Deluxe for Keralite when a tweet floated in.

@arichatt :@Finelychopped Have you been to Military cafe ? For me their Caramel custard scores a bit higher than ideal :-)

I had heard of Cafe Military, the Parsi joint, recently and a google maps search showed that it was at Fort. A quick change of plans and we decided to head to Cafe Military before our meeting. The three of us found Cafe Military rather easily once we reached Kala Ghoda. It is opposite Ankur, behind BSE, the lane opposite HSBC.

We walked in. Cafe Military had all the trappings of a traditional Irani joint. Deep, cavernous, airy, cool, dimly lit … a slight stench when we sat down which soon disappeared…possibly of the cloth used to mop our table… red chequered table cloths, wooden tables and chairs which seated hungry office goers…a content hum resonating across as people ate in studied silence…government office folks, elderly Parsi couples, lawyers in black, multinational bank employees garlanded with swipe cards, they were all there.

Unlike most other Irani places they served beer at Cafe Military…unlike the caricatured image of Irani restaurants it didn’t have a cat, or a board with stern instructions on how to behave …nor was there the archetypical grumpy Irani cafe owner … an urban legend as I have begun to believe.

The owner, Mr Behram Khoshravi ,(apologies if I got the spelling wrong), whom we met on the way out, is the opposite of grumpy. He punned on his surname (khush – happy, ravi – stay) as he introduced himself to us with a toothy grin and said that he was always happy. Happy running the restaurant his father, the late Khordad Khoshravi, started in 1933. Happy feeding people.

I met his equally sweet wife Shireen there. I asked her if she supervised the kitchen.

No fancy claims here. She just smiled and said that she had come to help her husband so that he didn’t get tired. “We have a cook who cooks all the food here. Moghlai (!) food”.

No pretensions of ‘my own recipes, cooked by my, shopped for by my husband’ or anything like that. There were no divas at Cafe Military. No restaurateurs or master chefs.

All Mrs Shireen had to say as she waved us goodbye was ‘khush raho’ ( be happy) as she closed her eyes in a silent blessing.

And that’s what our afternoon at Cafe Military was all about. It was all about finding happiness and feeling at home starting with Mohan, the elderly waiter who served us with a smile that reflected his boss’s toothy grin.

Sulky service at Irani Cafes? Well, Mohan Babu ran up and down getting each dish as we gave our ten minute long order. There was just so much good food around. And we were made to feel very welcome.

We started with the red aerated drinks so typical of a Parsi bhonu (meal). The only time in life when ‘getting a raspberry’ is a good thing. Thankfully, unlike with good old Mr Boman Kohinoor at Britannia, we didn’t have to wrestle for our raspberries here.

Then came the akoori. This was served with soft slices of bread which they get from Roshan Bakery at Mazgaon.

Akoori is a lesson to the rest of the world from Parsis and Iranis on how scrambled eggs should be made. A lesson the rest of the world could do well to learn. The akoori at Cafe Military…eggs beaten to a creamy consistency, slight tart of tomatoes with the odd resounding bite of chopped green chilli which suddenly woke you up like the last percussionist hand clap at the end of a snooze inducing head massage in the barber shops of old Mumbai… this was poetry on a plate.

The mutton dhansak was served to us cold. It had potential. The mutton tender. The dal had a hint of the flavours of musty kitchens where Parsi families got together to eat. But you had to stretch yourself to seek these out as the cold dish didn’t really embrace you. It needed patience which the colleague who was going to share the dhansak with me didn’t have. Nothing to write home about if you ask me.

So forget the dhansak for the moment just as we did when Mohan got us our kheema ghotala. This is the first time that we had this famous Irani restaurant dish. Kheema ghotala, which strangely enough literally means ‘minced meat scam’, was explained to us by Mohan as ‘egg and kheema’.

What we ate was probably the best dish anyone had at Mumbai that afternoon. An akoori base with a bewitching minced meat flavour and bite swirling through it…the taste…woody, robust….unapologetically meaty.

Chinmai said, the true test of a restaurant is its kheema. I agree. Most places at Mumbai disappoint when it comes to kheema, but the kheema ghotala at Cafe Military was sheer culinary wizardry.

And that was not all. Turned out that the kheema ghotala was just the crescendo that rose to a climatic end with the caramel custard. One bite of the custard and we could hear the birds chirping around us, could see the angels floating by, the flowers bursting around us in Technicolor brilliance as we bit into the sugary, cold, caramelised, milky, cuddly, lovable custard delights that the simple stained and chipped plates offered.

