Restaurant review: Home Chef, Shivaji Park

Statutory Disclaimer - the snaps are appalling, but it was a spur-of-the-moment dinner plan and I didn't have my camera with me! :( So bear with the bad phone-camera photos, please.

There had been a long-standing dearth of places serving Continental (for want of a better word) food in the strongly Maharashtrian neighbourhood of Shivaji Park. The place was thronged with restaurants serving Indian snacks - from authentic Maharashtrian grub (Prakash, Aaswad, Madhura) to Udipi-style rest-of-India dishes (Apoorva, Sujata, Gold Rush and others) All this till Oven Fresh came on the scene and took Dadar by storm. Delicious, authentic 'Western' fare - sizzlers, pastas, sandwiches, burgers were a revelation to the eager-to-try-new-stuff Dadarites. Not to mention the awesome stuff from their bakery - quiches, mini pies, rolls, cakes, puddings....drool!

My palate still tingles with the yummiliciousness of their Chicken Salad sandwich and their amazingly tasty Chicken burger with a hunk of a patty (McD's with your slender slice of processed meat, eat your heart out!). Sadly Ovenfresh turned vegetarian a few years ago and while still good, left a gaping hole in Dadar's foodscape.

Which looked as though it might be filled by the new kid on the block (its actually on the same block as Ovenfresh!) - Home Chef, down the road from Sushrusha Hospital. This tiny eaterie serves 25 at a pinch and has around 10 tiny tables and a counter for desserts. With fairy lights adorning the glass door, home-style posters proclaiming special discounts on cakes and pastries, and foot-tapping music, it has a warm, welcoming vibe.

But food-wise, Home Chef has quite some way to go before it can step into the gap left behind by Ovenfresh's vegetarian venture. I had the cream of chicken soup with celery, which was decent - the flavour of celery (fresh, pungent with a slight bitter aftertaste) came through with almost every sip. Though the soup itself was a bit gluggy in consistency, it was generous with small chicken morsels. The serving was large, too.



We proceeded to order 3 starters (Nachos with cheese and salsa, Garlic bread, and Fire-cracker sausages) 1 main (Vegetarian Lasagne) and 1 drink (Toblerone milkshake) from a menu offering rolls, wraps, sandwiches, salads, pizzas, pastas, sizzlers and other mains (barbeque chicken, risotto, mushroom pilaf etc). Each category has 4-5 dishes (at max) within it. Special point - they have completely independent menus for Vegetarian and Non vegetarian dishes (the menus
are wooden boards with the menu printed and stuck on them) - which confused me a bit since I got just the veggie menu and was left thinking that HC is a veggie place like Ovenfresh....

The food while being decently priced - slightly lower than Ovenfresh prices (INR 200 for pastas, INR 250 for sizzlers, INR 85-120 for starters), leaves much to be desired. Our nachos were (as we first felt) thoughtfully provided with the cheese sauce and salsa on the side.

But there was a strong flavour of something (possibly corn from the nachos) that overrode the cheese sauce (which had a strange sweetish-ness) and was only just-cloaked with the zingy salsa. I NOW know why restaurants prefer to drizzle on the cheese and salsa before shoving the lot into the oven for a quick bake - the flavours really come together in the oven!



The garlic bread was too heavy with the stretchy, gooey cheese and butter rather than garlic. I scooped on some salsa from the nachos and this immediately livened up the Garlic bread.

Firecracker sausages were chorizo-style - sliced on the diagonal, and stir-fried with garlic, chillies and onion - moderately spicy and tasty, but very oily as I got to the bottom of the boat-shaped bowl they were served in.



The lasagne was very tasty- but very spicy! And overflowing with sauce.

We ordered the Toblerone shake only to soothe our burning mouths (thanks to the Lasagne) - and it turned out to be a diappointing affair - not thick and rich as I'd expected but very like the milkshakes Mom makes at home - you know, all milk and no thick ice cream! Even the toblerone flavour was hit-and-miss, but the gritty,grainy trexture of poulverised nougat indicated that a couple of Toblerone triangles HAD been blitzed in the blender for this shake.

Service was patchy - the soup and starters arrived in record time, but then the staff went on a long holiday and refused to come take our orders for the mains. slow - which was great for us since we could talk, talk, talk and really catch up. In the end, we had to ask someone to come take our order (not because we wanted more of the strictly-OK food, but because we felt bad for the people waiting outside for a table!)

