In an Italian cheese town, we discover violins and, well, Punjab.

You wouldn’t find it on usual touristy maps. But should you decide to stop by at Cremona, an ancient town in Italy’s Po river valley, home to some of its best cheeses (as also the Roman poet Virgil, who went to school here), chances are that you will feel quite at home. For one, despite its distinct Continental air, Cremona reminds me, well, strangely enough, of “Main Hoon Na”, the Shahrukh Khan movie.

No, there are no actresses in chiffon shooting here — everyone is well-clad and jacketed-up in the biting winter of northern Italy. And when we do catch strains of music, inevitably inside local bars where Spritz, a student-y concoction made of wine, sparkling water and robust country liqueurs flows freely, it’s not Bollywood. Yet, just like in the spoofy film, there are violins everywhere. And that explains why SRK’s scenes pop up in my head.

Musical history

Cheese apart, Cremona is known for its musical history — home to some of the best-known makers of violins (the violin was invented in Cremona in 1564, according to records), including Stradivari in the 17th century, whose hand-crafted instruments have long been held as the epitomy of perfection around the world. So it is fitting that we see so many violins all around.

The town square has a famous Stradivari statue. Then, there are those luthier shops you are tempted to peep into, still manufacturing and repairing instruments by hand in this electronic age; but, equally, there are violin-shaped chocolates, cookie boxes, not to mention nougat shaped like violins.

Culture, cattle and good food go hand in hand in this Lombardy town, the dairy capital of Italy. Its cheese (the hard and grainy Grana Padano that can sit on top of pasta and the superb Provolone in mild and piccante flavours are special) and ham (the Salame Cremona PGI, with its soft, slightly garlic-flavoured paste, is one of the most famous salami, while the cotechino from here is also highly regarded) feed a million mouths.

I also come across the mostarda di Cremona, a quirky concoction, where mustard seeds are combined with candied fruit! It is a fitting accompaniment to a local meal of boiled meats that comprises local gastronomy. At a restaurant bustling with local families and farmers on a Sunday afternoon, we sit down to a meal of Bollito Misto (mixed boiled meats) — calf’s head, veal tongue, pig foot and cheek are all on the menu — for a ridiculously low price. The meats sit on a trolley that comes rolling to each table and unlimited portions of whatever it is you may wish to sample are judiciously carved out.

Touch of cheese

What can be better than visiting a cheese factory post this? We visit the Auricchio plant nearby, a 120-year-old family managed company, to see tonnes of Provolone being stretched, rested in brine, shaped by hand, aged and packed. And discover Suchcha Singh.

With a lion tattoo inked on his arms and rapid-fire Italian, Suchcha could be just another Cremonese dairy worker. But one look at us and his face creases into a huge smile. He breaks into chaste Punjabi, asking, funnily enough, a Tamil-speaker among us whether she was from Jullander. He is a trifle disappointed when he learns she is not but we are the people from “back home” and that is good enough.

Suchcha is hardly the only son of the soil around. Cheesemaking, apparently, had come to a halt briefly one day, when, some months ago, a “beauty queen from India”— the Italian managers are unable to say who she was — had stopped by to take in the astonishing scale of production. All the lads from Punjab milled around for a dekko — and considering that the dairy industry in Cremona is dependent on them, it was a substantial crowd.

Sikh immigrants have been arriving in Cremona in steady droves for the last two decades. But unlike many other places in the world where such cross-cultural collisions are fraught with tension, in Cremona, they are looked forward to. With local youth having given up farming, it is these workers from India’s own dairy country who are driving the production here.

The region, according to some estimates, produces, about one million tonnes of milk in a year (a tenth of all produced in Italy). Extreme care needs to be taken to ensure steadfastness and quality of supplies what with cheesemaking being an artform here. Indian farm workers, already, used to tending cattle at home, are generally deemed more than fit for the task, putting in 12-hour shifts, working weekends and bringing in extended families and friends into this very Italian circle of work and life.

The region now has ostensibly the biggest Gurdwara in Europe. Though we couldn’t visit it, Gurdwara Kalgirdhar Sahib, inaugurated last August, has been designed, interestingly, by an Italian (Giorgio Mantovani). It is a centre for the community that seems to have seamlessly amalgamated with local life.

As we sit on the high table, nibbling on the big cheese, it would be well to realise the desi twist to it.

(The article appeared in The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, on Feb 4, 2012)

http://www.thehindu.com/arts/magazine/article2860190.ece

Copyright 2009 India - Food & Travel Guide

Cremona, Anyone?

By Anoothi Vishal

Unlike France, where culinary maps, strictly-followed recipes and clearly etched-out techniques define the practice of cuisine and, even, say Thailand, where funeral books are strangely popular not in the least because they carry prized family recipes, India has never had a tradition of codifying recipes. Recipes have always been passed, word-of-mouth, from one cook to his descendants, mother to daughter and so forth. And the only community I can think of where these have traditionally been written, and passed on as legacies is perhaps the Chettiyars. But even those accounts are tough to come by and remain zealously guarded in the familial domain.
All this, of course, means that traditional recipes in India typically die out with the passing of an older generation and our cuisines, so diverse and varied, eventually languish. The last one-two years have seen some change in that the boom in Indian publishing and interest around food have come together to give us a bevy of cookbooks on elusive community cuisines. But apart from family lore and recipes from mothers and grandmothers, what is really the kind of material available to any researcher into the evolution of Indian cuisines? More often than not, the handful of early accounts that we do have are courtly tomes, dealing with elite food concocted for kings and princes; not really the cuisine of the common tables.

