Showing posts with label PUNE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PUNE. Show all posts
Thursday, November 10, 2022
Belly, Belly Good: 9 Interesting Pork Belly Preparations Around India
Saturday, January 20, 2018
Waiter, There’s a Dessert in my Drink!
Is it a dessert or is it a cocktail? Precariously
balancing that fine line are a host of dessert-inspired cocktails. We sweeten
you up with a few such post dinner drinks.
By
Raul Dias
This drinkable, ‘martinified’ version of a traditional crème brûlée is a custard and vanilla flavoured cocktail infused with vanilla vodka, replete with a hard-caramel shard to replicate the glassy top of the French dessert.
Available at Scribble Stories, 21B, Santhal ONGC Complex, Opposite Lilavati Hospital, Reclamation, Bandra (w), Mumbai
Call 022-26400754
Cost Rs 475
The Peche Melba
While the classic dessert, the Peach Melba, was itself invented—again by Auguste Escoffier—in honour of famed Australian opera singer Dame Nellie Melba, this homage to a homage is a cocktail made from strawberry coulis, peach extract and some vanilla ice cream, all shaken with vodka.
Available at Pandora Gastronomy and Bar, Ground Floor, Nyati Unitree, Nagar Road, Yerwada, Pune
Call 020-30189820
Cost Rs 375
Saucier
Inspired by a classic dessert cocktail created by French pâtissier Auguste Escoffier, this version sees the pairing of sparkling wine, angostura bitters and maraschino cherry liqueur with bourbon and vanilla ice cream. And to make it still more dessert-esque, it is garnished with an edible nasturtium flower and silver dragées.
Available at The Runway Project, 2nd Floor, North Sky Zone, High Street Phoenix Mills, Lower Parel, Mumbai
Call 022-49151000
Cost Rs 825
Gingerbread Prohibition Pop-up
This prohibition era-meets-dessert cocktail is a rather unusual melange of bourbon infused with caramel popcorn, espresso, gingerbread and popcorn syrups and a dash of all spice bitter, that’s all topped up with a splash of stout. And in keeping with the speakeasy theme of the drink, the cocktail glass comes wrapped in a sheet of newspaper!
Available at Prankster, Shop No. 8-9-10, First Floor, Sector 29, Gurugram
Call 0124-4266653/54
Cost Rs 425
Toblerone
This after-dinner cocktail that is the deceptively potent sum of its honey, cream, Baileys Irish Cream and dark rum parts, is a drinkable paean to the nougat and honey-redolent, undulating mountain peak-shaped Swiss chocolate bar—the Toblerone.
Available at Izaya, NCPA, Gate No. 2, Nariman Point, Mumbai
Call 022-22821212
Cost Rs 490
Willy Wonka
No list of dessert cocktails can be complete without a nod to Willy Wonka. Named after him, this post-dinner martini cocktail sees whiskey, creme de cacao and dark chocolate shaken together and poured into a chocolate sauce lined martini glass that’s garnished with a chocolate shard.
Available at The Sassy Spoon, Express Towers, Ramnath Goenka Marg, Nariman Point, Mumbai
Call +91-9920003500
Cost Rs 420
(An edited version of this piece was first published in the 29th January, 2018 issue of India Today magazine https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/leisure/story/20180129-dessert-cocktails-creme-brulee-martini-gingerbread-prohibition-pop-up-1149657-2018-01-19)
Sunday, October 22, 2017
New Flavours Galore
Right from the wonders of Mexican moles to Peruvian ceviches and the Ethopian messob, a whole smorgasbord of new restaurants around India are referencing myriad Latin American and African cuisines like never before, making ‘tis the season for a bit of exotic flavours on our plates!
By Raul Dias
There’s no doubting the fact that India has, for the last couple of years, been ensnared in the
vice-like grip of a raging culinary vortex that’s spewing out every conceivable cuisine trend that,
we the diner, are only too happy to lap up (pun intended!). Never mind how outré or over the top
they may be. Today, we may know our Thai tom yums from our Italian risottos and our Korean
gimbaps from the now de rigueur Japanese gunkan makis.
