The Well-Fed Bong

One of the most useful words in German - or at least the word I found most use for after the usual hellos and thankyous - was frühstück . This double-barrel umlaut of a word is a key ingredient of a successful B&B stay - it being the second of the B's and to my latearrival earlydeparture ways, the more important of the two. Last, not least, that sort of thing. Now I had taken German lessons in college, but my focus was much more on lunch in those days (the classes were usually just before noon). Frühstück, on the other hand, is breakfast - lots of heavy-duty german-style snorting required to get the right sound - and it is a glorious thing in Germany. I used to be a frequent visitor to Deutschland, and my B&B hostess would wake up at the crack of dawn to buy bread for me (and her family). The smell of fresh bread would often be what I woke up to - fist-sized buns of sesame, multi-grain, poppyseed, pumpernickel all ready to be my friends for the day. Not every culture h...

A few days ago, while wading through a reliably satisfying meal at one of the many Mainland Chinas of Mumbai, I was asked The Question again. No doubt you have asked this many times yourselves, in your head or to your friends or the occasional visitor from the real mainland of China - how different is Chinese food in India from real Chinese food? The short, maggi-sauce answer is easy (its different) but the longer answer - like all longer answers to Great Questions - is complicated. The first twist is in defining what one means by "Chinese" food. China, after all, is a really huge number of people and many different food cultures - and contrary to popular opinion they don’t all eat fried rice with kung pao chicken. In fact, food from one province can verge on the inedible for another, much like my soundly Bengali grandmother's opinion of a dosa. Indian Chinese food is heavily influenced by the first wave of Chinese immigrants who came to India from Canton province, and...

Food blogs are gaining some prominence. In the last few days, two people have posted on my blog, one offering to send me Danone yoghurt to taste and write about, and another a missive from Sweden on food products planning to enter the Indian market. Which brings me to an interesting thought - Busybee and Vir Sanghvi notwithstanding, India does not have much of a culture of mainstream food journalism. No major newspaper has a food editor or even a dedicated food section. Food magazines are at best Femina supplements, while A Michelin-like guide is as distant a dream as many of the cars that sport those tires. In contrast, The New York Times gives its (daily) food section prominence equal to the sports pages, while Europe worships its many food guides (chefs have committed suicide for failing to get the desired stars). The food press worldwide is massive - innumerable magazines with names like Gourmet or Restaurant (we're not even talking wine mags) sell lakhs of issues; they'...

If one expects little of airline food, one expects even less if hunger pangs strike at the airport. A decade ago, Indian airports were places where famine victims would feel at home – even coffee usually came in steel containers on the back of a cycle. International airports were better, but only if your tastes ran to McDonalds or Sbarro. Things have changed in the last decade. Flier numbers increased, airlines stopped serving even peanuts, but most importantly Osama’s antics led to a lot of people stewing long hours away between security and boarding. Nothing induces food cravings as much as boredom, and where there is demand supply will catch up. I’ve written earlier about airport food – sandwiches at Milan’s Malpensa , American at Madhuri Dixit’s Denver and more recently goose and dim sum in Hong Kong . A few days ago another airport restaurant caught my attention; this time much closer - homechi Mumbai. Just outside the newly prettied arrivals area of the Indian Airlines domesti...

This Sunday’s cycle ride yielded a mish-mash of culinary experiences. The day started with Bandra’s Theobroma and its Akuri . It was quite nice, creamy and spiced right; and a major star of the sideshow was the cheesy hash brown. The macaroons that came next were, however, a huge disappointment – the raspberry filling was delicious but the macaroon itself crumbled into gloopy nothingness in my hands. Not a patch on Le 15. Next stop was VT, and an old favourite seems to have spruced up again. Cannon (just outside the exit for the pedestrian subway) used to be Mumbai’s greatest pao bhaji (ok one of the greatest) but had in the middle fallen distinctly into mediocrity; thankfully it seems to have recovered its lost touch. Now I think of Pao Bhaji as comfort rather than truly gourmet, and indeed I think of most pao bhaji as insipid mash, but Cannon (along with Sardar in Tardeo) is definitely one of those the critics tag “worth visiting”. The secret of their explosive name is a mystery, b...

Haircuts are usually not on my list of pleasant, but friends sometimes take pity on me and treat me to goodies afterwards. Tuesday night the goody was a tasting session at the launch of Moshe’s newest outlet in (finally) Bandra. The location is tucked up above Nature’s Basket, a death-defying climb up some narrow stairs or a lift ride away from the street. The layout is similar to his other locations – walking in brings you face to face with the breads, and then there’s a nice dining area which, for this tasting session, was dominated by a table filled with salads, cheeses and turkey cold cuts. I’ve never been thank thankful for turkey, but the Mediterranean-tinged salads were, without exception, wonderful. Then the real assault started. As we sat down with glasses of pleasant white wine, little square plates filled with food started chasing us in what seemed like a never-ending supply. Nice little kebabs on sticks, poppers of asparagus and leek, two kinds of risotto, tofu, spicy chick...

