Restaurant review : Amba Bhavan, Matunga (E)

Saturday saw me and my friend VS head to Matunga (E) for some shopping and some me-time at a salon. Sunny blue skies and a welcome break from the muggy heat that's been plaguing Mumbai for the past few weeks (yes, In December! Copenhagen, look this way!) meant that we both were in high spirits and ready to enjoy the day.

After some pampering at the salon and some jewels-and-baubles shopping, we stopped at the venerable Amba Bhavan for what was called 'elevenses' in Ye Olde Days - a quick mid-morning snack.

Amba Bhavan is a Mumbai institution, located in the predominantly South Indian area of Matunga East. The decor is, well, minimalistic with blue walls, formica-topped tables, bench seating and coffee-bean-brown celing fans whizzing away. A steep ladder-like flight of stairs takes you to the loft-like first floor from where you an look down on the diners below.

VS and I (well, OK, only I) were famished and when the waiter came to take our order (typically without a menu) we were keen to order anything that was freshly made and would reach our table in minutes. On being asked for what fit our specs, he rattled off - 'Idli, Wada, Kadhi-wada, Rasam-wada, Kela Bhaji, Upma...'. I was intrigued by Kela Bhaji (Banana fritters) having never tried them before and asked for them to be brought, post-haste. The waiter countered (sheepishly) that they were pre-made and hence, not piping-hot. So I settled for Rasam Wada and it reached our table in record-breaking time. (Its another thing that I spent precious minutes photographing the dish rather than tucking in while it was hot)


The rasam was nice - fragrant with spices and with the right balance of hot and sour. It would have tasted so much better had I sipped it while it was steaming hot, but such is the life of a food blogger.... :) The wadas (fried dumplings made of lentils) would have benefited from a longer soaking in the rasam, though - the centres were still dry and devoid of the zing of the rasam.

While we demolished the Rasam Wada (took us a minute!) our waiter disappeared and refused to reappear. Just when we thought he'd packed his bags and gone for good (I was reduced to muttering - 'I am hungry...I want Kela Bhaji...let them be cold....where is the waiter?!!) his welcome step was heard on the stairs - and he came forth, holding aloft a plate of golden Kela Bhaji!



As he set it down and we gazed transfixed (he looked positively beatific as he bore the plate towards us!), he explained "A fresh batch just got made so I got them for you!" Plus, he got us true-blue South Indian filter coffee in steel bowls - which he poured from bowl to bowl froma great height (stretched/pulled coffee like the Malaysian 'teh tarek' or 'Pulled' Tea) to get a healthy head of foam on the coffee.


As for the Kela Bhajis - they were heaven on a plate! Crisp on the ouside, and buttery-soft on the inside, the batter was a textural delight. The raw banana slices that it swaddled were cursory, they had no flavour and could have been replaced with absolutely anything esle. But the batter was paradoxically soft-yet-crunchy and lifted the dish to another level altogether.

Both the Rasam Wada and the Kela Bhajis were accompanied by a coconut chutney - not your usual pallid watered-down chutney made with scraps of re-used coconut, but the real McCoy - thick, creamy coconut mildly faoured with spices.

The coffee (rather, the Kaaaaapi) was hot, sweet and invigorating with the robust flavour of freshly ground coffee beans and was the perfect aromatic end to our meal. The service, as told before, was quick, yet warm and friendly.


All of the above delights were ravaged in a matter of minutes (carnage on the table, i tell you!) and set us back by a paltry INR 59. So the next time you're around Dadar/Sion and in need of a cheap, nourishing and tasty feed, you know where to go!

Restaurant Review: Mama Mia, Hill Road, Bandra (W)

Mama Mia is set back from Hill Road, opposite Globus and that is the only reason I didn’t spot it in all the years I used Hill Road everyday. In retrospect, good that I didn’t – given that it’s a shrine to yummy but fattening food, ignorance was bliss!!

I’d been to Mama Mia yesterday with some folks from work (all of us who’d skipped lunch because we were too busy slaving away on a Saturday…sigh), and hence there are no yummilicious snaps for you to drool over – but I hope I can still do a pretty descriptive review. :)

It’s a pretty large restaurant (by Hill Road standards) and has a comfortable ‘hang-out’ kind of vibe – large windows, teeny-bopper ambience (two toned walls, a large screen TV playing VH1, PYT patrons – you get it) The menu is can be divided into 3 categories of sin –
1. Deep Fried
2. Doused in Mayo
3. Baked with cheese

Truly.

Each and every dish falls into one of the above categories. And no surprises, the dishes we tried were all delicious (can one go wrong with an overload of mayo/cheese/deep-fried crunch? I think not. ) But run for the hills if you’re on a diet!

We started with 2 salads (If you think ‘salad’ denotes ‘light and healthy’, like I first did, then - ha!) - the Insalata Di Pollo and the Mixed Meat Salad. I had plugged for the latter since its description on the menu had no mention of mayo, but I guess the ignoramus that I am, I didn’t know ‘cocktail sauce’ was mayo-based! It was undeniably delicious with the flavours of salami and sausage (chicken, not pork) really shining through the lurid orangy-red mayo-based dressing that was zingy and creamy at the same time. The Insalata di Pollo was your routine chicken salad with mayonnaise, just with lots of spring onions. Simple, predictable and yummy. Both the ‘salads’ were wonderfully tasty, in a artery-clogging way. I could actually feel myself getting full on the single serves that I’d had. (The shame!)