But recently, there has been a whole new breed of restaurants cropping up around the country.
Each representing a few hitherto unknown cuisines of Africa and Latin America. Each hoping to
break the Italian-Chinese- Japanese cuisine ‘hegemony’. And each making it their mission to
make sure we acquaint ourselves with exotic eats like fluffy injeras from Ethiopia, jellofs from
Nigeria and churrascaria from South Brazil, among others.
And while there have been (failed) introductory attempts made in the past with places like
Ubuntu in Mumbai serving South African food, the recently shuttered Manny’s Square in Delhi
doing its bit for Nigerian cuisine and even a short-lived Brazilian restaurant called Churrascaria
Brazil in Bengaluru, the following are bold new places that are making valiant inroads onto the
experimental Indian diner’s tabletop, straight out of Africa and Latin America…
Latino Vibes
Introducing tongue twisters of dishes like pão de queijo (cheese fritters), escondidinho (steak
topped with mascarpone cheese) and rocambole de espinafare (veggie-filled spinach rolls) to the
Indian diner’s culinary lexicon is this restaurant Boteco—with two branches in Pune and a new
three-months- old one in Mumbai—that claims to be the country’s first all-Brazilian eatery. And
yes, they do a mean version of Brazil’s national drink, the caipirinha which is the refreshing sum
of its cachaça, sugar and lime parts.
Bringing to Mumbai a range of exotic Pan-Hispanic flavours, Luca charts its food expedition
from the mercados of Mexico with a chocolate-laden chicken mole to the balmy islands of the
Caribbean (callaloo with okra) to finally, the sunny beaches of Coastal South America with their
riff on the Puerto Rican plantain classic tostones. Hints of colonial influences show up in dishes
like a ‘Latinised’ Spanish paella and a Portuguese feijoada.
Nestled in the heart of Gurugram’s Crowne Plaza hotel, Wildfire is an all-grills Brazilian
restaurant that takes a pescatarian detour from the usually meat-saturated churrascaria theme
with its seafood dishes like the pan fried red snapper pan fritto dentice and brodo di pesce zuppa
di saffron-redolent fish soup. But that’s not to say that the meat lovers are ignored. Take your
pick from the linguisa pork sausage, the tenderloin fraldinha or perhaps, the minty lamb paleta
de cordeiro.
Helping India discover that there is a whole other raw fish world out there as opposed to just sushi, Lima in Mumbai proudly shows off its Peruvian underpinnings. Offering a range of
ceviche—from a traditional yellowfin tuna tiradito one to a veggie-friendly enoki mushroom
iteration. All this, as you nurse a few of Lima’s signature cocktails like the pisco-saturated Lima
sour, served with a frothy cloud of meringue.
Out Of Africa
Offering up a mindbogglingly large menu of Ethiopian delicacies from the teff-flour made bread
called injera to the national dish of chicken doro wat spiced with the traditional berbere spice
mix and a carom seed and olive oil cake called nech azmud, Abyssinian, the year-old Chennai
restaurant in Alwarpet, has almost everything—including the low-slung furniture and
ingredients—brought in from Ethiopia.
While prima facie there may nothing remotely Nigerian to the look and feel of this Marine Lines,
Mumbai restaurant, a glance at Greeen Onion’s menu will throw up myriad surprises in the form
of the tomato-y jellof rice with a huge hunk of deep-fried chicken, served with fried plantain
slices as accompaniments and the funky smelling, dried fish redolent goat onugbo curry, best
mopped up with balls fashioned out of the log-shaped semovita fufu that’s flecked with pieces of
okra. Straight out of a 1001 Arabian Nights in its décor and like its name Fez alludes, this
Moroccan and North African restaurant in New Delhi’s Chanaykapuri area is a repository for all
things North African from its lamb tajine jazzed up with preserved lemons to its Tunisian stew
served with cous cous.