Rajpurohit Bhanwar Singh is not a man you would expect to find wandering the lanes of Mumbai, but that’s where I met him, churning out Mumbai’s best paneer jalebis for Gangaur at Juhu Shopping Center. Now paneer jalebis aren’t your tappori roadside stuff; we’re talking rolaty here with paneer, khoya, milk. and saffron all lined up. Crisp on the outside, but much juicier inside – this one’s a totally different taste and texture experience. Other sweetshops (like the disappointing Tiwari’s next door) make paneer Jalebis too, but Gangaur’s fat juicy crisp versions are distinctly better. Royal priest and all that… This is not the first time I’ve had paneer jalebis, but the variety I grew quite literally fat on was at Kharagpur’s Tech Market. The Bongs will have no truck with paneer, so we would call it chhanar jilipi . Unlike the regular flour jalebis, or even the paneer-milk versions of Gangaur (the sweetshop has strong Kolkata roots, by the way) – these are more like gulab jamuns ...

While much is written about food, cookbooks are usually not the best to find great prose. Great pictures, great recipes, even great murder weapons are often in good supply but prose;that's usually the province of food eaters. It being a rule and all that, there need to be exceptions. When Rushina invites a bunch of dedicated, carnivorous bloggers to a veggie meal in Gamdevi, it certainly smells like one such. This time, we were faced with Yashbir Sharma and The Food Trails of Punjab – a book that is definitely a work of passion. Its hard to describe the book – a cookbook, a travelogue, a Lonely Planet of Punjabi Dhabas – picture, recipes, cook histories, dhaba tales, hotel recommendations all threaded together with honest, unpolished prose that makes for compelling reading. It is a true cookbook, because there are pages and pages of detailed recipes. It is also a great guide to the dhabas and other eateries of Punjab. Squeezed inside are stories of some of the men behind these ...

Aurus is better known for its miniskirt traffic-jams than its food, but this is an injustice. This very stylish venue, laced with open-air seating, fancy cutlery and a great wine choice is also the place for some of the city’s best western food - helmed by Vicky Ratnani . Like most people, I had sampled Aurus food in bits and pieces between conversations or hanging onto drinks at parties and nights out. The food was good - demanding enough attention to get your eyes of the nearest celebrity leg for a few minutes – but we’d never actually had a meal there till recently. And this, as I’ve mentioned before, was a definite injustice. Sunanda’s birthday seemed the appropriate occasion for a fancy, al-fresco-by-the-sea dining spectacular – a chef’s menu with everything (including some soft-shell crab that Vicky excitedly announced he’d laid his hands on that day). And it was quite a spectacular meal – unending courses, food, presentation and the infectious, child-like enthusiasm Vicky bring...

It makes for a nice title, but the mutton is no more modern than the shop it came from. Having been stranded by meetings and car-parkings, I managed to get some thoroughly nice mutton cuts from Modern Mutton Shop in Bandra. I didn’t have enough onions for a true attempt at Kosha Mangsho, but decided instead on bhuna gosht (which is basically a blanket name for a mutton dish that is not quite kosha mangsho). Attempting to impress the ladies also led me to rustle up some luchis . I laid it on some nice blue plates, topped it with a few slivers of green chilli (purely for cosmetic effect) and clicked away. Yes, the luchis have a great shape – its from a cookie cutter. The haiku of the mutton is as follows – mutton marinated in dahi, then whole bayleaf, cinnamon, clove, elaichi, badi elaichi, dry red chillies in hot oil, some coarsely chopped onions fried to brown, ginger garlic paste, some dhania and kali mirch all cooked till the oil separates. Then add mutton, the dahi marinade, ...

Ninety minutes of start-stop is not exactly geared to improve one’s tastebuds, so it is with some lack of joy (and food) that I approached the dinner party thrown by a very close friend of a very close friend (that, I’ve learned, is the most unavoidable kind – even the end of the universe would have to be considered). But finally it was sighted in the horizon – Acres Club , Chembur. The map below is not just here to compensate for the lack of photos – trust me, you’ll need it. View Larger Map Anyway, interminable brakes and gear changes later, suitably settled into the pleasant divans of the Indian Harvest Restaurant , pacified by a glass of excellent Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc, I was in a more forgiving mood. The venue seemed nice, but call it my snooty-address snobbery – I still wasn’t expecting anything more than chicken-tikka-masala to appear. I just could not think of Chembur rising much above that. Imagine my surprise, then, when the most delectable biriyani appeared. Appar...