Moving on, we tried the fish and chips platter – and this was a winner! The fish fillets were fresh and oh so moist, encased in crunchy golden-brown batter (breading)!! I think the kitchen had marinated the fish first (not usually done in traditional fish n’ chips) which was the reason it was so palate-teasingly moist. The chips were good, nothing spectacular – they were tasty despite their uneven appearance, but not even close to the fries at Le Golden Arches. :) The fish and chips came with ‘’tartare sauce’ - a fizzy (yes, I was jolted, too!) raita-like concoction with grated carrot and greens that I steered clear of.

Next on the agenda were a couple of baked dishes. The one I sampled was a colleague’s all-time favourite dish, called ‘The Bulldog’. She is the one who got us to MM in the first place, citing it s her favourite pig-out palce in Bandra. In the case of the Bulldog, she instructed the waiter to make the dish extra spicy – and what appeared was a heaven-made combination of chopped chicken salami, shredded chicken baked with beautifully just-cooked chewy pasta tubes and a cheesy spicy white sauce (béchamel, what’s that?!) with a blistered cheese surface. Piping hot and tantalizing.

By this point I was about to burst (despite the small serves - the mayo/cheese do the job as effectively!) and didn’t try anything else. But I had a pretty clear indication of the culinary philosophy that rules MM’s kitchen – ‘Bring on the cholestrerol!’ seems to be the delicious motto! :)

The pricing is surprisingly affordable with the salads going for Rs 75-85, the Fish and Chips being around Rs 120 (with 5-6 pieces of fish and loads of chips) and the baked dishes around the Rs 120 mark.

My aforementioned colleague recommends that vegetarian folks stay away, there’s not much on offer for them, and I agree. Not that the veggie fare wont be good, its that the USP of MM is its non vegetarian dishes.

In short (haha! – Nearly 700 words till now!) MM is a wonderful place for an evening of indulgence with old friends (or foodie colleagues) with whom you don’t mind appearing like a pig. :) The food is uniformly tasty if not completely authentic. But all that LDL-laden food means that MM should not be a regular stop in your food yatra. :)

Happy Diwali! And an easy recipe to make your Diwali a bit sweeter

Diwali's coming! Wafts of delicious Diwali treats being whipped up by Ma greet me everyday when I return from work. The roads are lined with sellers of firecrackers, mounds of rangoli colours, shimmering lanterns and endless diyas (earthen lamps).

One of the goodies my Mom has recently started making for special occasions is the crowd favourite - kaju barfi. This sweet sensation is soft and rich with cashewnuts and other delights. And what is more delightful is that the recipe is so easy! Few ingredients, simple steps and voila - a delicious sweet is ready for you (or your guests, if you're feeling particularly generous!) to swoon over.

The recipe is my Aunt's - thanks, S Kaku!

S Kaku's Kaju Barfi:

Ingredients:

3 cups ground cashewnuts (coarsely ground, texture that of coarse breadcrumbs)

2 cups sugar

1 cup milk powder (yes!)

1 cup water

A few strands of saffron (kesar), dissolved in 2 teaspoons of warm milk

Silver leaf (varkha) (optional, for garnish)

Method:

Thoroughly mix the cashewnut rubble with the milk powder.

Grease a tray/dish with ghee (unsalted butter for those who dont have ghee)

Make syrup from the sugar and water. If you are the finicky type, you can 'clean' the syrup by adding some milk while it boils and skimming away the impurities that the milk pulls to the surface and then straining the syrup. This ensures that the syrup is crystal-clear. But it is not worth the bother, at least in this recipe.

Boil away on medium heat. The syrup should be thick (A test: When a drop of syrup is dropped into a bowl of cool water it should not dissolve but hold its own)

Now comes the time for some quick action - tip in the dissolved saffron and the cashewnut-and- milk powder mix into the syrup and stir it in briskly, all of this in rapid-fire succession.

Tip out the mass onto the greased tray and spread it out FAST with your palms (its HOT, but cant be helped). Then turn a rolling pin over the whole thing so that you get a smooth, even surface.

Garnish with silver leaf.

Score the tray with criss-crosses, going all the way till the bottom of the tray.
It is crucial that you score/cut the pieces while the nut mass is still warm. You can break up the barfi into individual pieces when it has cooled down, but attempting to cut the barfi after it has cooled down is a lost cause - the pieces will brittly splinter into shards.

So there you go - a simple, straightforward recipe to sweeten this Diwali!

May the festival of lights brighten up our lives. :)

Serendipity - and my tryst with scrambled eggs

Scrambled eggs have always fascinated me - well, at least ever since I figured out that this dish is vastly different than its Indianised version, i.e. bhurji or khagina.