Deepak spoke of food orgasms in a very Masterchef USA like-lingo as we smiled blissfully through the bites of the custard…stopping only to call for seconds.

My Fort sabbatical didn’t end there. The meeting followed, and then with reinforced troops at Yazdani…Irani chai, khaari biscuits, brun maska, shrewsberries…these were hungry troopers.

I then walked down the main footpath past folks hawking porn dvds and sex toys as I checked out the camera shops there. I turned to head home…steps getting slower…savouring each lingering moment….and then I knew I had to have rava dosa and coffee at Swagath before leaving. So what if I was full!?

At Mumbai, Bandra is home to me but there is something about Fort that holds me in its spell. That has me enchanted. A bit like a Hindi film romance.

Fort after all was my first port of call when I came to Mumbai as a summer trainee many summers back. Since then I fell in love with the sea at Marine Drive, then Colaba and eventually Bandra where I pitched my tent.

Hindi films teach us that despite the various romances since, you cannot forget your first crush. There is an inexplicable warm glow and quickening of heartbeats every time I come back to Fort. Like a Hindi film romance, or any romance for that matter, there is no logic to it.

Yet there is something in its sense of history, in its tales of times forgotten, in its thick stone walls with musty paint, in its crowded winding lanes, in its European architecture, in its delightful bites, in the smiles of its people and in the sense of happiness surrounding it, in its many quaint and honest eateries, places like Cafe Military …

There is something in it which makes me fall in love again and again with Fort.

Technorati Tags: Cafe Military,Fort,Mumbai,Irani cafe,parsi food,kheema ghotala,caramel custard,akoori

Flash Mob the Bengali way … Tongue Moile at Ainsley’s Grill & More, Bandra

2011-12-09T01:45:00.001+05:30

I strongly believe that if you love food then food seeks you out.

Which explains why I am not a food trooper when I am at home. While travelling out of town I go out seeking dishes or food destinations, bursting with nervous energy with naps, and if possible a soak in the hotel tub, thrown in.

At Mumbai I vegetate. Organised eating doesn’t work for me. Plans to seek out places. PR invites for free cakes and ales. Invites to review restaurants. Networking meets. Niet. Even my friends find it difficult to drag me out of my comfort zone to go out in search of food.

The thing with good times, as with good food, is that they just happen. You can’t manufacture them. Plan for them.

This evening for instance.

I was in a meeting at work towards the end of the day, thinking of the 219 that Sehwag had just scored, when the phone rang. It was Soumik.

“Let’s go to Candies around eight when you are back”.

Now I knew it would be a lark. Candies at Mc Ronnel had turned into a chubby four year old today. To celebrate they were giving a fifty percent discount on all food. So chances of getting anything there was remote.

I headed there in any case. Soumik was there. Romi too.

As I had expected, the racks at Candies were empty barring four sweet corn soups and some buns.

Quick discussion on next steps and we headed to Ainsley’s Grills & More. The new shop opposite Sante at Pali Market.

We reached there. Placed our orders with the owner Mr Anthony who also runs the restaurant at Bandra Gym.

Ratoola and Surya joined us. We were now five.

The food finally came as things were being cooked on the spot. Ainsley is a take-away joint. But we sat down. There were five of us. We sat on stools and ate in front of the counter. Folks passing by looked at us as this was probably a first.

We started with the tongue moile. An explosive Sehwag like opening. I had expected the yellow curry of the karimeen moilees of every food and travel show featuring Kerala.

Except that this was a thick fiery brownish-red dish.

Moile is East Indian Anthony explained unlike the Keralite Moilee. Moile is a dish made with boiled tongue stir fried in ginger, garlic, white and black pepper, onion and tomato slices and ground Kashmiri chillies for colour. Moilee on the other hand has mustard and coconut milk at its base.

In case you were wondering how I got the details, turns out that the chef at the East Indian Ainsley is Shubhankar Sarkar from West Bengal in the actual east of India. He couldn’t stop talking once he figured out that the five of us were Bengali too.

So we were six Bengalis and one East Indian now.

The tongue moile was spectacular. The meat luscious and seductive as only tongue can be. The East Indians and Goans are the masters of tongue. The dish.

