Simple Pleasures : A day off, and croissants from City Bakery

Today has been the day of simple pleasures - those little jewel-bright moments of joy which might not make the headlines or the photo albums, but which make life ever so pleasant and rewarding.

I'd taken the day off to spend some time with my cousin who's moving base to the US. And so the day began with that wonderful lazy feeling of utter well-being when you wake up to your alarm, switch it off and go right back to sleep! Monday morning blues were replaced by Monday morning bliss! :)

Yawning and stretching, I finally got up, only to see that breakfast was a manna from heaven - a cup of my Mom's special chai and a golden, flaky croissant from City Bakery at Worli. This croissant is stuff of dreams - golden-brown crusty top flecked with sesame seeds, and layer upon flaky layer of progressively softer bread till you reach the heart of the pastry - the softest, most buttery pillowy mouthful ever. What's more,  City Bakery has managed to retain the heavenly buttery taste and gorgeous looks of this croissant for several decades now - that's consistency for you!




City Bakery does a variety of breads, cakes and biscuits and opens its doors at 6:00 AM sharp every day. Biting into one of the first croissants to come out of their oven at 6:00 AM is one of the un-missable experiences of any food-lover in Mumbai. It also is one of the few affordable luxuries you can still regularly
indulge in - the croissant is priced at a paltry Rs 11. Yes!! While fancy aspiring-to-be-French bakeries are serving small, tightly-packed puff-pastry-like corissants at Rs 60,  here is a honest, hard working, no-frills bakery which focusses on quality and taste rather than ambience and airs.

Drive down to Worli some rainy morning with a thermos of hot tea or coffee, and bite into a fresh-from-the oven croissant  to understand what the French mean by joie de vivre!

Quick-Fix Meals : 10-minute Prawn Curry

I just love those times when inspiration strikes so loud and clear that "inventing" a dish is simply a matter of following the clear directions appearing like magic in my mind.

The other day was just like that - when the "recipe" for a quick-n-easy prawn curry just popped into my head. I simply followed its lead and found my way to simple yet sublime deliciousness. :)

So here's the recipe for my 10-minute prawn curry:

Ingredients:
1/2 kg medium-sized prawns, shelled, cleaned and de-veined
2 green chillies, chopped (adjust to taste)
2 handfuls/ cupfuls loosely-packed coriander leaves
1/2 inch piece fresh ginger, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped, and 2 cloves garlic, sliced
1 small lemon, or 1/2 a big one
2 cups thick coconut milk (tinned, or made from powder is absolutely fine)
1/2 flat teaspoon each of turmeric powder, red chilli powder and salt
Salt, to taste

Method:
Sprinkle the 1/2 teaspoons of salt, turmeric and chilli on the prawns and mix well with your fingers. Leave aside.

In a mixie (the small chutney or coffee grinder), place the coriander, chopped chillies, ginger and garlic, lemon juice and a touch of salt. Whiz to a chunky paste. Do not throw the grinder into the sink or dishwasher, and do NOT rinse it. (Yes, that's right, and no, I am not crazy. Just wait)

Smear the green chutney onto the prawns, and keep aside for 5 mins.

In the meantime, if you're using coconut milk powder, dump the powder in the grinder (the one used for the green marinade), add the required amount of water and whiz. You'll get lump-free coconut milk AND extract every last bit of flavour from the chillies, coriander and garlic. :)
If you're using tinned coconut milk, just swill it around in the grinder.

Heat 1-2 teaspoons of oil in a pan. When hot, add the sliced garlic and the prawns, up the heat and briskly stir for 30 seconds or so.

Add the coconut milk, lower the heat and cook for a further 1-2 minutes - till the prawns are just-cooked (they go opaque) and the curry sauce is thickened to a perfect drench-rice-with consistency. Do not let it boil.

Adjust the seasoning and serve piping hot, with mounds of fluffy steamed rice. And enjoy the gorgeous fresh-yet creamy taste of the easiest prawn curry ever!

Cook's Tip #1:
Use fresh prawns, not frozen ones. The intensity of flavour just cannot be matched.

Cook's Tip #2:
To up the ante, you can increase the quantity of the coconut milk (adjust quantities of the green marinade as well, since that is what flavours the curry) - basically have more curry sauce at hand.

Take out the extra sauce (full of flavour from the  prawns, coconut and the zingy marinade), dilute it with some water, add some salt, and cook the rice in this flavoured broth. You'll be rewarded with plump butter-yellow grains of rice, fragrant with coriander and prawns, with a hint of sweetness from the coconut in the background. Yum!

Kitchen Experiments: Orange-Butterscotch Brownies

One of my ex-colleagues, a beautiful and gracious lady called SS recently hosted a friends' pow-wow at her place. The invite was generous - "Just bring yourselves and let us know the tipple of your choice"  - and the promise of a long evening spent in the company of good friends made us all look forward to hotfooting it over to SS's and her husband AS's place.