I tried cooking up scrambled eggs several times (too many to count), trying to get the perfect 'pillowy-soft almost-set' eggs. I fiddled around with cooking times, ingredients (cream/milk/cream+milk/cheese and so on), techniques (whisk eggs like mad, add to the pan, add cream and then scramble over high heat/ whisk eggs and milk together, scramble over medium heat/ mix eggs and cream and milk (no whisking!) and scramble over very low heat and so on) but there would always be some thing which would mar the perfection of the pale golden eggs - either they would be too dry or too runny or horrors! - have a perfect just-set texture which would start giving off watery juices as it cooled. :(

And then, a few weeks ago, I chanced upon the best eggs I have ever made - serendipity! What happened was that I had swirled some oil in the pan over medium heat when I got a phone call. Engrossed in conversation, I only came back to earth when I saw that the oil was about to start smoking. To avoid disaster, (and to minimise the washing-up) I cracked open a couple of eggs straight into the pan. Unfortunately they began to set right away due to the high heat, throwing me into panic - I didnt want fried eggs! I tipped in a rather generous splash of milk and stirred like crazy - all the while going on with my phone conversation (the friend at the other end had no clue she was aiding a culinary discovery!)

And what would you say - the result of this dangerous multitasking resulted in the yummiest, most scrumptiously soft scrambled eggs I have ever managed to make. No runny juices, no disappointingly dry scrambles, no large clods of eggs - but perfectly butter-yellow-shot-with-white soft quilt-like eggs.....and, for a wonder I'd got the seasoning perfectly right too. Bliss!

Sometimes, the best things in life happen by chance. :)

Kitchen Experiments : Risotto

Risotto had been a long-standing item in my 'To try' list - ever since I read about it in Vir Sanghvi's delicious book 'Rude Food'. And since I tasted the most divine mushroom risotto at Spaghetti Kitchen (Phoenix Mills, Mumbai) 2 years ago. (Its another thing that the second time I sampled SK's risotto a few month's back, it was nowhere near my first delightful experience!)

Like all classic dishes, this one seemed too simple to be true - but in its simplicity lay the danger of going wrong.In a complex dish with lots of ingredients, its relatively easy to cloak your mistakes - but in a dish which has one primary flavour/ingredient, a mistake is almost impossible to hide.

To add to this, the process of making a risotto seems riddled with pitfalls - there is no clear indication as to how long is the rice to be cooked (al dente is so relative!), at what stage does one safely assume that the stock has been absorbed by the rice - and most exapseratingly - how does one know that the rice looks 'wet and slightly dark because of its own starch' and not 'wet and slightly dark becuase of too much stock'?!!

After the Great Veggie Meatball Debacle, I was wary about trying anyhting new and exotic - but a pressing need to either use up or throw away some white wine (and ditto some fancy imported stock cubes)meant that I calmed my quaking heart and stepped into the kitchen to make risotto.I used some fat and short rice we'd got from the grocers (didnt want to splurge on Arborio/Carnaroli/other expensive imported rice, especially after the GVMD). Basically any rice which becomes sticky when cooked rather than each grain standing separate (like Basmati and other long-grained varieties) will do. Purists might turn their noses at anything less than Arborio, and yes, the quality of the risotto will vary according to the rice used (since the rice is the hero of this dish) but for a first-timer, any short-grained sticky rice type will do.

I also used bare essentials for the rest of the ingredients - I skipped the mushrooms and the chicken/seafood and used whatever white wine I had on hand, just so that I wouldnt feel bad in case the dish flopped.

And as luck would have it - it turned out well! Of course there's room (lots of it!) for improvement, but this was good enough to encourage me to try it again, this time with better ingredients. :)

I used the recipe (its actually more a process than a recipe) given in 'Rude Food' and since its a generic process, I dont have any qualms sharing it with you all here:

1. Make lots of stock - either from scratch (tough!) or use stock cubes/stock concentrate. This is the main flavouring for the risotto, so I would recomed using good quality cubes/concentrate, made entirely of natural ingredients. I used an imported Knorr chicken broth cube. A vegetable stock might be too feeble unless boosted by adding flavoursome mushrooms in the ristto.

2. If you're adding seafood/chicken/mushrooms to the risotto (I didnt) lightly saute them (till half-cooked) in olive oil and keep them aside.

3. Gently fry finely chopped onion and garlic in olive oil or olive oil-and-butter. Add some dried mixed herbs.

4. Add raw, unwashed (yes!) rice straight from the packet(a good fistful/ 3/4ths of a cup per person) and saute with the onion and garlic for about3-4 minutes.

5. Add a splash of white wine (no particular type), enough to just cover the rice in the pan. Wait till the rice has absorbed the wine.

6. Add the hot stock, one ladle at a time and keep stirring the rice till the ladleful of stock is absorbed.

7. Repeat step 6 till the rice is cooked but not mushy. (Wikipedia says about 17 minutes after adding the first ladleful - but that is for those expensive rice varieties) If using mushrooms/chicken/seafood, add it to the rice midway through the cooking process.

8. The final risotto should be sticky, not runny (not like the Maharashtrian mau-bhaat!) with a gooey consistency.

Take it off the flame, add some butter/grated Parmesan and mix through. Serve piping hot.