Of course, it is not to say that these accounts are not fascinating and invaluable. Ain-i-Akbari, for instance, talks in detail about the Mughal kitchen, about Akbar’s great belief in the water from the ganga (in which all food was cooked), in a separate category of vegetarian food that the emperor had on days he would ritually abstain from meat and so forth—all giving us a picture of a Mughal India where cultural amalgamation had perhaps taken place and become a way of life. The Mansollasa, a Sanskrit text, purportedly dating back to the 11th century and written by Chalukya king Somesvara, has chapters on cooking and lists several varieties of fish, for instance. Lesser known works include the Sarbendra Pakashastra from Tanjuvar, written by a 19th century ruler, complete with recipes, including for south Indian kebabs!

Undoubtedly, as patrons of the arts (including the culinary art), the erstwhile royal families are custodians of a huge slice of culture. Amongst those who have managed to hold on to some of that is the Sailana family.

“The Cooking Delights of Maharaja Digvijay Singh”, or the Sailana cookbook as it is known to its fans, was first published almost 30 years ago. It is by far one of the best cookbooks ever to have come out in India —and not because of any glamorous pictures or marketing pitch. Instead, the recipes collected and perfected by the former ruler of Sailana, a small princely state in Madhya Pradesh bordering Rajasthan, speak for themselves. Each of the 164 recipes are precise, flavourful and guaranteed to give perfect results (I have tried them). Which is why, perhaps, the tome, now out of print, is rated so highly and there are enough women who will tell you how this formed part of their wedding trousseaux (it did of mine).
Last week, I was fortunate to come across Vikram Singhji, Maharaja Digvijay Singh’s son, and as passionate a cook as the late ruler, who not only told me the incredible story behind the Sailana recipes but also cooked a whole host of these himself. A Sailana festival is being held across India at the Park Hotels (in four cities, in succession) and will feature Vikram Singhji cooking himself; a second cookbook is on the anvil, featuring another 160 recipes and there is to be a short film on the culinary legacy in conjunction with Apeejay Surrendra Park hotels.

The Sailana recipes are unique because they represent a personal passion rather than just another regional repertoire. The process of collecting the recipes started almost a century ago when Sir Dilip Singh of Sailana was stranded on a hunt without the services of a cook. The game was ready to be cooked but no one quite knew how to. This made the ruler wake up to the importance of preserving and documenting recipes and he started the process in his kitchen. His son, Digvijay Singh, turned out to be even more passionate about food. As a princely ruler, he would cook one dish a day and when he travelled to other parts of the country, he went along with a small jeweller’s scale and a small box of masalas! When he liked a particular dish, he would ask the cook to make it, watching, taking notes and noting down precise measurements for spices with the aid of the scales (a practice as unusual today in the Indian kitchen, where everything works on andaz, as it must have been then.)

The result is a collection that not only has family and regional recipes from the princely state but the best recipes the widely-travelled family ever encountered. In Kashmir (the Sailanas are related to the former royal family there), Digvijay Singh tried the rogan josh at three-four homes but liked one version best and recorded it; in Lucknow, a cook called Salim, made him a special raan that he tried out later in his own kitchen and so on.

The meal that Vikram Singh cooked for us, certainly, was unusual in the kind of disparate flavours it presented on the same thali. And in the uniqueness of the preparations: The Shikampuri kebab he served were different from the usual Hyderabadi ones in that the recipe uses a filling of cream instead of yoghurt within the mince. There were the totally fabulous goolar kebabs made with figs, murgh Irani, a dum recipe from Iran, with rich almonds, a Bengali-influenced dahi machi, whole moong dal with a dash of mustard, a totally unique kaleji (liver) ka raita not to mention a hare channe ka halwa that you may never have even heard of.

Because the Sailana recipes represent food from all over the country but with a distinctive individual touch, what a meal comprising of these, above all, exemplifies is not merely recipes that are no longer part of our kitchenlore today, but the mindboggling scope of Indian cuisines and seasonal ingredients, vegetables, fruits, grain, that would be used in our cooking so effectively and innovatively but, alas, have lost out to global marketing forces.

(An incomplete version appeared in the Financial Express on Sunday on Feb 5, 2012)

Copyright 2009 India - Food & Travel Guide

Khana from Sailana

Serviced apartments can be less expensive than equivalent hotel rooms. Since the beginning of the boom in cheap international travel and the corresponding increase in the level of sophistication of international travelers, interest in serviced apartments has risen at the expense of the use of hotels for short stays.

Here is a list of Top ten serviced apartments in Bangalore.

Brigade Homestead Serviced Residences:

Locations:

Homestead 1, Lavelle Road

Phone: +91-80-2222 0966 / 67 / 68

E-mail: enquiry@homesteadbangalore.com

Mayfair, Cambridge Road

Phone: +91-80-4178 3600 / +91-99723 05351

E-mail: sanat@homesteadbangalore.com, enquiry@homesteadbangalore.com

Jacaranda, Indiranagar

E-mail: renjith@homesteadbangalore.com

Homestead 2, Jayanagar, Ashoka Pillar

Phone: +91-80-2657 8020 / +91-98804 05244

E-mail: hs2@homesteadbangalore.com, renjith@homesteadbangalore.com

Homestead 4, Jayanagar 8th Block

Phone: +91-80-4005 3333 / +91-97413 07421 / +91-98804 05244

E-mail: hs4@homesteadbangalore.com, renjith@homesteadbangalore.com

Contact Details:

# 82, 2nd floor, Hulkul Brigade Centre,

Next to Bangalore Club,

Lavelle Road, Bangalore 560 001

Ph: +91-80-4043 8000

e-mail: kavitha@brigadegroup.com

Website: www.homesteadbangalore.com

Room Tariff: Rs 3,000 to Rs 6,000

Halcyon Condominiums:

P.B. 4708, No. 9, Drafadilla Layout

4th Block, Koramangala

Bangalore 560 0047

Tel: +91-80-41102200

Fax: +91-80-41102400

Email: halcyongroup@vsnl.net

Website: www.halcyoncondos.com

Room Tariff: Rs 5,000 to Rs 8,000

Melange Bangalore Service Apartments:

21, Vittal Mallya Road

Bangalore – 560001

Phone: 91 080 51120399

TEL: 22129700 /01/02/03/05/06/07

Fax: +91-80-22129700 / 01 / 02/03/05/06/07

E-mail: info@melangebangalore.com

Website: www.melangebangalore.com

Room Tariff: Rs 3,000 to Rs 8,000

The Orchard Suites:

Locations:

The Orchard Suites (Sankey Road)

# 105, 1st Main Road,

Seshadripuram,

Bangalore – 560020

The Orchard Suites (Sarjapur Road)

#1/13A, Haralur Road,

off Sarjapur Road,

Bangalore – 560034

The Orchard Suites (Infantry Road),

No 40, Lady Curzon Road,

(entry from Infantry road),

Bangalore – 560001

The Orchard Suites (Koramangala),

#25, Intermediate Ring Road,

Behind LG Showroom,

Koramangala,

Bangalore – 560047

Contact Details:

Ph: +91-80-41234444

Fax: +91-80-41234333

E-mail: reservation@theorchardsuites.com

Website: www.theorchardsuites.com

Room Tariff:Rs 3,000 to Rs 10,000

Oakwood Premier Prestige Bangalore:

Vittal Mallya Road

U B City

Bangalore – 560001

Ph: +91-80-22348888

Fax: +91-80-22347777

Website: www.oakwood.com

Room Tariff: Rs 9,600 to Rs 35,000

Copyright 2009 India - Food & Travel Guide

Top ten serviced apartments in Bangalore

A bunch of determined protestors offended by a book-that-shall-not-be-named stalled proceedings at the Jaipur fest; others, denied access to overcrowded sessions, sought their festive fix in laal maans and kachoris

Like someone sensible tweeted, the Jaipur Literature Festival should just drop its middle name and be true to what it really is: A festival; full of noise, food, booze, consumption and people dressed up in all their finery as any true-to-type Indian festival is these days, in our recession-defying, money-having-moved-east moment under the sun. Despite the mega bytes and displays of impotent anger on his behalf, it was not Rushdie, after all, who was the star of the show. Oprah was. Despite winning the DSC prize for literature for his debut work, Chinaman author Shehan Karunatilaka hardly created any buzz. The $ 50,000 prize money did. And despite this being a supposedly literary venue, choking with self-importance, no one really wanted any books signed, forget read. They just wanted the glory of a “cultured” thappa that seemingly comes from attending this jamboree.

And as socialities and schoolkids, grandparents, parents, and in at least one instance, even a month-old baby, rubbed shoulders with the media, critics, authors, wannabe authors, networkers, and plain bored souls wanting a bit of an outing on a weekend, one thing became clear: The Diggi Palace Hotel has become much too small a venue for such a mass of humanity. It is, of course, a mystery to those of us witness to all the antics how could a bunch of “protestors” offended by a book written almost 20 years ago (and which they hadn’t even read), manage to enter the venue. Considering that even valid card-holders were barred from entering and roads were blocked to prevent added influx into the venue, in danger of imploding, it should have been impossible for these hyper-sensitive men to even reach the august venue, forget making any threats. But that’s another story.

This post, considering it is on food and travel expressly, will focus on other things: Such as kachoris, laal maans and lassi, worthy sideshows to the megashow. With each cup of coffee inside the venue costing several long minutes wasted in queues and sessions held in impossibly tiny venues outside which a sea of those who hadn’t managed to scramble inside waited without the benefit of big screens and televised proceedings, the only thing to do in Jaipur during the JLF, was, of course, to lunch and dine and snack. Each restaurant and street stall that we visited during the time in the city was full of festival-crashers.

At Lakshmi Mishtan Bhandar, the famous kachori-sweets-and-chaat shop, tables were put out in a small small, back-of-the-house room annexed to the main restaurant to accommodate the extra crowd. Of course, should you have chosen to sit there, like we did, you would have abdicated any right to reasonable service. A solitary waiter went around taking orders and arrived with a single kachori after 30 minutes to be shared by a table. It was a smart strategy as he served up lunch to all patrons in tiny bits and pieces punctuated by long intervals of kitchen scrambling no doubt. In the end, we even had to beg for the bill, so that we could be free to attend the evening literary sessions over Sula, priced, per glass, lower than in Delhi restaurants.

At the Penguin party that evening, the scale was equally astonishing. As unlimited snacks, cheese, Glenfiddich and wine did the rounds, who cared about books and authors? In suitable high spirits, no one minded eating biryani (and strangely kulche) from soup bowls and pretty little gulab jamuns from soup spoons (though, it does look inelegant, doing so).

At Niro’s, the next afternoon, being an early bird that arrived in haste, post-Oprah, had its advantage. We found a table amidst all those who hadn’t been in fact able to reach JLF thanks to blocked roads and who had decided to settle for lunch instead. Niro’s speciality has always been laal maans, the fiery, slow-cooked mutton special to Rajput cuisine. But perhaps keeping the sensitive literary stomachs in mind and to cater to all the international travelers on special literary tour packages or Dilliwallas who had turned up to spend their Sundays well, the recipe had been “tweaked”. Out went the chillies, in went tomatoes (that bane of restaurant food in India) so that the end gravy was more sweet than chilli.

Having missed a polo match a couple of hours later (another fringe event on the JLF sidelines) thanks to shopping at Gulabschand (and tall kulhads of lassi) we decided to settle for an elegant tea service at Rambagh. Camomile was all it took to soothe fraying literary nerves. The protesters should have tried it. And the politicians too.