The thick sauce of the moile was slightly tart, slightly sweet with the odd bursts of green chilli heat in between…a symphony of complex notes floating through a street musician’s violin… at that point sitting on plastic stools and stools masquerading as makeshift tables on the street we were privy to possibly the best dinner at Mumbai tonight.

What chance did the chicken cafreal have after the moilet? I have never liked this Goan green (coriander, mint and chilly paste) dish before and today didn’t change anything. It was blink and miss and the only dish that the five of us Bongs didn’t wipe clean with our slices of multigrain (that’s what happens if the girls go to buy the bread) and Thums Up.

We chatted away without an agenda…Delhi versus Mumbai…future travel plans…Benares…Sydney… Dirty Picture…Tom Cruise…a touch of ‘PNPC’…Candies…the Upper Crust Show…gymming, walking…the merits of a beard in hiding face flab…future job plans…Sehwag, Sachin, Ganguly … film shoots... caviar and paneer bruschetta jokes around a sangria and champagne party...the sort of languorous aimless adda that is so genetically Bengali. The reason why the proportion of time I spend with people, in real life and in the virtual world, is directly proportionate to their sense of humour.

Shubhankar got our last dish. The beef chilli fry. It didn’t have a hope in hell. We were stuffed. Plus there was the trailblazing start by the Moile that dominated the night.

Yet, we were wowed enough to acknowledge that the Goan Beef chilli had its merits. There was a certain indulgent tenderness to the meat which was a mark of a cow that had lived a happy and full life. The garam masala-led taste tugged at your sleeves to get your attention even though your heart had been won over earlier by the sizzling hot and rather sensual tongue moile.

At the core of the beef chilly fry I was told were ginger, garlic, capsicum, Mallvani masala and some really good meat.

The beef chilli stand alone had its merits. But only if you had skipped the tongue.

And no Mr Sibal you needn’t censor any of this.

IceRocket Tags: Ainsley's Grills & More,Bandra,Pali Market,tongue moile,East indian dishes

Jack and Jill … Surrey Hills: Bills, Hudson Meats, Bourke Street Bakery. Sydney

2011-12-08T02:39:00.001+05:30

As I walked by Carter Road this evening I remembered that I was yet to charge the batteries of the NEX3. The lens is gone but the base unit has been repaired. I thought I’ll check on the photos on the memory card once I charge the camera.

I remembered the last morning at Sydney as I walked on in far away Bandra. The photographs I was yet to see. The lovely Saturday morning that I spent there with one time food blogging acquaintance, and now good friend, A at Sydney’s Surrey Hills. As I remembered that warm sunny colourful morning my steps quickened as I wanted to finish my walk, head back, get the camera out and retrieve the pictures. And I knew I had to write. It was one of those moments. I had to. No matter how tired I was. How late it was. No matter what happened in between. I just had to write.

I came back, finished a long phone call, saw that Banu’s daal was inedible, tossed myself a fried rice, gobbled down dinner and put the batteries into the camera with trembling fingers and switched it on. The photos flashed by one by one.

It all came back.

A reaching at 9 that morning, parking her car and calling me. Stepping down to her warm smile as we headed up from Elizabeth Street to Surrey Hills. I was in my sandals and not sneakers. No idea of the trek ahead. I gamely panted up the long uphill walk. Following A who had imbibed the Aussie sprightliness after all these years here.

Chatting and walking…on the one hand looking forward to the long flight back home in a few hours… on the other slightly wistful at leaving the lovely city of Sydney which had become my home for about ten days… A looked at me with a bit of concern, ‘Are you fine with the walk…had to park the car far away’…I smiled back bravely ignoring my pampered aching shins.

Apart from being a good friend and a wonderful person, A is proud of her city and is a great host. So she chose our breakfast place with care.

Bills. Owned by Bill Granger. Originally a partner of Kylie Kwong in her restaurant Billy Kwong. Kylie bought off Bill’s share later as A told me. His name still remains though.

Bills is a sort of deli/ cafe run by Bill Granger the restaurateur.

When I came back to Mumbai, I re-read Simon Majumdar’s chapter on Sydney in his ‘Eat My Globe’. Bills is where Majumdar started his Sydney trip. That’s where I ended mine.

It all seems like yesterday. The joy of not having a queue as we entered. Apparently Bills fills up pretty quickly on weekends. Luckily the hoards came in after we got our table.

