DINING OUT: Biryani With Quinoa? Manish Mehrotra Gives Taste Twist to Health Food at Stylish Zehen

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

WELLNESS DINING

WHAT: Zehen @ The Manor

WHERE: 77, Friends Colony (West), a little ahead of Friends Club

WHEN: 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

DIAL: +91-11-43235151 / 43235100

HOW MUCH: You have to be a Zehen member or a resident guest to be able to dine at the wellness centre. Members get 50 per cent discount on listed prices.

At Zehen, the state-of-the-art gym, with a
distinctive New York-style industrial look, is
complemented by a menu offering created
especially by Manish Mehrotra following
the nutritional principles of ayurveda

Zehen's Food for Thought vegetarian thali,
which changes daily, combines taste with
a concern for nutritional well-being

I FIRST wrote about Manish Mehrotra's khao suey when he was an unheralded chef at the India Habitat Centre's Oriental Octopus restaurant in 2002. He had magic in his hands, I wrote, which packed taste even into an everyday dish. Those were the days when the ladies who lunch (and the former prime minister wife, Gursharan Kaur) had fallen in love with khao suey. Every kitty party hostess had to pip her predecessor by serving a better khao suey and every nubile girl had to master the art of making khao suey before taking her pheras. Lo and behold, as khao suey kitty parties became the rage, the chef we now celebrate as the Master of Inventive Indian Cuisine, suddenly found himself in demand for his ability to dish up a humble Burmese meal-in- a-bowl like no one else.

Fortunately for us, Manish re-invented himself to marry the ingredients and influences he had been exposed to and create his own kitchen genre at Indian Accent, where wild mushroom naan drizzled with truffle oil competes for your attention with duck khurchan cornetto topped up with a sliver of foie gras, or Chilean spare ribs sexed up with sweet mango pickle, or poached lobster served on a bitter gourd (karela) accompaniment that presents the much-maligned vegetable in a completely new light. But I had never imagined that he could re-define thair sadam (curd rice) by adding pieces of masala chicken, giving texture and tonality to the mush.

Manish has invested a lot of time, and has spent some days at The Farm in the Philippines to understand that wellness hotspot's 'raw' menu, to develop a different kind of 'healthy' menu for Zehen, the wellness centre that has just opened on the precincts of The Manor, where Indian Accent has been having a dream run since 2008. A new food movement, in fact, has taken birth at Zehen. Unsurprisingly, the nutritionist balks when asked about the calorie count of the vegetarian thali, which changes daily.

"That's so yesterday," she says, repeating that the diet fads Delhi swears by have all gone out of the window in the countries where they originated. "It is more important to live life by ayurvedic principles and get balanced nutrition than to go on impossible diets to lose calories." The buzz phrase at Zehen is "sustainable lifestyle". If you eat unpolished rice, you'll feel full long after your meal, and you'll eat less. Jaggery will take care of your sweet cravings without exposing you to the ill-effects of refined sugar. Don't starve yourself. Instead, eat right. They call it 'Food for Thought' at Zehen.

"Once you eat for health, you don't need fad diets," says Manish, handing me a bowl full of makhana poppers, full of nutrition and low on calories. My lunch in the Zehen dining room, where there's only one communal table, started with a sweet potato salad and cucumber rings with a brown rice and cashew filling (light and refreshing), moving on to the curd rice, followed by tasting portions of lamb and quinoa biryani (cooked in lamb stock), pumpkin and brown rice risotto, chicken balls served in a delectable Kerala-style stew, patrani machchi, gluten-free uttapam 'pizza' and zucchini spaghetti.

I thought I was full, so I resolved not to have very little of the jaggery-only shrikhand and brown rice kheer. Yet, before I knew it, I was licking the sides of the bowls in which they came. Each preparation oozes what we like to describe as swaad -- the Japanese call it umami. It's the sense of taste and the feeling of fulfilment. And each dish -- such is the simplicity of the recipes (and Manish has a repertoire of 300!) -- can easily be replicated at home. Because, when you're at Zehen, you are encouraged to eat healthy when you're at home -- because wellness doesn't stop at the wellness centre.

This review first appeared in Mail Today on July 25, 2014. Copyright: Mail Today Newspapers.

Indian Accent’s Manish Mehrotra Sexes Up Chaulai Ka Saag for 'First Food' Launch

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

THE expression ‘sexed up’ first gained currency when the MI6 did exactly that to its report on the so-called ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in Saddam Hussain’s Iraq to give Tony Blair an excuse to join George W. Bush’s unholy coalition against the dictator. But when Manish Mehrotra sexed up the humble chaulai ka saag with cheese to neutralise its grassy taste, he did not trigger a war or cause widespread anguish. He only had people eating out of his hands, which is something the Magician of Indian Accent must have gotten used to by now.

Indian Accent's Manish Mehrotra
(above) produced magic with the
forgotten foods of India at the
release function of the Centre for
Science & Environment's most
intelligently written cookbook,
First Food: A Taste of
India's Biodiversity

And he gave us an idea. If only all restaurateurs learnt to use our traditional foods in a more creative way, they would create a substantial market for our poorest farmers, encourage the cultivation of crops that guzzle a third of the water that the gifts of the ‘Green Revolution’ do, and bring down their own food costs (which they keep complaining about in these rough times). What Manish did at the India Habitat Centre release of First Food: A Taste of India’s Biodiversity was recreate the recipes, adding his own creative lashings, in the Centre for Science and Environment’s cookbook with a difference. The Centre’s guardian angel, Sunita Narain, Zaike Ka Safar presenter Vinod Dua and food historian Pushpesh Pant released the book to an audience that spilled out of India Habitat Centre’s Silver Oak banquet hall.

It's a must-have cookbook
where each recipe comes with
a gold mine of information
that Middle India knows
very little about

The neatly produced book narrates the story of India’s lost foods, which are packed with nutrition and provide a livelihood to millions of marginalised farmers across the country. If these foods are sexed up by talented chefs such as Manish (and Old World Hospitality’s Executive Chef Rajeev Malhotra, who was busy elsewhere), our old food culture, which was based on centuries of earthy wisdom, can become fashionable yet again. Manish, for instance, showed us how roasted makhana (lotus seeds) dusted with a tangy masala can become a glorious accompaniment to cocktails. His sattu ke gol gappe had a firmer texture than the standard issues made with sooji and atta, and he took us by surprise with his bajra tartlets with a sweet and sour ker-sangri filling.

Manish demonstrated how bajre ki khichdi can taste anything but bland when you serve it like a chaat topped up with chutneys and saunth. His sattu is the Real McCoy supplied by a source from his native Bihar — it is made with a local variety of chana (chickpeas) and ground with its husk on along with others pulses and cereals — and he served it in the traditional style with a slightly runny baigan ka bharta. He made cheelas by substituting commonly used besan (chickpea flour) with a cousin of buckwheat flour. And his gahat ki dal (horse gram) struck a sentimental chord with the Kumaonis among those invited!

It was the most delicious way of understanding the age-old ties that bind our traditional crops with the lives and nutrition of India’s majority. The message came through without any pamphleteering. We have to preserve our rich gastronomic heritage for our own self-preservation and the good of the generations ahead of us. Get more bajra into your life.

 If you wish to know more about the book, go to http://www.downtoearth.org.in/content/food-book