For the rest of India, saag is usually the ingredient in a curry, such as saag gosht or saag paneer but the true-blue Bengali raises his left eyebrow every so gently with disdain at such pulverized, spiced and curried stuff. Saag to us is shaag – fresh greens and minimal fussing around with. And the Bengali munches through a lot of different shaags - laal , pui, palak, note and others that are mostly out of reach unless from your own garden. One shaag that is, however, easy to get nearly everywhere (even in the USA, where Indian groceries sell a perfectly usable frozen version) is methi shaag or fenugreek leaves. It also happens to be one of my favourite shaags, and to top it all is, as you can all see below, extremely photogenic. Methi shaag has some characteristic differences from other Bengali shaag recipes; firstly there are no spices (methi is quite a strong flavour in itself). Also, it uses peanuts, which is not that common in Bengali food otherwise. And its a bachelor’...

I’ve been back a while now, so this is the last of my Hong Kong posts. I didn’t really eat much more than street food in Hong Kong, but there were a few noteworthy meals fitted in there. The first was the dim sum meal I mentioned in an earlier post , but there were two others. My best proper Chinese meal was with my very multi-coloured friend PD, who took me to one of the few places in Hong Kong with lines. We went to Crystal Jade Xia Long Bao in the rather swanky IFC mall at the bottom of Hong Kong’s tallest building. This is the same Crystal Jade that fed me dumplings right off the boat (plane) but now, under PD’s watchful, paternal eye, it was going to be the full deal.   Some rapid-fire ordering later, food started landing up. Barbecued pork in a spicy noodle came first, a flavourful clear broth loaded with spice in which floated a generous helping of noodles and slices of meltingly fantastic, slightly sweet barbecued pork. Alongside were some sauce-tossed wontons and,...

This Saturday, I was faced with two small onions and a kilo of frozen chicken. Onion always bring do piaza to mind. The dish has a nice historic tale of its own – it is traceable to Mulla, one of Akbar’s Navratnas , a commoner who had worked his way through the imperial poultry farm to the royal court. Mulla (who was a scholar and administrator, not a cook) was so famous for this recipe that it became his royal title – he was officially called Mulla Do Piaza . He was said to have invented the recipe in question as a cost-saving measure; apparently the royal kitchen prepared both grated onions and fried onions for use in different dishes, much of which was wasted at the end of the day. I must also mention that though do piaza features in both Lucknawi and Hyderabadi food, Bengali men are particularly fond of claiming culinary excellence at it. The humble onion is omnipresent in food but usually as a sidekick - it is unusual to find the onion as the star, and a double role like thi...

The first thing I did stepping off the plane into Hong Kong was to head for dim sum. Luckily, Crystal Jade was right in front of the exit, dim sum conveniently at hand. In short order, Xiao Long Bao soup dumplings in my stomach, I stepped into a bold new world ready to chow through the chinese. As any Wikipedia-fed fool will tell you – dim sum means touch the heart and started up as a tea-time snack in Canton. Now that dim sum has worldwide recognition and is starting to challenge noodles as the flag bearer of Chinese food, I figure I should put some focus into it in its native land. Of course, it turned out to be harder to get in Hong Kong than I thought. Firstly, the Chinese insist on this whole daytime business – most places start at ungodly hours (even 5am was bandied around) and by the time the average conference goer (as in, I myself) has gotten himself out of his suit (as in, 2pm) the average shop is not in the mood to touch hearts. Then there was this little matter of what dim ...

I wrote earlier about food photography, but I was quite unprepared for Hong Kong. The night markets and the profusion of eateries there turned out to be a parade of food photos like no other.   Chinese eateries are known for their long menus but plastering every square inch of the walls with food shots gives these places an unusual atmosphere; as if you’re part of some massive photo exhibit. This comprehensive plastering seems to serve both purposes – point-n-shoot ordering and wallpapering, and of course if you’re not Chinese it gives you the barest hint of what you might expect. The photographs are quite good (if all in a vary straightforward, angled topshot style). The plates are artfully arranged and properly lighted, there are the usual colourful touches of lettuce or artful sauce splashes, and its all printed in large, sharp colour on photo-quality flex or paper. The interesting part is - I can’t imagine cheap eateries actually investing generous amounts on photographers and...