Random Sampling : Sagar Sweets, Mahim, Mumbai

No, I am not going to get statistical in my posts, 'random sampling' is essentially foodie indulgence which doesnt fall in any clear category (stores/restaurants/home) - the catch-all 'Miscellaneous'. :)

On Sunday, we made a quick stop at Sagar Sweets to buy some mithai for Ganeshotsav. And the way Dad, Mom and I betook ourselves was so indicative of our foodieness - or the lack of it.

Dad - walked straight into the store, bought what was required and stepped out.
Mom- stayed back in the car
Me - totally distracted by the trays (platters, salvers, plates...) of food being set out on folding tables on the pavement outside the store; bugged the poor guy laying it all out with my questions; clicked a few dozen pictures on my phone camera; finally bought a booty of goodies to taste!

The holy month of Ramzaan is on and that pocket of Mahim is predominantly Islamic. Muslims fast through the day during Ramzaan and can eat only during the night. Therefore, in the Muslim pockets of the city, during Ramzaan, come evening, and the streets are lined with stalls serving exotic food, traditional dishes you might not get through the year. Makeshift stalls come up, restaurants set up tables and stalls outside the premises as take-away counters, and crowds throng the streets. The month-long fasting ends with Eid when the celebrations continue through the night.
Sagar Sweets, being a combined bakery-and-sweetshop owned by a Muslim family, had on offer an interesting multitude of dishes being laid out in preparation for the evening. Some of them were instantly recognised, but thanks to my questioning the guy arranging all the stuff on the tables (poor chap was so bashful, I suppose he never had a curious female asking him to explain what all the dishes were!), every offering soon had a handle.


The yellow squares were blocks of bread pudding, freshly baked.



The green porridge-like dish in the silvery tray was doodhi halwa (doodhi/bottlegourd/calabash, is slowly simmered with thickened milk, nuts, sugar to form a comforting, rich mash)

The samosas looked plumciously inviting!



The puff pattices (patties?) looked the deal - layers and layers of flaky puff pastry swaddling a spicy-salty vegetable mash

And the piece de resistance - heaps of shallow earthen bowls containing phirni. (A porridge/pudding made of thickened milk and rice - flavoured with kevda/rose water)




I bought the puff pattice, the bread pudding and of course, the phirni. We did a taste test the next day and the results were:


Puff pattice - the ususal: too-oily, too spicy yet addictive. Nothing spectacular.

Bread pudding : We were a little disconcerted with the sunny yellow colour (though the blistered golden-brown top was reassuring) - we thought it would be too eggy. I do not like custard-based puddings that have an eggy aroma - and it's worse when the eggy scent is tried to be covered up with a stonger flavour like artificial vanilla or cardamom - because then you get 2 distinct smells - egg and the vanilla! But this bread pudding, despite its rich yellow colour had absolutely no whiff of egg. There were eggs in there - the silken smooth set texture couldnt be achieved without them - but no hint of the strong eggy flavour at all, and just a hint of vanilla. The barest hint. Oh, this pudding was divine- velvety smooth and not overly sweet. Score!

Phirni - Oh my goodness. This version of the popular dessert was even better than the one I'd sampled in Amritsar . Rice flour and milk slowly are simmered together with a few plump grains of rice to create a soft, smooth porridge which is then left to set in shallow earthenware bowls. The earthenware bowls leach excess moisture away giving a set, spoon-hugging consistency.

This phirni had achieved that wonderful textural balance between smooth and nubbly; and had a delicate almost-set consistency. And flavoured with a very light touch of kevda (kewra) jal (An extract distilled from pandanus flowers - gives a floral and sweet fragrance). Its easy to go overboard with kevda, giving a cloyingly sweet aroma but this was sublime!

As he was scraping away at the last of the phirni at the bottom of the clay bowl, Dad mumbled "Eid is on the 21st - gives us plenty of time"

:D

EDIT 27/08/09: Had visited Sagar again today. This time I reached there when business was brisk, at 7:30 PM. And laid out on the tables outside was a veritable feast for the eyes...... In addition to all the goodies I mentioned in the post there was:

1. A huge kadhaai (wok) in which golden pillows of malpuawere being fried

2. A tray full of sunset-orangejalebis , glistening with syrup

3. Another tray with massive helpings of shahi tukra (fried bread served with thickened milk-with-nuts)

4. A collection of little plastic bowls filled with mini rasmalais

5. Ditto of individually decorated creme caramels (caramel custard)

I stared at all this goodness in a haze of sugar-induced euphoria - AND walked away with just 4 little pots of phirni - to be given away!

Am I not the most virtuously good person you ever knew? ;)

Kitchen Experiments : Vegetable Khichadi a la Dad

Today was yet another 'fun dinner' (to quote a friend) at our house - Khichadi (made by Dad) and SevPuri (made by Mom). What was I doing? Well, I was acting as sous-chef to Dad - doing all the peeling-and-chopping, laying the table - all the non-starring roles. :-( ;-)

As I said in a previous post , Dad favours easy, one-dish meals - dishes which are flavousome and wholesome. Today's khichadi was yet another such dish - and kudos to Dad, he made up the recipe himself!