A told me that three things are apparently famous at Bills. The scrambled eggs, the ricotta pancakes and the corn fritters with bacon. The waitress told us that they had small portions too. A mercy at super-sized Australia. A ordered the pancakes and the fritters so that I could taste at least two of the troika. Turned out that Simon had the scrambled eggs as I later found out in the book.

The photos in the camera brought alive the memory of those dishes once again…it is almost as if I can even now feel my first bite through the soft plump cuddly pancakes, the ricotta bashfully streaming out, the glow of the honey which A maternally poured on to the pancakes and the bite of the fresh banana…this was sheer food perfection…one of those times to be savoured where everything else falls into place and nothing else matters for those few seconds.

I could vaguely hear A murmur in the background with an Aussie twang “you won’t have pancakes at Pancakes on the Rocks after this will you?”.

I smiled and shook my head. My mind swirling around in a rather opiate stratosphere of pleasure.

I can taste the sweetish buttery corn fritters coming together with the juicy full flavoured exceptional bacon with a healthy touch of greens which suddenly become so desirable at the Eden called Australia.

It was as if the Australian master Chef, Bill Granger had put together a breakfast in the best traditions of Aussie culinary creativity and gumption to bid me farewell.

Our last coffees and it was time to walk down the picturesque streets of Surrey Hills, the suburb I had heard so much of during my trip, and had made it to at the end.

We stopped at Hudson Meats, a very premium meat shop. The place from where A usually bought her husband, Andrew, his favourite birthday gift. A prime steak. She stopped to pick some meats for him and their kids as I walked around the shop in awe. I was like a kid in a candy shop. Or a Bengali in a meat shop. And there was mutton too. Except here it was premium and more expensive than even other meats.

I had a bite of the cured meats that A picked up for her kids.

This was a religious experience. A taste so sharp and yet so subtle. So infinitely delicate and yet so intrinsically luscious. A tiny bite was enough to stay with you till your next trip.

During the long walk back A suggested stopping at the legendary Bourke Street Bakery. One more place I was yet to to tick off my list even after my second visit to Sydney. A told me that the sausage rolls were famous here as were the tarts and pies. She warned me about the sad airport food and suggested I pick something up.

The way it worked was that you walked in a queue into the tiny shop placed your order, took your delivery and walked out. I picked up the roll as we made our way back. Though I wanted to buy up the whole shop and was tempted to stay back.

A last reassuring warm hug, our final goodbyes and A headed off to pick up her kids and I headed to the flat to shut my bags, shower and head to the airport.

And then it all begun to hit the fan.

First I realised that I had left the sausage roll behind after I came down with my bags to look for a cab. Then the camera mishap as it fell below my cab and broke into two. Then the airport laksa that burnt my tongue. Then giving up the sambal I picked up at the Asian Stores at the security check. And then being grounded by Qantas at Singapore.

Still at the end I returned home.

And most of all I didn’t break my crown.

Thanks A for that lovely send off. Hope to see you soon ….

Talking of returning home listen to this song from the movie Rockstar...just love the many layers to it

IceRocket Tags: Surrey Hills,Sydney,Bills,Bourkey Bakery,Kylie Kwong,Spice & More

The final frontier … At the bread baking class by Christina Fernandes, Le 15 Patisserie, Mumbai

2011-12-06T02:38:00.001+05:30

“Few chefs can really and truly bake. Most chefs, like me, harbour deep suspicions of their precise, overly fussy, somehow feminine, presentation obsessed counterparts in the pastry section. All that sweet, sticky, messy, goopy, delicate stuff. Pastry where everything must be carefully measured in exact increments – and made the same way every single time – is diametrically opposite to what most chefs live and breathe, the freedom to improvise, to throw a little of this and a little of that at any damn place they want” Anthony Bourdain, “Fire over England’, A Cook’s Tour.

I have no delusions of being a chef.

Yet, as always, Bourdain hits the sweet spot. This is pretty much what I feel about baking.

I love desserts. I worship breads. I don’t make them.

We even bought an OTG for that. I roasted, grilled, toasted, re-heated in it. Didn’t bake. I had a mental block to baking. Baking to me were what staircases were to Poh in Kung Fu Panda 2. The biggest enemy.

So you can imagine the joy I felt as the first batch of our bakes came out at the Le 15 Patisserie cooking class. “You are all my babies” I went as I saw them. The cheese and potato buns did inherit my looks.

