By Sourish Bhattacharyya
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| When it opens on July 20, Farzi Cafe at Cyber Hub, Gurgaon, promises to give Modern Indian Cuisine a bold creative thrust with its new-generation menu and presentation styles |
Saraswat would say that he had been inspired to devote many years
working on the recipes because of a barb from the father of French nouvelle cuisine, Paul Bocuse. On a visit to India as a guest of the Taj, Bocuse had
said to Saraswat that Indian food tasted great, but it didn't excite the eye
and make one want to eat it. Saraswat rose up to the challenge, but his
cookbook sank without a trace, just like Michelin-starred Vineet Bhatia's Mushk restaurant, which opened in 2002, where he courted
Delhi's palate with novelties such as truffle oil-flavoured naan or his favourite squid ink-infused
black chicken tikka.
Both efforts were way ahead of their time. It was five years
later that Varq at the Taj Mahal
Hotel and the now-famous Indian Accent
opened to a tepid response, and another five years had to lapse before Gaggan Anand, Saraswat's former acolyte,
dazzled the world from his Bangkok restaurant, ranked 17th in the world, with
his brand of Progressive Indian Cuisine.
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| Himanshu Saini, who's all of 26, has worked hard to translate Zorawar Kalra's vision on the menu |
To a traditionalist, Saini's creations, and the artefacts
they arrive in, may seem straight out of Mad Hatter's tea party, but their
beauty lies in the way they tantalise the imagination using the tools of
molecular gastronomy (notably liquid nitrogen) without deviating from the real
flavours of Indian cuisine. That is exactly what Modern Indian Cuisine is all
about. Its practitioners don't use, for instance, squid ink because it has no
Indian connect.
When at Farzi Cafe you are served a mini raj kachori stuffed with kurkure
bhindi surrounded by islands of chutney foam, each element tastes just how
it is supposed to. As does the idiappam sushi with prawn pepper fry, or the sarson da saag gilawat kebabs, corn
tostadas, chhaas spheres and masala popcorn, which may sound like a
gimmicky reinvention of the Punjabi winter staple, sarson da saag-makke di roti,
but actually tastes right while looking oomphy. This combination of the right
marriage of flavours and the elements of surprise is the leitmotif of the Farzi
Cafe menu.
The bhoot jholokia
spare ribs not only melt in your mouth, but also make you feel braver after
having the world's hottest chilli; the chilli duck samosa with hoisin chutney and the galouti burger with mutton boti
will leave you admiring the sheer ingenuity of the medleys of flavours and
textures; the pumpkin khao suey, yet
another flash of inspiration, will awaken you to the limitless possibilities of
the humble kaddu; and you'll smile
when the chicken tikka masala with
Cornish cruncher cheddar cheese naan
arrives in a replica of a public telephone booth you'll see all over London.
The same streak of innovation runs through the desserts
(Parle-G cheesecake on a pool of rabri
studded with Gems chocolate spheres) and the molecular cocktails (mixologist Aman Dua left me groping for words of
praise with his mango spaghetti in gin with a grape infused in a red wine
reduction), but the cherry on the icing is the paan gujiya, which is a dehydrated paan inside a candyfloss casing. That, in a sense, defines the
Modern Indian experience: quirky but not contradictory.
MISTRAL MENU INTRODUCES DELHI TO THE JOYS DUCK'S EGGS
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| Renaud Palliere of PVR Cinemas is anything but your stereotypical finance man |
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| As Executive Chef, Mayank Tiwari has given Mistral's menu a new direction -- I recommend his gazpacho soup and pumpkin risotto |
As I looked at the fried eggs, their perfectly semi-circular
yolks appearing like twin images of the setting sun, memories of the summer
vacations I had spent in Kolkata as a child flashed in my mind's eye. Duck's
eggs are a delicacy among Bengalis -- you get them fresh every morning in Kolkata,
brought to the city by women from neighbouring villages who pick up what they
find by the side of ponds where ducks, a strain of the Muscovy variety known as
Chinae Hans (the name indicates the
ancestors of these birds came from China), live in good numbers across rural
West Bengal.