Interestingly even the QSR (Quick Service Restaurant) concept has cottoned onto the exotic
cuisines’ appeal. For the last few years, Galitos, a QSR in Bengaluru’s Whitefield has been
giving patrons a taste of South Africa and its neighbour Mozambique with is very popular peri-
peri chicken, the kebab-like Afrikaner sosaties and the heart-y mealie pap soup that’s made with
corn meal and flavoured with tomato and basil.
Run by the cultural wing of the Ethiopian Embassy in Chanaykapuri, New Delhi, eating out at
Blue Nile, an über-authentic Ethiopian restaurant cum café is both educational and palate-
pleasing. The staff are on hand to guide you through the nuances of this North-East African
cuisine that has its flagbearers the fluffy injera bread made from rice, teff or corn, the black lentil
rich defen mesir and the begg tibs which is sliced lamb fried with onion garlic and fresh chilli.
(A shorter, differently edited version of this piece was first published in the October 2017 issue of The Week's Smart Life magazine)
By Raul Dias
There’s no doubting the fact that India has, for the last couple of years, been ensnared in the
vice-like grip of a raging culinary vortex that’s spewing out every conceivable cuisine trend that,
we the diner, are only too happy to lap up (pun intended!). Never mind how outré or over the top
they may be. Today, we may know our Thai tom yums from our Italian risottos and our Korean
gimbaps from the now de rigueur Japanese gunkan makis.
But recently, there has been a whole new breed of restaurants cropping up around the country.
Each representing a few hitherto unknown cuisines of Africa and Latin America. Each hoping to
break the Italian-Chinese- Japanese cuisine ‘hegemony’. And each making it their mission to
make sure we acquaint ourselves with exotic eats like fluffy injeras from Ethiopia, jellofs from
Nigeria and churrascaria from South Brazil, among others.
And while there have been (failed) introductory attempts made in the past with places like
Ubuntu in Mumbai serving South African food, the recently shuttered Manny’s Square in Delhi
doing its bit for Nigerian cuisine and even a short-lived Brazilian restaurant called Churrascaria
Brazil in Bengaluru, the following are bold new places that are making valiant inroads onto the
experimental Indian diner’s tabletop, straight out of Africa and Latin America…
Latino Vibes
Introducing tongue twisters of dishes like pão de queijo (cheese fritters), escondidinho (steak
topped with mascarpone cheese) and rocambole de espinafare (veggie-filled spinach rolls) to the
Indian diner’s culinary lexicon is this restaurant Boteco—with two branches in Pune and a new
three-months- old one in Mumbai—that claims to be the country’s first all-Brazilian eatery. And
yes, they do a mean version of Brazil’s national drink, the caipirinha which is the refreshing sum
of its cachaça, sugar and lime parts.
Bringing to Mumbai a range of exotic Pan-Hispanic flavours, Luca charts its food expedition
from the mercados of Mexico with a chocolate-laden chicken mole to the balmy islands of the
Caribbean (callaloo with okra) to finally, the sunny beaches of Coastal South America with their
riff on the Puerto Rican plantain classic tostones. Hints of colonial influences show up in dishes
like a ‘Latinised’ Spanish paella and a Portuguese feijoada.
Nestled in the heart of Gurugram’s Crowne Plaza hotel, Wildfire is an all-grills Brazilian
restaurant that takes a pescatarian detour from the usually meat-saturated churrascaria theme
with its seafood dishes like the pan fried red snapper pan fritto dentice and brodo di pesce zuppa
di saffron-redolent fish soup. But that’s not to say that the meat lovers are ignored. Take your
pick from the linguisa pork sausage, the tenderloin fraldinha or perhaps, the minty lamb paleta
de cordeiro.
