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Hyper Hype
Tucked away inside the InOrbit Shoppers Stop is a gourmet Hypercity outlet, with lots of canned and fresh food for sale but also a deli. Its a wonderful ambience. Here you are, sitting on barstools at a counter, surrounded by food, and being served freshly prepared meals from the top-of-the-line ingredients on sale there. You can hardly argue with the idea. Unfortunately, the reality is less than overwhelming. I and a friend went for lunch there, and finally settled on two of the three sandwich choices they had - a BLT and a smoked salmon. We wanted a salad too, but most compartments were empty so we settled on a soup, (the only one on offer was mushroom and that too a canned version, not from scratch). We had some fun picking off sides from the counters, quite literally shopping for supper - a packet of chips, a piece of bread, a drink and settled down to wait for our sandwiches. That's when things went downhill. The salmon sandwich was very unexciting - real smoked salmon, but...
Imitating Imtiaz
Ok so I do a lot of cooking and I'd love to claim it all comes from taste memory and sheer genius. However, since no one seems to be swallowing the claim, here are some of my secrets. There's of course the whole business of eating, and trying out and asking my mother and google, but then there are cookbooks too. I'm a great reader of cookbooks to extract re-usable techniques and flavour combinations that I can then tweak. Most of my experiments with Avadhi food are inspired by the recipes found in Jiggs Kalra's book "Prashad - Cooking with the Indian Masters" . The section on Avadh is written by Imtiaz Qureshi, whose food you can try at Dum Pukht in the ITC hotels. Another source of recipes is R.K. Saxena's website on Tripod (or at least, it seems like his website) that lists recipes from his book "Dastarkhwan-e-Awadh". Camellia Panjabi's book on the 50 Great Curries of India has also provided me some very reliable recipes. Minakshi Dasg...
Pure Expense
A few days ago, I had a very expensive lunch. Beer, two courses and no dessert the bill came to a staggering Rs 6,000 for two. No, I wasn’t on Wall Street chewing gold-plated hamburgers (that would have cost more). We were in Mumbai, on a normal weekday lunch, with a friend who had just been offered a great job (yesyes, he paid). The restaurant was Pure , in the Taj Lands End. This was only the second time I was eating lunch there, and I must say its a restaurant of interest for more than just the prices on the menu. Though usually empty at lunch (indeed, both times we were the only diners) its a gorgeous space – pastel latticework faintly reminiscent of Mughal architecture, large tables, stylish flower centerpieces, service more polished than the polite but intrusive kinds you usually get (check the Taj site out for all the brand names attached, if you’re inclined). Its also backed by a culinary philosophy that the waiters and the menu try to explain. Michel Nischan , the chef-inspi...