The Well-Fed Bong

Its always wonderful to find a hidden find, tucked away in hard to reach places but still worth reaching. One such was Indian Accent , a restaurant folded carefully into a nook in a gated community of quiet lanes and expensive bungalows. The Manor Hotel that houses the restaurant is itself a silent, comforting place with kurta-clad staff, cozy lawns  and understated decor. How did I find it? Embarassingly enough, like half of India I read Vir Sanghvi. And BBC's new Good Food Magazine . And the Times Food Award. I and fellow culinary explorer Atul headed into the recesses of Friends Colony; it took us a few wrong turns before we were settled into the dying minutes of lunch service. Napkins on lap, cellphones on tablecloth, we sat down to the serious business of studying the menu. Too late for the tasting menu, a la carte it was going to be. I liked the name, it seemed to imply that the food was like your global desi – hugo boss suits and frequent flier miles, but with a desi ta...

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, ...

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 emu looks like a kidsmenu version of the ostrich, but is apparently only distantly related (not even the same continent). I had seen a hundred emus from faraway in Karjat and three up close in a resort in Hampi (one wanted to befriend my shoe). A friend told me that it has a reputation for being stubborn, (but I think that’s before being cooked). And I knew they had three toes (ostriches have only two) - basically, I considered myself an expert on emus. So this emu expert was driving through the old NH4 highway, looking for some dhaba named after Toni. Signs for the dhaba peppered the highway once we were past Lonavala, and eventually we were informed in warm tones that they accept all major credit cards, do come on in. Toni da dhaba wasn’t exactly tony but it definitely was well-known - teeming as it was with people. At the back right where we parked the car was a cage full of emus. Not only that, the massive menu had menu scattered all over it, including a section of Ton...

Food, sometimes, is not just about food. Sometimes its about the stories behind food and once in a while the story is as big as the food. Here is one such story. Its just story, no food was harmed in the process… I didn’t know very much about Ambala, but I had the vague idea that it was in Punjab (it's in Haryana) and that it was somehow associated with dhabas (The only time I'd heard of Ambala before was when I went mutton-hunting in Los Angeles and discovered Ambala Dhaba ). Obviously, dreams of mutton again swimming in my head, I went looking on the Internet for famous dhabas in Ambala. So the story starts. It turns out Ambala does indeed have a dhaba that’s famous. The Hindustan Times warned me that the famous one is full of copies – apparently there were over ten of them (even a reference to one in Chandigarh ). This piqued my interest – anything with this much imitation must be worthy of flattery) - so we headed to Ambala. On the GT Road (now all expressway-looking...

I was up in the hills drinking in the scenery, but of course food needed to be on the agenda too. Himachal Pradesh, the land of apples and mushrooms, is a dramatically beautiful state. After a few hours of the flat Punjab plains, twisty roads started spiralling into the heavens pretty much from the instant we crossed the border. Straight-line distances lose their meaning, and the drives (specially if you have a camera) take forever. It seemed only logical that we should be eating Himachali food, but like the aforementioned twisty roads the path to ‘local’ cuisine was anything but straight. The dhabas lining the drive up had proved Himachal to be foodwise quite firmly under the Punjabi thumb (given that it was once part of Punjab, this was hardly unexpected). Enquiries about Himachali food wasn’t met with the most encouraging of responses; one person even told me flatly that there was no such thing – it was all Punjabis anyway. It seemed from where I was standing that Himachalis drank ...

Himachal Pradesh offers stunning views, pretty much from the instant you cross the border at Parwanoo and start your twisty way up into the Shivaliks. Every twist and turn brings new vistas and the temptation to stop and stare, but man does not live by scenery alone. Food, as in much of India, was pretty much everywhere.  HPMC juice stalls and dhabas littered the place, but the odd Chinese or burger joint, or even a bakery sometimes poked its head in. We stopped at a few miles from Parwanoo, picked at random by our driver who wanted a tea. The tea - standard stuff - came with something called fan, which turned out to be a khakra thinking itself a footlong. We stopped at a roadside strip with four stalls. Two juice stores were sandwiched by two dhabas tin a mirror-image arrangement, hanging precariously off the edge of the road. The dhabas boht had the same menu; the HPMC stalls sold juices, wines and pickles of the same kinds. I never cracked the mystery of the mirroring, bu...

In the days when I used to frequent trains, one of the (parentally unapproved) food items available at Asansol station was the Litti. Laloo has spread Litti Chokha across the railway network, on trains as well as stalls in railway stations across the country.  Litti is essentially a ball of dough baked in the dying embers of a fire. Fancy litti variants have a filling (usually sattu), simple ones are left to fend for themselves. Its very similar to the traditional Rajashthani bati (of the dal bati fame) but without the ghee.  It can't really be eaten by itself, some kind of accompaniment is required. On Asansol's railway station it was a kind of wierd tasty sauce, but more commonly its something called chokha - a brinjal-centric mixed veg mash not very different from baigan bharta. It was with some interest, therefore, that I read a Mid-Day article describing it as North India Vada Pao. Inspired by the article, I went in search of Mumbai's litti vendors as part of my ...

Ethnic is always an interesting challenge. Dictionaries blithely define 'ethnic' as belonging to a shared cultural, linguistic or racial identity - which unfortunately means that the world is full of 'ethnic' restaurants. Nearly every restaurant in New York or Tokyo or London is, by that definition, ethinc - they just belong to the ethnic majority rather than some exotic minority. Italian, Sushi, New American, French...et al. Here again, India saves the day. In a world full of ethnic restaurants, India is overloaded with that unique label - multicuisine. South Indian thali with paneer butter masala, chicken tandoori with chowmein, Russian salad with schezwan soup, its all here, only in India. Armed with the information that Indians when eating out order (that uniquely Indian version of) Chinese food more often than any other kind, eateries in India went about arming their menus with lots of words starting with chow. Then, as tandoori chicken and paneer butter masala s...

Chicken is simple to cook. If you put your mind to it then a delicious, genuinely Indian chicken dish is not that tough. Of course, there are some basics to cooking chicken Indian style. First, boneless chicken does not work - lose the bones and you'll have a weak tasteless gravy. Second, the skin has a lot of flavor so dont throw it away before cooking - pick it out after the dish is done and throw it away (you need just a little skin though, too much will just make it greasy). Third, dont go to a supermarket chain for your chicken - those look great, cook beautifully but taste of nothing. Shell out twice the money, but its worth getting non-frozen free-range chicken. The simplest chicken dish I know is a Raj-era dish called Shikari Murgh, or Hunters Chicken. I don't remember how I came by it, and the name - I guess it was cooked by shikaris when on a hunt because it's really quite simple to make. Take some large pieces of chicken, make a few slits in them to let the flavo...