The Well-Fed Bong

Mumbai isn't quite New York when it comes to writings about restaurants, but there's still a fair amount of discussion on where and what to eat, making it very unlikely that you'll discover something completely unknown to the food paparazzi. It was with some surprise, therefore, that I stumbled upon Farid Seekh Kabab center in a crowded Jogeshwari street. I went past the shop one day, noted the crowds waiting to get in and the smells, and decided to try it out. It turned out to be one of the best seekh kababs in Mumbai - incredibly juicy (you can actually squeeze juice out of it), great taste and dirt cheap. Kabab is the only thing they  do (along with a cholestrol-spiking fried parathas), though they're willing to get you tea and pepsi from the hotel across the street. And people know they're on to a good thing; the place has an assembly line of kababs running continuously on a long charcoal sigdi, and a perpetual line of people waiting. I discovered the se...

When I started this blog some years ago, one of the most frustrating things about blogger was the absence of tagging. They've finally caught up with it, and I too have finally caught up. I just finished tagging all my posts.

There's whole rash of Bengali restaurants in Andheri Lokhandwala, where I stay, so I teamed up with a newly tattooed friend to test their mettle. The restaurants we chose were Hooghli , Hangla's and Calcutta Club . Of these, two (Hoogli and Calcutta Club) are within shouting distance of each other at the end of Oshiwara's restaurant row, while Hanglas is some distance away near Lokhandwala market. (view map) Now the question was how to test. Kosha Manghso, the seminal non-veg dish on a bong menu seemed like ideal to try the taste test. We decided to order a plate of Kosha Mangsho from each of the restaurants, and pair it with homemade luchis . The three deliveries were very interesting in their differences. All looked distinctly different from each other, had different prices and came in different packages. Hangla's medium brown version came in a big foil box and cost Rs 99. Calcutta Club delivered an orange version for Rs 80 while Hooghli was the most expensive -...

I finally managed to discover how to integrate Blogger with Facebook - its in the Notes application. Now you can see my posts on Facebook.

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...

The one thing that signals good food time in Kolkata is the luchi. Not to be confused with the non-bong poori, the luchi signals a special treat in this primarily rice-eating part of the world. The differences are subtle but important - a true luchi should be a feather-light, puffed roundel that retains its shape on the plate and doesn't flop about like the commonplace poori. Luchis come in two varieties - the regular atta version and the perfectly white, incredibly light maida luchi that only bongs make. Of course, they look unhealthy but that picture is a dinner plate full of luchi; it took half a cup of flour and a tablespoon of oil (I put 4 tablespoons of oil in the kadahi, and three remained after I finished) - that's about as much as salad dressing! That should have been enough luchis for two light diners, but I was hungry. Everyone will tell you luchis are difficult to make, and it took me a long time to try making it. Frankly, the weight of culinary expectation dis...

On Saturday, I made a dessert as part of my multi-course extravaganza. The Bengali sweet tooth is legendary, so dessert is simply unavoidable. I made shujir payesh - a version of the famed bong payesh that is considerably easier to make than the rice variety. Shujir payesh, or polenta milk pudding, is actually one of the easiest and quickest desserts I know how to make, though I must admit it took me years of doing it wrong and failing to get it right. Its basically sooji (or rawa or polenta or grits) with milk, sugar and a little cardamom, optionally with raisins, cashews, pistachios, saffron and whatever else moves your cheese. Brown lots of cashews and raisins in a little ghee, then add a handful sooji and stir till the distinct aroma of frying sooji comes out (about 30 sec). Then add milk (at least twice the volume of sooji), a cardamom pod or two and sugar, thicken slightly and you're done. Stay low on the sugar; this is supposed to be only mildly sweet. Top it with saffron...