Rice. Lentils (moong daal - with the shells on). Carrots. French Beans. Onion. Garlic - just a touch. Spices (Goda Masala)- the barest whisper. And salt (to taste, of course. :-) )

A bit of saute action in a wok(onion, garlic, green chillies). Followed by the veggies. And the rice and lentils. Topped with recently-boiled water. Seasonings adjustment. (masala and salt). Covered and left to cook till the rice-and-lentils-and-veggies are just-cooked. Care taken to not let them become mush.

Served piping hot. Ghee - optional.

A full tummy and a smile on the face - mandatory. :-)P

Kitchen Experiments - err....make that Kitchen Disaster!

I had a holiday in the middle of the week and thought it would be an excellent time to try replicating one of my favourite sandwiches at Subway in my kitchen. The Chicken Meatball Marinara is one sandwich you can enjoy without any guilt - if you eat it the way I do. No cheese, no mayo-based sauces - and Subway doesnt butter the bread, anway. Simple and flavoursome. But paying INR 105 for such a simple dish makes me break out in goosebumps - so this sandwich was next on my 'To Try' list.
However, given my family's vegetarian leanings, the supply of soya granules in the store supboard and the plethora of 'veggie meatballs' recipes on the Net, I decided to make a vegetarian version of my favourite sandwich.
And it flopped - miserably!
The details are too painful (and too long!) to get into, and in all honesty, I wasnt going to post this spectacular debacle on the blog at all - but I learnt a few important lessons which I would like to share with other fledgling cooks:

1. Soya has an incredibly resistant flavour. NOTHING can cloak it. Only a few spices/aromatics complement it and make it taste yummy. (Far-eastern condiments do the trick - not surprising, given soya's origins!) Do not overestimate your ability to give lift to the flavour of a soya-based dish - the meaty-yet-not-meat aroma is all pervasive.

2. Think twice (nay, several times!) before you substitute one type of nut for another. Each nut has a different flavour and oil content. My recipe called for powdered pecans/walnuts and having powdered peanuts on hand (danyacha koot!) I used that instead. DISASTER! This was the step that was the beginning of the end, as far as my sandwich recipe went. Peanuts, too, have a strong flavour (sweetish) which cannot be masked easily. I wanted the nuts to give the 'meat'balls just some bite and body (not flavour) and they ended up doing just the opposite - they made the dough runny(because of the oil they released) and peanut-flavoured!

3. Dont try to salvage a dish which is beyond repair. It's best to throw a failed experiment in the bin - rather than slave over it for hours, expending time, energy and money trying to make it edible. The effort is like a Wagnerian opera - things just keep on getting worse and worse till the end comes (ie. you snap, throw away the dish and storm out of the kitchen in a haze of tears/anger/bitterness)

I was so disheartened by this disaster (I am normally a reasonably talented cook!) and the peanutty smell pervading my kitchen, that I thought I wouldnt be able to face another kitchen experiment ever again. But, now, after a passage of 3 days, I feel better. Perhaps I am not upto juggling with ingredients and playing around with established recipes yet - but that doesnt mean I can't come up with my own, from scratch! :D

The miracle of Katra Ahluwalia

A flurry of messages from friends telling me that they'd read my blog 'inside-out' made me want to do the same. :D
As I was browsing through my posts on Amritsar, I was shocked to see NOT ONE POST describing the miracle of Katra Ahluwalia.

Katra Ahluwalia....located at the end of one of the numerous winding lanes oppsite the Golden Temple in the heart of Amritsar.Tangled electricity transmission cables hang overhead, parked cycles and motorbikes block a foot or two of the 6 foot-wide-lane, constant traffic - pedestrian and bikes/cycle rickshaws-tries to overtake you in the 4 ft of road left empty, the old mouldy buildings close in on either side of the road....as you walk deeper and deeper into old Amritsar.

Finally (well, actually, its just a 5-min walk!) you reach a clearing of sorts. A junction, if you care to call it that, where 3-4 lanes meet. Located in this prime real estate (yeah, right) is the epicentre of Amritsar's culinary delights. 'Gurdaas Ram Jalebian Waala' sells the most intoxicatingly delicious gulab jamuns and jalebis. A trip to Amritsar is futile without having sampled the fare here!

The store (I cant even call it that, its just like an open verandah of an old building) is resolutely no-frills with old and decidedly grimy looking walls and furniture.



But chances are, you'll never even notice this - because the first thing you would notice (if you're reasonably sane) are the kadhaais full of jalebis being fried in bubbling ghee. And the gulab jamuns glistening a golden brown in pans of syrup.







The gulab jamun here is a thing of beauty and grace. The size of a golf ball, it has a glorious golden-brown hue and the radiance of having soaked in just the right amount of syrup. You get one gulab jamun for a paltry Rs 4, in a 'dron' (a small bowl made of dried leaves) The spoon slips through with the greatest ease, the texture is so soft. But it is not overly squishy - it maintains the exquisite balance between firm bite and soft, soft meltingness. Drooool....

The jalebi, on the other hand looks like the gulab jamun's poor cousin.