Copyright 2009 India - Food & Travel Guide

On the JLF fringes

Last week saw the opening of what is certainly going to be one of the most high-profile restaurants in the country for a while. Megu, the exclusive, New York-based contemporary-Japanese diner made its debut in Delhi in an exclusive tie up with the Leela group of hotels. And plans are now afoot to take it to Mumbai (in the next year and half or so). But what does that mean for the Indian diner? Does the launch of Megu (and others of its ilk, set to follow its steps into the bustling Indian F&B market) mean that we must now reconcile ourselves to ushering in an age that will see the Louis-Vuittonisation of eating out– where a consumer pays absurdly high prices for what is essentially just a monogram/ tag or brand?

Certainly, like its pedigreed cousins Le Cirque, Hakkasan and so forth, aspirational brands for the top one per cent of India’s middle-class consumers who supposedly spend on luxury (and luxury dining), Megu will hold a distinct charm, if not for the value it offers, for the brand name alone. When I visited on just the fourth day of its opening its doors to Delhi’s eager beavers, the main dining section and the bar were both teeming with known and unknown faces, with media, multiplex and motorcorp barons dining with families and friends within elbowing distance of one another.
But if you visit Megu merely to people-spot, site-see (we’ll come to that later) or to just indulge in the competitive society sport of paying jaw-dropping prices for a meal, you will be doing serious injustice to the restaurant and all that it seems to be heralding.

What Megu really does is to raise the bar for upscale, casual dining in this country by not just some but many notches. High-profile restaurant launches are a bit of a gamble usually because the substance rarely lives up to hype. Megu is that rare exception where it does. Luckily.
As the food starts rolling in, you realise this is theatre in motion. There is an incredible amount of detailing. Each dish is dramatically presented and not the least because there are separate, specially-crafted serving platters for almost all of the 100-plus dishes on the menu. Equally, a lot of attention has gone into sourcing often exclusive Japanese ingredients for each dish, which, though contemporarised, play around with authentic flavours.
Though this was a rather exceptional dining experience for me in that everything that I tried had a certain wow element to it, I will mention the four top-listers of my meal. The first, without doubt, had to be the yellowtail (hamachi) carpaccio seasoned with kanzuri chilli paste, the key ingredient. Kanzuri are red chillies from Nigata, one of the snowiest regions of Japan, where the chillies are put on ice beds for months to rest and mellow before being made into a fermented chilli paste.

The second was again carpaccio—waghyu beef sliced impossibly fine, put on a base of seasme-mayo and topped with micro basil leaves to offset the texture which totally elevated the level of this preparation. The third was the salmon tartare topped with a soya and wasabi jelly, which was melted on the table by the server using bincho-tan, or the white charcoal that has been used in traditional Japanese cooking. And last, but not the least, was the phenomenal Shira Ae, a vegetarian special (about half the menu is veg, in keeping with the local market) created specially for Delhi, where beautifully-sliced squash, our humblest of veggies, was put together like a flan of sorts.

The last apart, all my favourites for the night turned out to be classic Megu dishes, the same as in its other outposts round the world. But a chunk on the menu is also devoted to “India dishes” (vegetarian and those like the crispy kanzuri shrimp, likely to go down with fried-shellfish loving, splurging patrons).
There is a competent sake (including a sparkling one) menu in place (that tells you, perhaps, for the first time ever in any Japanese restaurant in the country) what exactly is it that you are drinking. And finally, all the stunners from Megu New York (that places as much importance on looks as on the food) are lead motifs here too: A giant bell, the Buddha statue (not carved in ice daily as is done in NY but made of glass neverthless) et al.
However, all these are but pieces of the jigsaw. The glue that holds these together (apparently as much in the Big Apple from the reviews that I have read) are the people running the show: the chef (Yutaka Saito), an incredibly savvy restaurant manager (Rajat Kalia), who has the gift of being chatty and informative at the same time, so rare to find in India, and above all, Aishwarya Nair, the Leela heiress, but very much a regular, working girl.
A committed foodie and a trained chef, Nair looks after F&B for the hotel group and has been personally involved with the Megu launch down to the minutest detail. As she shows off the antique kimonos used to panel the private dining room and as she enthusiastically recommends the wasabi cheesecake (fitting for someone with her own bakery brand!), I finally understand what makes this one so different from so many other soulless super expensive/exclusive ventures.

At the Indian Megu, it is Nair’s innate sense of hospitality and good-cheer that seem to have permeated into the entire service so that dining at this uber-chic restaurant is not the pompous, stiff affair that most Indians actually expect of any “five-star” experience when they are doling out such high prices for the wine and food.

One problem with brands or chains when they evolve from single chef/owner/creator-driven operations is that they lose the personal touch, charm or quirk that may have made them so successful in the first place—because, after all, eating out at the highest restaurateuring level is so much more than putting mere food on the table. (Though, I should also stress that without the latter, no amount of frills succeed. It’s a given in the business.) Megu navigates this treacherous zone with elan. For a luxury restaurant, it is an incredibly warm, young and casual space to be in. Hopefully, that will be the real gamechanger in the Indian context.

(The article appeared in Financial Express on Sunday, on Jan 22, 2012)

Copyright 2009 India - Food & Travel Guide

The Gamechanger?

Beginning-of-the-year food forecasting can get downright absurd. This year, for instance, popcorn has been deemed a big trend, at least in the US, where popcorn patrons are expected to consume buttered, honeyed or otherwise versions in copious quantities, just as another trend anoints customized French fries as the new “It” thing. Similarly, turmeric that goes into all Indian khana unfailingly is set to be “discovered” globally; though we can’t really be sure as to the dessert that will finally push cupcakes and brownies, the two have-beens, off pop charts….

My advice: Junk the lists. Just look out for interesting new things to try out in the new year- — break the clutter, go against established norms, discover tradition as much as exotic new ideas. There is, after all, a brave new world out there—waiting to be sampled.

