Roasted Pumpkin Soup with Chili Maple Croutons

Now don’t be babies and skip this post because it’s got ‘kaddu/ kumbalkayi’ as the star ingredient. I know I ran a mile when my mom made pumpkin playa when I was a kid. There was so much drama about not eating it, that my mom finally relented and stopped making it for many years. But I guess I was always a hypocrite when it came to pumpkins. There’s a special halwa (sweet) called ‘Kashi Halwa’, that’s made out of pumpkins for our wedding ceremonies. I used to wait patiently furiously tapping my banana leaf for the waiter to serve us the halwa. I would quickly devour it before he finished serving the rest of the table and act like he missed serving me. The look on the waiter’s face was priceless!  But topping that look was mine, when my mom finally told me that the halwa was made out of pumpkin! Evil evil woman! After that I had to make my peace with the pumpkin. (If only to avoid the dichotomy while eating the halwa!)

Circa 2012, over a dinner in Graze at the Taj Vivaanta – I order Pumpkin Soup. The co-resident looks like he’s going to gag on his breadstick. I look at him smugly with a wait and watch approach. The soup is divine! Maybe because of the generous amount of truffle oil, but divine nonetheless. It also costs an arm and a leg. So I come back home and attempt to replicate it over the weekend. And the result is this gorgeous concoction. Yum yum yum… I kicked the recipe up a notch and served it with some Maple-paprika croutons. I now crown myself Queen of the Pumpkin Patch! :P

Mangrove - Restaurant.Cafe.Wine Tavern (Kalyan Nagar, Bangalore)

I live at a point where going to Indiranagar or Koramangala or MG Road is the same distance. I know, lucky me! With so many food options scattered at my doorstep, I hardly travel beyond these areas for a quick bite. But after a point it becomes same old same old and this weekend we decided to travel to the beyond. Ok, that’s Kalyan Nagar near H.R.B.R. layout for you. We took the Bypanahalli route because the GPS on the co-resident’s phone said it was the shortest and fastest route, but we din’t know it would lead us to a defunct railway crossing! After a few more adventures, we reached Mangrove. It’s a new American cuisine restaurant that’s opened its doors, to entice the sudden population burst towards Manyata Tech Park and ORR. There is a big sign painted on the entrance wall so that you don’t miss the restaurant on the quite road. J

We expected to find the restaurant under a Mango tree, but realized that the young couple who run the place came up with the name when they were scuba diving in the Andamas (which you know is also famous for its Mangroves). The lady also runs a bakery called Oven Treats and after being in the business for 8 years thought the time was right to step it up. The restaurant/café/wine tavern offers all day dining from 11am to 11pm, but you still have to wait for a while longer to have your meal with some wine. (The license is on its way). The space is split into two areas – the ground floor being more casual and café like, while the top floor acts as the more formal dining space. (The co-resident fell in love with the wooden chairs, but unfortunately it’s not something we can buy here. The restaurant had them tailormade and shipped from Pune L)

Pasta with Roasted Vegetables

Featured in Foodgawker.com on 16th Oct 2012

Featured in Tastespotting.com on 21st Oct 2012

No matter how good my refrigerator is, I can’t store things forever. Especially fruits and vegetables. I don’t have the luxury of taking a lovely evening stroll to source my produce everyday, like the friendly aunty who lives across the street from me. I go to a hypermarket close by and bundle everything I can into the car and lug it home once a week. I know the hypermarket claims the produce is super fresh and challenges anyone to claim otherwise. But everyone knows that even the supposedly ‘fresh’ produce in supermarkets is already stashed in cold storage for weeks to help transport it intact. Now is this a rant on the troubles of city living or the hypocrisy of large corporations? No.

I just have a rule that once I buy something perishable from the market, I need to finish it within a week. In a perfect world, I would have planned the menu for the week in advance. I would have used up everything judiciously by the end of the week. I would have variety everyday and would eat healthy and balanced meals. Unfortunately we live in the real world. Sometimes we work late, sometimes we run out of gas, sometimes we go out for dinner and sometimes we just want to order in greasy Chinese. Towards the end of the week, when I open the fridge to grab some chocolate – the veggies are staring back at me. The guilt meter points to high. That’s when genius strikes and I rustle up something that can accommodate the weeks shopping list. Fortunately this time, they all lent themselves to a nice Roasted Vegetable sauce served with Pasta. Hallelujah! Because it looked and tasted so amazing, the co-resident thought I planned this, weeks in advance J

Chinese Food Festival at Feast, Sheraton Bangalore

Monday was an eventful day. I finally drove all the way to the other side of town to experience authentic Chinese delicacies. Now this would have never been done, if not for a blogger friend of mine who invited me to come along with him to Sheraton. He was invited as part of the Chef’s table and I was going to be his happy sidekick.