The bread classes at Le 15 are conducted by Christina Fernandes. Pooja, @poojadhingra (twitter), who owns Le 15, told me that these classes were amongst the most popular there and get fully booked up. A twitter conversation between @oneblackcoffee, Pooja and me made Pooja suggest a special class for us if we could arrange for at least four students. People started saying yes the moment I even mentioned the class and we finally had to close at nine against the maximum of eight participants.

And so I landed up on Sunday with friends from blogger, facebook, twitter and work. I don’t know what Pooja told Christina about us but Christina said, “So you are all bloggers. You have come here to blog about this. Why?”

I had to tell her that only a few of us were bloggers and that I had actually come to learn how to make breads. Doubt if she believed me as most of us clicked away. (This is the link to Sassy Fork’s post on the class.)

Christina turned out to be a very patient teacher who explained what was happening at every step to us, got her hands dirty, literally…made us do the same….and helped us figure out where we was going wrong and helped us fix things.

Most of us in the class hadn’t baked before even though we cook. Most, like me, had a mental block against baking. I was the only guy in class. Yes the messiest spot on the table top was where I kneaded my dough. I was also the slowest in the class and the reason why everyone’s dough had to wait before going into the oven. Vijay, the Bengali assistant chef, and the only other guy around, even came to my side and whispered ‘eto deri korle hobe’ (“you can’t be so slow”) as I was holding the flag high for my gender and race.

There were four and a half Bengalis out of the nine students. If you took us, and the Bengali kitchen folk of Le 15, then we had actually created a little oasis of Bengalidom in the Maharashtrian dominated area of Parel at Mumbai.

Having studied sociology and then worked as a qualitative market research I was used to these lone male scenarios. Knew when to make forlorn faces so that folks like Bonnie, Archana and even Christina jumped in to help me while I took a break and helped Pooja in the tastings for her new cointreau macarons and Jack Daniel cupcakes. Now that’s a man’s job.

We did four breads that day. Bread rolls and cheese and potato buns…the conversation starters. The noble whole wheat multigrain loaf. The buttery indulgent quiche-like Neapolitan Foccaccia.

With each bread my confidence in kneading dough grew. The flaky powder which surrounded me after round one soon gave in to more confident doughs… climaxing with the buttery spa-like foccaccia dough massage.

Through the process Christina kept an eye on us and stepped in to help when required. She gave us tips on sourcing and storing yeast, opened our minds to variations in the recipes and the endless possibilities ahead of us, she taught us to shape bread, gave tips on baking. “Baking bread is so much more fun than desserts”.

I asked Christina if the breads could be baked at night and had for breakfast.

“Breads don’t stay for long,” said Christina with a twinkle in her eyes. “In our house people finish them as soon as I take them out of the oven even before they reach the dining table”

Well, as our breads came out, as the golden glow of the butter glazed bread and its enchanting aroma enshrouded us I knew exactly what Christina had meant. …we were all in a very happy place. We had achieved the ‘world peace’ that Miss Universe contestants aspire to. The sense of salvation all saints meditated for….we had baked all of that that Sunday.

Next morning I cut a couple of slices of the hardworking multigrain bread and a slice of the hedonistic foccaccia, heated them in the OTG and had them for breakfast.

Breakfast had never tasted so fulfilling before.

This post is dedicated to all of those who had encouraged me to bake and said it is easy. They were right. Provided one finds the right teacher.

IceRocket Tags: le 15 patisserie,pooja dhingra,christina fernandes,bread baking classes in mumbai

The Hyderabadi biryani trail…. Shadab, Cafe Bahar, Paradise … Hyderabad

2011-12-05T01:06:00.001+05:30

A lot changed in my life when I moved to Mumbai a decade and a half back.

I was living alone for the first time. Away from home. With strangers in a PG. A new city. Had just about begun work life.

Yet, the thing which shook me up the most was the biryani at Mumbai!

It was nothing like the biryani at Kolkata. The rice grains were longer, oven softer, soggier. There was a mix of masala in the rice, bordering on being curried. There was no uniformity. The biryani at various restaurants were dressed in different colours. The meat to rice ratio was a lot more balanced here compared to the rice dominant Calcutta bryanis. The biryani at Mumbai seemed louder and more base in comparison to the rather demure silken biryanis of Kolkata. Biryanis were more expensive at Mumbai.