1. A for… Ayurveda-chic: In 2012, rediscover this part of our heritage. In our mad rush for imported “luxury” feasts (caviar, by the way, is now being farmed everywhere from Spain to China and is thus certainly no luxury item), we have kind of forgotten all the fresh, seasonal ingredients that have always been the basis for Indian cuisines. Charaka’s “science of life” that has spin-offs in every culture, including the Chinese yin-yang, characterizes all foods as based on their taste and property. Each ingredient is thus suitable to not just different seasons and times of the day but to different people. As emphasis on health grows, learn to be Ayurveda- chic: There’s also at least one super luxe restaurant opening up this year based on the principle. Watch this space.

2. B for… Barramundi (er, not Basa): The Vietnamese catfish (also being farmed in India) has invaded the Indian restaurant space in recent times. And though basa filet is perhaps cheaper than most local fish in the market, we still tend to look at the “imported” fish as a luxury and exotic ingredient. This year, try Barramundi, the Australian, flaky, white-fleshed fish, whose stock has been rising globally —- not the least because this is the same as our very own Bhetki!

3. D for… Dirt! No, don’t baulk. We don’t mean real dirt, or soil or whatever it is that fancy chefs choose to call it. As plating gets more sophisticated even in India and chefs play around with flavours and textures, everything from a sprinkle of ground coffee beans to a smear of black olive paste is dubbed “dirt” on your beautiful platters. Learn to read the menus.

4. E for… Extra Virgin Olive Oil: Someone please tell those retailers to stop conning us with “good-for-frying” olive oil that has neither the supposed health benefits nor flavour of extra virgin olive oil. Like wine, EVOO tastes different depending on its terrior and varietals. This year, try to discover what your preferred taste is: Spanish Picual on that slice of red meat, Arbequina on an egg or salad? Better still, if you are travelling in the Continent (Spain, Italy, Greece) at the end of the harvest season (typically January in many places), bring back a bottle on unfiltered EVOO and discover the phenomenal taste. Though be careful to note the date of manufacture and consume the contents of the bottle within two years (for EVOO), or one (unfiltered).

5. F for… food, as drink…: Junk that Cosmopolitan or Appletini, try culinary cocktails with flavours of jalapeno, ginger, miso, mustard, sage, cucumber, japanese ginger, and coriander roots, suggests young chef Nishant Choubey. In America, it is bacon and grilled cheese flavours that are a novelty but we may give those a miss—yet.

6. … and fruits in maincourse: No, no one is suggesting that you go on a perpetual phalahar, literally, a fasting diet of fruits. But do try fruit infused kebabs, raspberry (or mango) “chutney” with that pan-fried foie gras and so on. Fruits and meat do meet, rather well, as some of our trendiest restaurant chefs are proving.

7. H for Hand-pulled noodles…: Noodles— udon, soba, pad thai, Singaporean, you name them—in a bowl are the stars on the many pan-Asian-café menus that have sprouted in the metros in the last year. Now, try the traditional fresh, hand-pulled Chinese noodles that are slowly also making their way into restaurants.

8. … and Heritage dishes: Hyderabad’s delicate sufiana biryani and haleem, old Delhi’s dorra or boti kebabs not to mention yakhni pulao, Lucknow’s sheermal, kakoris, nimish… Look hard enough and you will find these not just in hard-to-get-invited-to homes but exclusive restaurants too. Luckily, we are just about beginning to market our heritage.

9. K for Korean: Chennai, not surprisingly given its status as a manufacturing hub for so many Korean companies, has an astonishing number of authentic Korean restaurants. Catch a flight for spicy BBQs and the addictive bibimbap.

10. L for Licorice: Though licorice candy and desserts are quite common, it is, of course, possible to entirely hate the strong flavour of the herb that we also know as mulethi in India and by other local names. But, recently, I had home-made pasta flecked with licorice, also used as a seasoning for Chinese savoury sauces and the result was hardly unpleasant.

11. O for old grains: Refined maida is the bane of our existence. This year, go slow, and rediscover some old grains that are still around despite wheat and polished rice. In the Indus Valley, barley, for instance, accompanied wheat as a staple. It is the only grain mentioned in the Rig Veda even though it is a minor cereal today. It would be a shame to lose it and others like the amaranth (ram dana) that you still get in the form of chikki during northern winters. If you don’t want to stick to Indian grain, try other ancients like spelt (Italy), couscous and quinoa (a nut really native to south America), all being increasingly used by trendy, go-slow chefs.

12. X for Xtreme contrasts: Any cutting edge dish should startle you out of your comfort zone. And there’s nothing like contrasting temperatures. Ice with warm chocolate foam, or indeed a warm, cheese risotto with cold beet foam—two dishes I tried very recently at Rossini in Bangkok. Look forward to such inventiveness in India too

(The column appeared in Sunday Economic Times on Jan 1, 2012)

Copyright 2009 India - Food & Travel Guide

12 things to eat in 2012

Over my monthly lunch with S and A (this time though it was more like a quarterly lunch), I discovered the best soup in Delhi. S is a member at the snobby Gymkhana; so we sat around a table in the dining hall, trying to look older and distinguished enough to fit in with all the other diners, to speak in hushed whispers and to not give in to the temptation of looking into our silenced-cellphones to check whether there could have been any other calls at all from non-random PR people.

When S turned 18, her father, a member of long-standing and repute, brought her to these hallowed portals for a meal. It was a rite of passage. And ever since then, she, a vegetarian, has possibly settled for paneer a la kiev that the club turns out in a paen to 1950’s-style clubby “Continental” food. When S ordered that once again at lunch yesterday, I was tempted to laugh, but looking at the butter and cheese oozing out of the roll, hastily changed my mind and begged her for a small bite, which, despite the paneer, is entirely edible.