One point I'd particularly like to mention is that while their decor is of a smart cafe (tile-covered tables, nice wooden chairs, cool stone banquettes, a genuine brick wall) the crockery they used was way below par - plastic plates and bowls make me shudder with distaste - especially in a place which serves sandwiches for Rs 120 each. The lasagne, was served in the foil tray it was baked in. Small issues maybe, but they do contribute towards the overall dining experience.

On the whole - a nice place to catch up with friends (the menu is an all-day dining one) over some nibbles at any time of the day. The atmosphere is warm and cheery, the location is convenient and the menu is interesting. I hope that the lacklustre food and patchy service are just teething problems which will be ironed out with time and experience. All the best to the team at Home Chef, I'll be definitely paying a second visit a few months down the line!

Home Chef
71 Meher Building, Ranade Road, Shivaji Park, Dadar (W)
Landmark: Opp. Oven Fresh, in line with Sushrusha Hospital
Tel: 24455034, 24455035, 24453036

Kitchen Experiments : Agent J's Power Momos

Ever since we'd sampled some delicious momos at Kung Food, they'd been firmly on my culinary radar. Add to that a colleague (let's call him Agent J)'s constant demands / requests / pleas / haranguing / harassing / pestering for 'power' momos and a long-unused supply of soya flakes and a free Sunday afternoon - and what we get is my take on the popular Tibetan/Sikkimese snack, Momos.

Just to appease J, I had skimmed through a few recipes for authentic momos but most of them featured pork which is a big no-no for me (cooking it I mean, not eating it!) After a few dips into varied recipes, I concluded that I would be happy only with my own improvisation of the recipe. So off I went! And as luck would have it, I whipped up some pretty good momos, as far apart from the bland boiled-chicken-with-a-hint-of-onion-and-corainder ones I'd first sampled at Pune, as could be.

The key to making these parcels of yummiliciousness is to ensure that the filling is redolent with clean, sharp flavours. Remember, the taste of the filling has to cut through the thin sticky starchy flour covering swaddling it, so make it a tad sharper in taste than you normally would make a stir-fry or any other subzi. I was pretty sure about how I wanted the filling to taste (hot and sour, not a hint of sweet) and made up my recipe accordingly, but you can do what you fancy. Thats what's great about versatile dishes like dumplings/pies - you are your own boss, and you can make them taste the way you want.

While my momos would not win any pageant for their looks (they looked decidedly clumsy - I call it the 'homestyle' or 'rustic' look!), they were hearty in taste and genuine in flavour. And that, I think is more important than delicate pleats or super-smooth skins. But yes, I shall work on making prettier momos in the future. :)

Ingredients: (For 10-12 small momos)

1 small red onion, diced finely
3 cloves of garlic - first bruised, then chopped finely (bruising the garlic first helps release the flavour better)
1 green chilly, finely chopped
2 handfuls soya flakes/granules
2 sprigs of coriander, chopped
soy sauce, vinegar, chilly sauce, salt, pepper - to taste
Oil - 2 teaspoons

Maida (refined flour) - 3 tablespoons
Water
Oil

Recipe:
Make a stretchy soft dough of maida and water. Drizzle some oil to keep the dough from going sticky.



Boil water, add the soya flakes/granules and let them cook for 5 minutes or so. Squeeze the excess water out.

Heat the oil in a pan, saute the onion, garlic and chilly.


Add the cooked soya flakes and stir through.

Add the vinegar, soy sauce and chilly sauce. Season with salt-and-pepper. Add chopped coriander.

Taste the filling - it should be moist, tangy and hot (spicy).

Keep aside, let it cool.



On a plastic sheet (I used the plastic bag in which the flour is packed) or cling film, roll out the dough into a circle. (If it refuses to roll out and sticks to the rolling pin, press it out using your fingers, it will be elastic enough).

Add a small amount of the filling and close the dumpling in a shape of your choice.



I made 2 half moons ( fold half of the dough circle over the filling and press down with a fork), one round dumpling (roll out the dough, put the filling in the centre and bring the edges of the dough circle together in a rough circular shape - you can even pleat them first and then bring them together at the top if you're deft enough) and one paratha dumpling (one round dough circle clamped over another with the filling thinly spread between the two, like a sandwich).