It is not very attractive to look at - with its uneven appearance (some spirals are thin while others are swollen and misshapen) and dull orange-brown colour. (I adore a golden, delciate filigreed jalebi!). But take one bite.......................... and you're lost. The first crunch (yes, it is a resounding crunch!) floods your mouth with piping hot syrup, redolent with the aroma of ghee. It is an explosion of flavour! Each ungainly spiral is a mouthful of pure pleasure. You get a dron-full - about 4-5 small jalebis - for Rs 5. The prices make you weep.

As you recover from your reverie (the gulab jamuns and jalebis put you in a semi-trance), you notice that the tiny square (clearing/junction) is filled with like-minded people who are busy with their own dron-fulls of bliss. This place might be shabby and unkempt - but the satvik perfume of ghee-and-sugar that pervades all the tiny alleys and lanes more than makes up for the humble surroundings. Despite the 'heart of old Amritsar' location, this palce is easy to find - just ask anyone outside the Golden Temple and they'll give you directions to this treasure trove of goodies - if not walk you there themselves.

I know I am being repetitive - but I cannot stress this enough when I say that a trip to Amristar is futile if you do not sample the gulab jamuns- and more importantly, the jalebis at Katra Ahluwalia. Almost as futile as skipping the Golden Temple or the Wagha Border. Dont miss it.

Rasam on a rainy day

Today dawned as a dreary, cloudy, grey day - with slick roads testifying heavy showers during the ngiht.
It was a day which made me feel like turning off the alarm and cuddling back beneath the sheets, and not think about going to work.

However, what could have been a dull, lifeless morning was transformed into a thing of joy and vibrance and energy - by the entrance of the culinary delight called rasam.

Mrs.B.N. very kindly dropped off some piping-hot, just-made rasam to start the day for Dad and me, Mom being out of town for a couple of days. The rasam was so hot, I really wonder how she carried it with her bare hands!

As Dad prised open the lid, the first spice-laden wafts that arose from the container tickled my nose and suddenly made the day look brighter and full of promise. The gently unfurling curls of steam, the resplendant red-golden-orange-yellow colour (the pictures just dont do it justice!), the spicy scent - all contrasted sharply with the cold and wet gloom and made my blood sing! :)




Rasam is the South Indian equivalent of chicken soup - simple, nourishing and incredibly tasty. It is essentailly a clear soup or broth, based on lentils rather than meat/vegetables. Sour and spicy are tha hallmarks of rasam - be it lemon rasam, tomato rasam, tamarind rasam or pepper rasam.

This rasam was made using MTR (a famous cooking-aids manufacturer and restaurant) rasam spice mix. But it had all the genuine heartiness of flavour of the real McCoy (the kind made at home from scratch, using Grandma's recipe). On slurping a sip, the first taste was sour and salty - and just when I'd concluded that it wasn't adequately spicy, the aftertaste of spice tingled my tastebuds in an altogether delightful way. Though if I was to be nitpicky, I would wish for these two tastes - sour and spicy to be present together throughout each sip and not as separate components on the taste timelime.

But that one point aside, MTR and Mrs. B. N partner each other perfectly to create a delicious, mood-lifting elixir! :)


When the cat was away, this is what the mice had for breakfast :P EDIT (15/08/09) - Mrs. B. N., suffering from pangs of guilt at having used ready-made spice mix and a few shortcuts for making rasam, sent some true blue rasam over today - made entirely from scratch. If the MTR rasam was good, this was SUPERLATIVE! Perfect balance of sour, spicy, salty and just that elusive hint of sweetness - yum! Thank you, B. Aunty!! :)

Kitchen Experiments : Simple and Tasty Pasta

This is one of the first dishes I conjured up, under the tutelage of the lovely Mrs. B. N. I was introduced to the delights of Italian cuisine by this dish - an incredibly quick and easy pasta.

Ingredients:
2 medium tomatoes (nice and ripe)
1 medium onion
1 medium capsicum
2-3 cloves garlic/1/2 teaspoon garlic paste
3/4 teaspoon red chilli powder/paprika
1-2 tablespoons tomato puree/ketchup (for cheating)
1 tablespoon olive oil
sugar, salt, freshly ground pepper and dried oregano - to taste
1 cube processed cheese/2 tablespoons grated cheese (parmesan or whichever you like)
4 handfuls of pasta (whichever shape you like)

Method:
For the sauce:
Roast the capscum (whole) on the stove (on a naked flame) turning it over to char it uniformly.


While the capsicum's getting blistered on the stove, finely chop the tomatoes and onion and roughly crush the garlic cloves


Remove the capsicum, peel off the more burnt black parts of the skin (they'll slip off easily).

You neednt get rid of every smidgen of black, some charred skin is necessary for the smoky flavour it imaparts.
Finely chop the capsicum as well.
Heat the olive oil in a pan, then add the onion and garlic. Saute till lightly golden.
Add the chilli powder/paprika and stir ofr another 30 seconds.
Add the chopped tomatoes and cook on high heat till the tomato juice starts bubbling away rapidly (about 5 minutes)Add the chopped capsicum. Stir.