For our part, A and I settled for fish—she for a simple grilled version, I for the famous baked tomato fish the dining hall here is famous for. And indeed this turned out to be the best food I have ever had at any Delhi club. We finished off our meal by sharing the famous caramel custard—the real thing, not out of a packet. But it was really the first course of beet soup that is going to get me all nostalgic. Never the one to choose anything healthy, I can, nevertheless, slurp on this soup all winter long.

Considering that standards at the other dining hall that I used to love going to—at the IIC— have been drastically slipping over the last couple of years, the Delhi Gymkhana now has no clubby rival to its food in the city. The last meal I had at the IIC was with author Chetan Bhagat (and his mother) over an interview, amusing for many things (including the grandiose, old waiters trying to bully poor Chetan) but certainly not the food. Even the apple pie that one had religiously sought on every occasion of IIC-eating had begun to lose its allure. I haven’t been there ever since.

Where I do go pretty frequently—given that that’s the only club I am actually a member of—is the Indian Women’s Press Club and I am indeed partial to its homely charms, even though sometimes they border on the plain ridiculous, like when serving up the comforting Indian-Chinese honey-chilli potatoes with a watery gravy. Nevertheless, for ghar ka khana, or bhelpuri and sarson ka saag IWPC has no rival. The food at the general Press Club, especially the snacks that you had with lots of subsidized booze (egg-on-toast, masala peanuts and so on), used to be pretty decent at one point. But I no longer have the will or taste to go to the Den, having acquired some grown-up sophistication at long last.

Panchsheel Club, newly-made over, has some decent food going, I have sampled some birthday fare at Friend’s Club that is nothing to write home about though the lovely location makes up for everything, but the Sarvapriya Vihar Club used to serve a mean rogan josh and kebabs at least till some time ago. There is, of course, the Delhi Golf Club (always memorable because I had my first glass of Rose wine there), where food and company have both been immaculate. Most recently, I attended a spectacular wedding on the lawns overlooking a heritage structure and the golf course. (Highly recommended to any one looking to get married or remarried.) It was understated, elegant, with a live jazz band and first-rate food that comprised everything from dim sum to a seafood buffet. I doubt whether the meal was catered to by the club though it would have been an interesting exercise.

(Do write in with your own Club favourites.)

Copyright 2009 India - Food & Travel Guide

My Gymkhana meal (with S and A) and Delhi’s best Club food

By Anoothi Vishal

First impression

The sleepy Crescent Mall, much of whose top floor Smoke House Room takes up, lies in darkness when I give my car to the valet. I need to walk inside, in semi darkness, and locate the lift— something that
would have made me feel a bit insecure were I an unaccompanied single woman in notorious Delhi. But I am soon to emerge from this area of darkness into a restaurant so a dazzling and all-white that I am tempted to shield my eyes. Smoke House Room lies bereft of too many guests on the Thursday evening I visit——- except for one other couple and another group that arrives a little later into our meal, there’s
no one apart from us. But that is not to say it isn’t populated: There is an overwhelming army of service staff that comes to life as we enter.

The food

Ashwin decides to go for “The Hunter” (non-vegetarian) menu. And since both people on the table need to opt for tasting menus or neither, I decide to try out the vegetarian, “The Gatherer”, menu. Both have about six courses each, so we are prepared for the long haul. We settle in with a cocktail each—I choose
Sangria that turns out to be pretty terrible and syrupy. (The waiter explains — later — that the Smoke House specialty is without fruit bits though I can’t imagine why. No one offers to replace my drink at any point as it lies only partially sipped.) Ashwin’s green apple martini, however, is top notch.

The chef starts off with surprises for both of us, not on the menus, of which the chicken pate enclosed in a Ferro Roche wrap, which, in turn, is placed inside a “light bulb” is definitely amusing and creative. I also like the first course: “A gathering of mushrooms” has different kinds, lightly sautéed, with a dash of
prune-porcini chutney and a sprinkling of coffee olive “soil”.

The platters are all pieces of art—each course is beautifully presented and there are many elements to each dish which show the dexterity of the chef. In fact, the presentation definitely evokes a wow. Smoked tenderloin carpaccio, for instance, comes atop smoking herbs in a plate covered with a cling
film…

But if the real test is taste, there were only one or two truly standout dishes that I would recommend without reserve: the Black cod with coconut miso was the highlight of our meal. While none of the dishes were “bad”, what they were is too busy. A little simplifying and cleaning up of flavours is needed.
There is way too much happening on every plate. Besides, there is a sweet element to almost every dish which gets repetitive in a tasting menu.

I did not like the cold “X-Ray Ravioli” despite the novel idea; the mascarpone was a spoiler. And the platter of maize cooked in different ways would have been a winner but for the sweetish carrot sauce poured on top. Both maize and carrots have their intrinsic sweetness; combined that’s deadly!

A word on the breads, olive oils and herbed butter: addictive.

Service: Food started rolling out very fast. In fact, we got though the entire tasting menu in a little more than an hour which is a big plus in my book. On the other hand to find yourself in a restaurant with more waiters than guests can be pretty distracting, even if they seem well informed and courteous. But
what on earth was the sommelier doing (I assume he was the sommelier; at any rate part of the service/ management staff) pacing the length of the restaurant almost continuously with an urgency more
reminiscent of expectant fathers?

The verdict: If you like showy food, this is the place to go to. The chef is skilled and has some good ideas.
But dishes need to come with cleaner flavours. Also, the flavour-palette tends to get repetitive. The restaurant is well above the average price range in Delhi with a glass of wine costing Rs 1,000 on an average (there may be a few that cost less) and the tasting menus costing Rs 3,500 (n-v) and Rs 2,500 (v)
per head each.

Would I go again: Unlikely. I prefer substance over show biz. For the price, there are few compelling dishes here that I would want to repeat.