Steam in a steamer for about 5 minutes.



The cooked dumplings will look translucent and darker in colour. Serve piping-hot with chilly sauce.





Bite into steaming goodness and sit back as the flavours - hot, spicy, pungent, sour, tangy, fresh - explode in your mouth and fill your senses. Enjoy this perfect rainy-day food, sitting by an open window watching the rain crash down. :)

Cookery School - Home-made paneer

I attended this class at Mrs. B. N.’s years ago – I didn’t blog then, and practiced my lesson today, so today is the day this lesson comes to light!

Too many run-ins with rubbery store-bought paneer had made Mrs. B. N. start making paneer at home. Nowadays, of course, one gets soft-soft-soft paneer – under the name of ‘Fresh Paneer’ - at stores, but back then, the sure-fire way to get luscious mounds of creamy paneer was to make it at home.

Mrs. B.N.’s trick was to use buttermilk to curdle the milk rather than the commonly-used lemon or vinegar. My personal take on this is that a milder souring agent like buttermilk gives softer, bigger chunks of curd as against an intense one like lemon – which results in tighter, smaller, drier almost-granules. But since lemon is the most well-documented curdling agent, I guess I must have gone about it the wrong way, with lemon.

Mrs. B. N.’s recipe is incredibly easy, gives amazingly velvety soft-yet-dense paneer and the final product is ever so much more economical than store-bought fresh paneer, that’s it’s a useful weapon in your kitchen arsenal. Especially if you plan to make a paneer dish in a large-ish quantity.

So here goes –

1. Boil 1 litre of milk. Use a really big vessel, a size or two larger than the one you would use to simply boil it.

2. Just when its about to rise (boiling point), add 1 cup of sour buttermilk (chhas)

3. Stir gently; the curds will immediately start separating from the whey. Turn off the gas if necessary (if the milk shows signs of boiling over)


4. Strain through cheesecloth (or a simple thin cotton hanky/towel will do, too), and twist the cheesecloth around the curds, so you get a temporary bag which holds the curds. Wash away the excess sourness (just hold the cheesecloth bag under running water for a minute).

5. Leave it to drain on a draining board (a chopping board will do or any plain surface for that matter), with a heavy weight on top – I used a mortar (of mortar-and-pestle), but a pressure cooker filled with water is ace too. Leave it this way, with enough space for the excess whey to drain away. DO NOT keep for more than 3-4 minutes, since the longer you keep it under a weight, the more whey will drain out, and the harder and more rubbery will be the final product.

My sophisticated gadgetry for paneer-making!

6. As soon as the paneer starts holding its shape within the cheesecloth, take off the weight, gently remove the cheesecloth, and slice up the paneer in cubes/fingers/what have you. Use as desired.




I used up today’s batch of paneer in making 2 classic dishes – Paneer Chilly (of Indo-Chinese fame) and Kadhai Paneer.

Both recipes are very generic, with several variants available online. But I kind of went with the culinary flow and followed my own star …err….recipe. :)

Paneer Chilly:

Stir-fry onions (cut in long tendrils), thin batons of capsicum and slit green chillies along with some minced garlic in oil over high heat. Add soy sauce, vinegar, salt and sugar. Add some water, and then adjust the consistency with a slurry of cornflour-dissolved-in-water till you get the shiny gluey gravy that is so dear to Indian-Chinese cuisine. Add fingers of paneer, turn off the heat. Enjoy.

No quantities listed here, because its all as per taste – be sure to make it really sharp and spicy, though.

Kadhai Paneer:

Ingredients:

1. 2 cups paneer, cut in 1.5 cm-cubes
2. 1 small onion – ground to a paste with 3-4 cloves of peeled garlic, ¼ tsp cumin seeds and 1.5 cm long stick of cinnamon
3. 1 medium onion - cut in square dice (approximately same size as that of the paneer)
4. Ditto with 1 large capsicum
5. Garam Masala – ½ tsp (to taste)
6. Salt and sugar, to taste
7. Tomato puree – ½ Tetrapack ()
8. Tomato ketchup - 2 tbsp
9. Oil – 3 tsp


Method:


1. Stir fry the onion and capsicum dice in 2 tsps oil till the onion just starts taking a light golden colour. Drain and keep aside.