Now comes cheating time - add the tomato puree or ketchup (I personally prefer ketchup). This gives the sauce a rich red colour and a smooth sauce-like texture - essential if you dont plan to blend the sauce in the blender as the last step.
Next throw in the seasonings - sugar, salt, pepper and oregano. You can lightly crush the dried oregano leaves before adding them to the pan, to release the flavour better.
Add half the grated cheese. Mix and check for taste.
The last step is optional - you can choose to blend the chunky-looking sauce in the blender for a smooooooth sauce (in which case there is no need to chop the tomatoes and onion too finely) or leave it chunky. I prefer to leve it slightly nubble and chunky in texture.


Assembly:

Bring a large saucepan of water to a rolling boil, add 1 tsp oil and 1 tsp salt.
Throw in the pasta and let it cook till it is slightly less cooked than the 'al dente' stage (al dente - cooked but slightly chewy, i.e. not mushily soft)

Drain the pasta and add to the sauce and simmer for 5 mins over low heat till the pasta is al dente and has absorbed the flavour and taste of the sauce. Adjust the seasoning

Garnich with the remaining cheese and peppr-and-oregano.

Serve piping hot (with salad and/or garlic bread, if you wish)and enjoy!

Restaurant(s) Review(s) : Cafe Basilico and Golden Star Thali

Saturday was food fiesta day. (Not good for me, yes, but lets take that up later)
In the early evening, I sampled the fare at Cafe Basilico at Bandra ( Pali Naka, near Gold's Gym - ironic, yes!). The menu at Basilico is an eclectic mix of Asian, Moroccan, Italian and other cuisines with an all-day breakfast menu (Eggs Benedict, Cereal, French Toast etc), soups, salads, sandwiches as well as lunch/dinner options including Moroccan Chicken, Grilled Fish, a multitude of pastas, risotto and my favourite Lamb Peri Peri, served atop a stickily tasty bed of vermicelli rice.
On Saturday though, a friend and I skipped the Lamb Peri Peri and tried the fish steak sandwich instead. The sandwich was quite large and was served with fries and cursory salad (measly portion of fries, according to my friend who has just got home after 4 years in the land of super-sizing, USA). I wish the ketchup was served in a small pot rather than open-them-yourselves sachets (at that price, I don't want to feel as though I am in a chain-store fast food restaurant!). But on the taste scale, the sandwich was GOOD. Thick slabs of fish fillet nicely grilled and served between hearty slices of rustic-looking bread. Yum!
We also sipped on iced tea (nice, what can go wrong with iced tea?) and the intriguing-sounding fennel-and-lime drink (a murky dark green, but refreshing,with the unmistakable sweet flavour of fennel (badishop/saunf). The coffee was good too - and generously portioned in a huge mug.
All this set us back by IN 530. Pricy, but worth the change from the usual run-of-the-mill cafe menus!
Immediately after this generous 'afternoon tea' (for the want of a better term!), I headed to an all-you-can-eat thali dinner at Golden Star Thali (Charni Road). Recently awarded the DNA After Hours Food Award in the 'gourmet rasoi' category, this restaurant has been an old favourite of ours.
That day there were 9 of us in the slightly-garish-and-overdone-yet-looks-like-transit-accommodation restaurant. No sooner did we seat ourselves did the food procession begin. I have eaten here more times than I care to count, but each visit's food parade leaves me slightly dizzy.


Get this - 3 farsaan dishes ( 2 fried munchies, one dahi-dhokla - a tasty take on dahi wada), 3 types of rotis (puris, phulkas and sweetish, crumby biscuit roti, 3 subzis (the bhindi (okra) one was the star), 2 daals (one, the dessertversion sweet Gujju daal and the other with churma), one kadhi, rice, yumy soft khichadi, salads, chutneys, pickles, papads galore - AND 4 desserts! A heavenly malpua - pale golden and buttery soft in the centre with golden-brown crisp latticed edges - and served piping hot! Every bite was a whirl of hot and sweet goodness. Enough to make you high - way better than any chemical drug! Gulab jamuns (tasty but disappointingly mealy and firm in texture rather than molten soft), mohanthaal and doodh pak rounded out the dessert menu.
And every single dish was served at least thrice, if not more.
Every single time, I go with noble intentions of not being a glutton. And every time, I fail. At times, the maitre d' even coaxes you to eat 'just a bite more.'
And you sigh and comply.
Sigh.

Kitchen Experiments: Sizzling Prawns

Sorry people, for not blogging regularly anymore- but my new job’s started- and what with a 6-day week, I have very little time to myself!
This is a recipe I’d cooked a while ago (right on the heels of Prawn Rice, with the remaining prawns! :P) and finally I am sharing it with you!
It is quick, easy and delicious – and makes a great starter/sandwich stuffing/accompaniment to a roti.
So here I present to you – Mrs B.N.’s Sizzling Prawns!
Sizzling because that’s how hot and crisp they are when you dish them out from the pan – and also because of their gorgeous fresh-and-zingy taste!
(Mrs. B.N. hasn’t christened this dish, I have, so, if yours don’t turn out to be as sizzling as I described, lay the brickbats at my door and if they do, please deliver the bouquets at her door!)

Ingredients: (Am not giving any measures, because there are few ingredients and all are to be taken by eye or as per your taste and appetite!)