I was told that the biryani at Mumbai was ‘Hyderabadi’. Distinct from that of Kolkata which apparently was Lucknowi or Awadhi. With some potatoes thrown in. Then I heard the theory that the biryani of Kolkata is actually a ‘pulao’. Well if the menu card at Nizam at Kolkata called it biryani then that was good enough to me. To me the Nizam menu was as good as the Red Book was for many other Kolkatans.

With time one learnt to cope with the biryanis in one’s adopted city. Lucky biryani while specifying less masala. The Lucknowi biryani of Kakori House. The kachhi biryani of Olympia. The pulao of Parsi weddings. The Bohri biryani of Jeff’s. These were some acceptable biryanis at Mumbai to my Bengali palate. But my heart lay in the fragrant biryanis of Kolkata which were more a celebration of flavours than the masala-laden multi coloured dishes here.

Then a visit to Hyderabad came up recently. Almost a decade after I was last there.

An opportunity to decode the legend of the biryani of Hyderabad. I put up my plans on facebook and twitter and soon suggestions came pouring in. First from the non-Hyderabadis who all went ‘Paradise’. A place I had eaten at a decade back. Well, packed and ‘eaten’ from at my hotel room actually. Was under-whelmed then. Is that the best that Hyderabad had to offer?

And then the murmurs began. The Hyderabadis spoke up. On twitter, facebook, emails through friends, blog post links…in-flight chats…Shadab, they all said, in the Old City. Cafe Bahar. And a few mentions of Green Park, Bawarchi and Dine Hill.

Plans began to form in my head. I circled Cafe Bahar of Bashirganj at Hyderabad. The place where Gaurav said they served biryani the way locals liked it. Not like Paradise which apparently had sold out. I wanted to go to Shadab in the old city in search of history. Hopefully between the two I would find the Azhars and the Laxmans of the biryanis of Hyderabad. And, to be fair, I thought I should try out Paradise too. Even if it was meant for civilians.

Cafe Bahar: A strong second

My first biryani stop was at Cafe Bahar with office folks. I couldn’t get them enthused enough to sit in the bustling non AC section despite the cool weather so we headed up. A Mumbai based colleague, who had lived at Hyderabad before, was there. I introduced him to Cafe Bahar. With us there was a fellow Bengali based here and an Andhraite.

Cafe Bahar was packed at lunch and we had to wait a bit. The atmosphere inside was redolent of the same easy-going, content with life, warmth which I had begun to associate with Hyderabad. Our steward, Bijoy was a Bengali from Kolkata who had come to Hyderabad for a job interview and fell in its spell. Today he split his time between his jobs at a software place and at the restaurant. He was happy to see two Bengalis at the table.

Our biryanis arrived. Topped with boiled eggs similar to Kolkata. An overwhelming amount of rice which would leave everyone except the rice loving hearty eaters of Hyderabad nonplussed. I clicked away as my Bengali colleague said “I have never seen someone take photographs of food”. My colleague from Mumbai, who had eaten with me before, gave him a resigned look.

I dug in.

First impressions….crisp, firm, elegant rice. The flavours of the meat and spices subtle bringing out the rice in its full glory. The masala tickled your palate. A touch of tanginess that flirted with your senses. The spices of the yakhni anything but hot, oily or overbearing. Popping out like bursts of sunlight through the rice. Not drenching or flooding the dish. This was more like a jugalbandi of two musical instruments complementing each other than the rocket-fuel infused headbanger’s ball of places like Jaffer Bhai or Noorani at Mumbai.

The meat to rice ratio was similar to Kolkata with 80:20 in favour of the rice unlike 60:40 at Mumbai.

The taste reminiscent of the biryani of Lucky at Mumbai.

And then it all fell into place. Cafe Bahar, like most other famous biryani places of Hyderabad, was an ‘Irani’ place. Muslim not Zoroastrian. And that’s what Lucky was too. So you had two restaurants from two different cities of India united by its Persian heritage. Distinguished only by the boiled egg in the biryani at Bahar and the potatoes in that of Lucky. Though, Mohsin, the owner of Lucky did say that his biryani was not 'Irani'. "Just normal dum biryani he said".

Yes, there were strains of Hyderabad in the classic biryanis of Mumbai. The good ones.