2. To the same pan, add1 tsp oil, and stir fry the onion-garlic-cinnamon-cumin paste

3. Once the oil starts separating, add the tomato puree and ketchup. Stir over medium heat till the oil starts separating at the edges

4. Add garam masala and red chilli powder, and stir for a minute

5. Add salt and sugar as per taste

6. Add the fried onion and capsicum pieces and the paneer cubes.

7. Turn down the heat and adjust the seasoning. (In my case the gravy was a bit sour (went overboard with the tomato puree) - so added 1 tbsp of cream to balance it out. But that’s not a classic kadhai paneer)

8. Garnish with chopped coriander and/or crushed kasoori methi.

9. Serve piping hot-with parathas/rotis

Kitchen Experiments : Bhangra in Bangkok!

I know the title of the post seems like the name of an Akshay Kumar flick, but hear me out - I was going to christen this post 'Vaguely Thai parathas, or, Punjab meets Pattaya'. But a colleague at work took one bite and said - "This is more like Bhangra in Bangkok!" - so here it is! :)


It started with Mom's policy that if I while away the morning doing nothing productive (read : I dont work out), then she would NOT pack my lunch for me. I had jolly well make my own lunch for work rather than "scribbling all over walls on Facebook!" :D
While I completely understand and appreciate her efforts at making me independent, cooking up roti-subzi in the morning can be tedious. Not to mention bo-O-ring. I needed something exciting to kickstart the day!

So off I went. Finely - and I mean as finely as you can - chopped carrot, cabbage and capsicum (How alliterative!).


Then stir-fried some Thai green curry paste in a couple of teaspoons of oil, dumped the minced veggies and stir fried for a few minutes till the veggies were almost-cooked. Mashed in a potato, adjusted the salt-n-sugar to taste and finally added a dash of lime juice.



(Well, if you MUST know, I did BURN my first batch of curry paste because the oil was too hot. Pungent smoke filled the kitchen as well as my lungs and eyes and I was reduced to a spluttering, coughing, streamy-eyed excuse for a chef. NOW dont say I don't tell it all! :) )

This potato-and-veggie stuffing was allowed to cool and then used to stuff parathas, just like normal aloo parathas. You can of course shape the parathas any way you like - I didn mine 2 ways - one, where I made a bowl of the kneaded dough, stuffed a ball of stuffing, closed the dough-bowl over it and rolled it out; and the other where I first rolled out the dough, then
flattened out the stuffing on it as thinly as I could and then folded the dough over it to make a square parcel.

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

The parathas were then cooked on a tawa (griddle) with a hint of oil to help them sizzle and get a nice golden-brown tan. :)

The traditional stuffed paratha

Though this recipe may sound bizarre, I have it on authority that the end product tastes good - from an exotic-food-phobic colleague. He shudders from eating pizza/pasta/Chinese - everything other than simple home-cooked Indian food. So his testimony is of the highest credibility! :)

Kitchen Experiments : Deep Dish Stuffed Pizza

After watching a mouth-watering episode of Pizza Paradise on TLC, I was determined to try my hand at the Chicago-style deep-dish pizza. My attempts at making a thin-crust pizza from scratch years ago had been moderately successful at best, but did that stop me from taking the plunge again? No sirrrrreee! :)

The result was...ahem....a notch below moderately successful - the veggies let off a lot of water while cooking and the crust got soggy in parts. :( Next time around, will avoid the top crust entirely - hopefully that will mean that the moisture evaporates rather than being trapped into sogginess.

If anyone has a sure-fire way to make a deep dish stuffed pizza that has a soft-yet-crunchy, dry crust, please post a comment!

Now for the pics....they demonstrate the recipe, which I am not mentioning here 2 reasons:

1. My variation was NOT successful

2. Its a generic easily-available-on-the-Net recipe that you can adapt to your taste

And now, may the droolgates open.....

The flour+salt+oil

Yeast, bubbling over...

The dough

The dough - doubled in size after 2 hrs

Ingredients for the filling

Layer 1 - bottom crust

Spread over with pizza sauce

Dotted with slices (here - clumps) of pizza cheese/mozarella

Mushrooms, onions, peppers - with salt and black pepper

Tumble the veggies into the pie crust

Top crust - 2nd layer of pizza dough with sauce

Top with powdered Parmesan

Bake till the bread's done

Look at the height of this one!

V.S. of the monster

My slice...err...wedge!