Prawns – shelled, and de-veined
Coriander (Cilantro) leaves
Mint leaves
Green chillies
Ginger
Garlic
Salt
Rice Flour (I guess you can use cornflour if you don’t have rice flour)
Any vegetable oil (avoid strongly flavoured ones like mustard oil, because while the prawns can hold their flavour against the onslaught of mustard, the delicately fragrant coriander and mint can’t; and we want the dish to be fresh and zesty, not a powerpunch of mustard)
Lemon/Lime wedges (as an accompaniment)



Pound/Grind all the ingredients except the prawns, rice flour ad lemon to a smooth paste. Do NOT add any water while making the paste – this is very important!

Rub this paste onto the prawns and let them marinate for half an hour.

Add the rice flour (or corn flour) teaspoon by teaspoon till it absorbs all the water the prawns have released and a sticky paste-like mixture is formed. Avoid using too much flour as the dish gets very doughy otherwise.

Heat a tablespoon of oil in a wok or a frying pan and spread it all round the pan. Once hot, add the prawns to the pan, preferably to make a layer (don’t just tip them in pell-mell) all across the pan, leaving some space between the prawns for turning them over. Like cooking mini-pancakes on a griddle.

Cook on high heat till the prawns are golden brown on one side. Turn them all over, one at a time and cook on the other side till golden too.

(All of this careful cooking-turning-cooking is needed if you’re rationing the amount of oil used. You can go the whole hog and deep fry the prawns for maximum crunch without having to be all careful and slow)

Remove from the pan – ideally, the prawns would be semi-covered with a crispy, crunchy batter cover and the kitchen (or the whole house) would be redolent with the aroma of prawns and herbs.

Serve with a squeeze of lemon/lime juice and some finely sliced onions on the side.

Enjoy!!

Kitchen Experiments: Prawn Rice

I know I have been blogging like crazy lately, but cant you guess – my long vacation is about to get over and God only knows when I can next have such an extended break?!! :)
Today I made an old tried-and-tested dish for dinner – another one-dish meal! It was taught to me by my wonderful cousin K, who's the epitome of perfection - she's gorgeous, sings like an angel, cooks like a dream and is a surgeon, to boot!
The dish is extremely simple, delicious and has the advantage of appearing like a party dish over which you have slaved for hours! :-D

Ingredients:
250 gms ready-shelled and de-veined prawns (if you get the ones with the shell on, you will need more than 250 gms)
¾ tablespoon garlic paste/ 6-7 cloves peeled garlic
Green chillies (to taste, say about 3)
A fistful of coriander leaves
2 medium tomatoes
2 small onions
1 dry red chilly, broken into 2 pieces (optional)
2 cups Basmati rice (any long grained variety will do)
2-3 cloves, 1 stick cinnamon, 1 bay leaf, 3-4 peppercorns.
3-4 teaspoons oil

Method:

Chop the onions and tomatoes, medium fine.


Grind the garlic, chillies and coriander to form a not-too-fine paste.


Rub this paste onto the prawns and let them marinate for 30 minutes or so.


Wash the rice and cook it with about 3.5 cups water and the whole spices (cloves, cinnamon, bay leaf and pepper). Cook it in an electric rice cooker if you have one so that the rice becomes a bit dry-ish. (Each grain being cooked but standing separate from the others) It should NOT be soft and sticky

Heat the oil in a kadhai/wok and once hot, add the chopped onions and sauté till softened. Add the dry red chilly and stir. Next add the tomatoes and sauté till the tomatoes are half-cooked.


Add the prawns (along with the marinade/juice they are lying in) and briskly stir on high heat till the prawns become opaque. Take care not to overcook the prawns.

Add salt as per taste.(Add more than normal because it is to be enough for the rice which will be added to the pot later on)

Add the cooked rice and give the whole thing a good stir and cook on medium heat till the rice absorbs the prawns’ flavour, say about 5 minutes. Make sure the rice is nice and dry like biryani, no juice should be left to make it wet and sticky.



Garnish with fresh chopped coriander leaves and serve hot!
Squabble with everyone else at the table for the last prawn :P



The above quantities would GENEROUSLY serve 2, (maybe even 3) assuming this is the only dish being served, with maybe some raita.

A few tips:
Tip #1: Use fresh prawns as far as possible. Freshness is more important than the size of the prawns. (I used tiny ones) If using frozen prawns (like I did) make sure you make the dish ASAP once you get them. The prawns are the main flavour-giving ingredient in this dish and any lack of flavour in them makes the whole dish fall flat.



Tip#2: To get the maximum flavour, you can use a different method of cooking – do not pre-cook the rice. Rub the marinade off the prawns (yes, I am not crazy!) and shallow-fry them in the wok. Take them out in 15 seconds (when they are half-cooked). Next fry the whole spices in the prawn-flavoured oil, and continue with the onions etc. Tip in the prawns’ marinade along with the tomatoes. Then add water and salt and the washed rice and cook till the rice is almost cooked. Then add the fried prawns and cook till done. This method extracts the maximum flavour of the prawns - since the rice is cooked in a prawn-flavoured infusion, every grain will be imbued with prawniness!