Zorawar Kalra Presents Farzi Cafe Sneak Preview at Delhi Gourmet Club's Gourmet Passport 2014-15 Launch

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

Zorawar Kalra, Managing Director, Massive
Restaurants (Made in Punjab/Masala Library),
raises a toast to the Gourmet Passport 2014-15.
Others in the picture: (From left) Varun Duggal
of Massive Restaurants, Atul Sikand of the
Delhi Gourmet Club (DGC), yours truly, Aditya
Soni of Citibank, Sandeep Tandon of Old World
Hospitality and DGC's Rocky Mohan.

WHERE else can the humble karela be turned into a gourmet statement than at a Zorawar Kalra restaurant? And what can be a better forum to showcase the talented young chef Himanshu Saini's 'bitter gourd tempura' with sweet and sour raw mango chutney than the launch of the Gourmet Passport 2014-15? The smartly designed book of 402 'buy one main course, get one free' discount coupons from 134 restaurants in Delhi and Mumbai was presented by the Delhi Gourmet Club in partnership with Citibank at a free-flowing launch party on May 1 attended by all the supporters of the project.

SURPRISE PACKAGE OF THE EVENING:
Karela has never tasted better than in the
Bitter Gourd Tempura with sweet and sour
mango chutney served at the Gourmet
Passport 2014-15 launch party at Made
in Punjab on Thursday, May 1, 2014.
Of course, this was just one of the star
items on the 12-course menu.

The venue was Made in Punjab at Gurgaon's Cyber Hub; the finger-licking good food was from the menu of the upcoming Farzi Cafe next door ("it's not even 10 per cent of what we have in mind," Zorawar assured us, making us wonder, "what next?"); and the guests seen enjoying Himanshu's goodies included industry leaders Sandeep Tandon (Old World Hospitality), AD Singh (Olive Bar & Kitchen) and Pankaj Mathur (The Suryaa); restaurant powerhouses Janti Duggal (Mamagoto), Atul Kapur (QBA and The China House), Rajeev Aneja (Rara Avis) and Prashant Narula (Kwality Group); some of Delhi/NCR's most talented chefs -- Soumya Goswami, Ravitej Nath, Vikas Vibhuti and Sandeep Kalra (The Oberoi), Rajiv Malhotra and Pradeep Khullar (Old World Hospitality), Arun Kumar TR (Zambar/Lite Bite Foods), Vikram Khatri, Sujan Sarkar and Vaibhav Bhargava (Olive Bar & Kitchen and Guppy by Ai); F&B hotshots Ravindra Kumar (The Lalit's most durable pillar of excellence), Rajesh Namby (The Leela Palace New Delhi), Mohit Balachandran (Sodabottleopenerwala), Suveer Sodhi (The Lodhi), Sid Mathur (Impresario/Smoke House Deli), Yogendra Negi (DLF Restaurants/Set'z) and Sohan Bohra (Kylin Premier); and my partners in journalistic crimes -- Neeta Raheja (Very Truly Yours), Mukta Kapoor (Old World Hospitality), Deepica Sarma and Mallika Gowda (The Oberoi), Pallavi Singh (Crowne Plaza Okhla), Nidhi Verma (The Leela Ambience Gurgaon), Madhur Madaan (Kempinski Ambience), Nidhi Budhia (Crowne Plaza Rohini) and Manita Asija Tuteja (Kylin Premier/Sartoria).

But the star of the evening was the spread planned by Zorawar and his multi-talented deputy Varun Duggal with Himanshu. Just back from America, where he had presented a talk on the trends defining contemporary Indian cuisine in the august company of Grand Master Chef Hemant Oberoi of The Taj Hotels, Zorawar said the Farzi Cafe, which is coming up right next door to Made in Punjab at the ground level of the Cyber Hub, would take 'Modernist' Indian cuisine to a level that is a notch higher than his other baby, Masala Library at the Bandra Kurla Complex. Now, that's a very serious challenge to set for oneself -- Masala Library, after all, has won nine prestigious awards in the seven months that it has been around! I am sure he must have picked up ideas from his recent visit to Alinea in Chicago, where the American guru of molecular gastronomy, Grant Achatz, gave him a guided tour of the kitchen (a rare honour).