Helping India discover that there is a whole other raw fish world out there as opposed to just sushi, Lima in Mumbai proudly shows off its Peruvian underpinnings. Offering a range of
ceviche—from a traditional yellowfin tuna tiradito one to a veggie-friendly enoki mushroom
iteration. All this, as you nurse a few of Lima’s signature cocktails like the pisco-saturated Lima
sour, served with a frothy cloud of meringue.
Out Of Africa
Offering up a mindbogglingly large menu of Ethiopian delicacies from the teff-flour made bread
called injera to the national dish of chicken doro wat spiced with the traditional berbere spice
mix and a carom seed and olive oil cake called nech azmud, Abyssinian, the year-old Chennai
restaurant in Alwarpet, has almost everything—including the low-slung furniture and
ingredients—brought in from Ethiopia.
While prima facie there may nothing remotely Nigerian to the look and feel of this Marine Lines,
Mumbai restaurant, a glance at Greeen Onion’s menu will throw up myriad surprises in the form
of the tomato-y jellof rice with a huge hunk of deep-fried chicken, served with fried plantain
slices as accompaniments and the funky smelling, dried fish redolent goat onugbo curry, best
mopped up with balls fashioned out of the log-shaped semovita fufu that’s flecked with pieces of
okra. Straight out of a 1001 Arabian Nights in its décor and like its name Fez alludes, this
Moroccan and North African restaurant in New Delhi’s Chanaykapuri area is a repository for all
things North African from its lamb tajine jazzed up with preserved lemons to its Tunisian stew
served with cous cous.
Interestingly even the QSR (Quick Service Restaurant) concept has cottoned onto the exotic
cuisines’ appeal. For the last few years, Galitos, a QSR in Bengaluru’s Whitefield has been
giving patrons a taste of South Africa and its neighbour Mozambique with is very popular peri-
peri chicken, the kebab-like Afrikaner sosaties and the heart-y mealie pap soup that’s made with
corn meal and flavoured with tomato and basil.
Run by the cultural wing of the Ethiopian Embassy in Chanaykapuri, New Delhi, eating out at
Blue Nile, an über-authentic Ethiopian restaurant cum café is both educational and palate-
pleasing. The staff are on hand to guide you through the nuances of this North-East African
cuisine that has its flagbearers the fluffy injera bread made from rice, teff or corn, the black lentil
rich defen mesir and the begg tibs which is sliced lamb fried with onion garlic and fresh chilli.
(A shorter, differently edited version of this piece was first published in the October 2017 issue of The Week's Smart Life magazine)
Sunday, February 5, 2017
A Slice of India!
From the bakeries of Allahabad and Puducherry to homes
in Mumbai and Goa, cakes made with typically Indian ingredients like ghee and petha can be found jostling for space along with the more
ubiquitous varieties, making for interesting confectionary chimeras.
By Raul Dias
Incredible as it may be to believe, but until I was
around 10, I thought that ghee was
the only shortening agent employed in baking a cake! It was only when I began
to get ensnared in the vice-like grip of a multitude of cookery shows—thanks to
the satellite television invasion of the early 90s—did I discover butter as
being the de facto, world’s favourite cake fat. All this, much to the chagrin
of my Anglo-Indian grandmother who resolutely refused to make the switch,
insisting that her spiced fruit cake could only be made with lashings of shudh desi ghee.
Thanks to the forced WWII frugality thrust upon her in the form of grocery rationing, as a young homemaker, she came up with several recipes substituting the expensive and tough-to-procure butter with the easy-to-prepare homemade clarified butter. Recipes, along with a larder of rather strange ingredients, that would remain intrinsic parts of her baking repertoire, forever.
Speaking of strange, long before it became fashionable to add a bit of puréed pumpkin (and grated zucchini, too!) to impart a rich, moistly dense crumb to a fruit cake, my Nan would chop up bits of her favourite sweet—Agra ka petha, or sugar candy pumpkin—in lieu of the more ‘kosher’ candied peel and tutti-frutti. Along with ghee and a sprinkling of spices like sonth (dried ginger powder) and javitri (mace), she’d lovingly make her legendary fruit cake that both my mum and I have tried to replicate rather unsuccessfully over the years since Nan’s passing.