As a Bengali from Kolkata the biryani at Bahar did not pull at any emotional heartstrings. This was not the biryani we had grown up on. But as a detached observer one did conclude that the biryani of Cafe Bahar followed in the best traditions of the artistry and elegance of the courts of Hyderabad.

The local at our table said that Cafe Bahar biryani was different from ‘Andhra biryani’, which according to him was more like a ‘pulao’. Plus, as we found out, the biryani at Hyderabad were served with a meat and chilli sauce, march ka salon, and light yoghurt sauce, dahi chutney.

There was more to Cafe Bahar than biryani as I saw in the the bheja fry (goat’s brain fry) that I ordered. The brain was nice and tight, a consistency I liked, unlike the more amorphous squishy ones at Mumbai. A firmness which gave way to creamy goodness as you took a bite. This was tossed in a very interesting sliced onion and green chilli base. Definitely one of the best restaurant renditions of this legendary dish that I had ever come across.

I needn’t depend just any more on my own wok when I wanted bheja fry. I just had to come to Hyderabad.

We left well fed, satiated. I skipped the iconic Irani chai as I am not really a tea person. And I wanted to savour the memories of the first Hyderabadi biryani of the trip. Though we did have a few spoons of the syrupy muraqba-like qubani ka meetha.

Here are some of the pictures of the biscuits at Cafe Bahar.

Paradise lost….wouldn’t even call it third

The next night was that of Paradise. I wasn’t planning to go to Paradise first as,by then, the locals had really run it down. The vibe that I got was that of an over-hyped place, not meant for the sons of the soil, living on its past glory. Then I thought that for the sake of honest research I should stop there once. Let me figure out myself how bad it was … or wasn’t.

We headed to Paradise after work. After a whiskey and a rather tough and salty inedible chicken 65 stop at Crystal. A hard core bar in the best traditions of the sort of places Biswanath Ghosh seemed to spend most of his book, ‘Chai Chai’, at.

It was close to 11.30 pm as we hurried in an auto towards Paradise. The gates were shut but my local colleagues managed to get us into the ground floor section through the backdoor. Folks were still eating. Despite the late hour the waiters were going about their job with smiling faces with the hospitality that was so quintessentially Hyderabadi.

We took the chicken over mutton biryani basis the recommendation of our waiter. Our Bengali colleague shook his head in disappointment when he heard that our local colleague from the Telengana region and I had ordered 2 biryanis for the the three of us. He was right. It was too much. One plate was enough.

What didn’t help was the sheer mediocrity of the dish. No boiled eggs here unlike at Bahar. The rice was dry. No masala. This seemed like a good thing for Calcutta biryani fans right?

Wrong. The rice was devoid of any taste.

The piece of chicken gigantic and had as little signs of flavour in it as life on the moon. A fried piece of meat which seemed to have been put in separately as it was definitely not in harmony with the rice.

Paradise is the oldest of the three restaurants I went to. Established in 1953. I am sure it had seen its glory days. Today even four lines in this post seem to be too much to waste on this dish which left no thumb print in ones taste memory.

My recommendation if you are looking for biryani at Hyderabad and can’t go to the old city is to just head to Cafe Bahar at Bashirbagh.

Shadab, old city…the winner of my biryani stakes by a whisker

My quest for biryani started the next morning with a stop at the Golconda Fort. I huffed and puffed my way up the steps of this abandoned fort. Shiraz my (Over priced as I found out later) guide told me that we had climbed 375 steps and were 480 feet up. Steps which were earlier meant for horses to climb.

Yes, I had worked off my breakfast at The Park of medu vada, Gruyere, waffles and coffee during the climb. Shiraz might have charged me more than he should habe but he did bring to life the desolate walls around me and opened my eyes to the centuries of harmony between Muslims and Hindus at Hyderabad.

“Everyone loves peacefully, busy with their work…these leaders (politicians) are the ones who spoil everything’.

A logic you couldn’t fault with.

Next stop was Charmin and the old city. I walked through the laq market where Ashok, the car guy, told me to bargain furiously for its famous bangles. All I wanted were photographs though as I ambled happily through the streets. I brandished my point and shoot as I captured people, shops, fruits, spices, the Charminar, the Mecca Masjid and of course bangles through its lenses. Somewhere down the line I heard one shopkeeper refer to me to another as ‘he is from Discovery (!)’.

I stopped only once for a Bhel Puri in front of Charminar. This was unplanned but as I clicked his cart Ramesh exhorted me to try his bhel puri. “Don’t pay me if you don’t like it”.