Walking the streets of Hong Kong often brought me face to face with a funny snack; it looked to me like giant brown bubble-wrap and people seemed to regularly queue up for it. Meat did not seem to be involved, so I stayed clear of the queues till, eventually, google warned me I was missing a cultural phenomenon. Gei Dan Jai, Eggettes, Egg waffles, these things are everywhere on the streets of Hong Kong. I finally picked up the courage to buy, for a Hong Kong dollar, one of those folded bubblewrap eggette sheets. I had been told to expect mildly sweet vanilla-eggy flavour, crispy outsides and chewey insides and – well - thats what I got. Looks cute, tastes pleasant, not exactly earth-shaking. Methinks a bit of ice cream or chocolate sauce (of which I saw no signs) will do wonders. I guess its one of those things – you know you’re from Hong Kong if you salivate over Gei Dan Jai.

Sure, everyone eats the spare bits of whatever animal happens to be dinner, but no one does it quite like the Chinese. The Bengalis diligently polish off every inch of a fish, the English trot out the occassional trotter, the French wax about tripes and sweetbreads while Bycullah trumpets khiri and kaleji to all and sundry. All this, however, pales in comparison with the average street vendor in Hong Kong, whose entire existence seems focused on what the English translation rather guilelessly calls ‘offal’. Intestines, tongues, feet, knuckles, necks, ears, wings, after a while you start wondering where the regular bits of the animal go. Maybe to McDonalds. This is also one big aspect of Chinese cuisine that is never exported. I don’t think we’re likely to see Mainland China featuring intestine or skin anytime soon. Even cities like New York or San Francisco boasting substantial and authentic Chinatowns steer clear of organs.     Some of the offal is rather droolworthy....

I landed in Hong Kong deprived of breakfast and headed straight to the geese. Maxim’s at the airport makes no bones about how great it is. “Secret Recipe” “Delicious” all the important keywords were there. The counter was a straight lift from McDonalds, but they did have some tasty roasted geese on rice.   And, of course, I love their deadbird displays.

Right across the road from the Park Hotel are these big white letters on coca-cola red, once in 2D, once more in 3D; in other words, unmistakeable. I was finally face to face with the the Chennai branch of the injured party in the local biriyani wars.   Much as us outsiders insist on thinking of Chennai as veggie heaven, the city is actually teeming with biriyani joints – a feat attributed in no small part to the very successful Thalappakattu chain (the last letter of the spelling is critical here). In an earlier post almost exactly a year ago, I blogged about a quirky story of intrigue, marketing and myth-building around the popularity of biriyani in Chennai and its now-ubiquitous association with headgear ( thalappa ) – apparently two claimants presented themselves as the headgear trademark for biriyani. The battle between the Payyoli Rawther defender and the Dindigul challenger went to court, but seems finally to have been settled now with both parties left standing. T...

Though I’m Bengali with a sweet tooth that would put an elephant to shame, I don't cook desserts that often. One of my early attempts at making shujir halwa – a simple matter of combining semolina, milk and sugar (or so I thought) – had led to much embarrassment. Blissfully ignorant of the semolina-milk ratio and having never been told to roast the semolina first, I ventured forth and multiplied. Not so much time later, after poured every packet of milk at home into the attempt, I was left with five litres of what the unkind would describe as halwa-flavoured fevicol. That is now behind me, and if people remain stuck to one of my halwas nowadays the reasons are entirely more pleasant. Having cracked the suji code, I went through a whole halwa phase with dal, besan, and the rockstar of halwas – gajar . Then, having conquered the impossible, I gave it up a decade ago and except for the occasional foray remained largely halwa-free. Till recently. One day, a hard days’ work safely under...

My eye-candy post proved to be very popular, which may well be destined to make me lazy (picture equals hazaar words and all that). However, I’m determined to be as wordy as ever so here’s a ramble on photographs without photographs. I must say, Friday’s foodblogger dinner opened my photographic eyes. The top honours must go to Shaheen’s purplefoodie.com , where the pictures are so outstandingly wow that droolworthy is an understatement. Her potato photos should come with statutory warnings for dieters (though the garlic olive oil may provide some relief). Somehow she even manages to sex up the simple opening of a can . Nowadays, armed with multimegapixel phones and digital cameras, everyone’s photoblogging food . Once upon a time people used to photograph their kids obsessively but I guess food moves less, allows for reorders and often looks better. Food photography is the logical child of the trend of plating food in artistic ways. One can hardly eat at top restaurants nowada...

Blogs, I notice, have become very visual of late. Food blogs, in particular, seem to have improved in leaps and bounds on the quality of photographs. Just so that I dont feel left behind, I’m posting here four of my nicest food photographs.   Number one is a photo of a food stall at the Kandivali Lokhandwala Durga Puja, where fresh parathas are being made in preparation for the evening rush Number two is a sweet potato and starfruit chaat seller in Chandi Chowk in Delhi. Chicken vadas on a tawa in a Mahim bylane A store in Istanbul offering traditional turkish pide breads.