But on a recent trip to Allahabad, I came across a version of a spiced rich fruit cake that could easily step in as a worthy doppelganger to the one I’ll sadly never savour again. Once a stronghold of thousands of Anglo-Indian ‘railway’ families, Allahabad today has barely a dozen or so left. But what they’ve left behind is an edible legacy of sorts in the form of the Allahabad Cake, which is what I discovered at Bushy’s on Kanpur Road. This modest, 54-year-old little bakery still makes a scrumptious, Indianised version of a traditional fruit cake using nutmeg, saunf (fennel seeds), cinnamon, caraway seeds, ghee and a marmalade that the person at the counter told me is sourced from Loknath ki Galli—Allahabad’s foodie haven.
The mava cupcake is another Indianised cake treat most of us grew up eating here in India. Dried whole milk or mava is the chief ingredient of the moist, eggless cake that’s flecked with cardamom seeds that go pop in the mouth when bitten into! This classic tea time delicacy has been made famous by the Irani and Parsi bakeries of Mumbai and Pune—particularly Merwan’s that has several branches in both cities and by Mumbai’s iconic Sassanian bakery at Marine Lines.
Made with copious quantities of salted butter, eggs, semolina and the main star ingredient—desiccated coconut powder—the bhaat cake is Goa’s pride and joy (see recipe). A vestige of Goa’s Portuguese colonialists, this dense, intensely coconut-y calorific treat has its underpinnings in Middle Eastern confectionary, given its remarkable similarity to the basbousa semolina-orange blossom water cake of Egypt, that is understandably bereft of the very coastal Indian ingredient—the coconut.
Another close colonial cousin of bhaat is the East Indian thali sweet that uses an additional ingredient in the form of almonds ground in rose water. And alluding to its name, this festive treat is both baked and served in an inch-high steel thali. Once ready, diamond shaped slices are cut and eaten more like an Indian mithai than a cake.
On a year-long work assignment in Chennai a few years ago, my weekends were mostly spent driving down to Puducherry, both, for bar essentials restocking, and to partake in the wonder that is the vivikum cake. Also known as the Pondicherry cake, this more-ish treat is prepared by Puducherry’s Franco-Indian Christians for Christmas, though one can find it all year round at bakeries such as La Boulangerie and Baker Street. Made with ghee (there we go again!), eggs, semolina, nuts, brandy-macerated raisins and zesty lemon peel, the alcohol in the cake helps lengthen the vivikum cake’s shelf life. Not that longevity matters in this cake… err, case!
Thanks to the forced WWII frugality thrust upon her in the form of grocery rationing, as a young homemaker, she came up with several recipes substituting the expensive and tough-to-procure butter with the easy-to-prepare homemade clarified butter. Recipes, along with a larder of rather strange ingredients, that would remain intrinsic parts of her baking repertoire, forever.
Speaking of strange, long before it became fashionable to add a bit of puréed pumpkin (and grated zucchini, too!) to impart a rich, moistly dense crumb to a fruit cake, my Nan would chop up bits of her favourite sweet—Agra ka petha, or sugar candy pumpkin—in lieu of the more ‘kosher’ candied peel and tutti-frutti. Along with ghee and a sprinkling of spices like sonth (dried ginger powder) and javitri (mace), she’d lovingly make her legendary fruit cake that both my mum and I have tried to replicate rather unsuccessfully over the years since Nan’s passing.
But on a recent trip to Allahabad, I came across a version of a spiced rich fruit cake that could easily step in as a worthy doppelganger to the one I’ll sadly never savour again. Once a stronghold of thousands of Anglo-Indian ‘railway’ families, Allahabad today has barely a dozen or so left. But what they’ve left behind is an edible legacy of sorts in the form of the Allahabad Cake, which is what I discovered at Bushy’s on Kanpur Road. This modest, 54-year-old little bakery still makes a scrumptious, Indianised version of a traditional fruit cake using nutmeg, saunf (fennel seeds), cinnamon, caraway seeds, ghee and a marmalade that the person at the counter told me is sourced from Loknath ki Galli—Allahabad’s foodie haven.