Of course I had to take something along (I suffer from a Nigella-esque complex of feeding people) despite SS assuring me that I needn't bring anything other than my sweet self. Ahem. :P

Inspiration struck in the form of brownies - I mean, who doesn't like a rich, moist chocolate brownie? Its a definite crowd pleaser! But yes, no one wants a plain old brownie that is easily available even at your corner grocer's these days. I wanted to whip up something special for the special bunch of people I was going to meet. The solution - Double Decker Brownies!

Well, at least  they were MEANT to be that way. :D

A few Google searches for brownie and blondie recipes (there are thousands of them, pick any you like), a quick rooting through the kitchen cupboards, and my usual cavalier attitude towards fixed recipes - and I was set. I had planned to do one batch of blondie batter - with butterscotch chips and orange extract - and one batch of classic chocolate brownie batter with chocolate chips - and then layer them atop each other and bake. But of course, the patient and multi-step method for achieving this was not me, so I mixed up a master batter (like a master stock or sauce!) - of butter, eggs, and brown+white sugar - and then divided it into 2 batches. Flavoured one with orange extract and  stirred in some butterscotch chips, and flavoured the other with cocoa, vanilla extract and chocolate chips.

Everything seemed to be chugging along perfectly, till disaster struck while ladling the batter into the baking tin. The blondie mixture went in first, and the idea was to gently pour the chocolate mixture on top, to produce a double-layered ebony-and-ivory brownie. But for some reason the chocolate mixture was way heavier than the blondie one and IT SUNK into the blondie mixture rather than remaining as 2 distinct layers. :(

Oh, well. "I'll call them marbled brownies", muttered me to meself and gave the mixture a quick stir to give a nice abstract marbled effect and went on to bake them. :D

I was so intent on my invention that while there are photos of the prep stage, there are none of the final product.  :( So no pics in this post. :( :( :(

The brownies were out in record time and while they seemed a little cake-like (not gooey enough!) when they were just taken out of the tin, a night in the fridge made them go dense and moist like a good brownie should.

Only pitfall - the butterscotch chips sunk to the base of the pan while baking, and with the brown sugar, made a crunchy, golden crust at the bottom - rich and buttery and sweet. Brownie purists would not approve of a crust at the bottom of a brownie. But one bite of that shatteringly crunchy shell, scented with butter and orange.....and I was deaf to all purists. :P

Restaurant Review : Vinoteca by Sula

The only thing I know about wine is that I don't like it.

White wines taste like sour astringent while reds remind me of Ayurvedic 'kadhe' - medicinal decoctions. The only wines I enjoy are sweet ones- like port- which are considered at the bottom of the wine quality pyramid.  Its telling enough that Agent J and I shared a single glass of wine throughout the evening during a (not so) recent visit to Vinoteca, the wine bar opened by Sula a few weeks ago at Worli.

The sole glass of rose wine that we sipped on throughout the evening

Why then, you would ask, did I even bother to go to Vinoteca?  The answer is one word - tapas! :D

While Vinoteca IS a watering hole where you can taste Sula's finest as well as a selection of international wines, its kitchen, run by Chef Silvia Grimaldo specialises in tapas - bite-sized Spanish starters. Though calling them starters is actually a misnomer because often the entire evening is spent nibbling on tapas with no mains or entrees in sight.

The menu at Vinoteca offers tapas, mains and a very limited (3) selection of desserts. While tapas and mains are listed in the menu, you also have daily specials (scribbled on black boards mounted on walls at 2 ends of the room). The pintxos (pronounced pinchos) however change daily with no set menu choices.

The day we visited Vinoteca, (after making a reservation- they follow a 2-slot reservation policy,either show up at 7 or 9 - and reservations are necessary since its a hip new hangout that gets full FAST) the daily specials did feature the mini lamb burgers, much to my relief. It was a dish which was raved about in the reviews I had read! I had made up my mind to order them way before Chef Silvia came across to our table (casually dressed in jeans and top with long blonde hair left loose) and recommended them! () also highly recommended the Chicken Croquettas (in a charming Spanish accent!) After the Chef, had one of the hostesses coming over and recommending the wine to go with our tapas. I really loved this touch of personal attention which was sadly not followed through by the distracted waitstaff. But on the whole the staff is friendly and courteous - score one!

The first tapas to arrive were the mini burgers. The adorably miniature burgers, held together with toothpicks made a very cute picture.

But there was nothing little about their taste! Toothsome tasty patty with absolutely no sign of dryness, a dab of spiced mayo,  a slice of cheese and a picked gherkin - we loved those bite-sized burgers!