Touched by his humble pride I agreed to reduce some precious biryani space. The plan was to have a polite bite or two and then pay him.

Till I took my first bite.

It was so different from anything I had ever had. Be it the bhel puri of Mumbai or even the hallowed jhal muri of Kolkata. This simple yet ethereal light citrusy delight held me in its spell as I finished Ramesh’s bhel. He smiled on seeing my enjoyment.

A bon vivant moment as I believe it is called.

I finally headed through the hustle and bustle, the energy, the vibrancy and the colours of the streets towards Shadab, Shadab, like Cafe Bahar, was newer than Paradise. I was told that it came into its own only after the restaurant at the Medina Building opposite it shut down.

I was alone and after a short wait got a table. I soon had to share it with a gentleman called Umar from Chennai. As we spoke I soon found out that in his opinion the best biryani at India was to be found at Chennai! So much for Lucknow and Kolkata. We both chided our friendly waiters when they got us the huge plates of food.

“This is too much for one person. Why don’t you serve less even if you don’t reduce the price? This will go wasted” we both said.

Yet at the end my plate was empty. For Shadab was my winner of the Hyderabadi biryani stakes. No boiled eggs but that apart it was everything that the biryani of Cafe Bahar was.

What tipped the scales in Shadab’s favour was firstly the mutton. Slightly more succulent and moist than that of Bahar. With the odd marrow bone that one could suck ones way through to er, paradise. The masala again subtle, a foil and not a wet blanket. What distinguished the Shadab biryani was the inherent heat of crushed chillies which was missing at Bahar. A perfect tribute to the chilli loving people of Andhra Pradesh, the state Hyderabad is a capital of.

I ended the meal with the satisfaction of having tasted what is arguably Hyderabad’s biryani. Headed down after politely declining the smiling waiter’s request to try out the ‘special Irani’ tea.

On the way out I got to enter the prep kitchen thanks to the kind gentleman in a white beard managing the kitchen. This was the kitchen where the rotis were made, the tea of the Irani chai was brewed and then boiled with tea and sugar. This is where the biryanis, which were cooked upstairs, were assembled and plated when orders came in. The gentleman later introduced me to one of the customers who often taunted them and said that the biryani of Paradise was better than that of Shadab. I was paraded as proud proof that the biryani of Shadab was better than that of Paradise much to the silent mirth of this gent.

And so my Hyderabad trip came to an end as I stopped to pick fruit biscuits at Karachi Bakery and then stopped for a last pesaratu at Chutneys. The memory of the fiery country chicken, natu kodi iguru, at Southern Spice emblazoned across my heart, the memory of the poetic guntur idlis of Chutneys fondly stored in my memory The knowledge of having tasted its best biryani at Shadab in the old city, the best biryani to be had at modern Hyderabad at Cafe Bahar and having debunked the myth of Cafe Paradise and its biryani made me feel that this had been a fruitful trip.

I had eaten with the locals. Like a local. Where the locals ate. The easygoing, food loving people of the city of Hyderabad made you feel at home with their big hearted hospitality. The weather was pleasant, the heritage architecture operatic, the modern airport awe inspiring …the food soul uplifiting…the smiles all around you as wide as they get.

Hyderabad doesn’t have the culinary media gloss that surrounds a Mumbai or a Delhi, it doesn’t have the Bengali gastronomical passion that pushes Kolkata ahead when it comes to food lore, nor is it the Incredible India of Rajasthan, Kerala and Goa which are paraded in front of the word.

Hyderabad is probably one of the most under-rated food cities around. You know that Hyderabad is out there somewhere but not much beyond that.. chances are that people of Hyderabad and their sheer love for good food are yet to have touched you if you have not been to the city yourself.

I was fortunate enough to have opened my eyes to the wonders of Hyderabad in this trip.

Though if I was to travel to a city for biryani it would still be Kolkata.

Press: Here’s a recent sound byte at Hindustan Times Mumbai

And here’s the link to a write up by Rehab at http://www.socialsamosas.com/ on our recent conversations.

I am leaving you behind with some photos of Charminar and its laq market. Makes you want to go there don't they?

IceRocket Tags: Hyderabad,biryani,bheja fry,charminar,bhel puri,bangles,shadab,cafe bahar,cafe paradise,golconda fort