Food: 7/10

Service: 7/10

Ambience: 5/10

Total: 19/30

(The review was published in the BBC Good Food Magazine India, Jan 2012 issue)

Copyright 2009 India - Food & Travel Guide

My (unannounced) review of Smoke House Room

Not because I wanted to particularly celebrate the Delhi Durbar of Dec 12, 1912, where George V may well have been following, ironically, the grand Mughal tradition of holding an ostentatious audience with his tributary princes. Not even because the day should be celebrated — with or without the government of India pitching in to mark what it does not quite what to acknowledge: the country’s colonial past—as the beginning of a newer, more powerful Delhi. But quite by chance; because I was meeting a friend for lunch and wanted to check out the much raved-about Elma’s Tea Room in Hauz Khas Village (itself a destination bearing testimony to the twists and turns of Delhi history), that I landed up observing New Delhi’s 100th birthday with an old-fashioned “coronation chicken” sandwich.

It wasn’t a bad choice at all.

The finger sandwiches were quite the antithesis of all the terrible, soggy, mayo-laden monstrosities that we have been force-fed all this while. And while I will really need to authenticate the “Victorian” past of this common recipe that became so popular (mostly as a quick-fix TV meal) in Britain in the 1950s, the claim that is sometimes made of this cold chicken sandwich (or salad, flavoured with “curry” powder— Elma’s thankfully used fresh herbs) that it is indeed a throwback to George V’s times, put a delicious twist in the tale.

So here was I, a reluctant post-colonialist, sitting amidst scenic-ruins from Delhi’s Muslim past; that have been rediscovered today as a fashion-food-art destination for mostly expats, eating Coronation chicken on the 100th anniversary of the very day when a flaunting British monarch had insisted on celebrating his crowning in the jewel-in-the-crown colony, in a post-Liberalised anti-restaurant restaurant (that is another story for later) that wants you to believe that it is a cosy, country room in Victorian England…. Read that again. Could the layers in this narrative get more delicious?

At any rate, I am immensely glad that I chose to go to Elma’s (I adore their “made-in-India” by the Tatas floral crockery and tea cups that they have to, ironically, import all the way from London because the collection is only available in the UK… there, the strange Empire connection yet again…) and not to one of the flaky “Delhi” food festivals that have sprouted this season in our midst, seeking to market the birthday to a larger audience of not just tourists and expats but even those who consider themselves Dilliwallahs —though, of course, it is to be debated who exactly falls into the last category in a city of migrants where life, culture and enterprise have always been enlivened by the quintessential “outsiders”.

When I last checked, counters at the much-publicised “Dilli Ke Pakwaan” festival outside the row of emporia on Baba Kharak Singh Marg, were selling chole-bhature and pav-bhaji along with basterdised masala dosas and genric chaat (though there were some supposedly purani-Dilli specials like paranthe and kulfi) under the convenient tag of Delhi food. Certainly, this too is Delhi food of a kind, or at least pan-Indian food appealing to a globalised palate, commonly and cheaply available on our streets from Patna to Mumbai, in food courts and QSR-chains set up by enterprising sweet-shop owners. If the point is to regale Delhi masses with a “mela”, an undiscerning fair, then we cannot perhaps fault the conceptualization and execution of such feasts.

If, however, the point is to celebrate and showcase heritage, to give people a chance to sample those segments of the past that face obliteration thanks to an all-consuming mass culture of the day, then I suppose we must take exception to the way how we have been creating and marketing such shows. The more you think about it, India is really a strange country in our ambivalence towards history and dare I say “culture”. It is perhaps the fact that we live with so much of it in our midst that we are blind to its magnificence. Or, perhaps, it has to do with that urgent business of living, so competitive in the country, where, despite GDP projections and vaulting ambitions, ordinary lives have remained firmly third-world.
Today, with tourism, hospitality and retail booming, we are perhaps better aware of commoditizing heritage. But while it is valid to market it, shouldn’t some thought be put first into reasonable research and authentication? Countries around the world are not only protecting the unique identities of their produce but showcasing traditional recipes and cooking practices as an exercise in conservation and marketing. Sadly, as the celebrations around New Delhi’s big birthday have shown, neither is on top of our minds.

For those of you who have been reading this rant without knowing what exactly is “Delhi” food, a few pointers: Chole-bhature, as indeed dal makhni- or butter-chicken naan became part of the city’s pop consciousness only post-Partition when the tide of enterprising refugees from the Punjab brought in a new food culture in our midst. (Pav-bhaji, if provenance is important to you, has always been a Mumbai street snack, masala dosa, from Udupi, at least the version that is popular all over.)

The older food of Delhi, as it must have been during the Durbar of 1911, was a mix of the Mughal and various Hindu-community-foods of what we now know as old Delhi. These were the dominant communities of Shahjahanabad and it was their culture and cuisines interacting with each other, feeding off each other and reacting to each other that defined the older lifestyle. Apart from the Muslim nobles, whose food was itself a form of fusion of Persian-Turk-Subcontinental influences, cuisines of the Kayasthas (the record-keepers and administrators in Mughal courts, whose culture and food thus show a blend of high-caste Hindu and non-vegetarian Muslim influences) and the baniyas (the vegetarian community of traders and money lenders who owned most of the land and the first of the big businesses in the city) influenced the food culture of an older Delhi.
Amongst the most common ingredients that we use in Indian cooking today are potatoes, green chillies (not to mention red), and that bane-of-modern-Indian-kitchens, tomatoes. But these, as also many others, were not native to the Indian subcontinent and thus naturally not part of traditional, seasonal repertoires. But as they began to make an appearance with Colonial trade, they gradually found their way into Indian kitchens too. Potatoes, for instance, were first used by the English and then in upper-class Muslim homes only.