The mava cupcake is another Indianised cake treat most of us grew up eating here in India. Dried whole milk or mava is the chief ingredient of the moist, eggless cake that’s flecked with cardamom seeds that go pop in the mouth when bitten into! This classic tea time delicacy has been made famous by the Irani and Parsi bakeries of Mumbai and Pune—particularly Merwan’s that has several branches in both cities and by Mumbai’s iconic Sassanian bakery at Marine Lines.
Made with copious quantities of salted butter, eggs, semolina and the main star ingredient—desiccated coconut powder—the bhaat cake is Goa’s pride and joy (see recipe). A vestige of Goa’s Portuguese colonialists, this dense, intensely coconut-y calorific treat has its underpinnings in Middle Eastern confectionary, given its remarkable similarity to the basbousa semolina-orange blossom water cake of Egypt, that is understandably bereft of the very coastal Indian ingredient—the coconut.
Another close colonial cousin of bhaat is the East Indian thali sweet that uses an additional ingredient in the form of almonds ground in rose water. And alluding to its name, this festive treat is both baked and served in an inch-high steel thali. Once ready, diamond shaped slices are cut and eaten more like an Indian mithai than a cake.
On a year-long work assignment in Chennai a few years ago, my weekends were mostly spent driving down to Puducherry, both, for bar essentials restocking, and to partake in the wonder that is the vivikum cake. Also known as the Pondicherry cake, this more-ish treat is prepared by Puducherry’s Franco-Indian Christians for Christmas, though one can find it all year round at bakeries such as La Boulangerie and Baker Street. Made with ghee (there we go again!), eggs, semolina, nuts, brandy-macerated raisins and zesty lemon peel, the alcohol in the cake helps lengthen the vivikum cake’s shelf life. Not that longevity matters in this cake… err, case!
Bhaat
Cake
Recipe
Ingredients
500 gm granulated sugar
250 gm salted butter
250 gm semolina
250 gm desiccated coconut powder
1 tbsp rose essence
1 tsp baking powder
6 whole eggs
200 ml water (room temperature)
25 ml water (heated)
Procedure
* Put 200 ml water and sugar in a thick bottom pan and allow to melt over a medium flame.
* When melted, add butter and allow to combine.
* Now add desiccated coconut powder and semolina and cook for five minutes. Allow to cool to room temperature in pan itself.
* Add baking powder to heated water and pour into the cooled batter.
* Add rose essence to batter and keep aside.
* Beat the six whole eggs till frothy and add to batter combining well.
* Line a 1kg-bearing cake tin with butter paper and bake in a pre-heated oven for 45 minutes at 180˚C.
* When cooled cut and serve on its own.
500 gm granulated sugar
250 gm salted butter
250 gm semolina
250 gm desiccated coconut powder
1 tbsp rose essence
1 tsp baking powder
6 whole eggs
200 ml water (room temperature)
25 ml water (heated)
Procedure
* Put 200 ml water and sugar in a thick bottom pan and allow to melt over a medium flame.
* When melted, add butter and allow to combine.
* Now add desiccated coconut powder and semolina and cook for five minutes. Allow to cool to room temperature in pan itself.
* Add baking powder to heated water and pour into the cooled batter.
* Add rose essence to batter and keep aside.
* Beat the six whole eggs till frothy and add to batter combining well.
* Line a 1kg-bearing cake tin with butter paper and bake in a pre-heated oven for 45 minutes at 180˚C.
* When cooled cut and serve on its own.
--Recipe
courtesy Ann Dias
(An edited version of this article first appeared in the 5th February 2017 issue of The Hindu newspaper, India http://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/food/Cake%E2%80%99s-colonial-cousins/article17193172.ece)
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