Prithvi Cafe has always been one of my favorite places to sit around and read books. In addition to uncomfortable seats and a steady supply of cheap tea, Prhtivi provided a continous stream of peoplewatching that was difficult to equal. It helped that the cafe, owned by Bengalis and kitchened by a chef who could speak and cook Bengali, was able to turn out Mumbai's best Shorshe Bata Maach. And then there was the Irish coffee... I went back to Prithvi after a fairly long time. Much had changed since then; the cafe is now operated by Mocha. There's no Bengali food in sight and there's not even the smallest scent of alchohol in the Irish Coffee. There's also a new menu with specialities from different landmark restaurants of Mumbai. The net result - I like the new, much warmer lighting. The seats are just as uncomfortable as ever in the old section but thats still the place for peoplewatching. The chai is definitely better, and the food even if lacking all shorshe is act...

I finally got around to cooking a full, multi-course vegetarian meal for my friends. Here's what finally came out... Kumro bhate - Steamed pumpkin mash with coconut and raw mustard oil, and rice Posto bhate - poppyseed paste with raw mustard oil, and rice. This was actually the surplus poppyseed paste from the aloo posto, but it tastes great nevertheless Methi shaag - Fenugreek leaves stir fried with roasted peanuts Aloo posto - Potatoes in a poppyseed and nigella sauce Boti Chocchori - Cauliflower, peas and snow peas steamed with mustard. Snow peas, of course, are not traditional but substitute nicely for broad beans (sheem) which are. Mushur dal - Masoor dal with panch phoron and chopped cilantro Chhanar Dalna - Paneer in a ginger-cumin sauce with whole garam masala Shujir Payesh - Rawa milk pudding with saffron and cardamom. (Its actually five courses, because 4,5 and 6 are meant to be had together) All this, of course, with steamed rice. I ran out of Gobindobhog, but the...

When hunting for great food in the bylanes of Kolkata in my teenage years, one thing that we would often go looking for was the famed mutton rezala. Aminia, Nizam and many other places did good rezalas, but the most famous one was Shabir in Kolkata's Chandi Chowk area. I've been back to Shabir a few times over the years, but this time I went to the second-greatest rezala place in Kolkata - New Aaliya on Bentick street, very close to Statesman House - and came out licking my fingers for the next month. Rizala originates from Lucknow (and is even listed in Dastarkhan-e-Avadh by RK Saxena) but seems to have survived in Kolkata in a unique variant (and its not just the spelling that changed); I've never seen quite the same thing in any other city. Though RK Saxena's authoritative Avadhi recipe describes it as a thick white gravy, Rezala - its Kolkata variety - is spicy, thin and just a little sweet. Awadhi Rezala is made with mutton but in Kolkata, the chicken variety i...

In the last two years, I've really learned to make use of ginger-garlic paste. Though books repeatedly tell you of the wonderful properties of ginger, specially the use of its thickening effects in Indian cooking, its only recently that I practically stumbled upon what exactly they mean. Ginger-garlic paste, added to hot oil or ghee and simmered on a low flame till it becomes vaguely gelatinous and releases oil. The trick is to make sure the paste is free-flowing and not very dry, and the simmer is slow and long. Keep simmering it undisturbed till the paste browns slightly at the bottom and you can smell it caramelizing. How much ginger to garlic? I used to use roughly equal quantities, but my favoured mixture now is about 50% more garlic than ginger. Garlic, in particular, mellows with heat so more garlic makes sense, but I learned this from Jiggs Kalra's book of recipes. The other trick is to be generous in quantities of ginger-garlic paste - that's what makes your sil...

Ok, so I've ignored this blog for a long time. Just over two years since my last post. 1-Jan-2008 is probably a good time to restart. A lot happened in the two years. I changed jobs, came back to Mumbai, stayed in two different places and did lots more cooking and eating. Coming back to India, foodwise, has been a big change. Of course, I get to eat much more by way of Indian food (and its innumerable regional varieties), but I also get a lot less of New York's wonderful profusion of food from the rest of the world. I also get to cook a lot more, and observe how cooking and shopping has changed even in the few years that I was away with the advent of hypermarkets. Here's to the return of a convergence of two of my major interests - talking and food.