Seasonal ingredients were stuck to—in summer, a mutton curry with arvi or colocasia, in winter, famously with turnips, slowcooked overnight to perfection… Black pepper was another potent, winter masala—used in everything from nahari, the bazaar stew that the poor breakfasted on, to chaats, which included kulle, fruit cups, and lentil based tidbits not just the aloo-tikkis of today. And even those, when they did appear, were distinctive: The Dilli aloo-tikki has texture, filled as it is, with chana dal, and served with just a refreshing green coriander chutney and a sweet chutney, no overdose of yoghurt please. Bedmi-aloo, nagauris (small pooris) with halwa and the like were vegetarian breakfast dishes and mithai (non-channa) was made in multitudinous ways, a favourite with Bahadur Shah Zafar II, the ill-fated last Mughal with-a-weak-stomach. The lost/heritage dishes of Delhi would equally include boti kebabs and kali mirch ones, says researcher Salma Husain, pasande, even nargisi kofte, where mince is wrapped around hard-boiled eggs, and that apparently inspired the Scotched Eggs. Equally, a host of Anglo-Indian specialities that began to appear closer to the time of the darbar. But that’s a legacy that needs to be delved into whole-heartedly.

Copyright 2009 India - Food & Travel Guide

On Delhi’s 100th birthday: Coronation chicken, Shahjahanabad’s lost dishes, and a rant

By Anoothi Vishal

Last week, in the heart of Parma, that lovely region of Italy known for its ham and cheese amongst other things, I got a chance to live out my masterchef, er, apprentice dream! Yes, those have been my two favourite shows of television. And no, I am not mixing them up. But fact is that as I stood trying (unsuccessfully) to dice up carrots into very small and absolutely uniform cubes, to debone quail (with some success), make lollipops out of legs (!) and watch a pot of risotto bubble, I crossed over, albeit for just the tiniest fraction of time, from observer to observed, from taster to creator, from food critic to not-quite-chef but certainly a legit kitchen-apprentice taking lessons from not one but three masterchefs; Indian and Italian!

But, first, the context.

The Academia Barilla in Parma, established a couple of years ago, is rather an amazing resource centre for not only those who seek deeper knowledge of local regional produce but for anyone with the remotest interest in gastronomy and indeed food as a centerpiece of a larger culture. Housed within the academy set up by the food MNC (Barilla, after all, equals pasta in many markets where it is dominant, if not quite as yet in India) is a rare collection of books on food going back almost two centuries. The oldest manuscript here (from Milan) dates back to 1815, there are tomes on garlic and formaggio, on chocolate and fungi and aphrodisiacs, and such curious collectibles as a seating plan from the 19th century for 13 guests round the dinner table—whether as a parody of the Last Supper housed nearby in Milan incidentally or otherwise is not clear.

For anyone researching the history of communal eating in Europe, there is also a large section on some of the earliest menus on the continent that came into being, as it is recorded, only in 1810. It was only then that the traditional, centuries-old “French service”, where food was put on the table all at the same time, ironically, contrary to how we use the term today, gave way to a newer Russian service with the meal being presented in courses. Menu cards thus came into play, propped up before each guest, to explain the sequence of events and often these would be embellished with art and even a celebrity autograph or two. At the academy, it is possible to see some early examples and compare these with those of a hundred years later.

In the centre of the library that houses the books and the collectibles is a cheerful dining table. All you need to do is take your place and tuck into the quiet sense of history and culture that permeates the air as well as into the luscious Fontina cheese-fondue that can be wiped off with cabbage involtini (grilled roll-ups really that invoke the spring roll for many of us bred on Indian-Chinese) with just a hint of juniper in its midst and rather more of the Parmigiano-Reggiano; this after all is the big cheese’s home country. The menu crafted for us by chef Mario Grazia, presiding at the academy, also has an easy-enough-to-attempt-at home pumpkin risotto and stuffed quail wrapped with prosciutto di Parma, famed cured meats from this region, that may well qualify as the star of the meal – if not entirely because your columnist helped cook them!

Cooking vacations are now a part of many “offbeat” itineraries for luxury travelers around the world. And indeed nothing can give you the sense of a place, its history and its people than the simple (or complex) rituals of using local produce and local cooking methods to produce something for your palate. That’s why, increasingly, a small but growing set of well-heeled “experience” junkies all around the world as well as in India are now turning to food to unravel the mysteries of civilization.

If Bangkok has its immensely popular the Blue Elephant School for Thai cooking (as well as several other smaller, picturesque ones) known to even those of us in India who can’t get over the malls, the banks of the Seine its La Cuisine Paris and others of the ilk, if even the “serious” Culinary Institute of America not to mention the huge network of Le Cordon Blue schools are seeing their ranks swell thanks to weekend foodies and gourmet travelers, who would much rather attend local markets and cook lunch with their buys than “site-see” or shop-hop, the academy in Parma too could well be a destination for the foodie tourist.

Afternoon cooking classes can be as basic or involved as you like and are priced at upwards of Euros 300 per person, per class. And it would be possible to spend a couple of days visiting the nearby cheese and pasta factories not to mention salumi centres even as you do courses in dolci, primi, mains and more.

Back in the kitchen, chef Grazia, seems a relaxed man. His kitchen is possibly a much less chaotic space than it would surely have been let out to a bunch of bumbling amateurs. In their place we have two of India’s most assured chefs specializing in contemporary European cuisine. Caperberry’s Abhijeet Saha and Olive’s Manu Chandra may bring different sensibilities and personalities to the table, but, here, at Barilla, they work in tandem, deftly, finishing off each other’s dishes, anticipating, waiting, even cleaning, not to mention helping us, the unskilled, prep the food — sometimes sternly, sometimes with a lazy wave of the hand, rarely with class-teacherly approval.

As the last of the dishes get plated up and the wine uncorked, we head to the library. It’s been a meal worth cooking. And eating.

(The column appeared in the Financial Express on Dec 11, 2011)

Copyright 2009 India - Food & Travel Guide

My day at the Academia Barilla, Parma