AD Singh, who's unfailing in his praise for restaurants (even if they have the potential of becoming his competition), couldn't stop praising the papad-crusted dal chawal arancini with achari crème cheese and onion chutney. It was a brilliant reconstruction of the Sicilian classic with an Indian twist. My personal favourites were the tandoori portobello mushrooms with truffle walnut herb crust, bhoot jolokia lamb chops with tempered coriander seeds, and the chilli duck samosa served with roasted plum chutney. Each dish came with a twist and the presentations showed the Zorawar Kalra eye for detailing. As one of the guests said, "The food tasted as good as the discount coupons inside the book." Well, you have a year to check out each one of the 134 restaurants that have participated in the book that has stirred the pot of Delhi's imagination.

Kwality's Corporate Chef Sultan Mohideen Eyes Guinness World Records with 72-Kilo Paneer Tikka

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

Kwality Group's Corporate Chef
G. Sultan Mohideen, who served
a long list of VIPs during his stint
with ITC Hotels, created history
by cooking a 72-kilo paneer tikka
at a Delhi farmhouse on April 12

IT IS chicken tikka masala (CTM) that's been making history. Back in 2001, the then UK foreign secretary Robin Cook declared it to be "a true British national dish". More recently, in 2009, Pakistani-born British MP Mohammad Sarwar tabled a motion in the House of Commons seeking protected geographical status for Glasgow's CTM.

Now, it's time for the rise of the underwhelming paneer tikka. Kwality Group's Corporate Chef G. Sultan Mohideen, who has also written a Ph.D. thesis on the Indo-French cuisine of the court of Tipu Sultan, produced what he claimed was the world's largest paneer tikka on Saturday.

Mohideen started his quest for the paneer tikka Holy Grail in the afternoon, in the presence of a jury consisting of, among others, a magistrate, an inspector of weights and measures and the well-regarded chef Sudhir Sibal of the ITDC.

By the end of the day, after Mohideen had cooked the monstrous 72-kilo block to perfection in a custom-made tandoor with a diameter of 4 feet and cut it into 1,650 pieces (each a 1.5-inch square) at a Chhattarpur farmhouse, he was confident that his feat would qualify for the Guinness World Records.

The chef started working towards the paneer tikka world record some time back by first getting a fabricator to develop a mould to produce the humongous block, which he sexed up with spices. He also got giant skewers made to hold the block in the tandoor, which had 50 kilos of coal burning, and these were supported by heavy-duty chains operated by a pulley.

The mould came with a sliding door so that the block of paneer could be rolled out without much fuss. And to ensure the flavours were distributed equally down to the core of the block, Mohideen injected the marinade into it five to six hours before undertaking the challenging task of cooking it.

Commenting on the feat, Indian Accent's celebrated master chef, Manish Mehrotra, said no one had ever attempted to cook such a big block of paneer, so it was indeed deserving of a place in the Guinness World Records.

Monish Gujral, Moti Mahal's Brand Custodian, said the chef couldn't have chosen a more appropriate dish. "Paneer tikka remains the most ordered starter in any North Indian cuisine restaurant," Gujral said. Each of the 150-plus Moti Mahal's Tandoori Trail restaurants, he added, sells, on average, 25-30 portions of the dish every day. Mohideen said the 70-plus-year-old Kwality restaurant in Connaught Place, which is famous for its Pindi chhole-bhature, seekh kebabs and tomato fish, moves an average of three kilos, or 100 pieces, of paneer tikka a day.

The hara bhara kabab follows the paneer tikka in the popularity sweepstakes, according to Gujral. The record-chasing chef, though, believes tandoori mushroom tikkas and bharwan aloo follow in the pecking order.

Mehrotra shares Gujral's bullish sentiments on the paneer tikka. "It gives vegetarians a sense of getting a bigger bang for a buck," he said. "They see it to be a product whose value is equivalent to that of a chicken preparation." In the case of the other vegetarian preparations, they get the feeling that they are paying a lot more than they should. The humble paneer tikka has finally found the pride of place its fans would like  it to have.