Feast, which is the all-day dining restaurant at the Sheraton Hotel, Bangalore was playing host to visiting Chinese Master Chef Thi Gang. Chef Thi Gang is from their award winning restaurant Li Bai at the Sheraton Saigon, Vietnam and was here to showcase the rich and diverse culinary heritage of China. Like India, China is vast country with unique regional cuisines and showcasing all of it can be a gargantuan task. So the Chef had handpicked some interesting dishes to help us savour a taste of China, if you will. The chef is a tiny man with a big smile and speaks very little English but his mastery was evident as we tasted the food. Anyway, we had Executive Chef Bela Rieck who was happy to indulge us with some fun conversation and cuisine facts. 

Hassleback Potatoes with Garlic and Sour Cream

Featured in Tastespotting.com on 12th Oct 2012

I’ll admit the only reason I made this is because it looks so cool. Like an armadillo or a fat fan or an accordion. A restaurant in Stockholm invented these and hence they took on the moniker of the restaurant. (The restaurant was called Hasslebacken!). I like fancy looking food, but I don’t really have the patience to make it look fancy. That’s why I’m always envious of pastry chefs. How many hours of practice and restraint does rolling out a perfect sugared rose take?! When you look at a hassleback potato you’re thinking it involves a fair bit of work. Well, it involves some work, but nothing more than slicing and stuffing. On a day when the whole of Bangalore was cooped indoors because of the bandh – I figured I might as well give it a go. The final product is a potato that is crisp on the outside and soft in the middle. Almost like soft crisps. (Oxymoron, I know!). Also since it’s mostly served with Sour Cream, you’ll be safe no matter how it turns out!

P.S. Yes, I’m exactly like Monica Geller in this situation – I will be friends with the foreign student if it means I get to eat sour cream everyday! (The last line is for those fools who used the TV show friends as role model behavior for most of the 90’s and 00’s – that fool includes me!)

French Macarons and Amande Patisserie

There has been a flurry of activity around the Macaron in Bangalore. Suddenly home bakers have taken to trying their hand at churning these pretty treats out, Taj Vivanta has a Macaron festival, patisseries are selling them hot off the mint and  there has even been serious discussions on a popular food group around their spelling! Adding to this is Masterchef Australia – I don’t think there’s been one season where the contestants have not tried their hand at impressing the judges with a fancy macaron. I guess we’ve reached critical mass for the Macaron in Bangalore and Amande Patisserie has come in at the right moment!

Before you read any further, I have a few things to profess. When I first came across Amande, I was just a happy customer. Being a click crazy person, of course I had to take pretty pictures of the Macarons and cry out to all and sundry on Facebook on how much I loved them. Owing to this evangelist behavior Amande’s customer list included people from my friend list as well! Amande’s owner was tickled pink that a few pictures could get him a larger fan following. (They don’t have a retail outlet yet..only home delivery by ordering online.) So he asked me to click a couple of more pictures for his website – to showcase new flavors. I happily obliged (which food photography obsessed geek wouldn’t?). So now that Amande is a photography client, (P.S. As of now, none of my pics are updated on the website yet. Will let you'll know when they are) Would it be wrong of me to write about them?  I did think of this for a long time and finally decided – I love their macarons irrespective of shooting for them and it would be a great disservice to you guys if I didn’t talk about it here. Besides, if I’m telling you upfront about the circumstances, so I'm sure you guys would understand. (P.S. I got paid in kind in Macarons and wine, so that lessens the promotional angle :P)

Jamaican Jerk Chicken

Was the chicken a jerk? I thought ‘jerk’ was reserved for the masculine gender, so shouldn’t the rooster be the jerk? On the other hand, why is the poor poultry being subjected to name calling in the first place? Ha ha ha … this recipe name always cracks me up. I know it’s juvenile to laugh at such things but my brain is wired in weird ways! So coming to the point…nobody is a jerk here (except maybe the gas connection guys – but that’s another story)!