Next up was the salmon and cream cheese tapas ( I forget the name) that featured silky slices of salmon rolled around a core of soft cream cheese. These rolls were  garnished with a walnut and a dab of sweet chilli sauce, and sat atop a bed of micro sprouts on thick chunks of toasted bread. 

I quite liked it, but not being a devout fan of salmon, I didn't LOVE it the way I loved the mini burgers. Agent J found the dish too bland and the slippery salmon too confronting so he pushed his share on my plate.

Next up were the much-recommended Chicken Croquettas. What a delight! Soft, soft cylinders made up of a crunchy-yet-fragile shell and a tasty morsel of chicken filling, every croquetta was a heavenly mouthful. 

Totally worth the gushing recommendation!

To round up our tapas selection was patatas bravas - fried cubes of potato drizzled with tomato sauce. Fried potato is always glorious, but a more generous ladling of the tomato sauce would have given a lift to the kind-of-dry-and-bland dish.

The dessert menu is extremely limited with just 3 options- a coffee tart, lemon tart and chocolate truffles. And I doubt if chocolates can really be a dessert.

There were lots of dishes on the menu - all very exotic sounding and tempting, but the kind-of high prices made me feel vary of blowing up money on a dish that I might not end up liking. The pork tenderloin was raved about in this review but the very steep price (Rs800) made me gulp and skip it. :)

To sum up - excellent service, some great (and some not so great) tapas, a very cool vibe - but a tad heavy on the wallet!

Vinoteca by Sula
Ground Floor, Sunville Building  Dr. Annie Besant Road, Worli, Mumbai
Telephone: 022 4004 6234

The bill came to approximately 2000 Rs - with 1 glass of wine included

Cookery School : Chivda

Chivda is such a common (there are as many variants of the basic recipe as there are homes) and easy-to-make Maharashtrian snack, that I'd dismissed putting it up on the blog. But a request for the recipe from a non-Maharashtrian friend brought home the fact that the typical Maharashtrian 'Patal Pohyancha Chivda' is not so well known after all. And it is tastes SO amazing with a cup of hot, sweet tea that I just couldn't not share it with all of you! So here is my Mom's adaptation of the basic recipe given in Ruchira, the authoritative guide to Maharashtrian cookery ( like Mrs. Beeton's).

Maharashtrian Patal Pohyancha Chivda
Patal- Thin
Pohe - Rice Flakes
Chivda- think of a savoury Indian Chex Mix

Ingredients:
0.5 kilo patal pohe (patal means thin, so ask the grocer for thin pohe)
1 wati/katori or 1.5 cups peanuts (skins on)
8-10 green chillies, chopped into 1 cm long pieces
8-10 kadhipatta (curry leaves)
0.75 cup vegetable oil (groundnut/sunflower)
1 tablespoon black mustard seeds
0.5 teaspoon hing (asafoetida)
1 teaspoon haldi (turmeric powder)
0.5 wati/katori or 0.75 cups dried coconut slices ( thinly sliced in half-moon shapes)
Salt and sugar to taste

Process:
Sift the pohe (lightly shake them around in a colander - not a sieve) so that the small dust-like particles of crushed pohe fall down and usable pohe remain in the colander. Do this in 4-5 batches.
In a huge vessel (the biggest you can find) tip all the pohe and dry roast them on low heat. Keep stirring at 30 second intervals or so - the pohe, being very thin, can start burning very easily so you need to keep them moving.
To test if the pohe are done roasting, take 2-3 pohe out and let them cool down. If, at room temperature the pohe are crisp and crunchy, they are done. Handy hint - start testing once the pohe for crunchiness once they feel lighter and easier to move about in the pot while stirring. They become lighter cause the water content is evaporated which is the whole reason we're toasting the pohe. :) DO NOT SKIP this step of roasting pohe, else you might land up with tasty but chewy Chivda!
In a kadhai/wok, heat the oil. First, fry the peanuts in the oil till they become a dark pinkish red. They will splutter as they cook, so stand back!
Remove the peanuts with a slotted spoon and toss them over the toasted pohe
Next, fry the coconut slices in the same oil. They turn from white to gold to burnt brown in minutes, so watch out! Take them out when they are a deep gold and strew them over the pohe.
Next, make a phodni/vaghar/tadka in the leftover oil. That is, add mustard seeds, asafoetida, turmeric, chopped chillies and curry leaves - in that order. When everything is done spluttering (and the chillies are wrinkled up and crisp) empty this spiced oil over the pohe.
Add sugar and salt to taste.
Using 2 long-handled spoons, toss and turn around the pohe, peanuts, coconut slices, and spices till everything is well-mixed.
Let the chivda cool down to room temperature. Once done, store it in airtight jars.
Enjoy with a cuppa steaming hot tea!