Mistral gets its duck's eggs from the French Farm in Manesar, which is run by a temperamental yet much
sought-after Frenchman named Roger
Langbour (and his Muscovy ducks have nobler strains). The restaurant's
executive chef, Mayank Tiwari, a
graduate of what I call the AD Singh school of hospitality, took nine minutes
to get the perfect fried eggs, their uniformly proportioned whites balancing
the bright orbs at the centre. There's more to recommend the restaurant for --
the gazpacho, pumpkin risotto and the Persian koobideh (seekh) kebabs are my
personal favourites -- but I can keep going back only for the duck's eggs.
HAVING DUCK EGGS THE BENGALI WAY
DUCK EGGS seem to be in vogue, especially because they have thicker shells, which means they stay fresher longer; more albumen, which makes them best for cakes and pastries; and more Omega-3 fatty acids, which are good for the brain and the skin. There's one catch, though. They have double the amount cholesterol in chicken eggs, which is bad news for the heart. They also have very little moisture, which can be a problem if you are trying to whisk a duck's egg, and fried eggs can become rubbery if you aren't a skilled handler of duck's eggs. I just love the way they are cooked in West Bengal -- as a curry (dimer dalna). Duck's eggs, funnily, entered old-fashioned Bengali kitchens much before chicken eggs were allowed!
MANJIT GILL'S QUEST FOR AN INDIAN DATA BANK OF RECIPES
WE LIVE in a cornucopia of cuisines, yet the world knows so
little about our country's culinary heritage. To bridge this knowledge gap, the
Ministry of Tourism has teamed up
with the national body of chefs, Federation
of Indian Culinary Associations (FICA), to launch a multi-disciplinary effort
to create a central databank of recipes (at least ten of them) from each of the
country's 640 districts. We owe this idea to FICA President and Corporate Chef,
ITC Hotels, Manjit Gill, who was
inspired by his visit to Bucharest, Romania, for the International Congress of
Culinary Traditions earlier this year. And he found an eager listener, and
doer, in Parvez Dewan, Secretary,
Tourism.
HAVING DUCK EGGS THE BENGALI WAY
DUCK EGGS seem to be in vogue, especially because they have thicker shells, which means they stay fresher longer; more albumen, which makes them best for cakes and pastries; and more Omega-3 fatty acids, which are good for the brain and the skin. There's one catch, though. They have double the amount cholesterol in chicken eggs, which is bad news for the heart. They also have very little moisture, which can be a problem if you are trying to whisk a duck's egg, and fried eggs can become rubbery if you aren't a skilled handler of duck's eggs. I just love the way they are cooked in West Bengal -- as a curry (dimer dalna). Duck's eggs, funnily, entered old-fashioned Bengali kitchens much before chicken eggs were allowed!
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| Manjit Gill, Corporate Chef of ITC Hotels and President, Federation of Indian Culinary Associations, was inspired by the International Congress of Culinary Traditions held at Bucharest, Romania, earlier in the year |
Gill says his team will have 600 recipes, a tenth of what is
intended to be collected, ready for the Modi government's 100 days in power.
Imagine the world this exercise will open up. Where else are you going to find
the kind of variety we are able to savour even among jalebis! A Gohana jalebi weighing 250 gms apiece (almost like
the ones dished up by Chandni Chowk's Old
& Famous Jalebiwala) is a story by itself, as is the dark brown
Burhanpuri mawa jalebi, which is a
Ramzan must-have at J.J. Sweets in
Mumbai's Bohri Mohalla. The national databank will make us understand this
diversity and treasure it.
This column first appeared in the Mail Today edition dated July 17, 2014.
Copyright: Mail Today Newspapers.
This column first appeared in the Mail Today edition dated July 17, 2014.
Copyright: Mail Today Newspapers.