Jerk is a style of Jamaican cooking where the meat is generally dry rubbed or wet marinated with a very hot spice mixture called Jamaican Jerk spice (courtesy: Wiki). The inspiration for this, was the fact that I had a bottle of All-spice and the rest of the ingredient list (including Demerara sugar) available in my pantry. I know! Sometimes I surprise myself! So I proceeded to make the mixture and marinated the chicken overnight. I cooked it for lunch this afternoon and maybe was a bit overenthusiastic in charring the chicken. (Well, the recipe said 45 mins and I was loitering around!) Of course I’ve tweaked the cooking time down to 30 mins for you guys – the martyr that I am, taking the hit so that you can have a good recipe! It’s a good change from the regular tandoori or grilled chicken recipes. Enjoy it with some beer on a hot afternoon J

Pretty in Pink - The Guava Mojito

Featured in Tastespotting.com on 21st Sep 2012

Featured in Tasteologie.notcot.org on 22nd Sep 2012

When I was a kid, it was stereotypical for the girls to dress in pink and the boys in blue. And because I was pretty much forced to wear pink most of the time, I developed a kind of love hate relationship with it. Love because I actually adored the colour and hate because I would be called a ‘girly girl’ whenever I wore it. And this was completely unacceptable to me, especially while playing tough games like police and robbers in the neighbourhood! I could not bear to have my game credentials questioned because of a colour! (Racism at the grassroot level!). So I avoided pink as I grew up, until one day my wardrobe had nothing that was pink. And then the revolution happened – the metrosexual male stepped over the line and wore the prettiest baby pink shirt! That was it… something snapped inside of me. The hypocrites! All the while belittling us women for being girly girls for wearing pink and now romping around town doing the same! I quickly did a 360° turn and embraced my long lost friend – pretty pretty pink. My Guava drink is a toast to you!

P.S. Now don’t let the prettiness of the drink fool you, it’s got enough vodka to knock a grown man into happy oblivion J

Red and Green Coconut Chutneys for Idlis or Dosa

Featured in Tastespotting.com on 18th Sep 2012

I was the kind of South Indian kid who always liked her Dosas more than her Idlis. The crispy buttery pancake always made my mouth water a lot more than the healthier alternative – The Idli. The only place I would crave an Idli was this little cart near Commercial Street. There are more than a dozen idli sellers with similar wares in and around the area but I always gravitated to this one. The reason was simple – the chutney’s! This man made the most awesome red and green chutney’s to go along with the idli’s. People would queue up in front of his cart from 7:00 pm upto 9:00 pm. His stock would never last beyond that! The whole exercise of ordering in this place is an art – of War! You jostle through the crowd to reach a point where he can actually see your face and hear you. Then you scream out your order (no dilly dallying) and squirm your way out of the crowd. Then you keep looking at the guy who plates the idli’s to confirm whether it’s your turn. He will look at you and the slightest nod in your direction would signify that you can come collect your wares. Of course many people will still attempt to move up the crowd and convince him that it’s their plate, so you need to elbow them out of the way and take what’s rightfully yours. I always go back for second (and third) helpings of the chutney. People around are definitely not tolerant of an Idli holding person moving up the order crowd again, but a girls got to do what a girls got to do! The Idli Plater grudgingly dishes out the smallest portion of the second round of chutney’s (after all Coconut’s don’t come cheap these days!) When you are finally done eating, you dispose of the banana leaf (your plate) and pay your bill and smile till your jaws ache!

Now, my version of the Red and Green Coconut Chutneys can never parallel his, but it will definitely add zing to your Idli or Dosa in the morning! J

Veggie Chic Menu at Caperberry, Bangalore

I like my chicken and my bacon and my pork and mutton and prawns and …you get the drift. So when I excitedly signed up for the Veggie Chic menu created by Chef Abhijit Saha of Caperberry, many eyebrows were raised. Is she turning vegetarian? Is she just coming there to mock us with terms like Ghas Phoos? And finally has she not read the menu? My answer to all the dear veggies – I just thought the Veggie menu looked exciting and why should I pass up an opportunity to be entertained by a culinary genius just because the menu didn’t have anything that walks, swims or clucks! Now that we have resolved the mystery of my presence at the dinner, let’s move on to important bits – the restaurant and the food!

Caperberry means provocation of desire in Hebrew. It’s also really a berry as well – green and tart… but the earlier definition is more in tune with what the restaurant wants to achieve. Caperberry is located at the Tanishq building on Dickenson Road. You have to literally search for the name board before you enter, but a restaurant of such repute hardly needs to shout out from the mountain top! The restaurant is know as much for its food (molecular gastronomy), if not more so for its celebrity chef Abhijit. After this experience, I think he deserves the adulation!