While navigating Old Delhi is never easy, some of the food shops here have been serving generations of loyal customers. For a walk with a group of foodies this summer that includes Jalebi, Kheer, Stuffed naans and parathas click here.

Mini cakes at Miette

Chocolate ganache cake

Ferry Building at San Francisco is perhaps my favorite spot in the city when I am feeling lazy or when the weather is not at its best. They have everything to cheer you up – good coffee (Blue Bottle), good food (Slanted Door), good chocolates (Recchiuti), good bread (Acme), good cheese (Cowgirl creamery), the Farmer’s market and excellent views. This time, I found another reason, Miette Cakes. We picked up a chocolate ganache cake and it was delicious. The chocolate was intense (Scharffen Berger). The size was big enough to share with significant other and small enough to disallow fat/sugar overdose.

Four Barrel Espresso Station

Four Barrel on Valencia is a well reviewed coffee mecca in Mission District of San Francisco. The queues are long but is a good opportunity to watch city fashions. The space has a modern warehouse look with a coffee bar at the entrance, the main coffee station in the middle and stock at the back. Seating is somewhat minimal but if you hang out long enough, you are bound to find a table. The coffee bar is akin to a wine bar where you pay to sample their brews. My husband was very excited about the coffee after having sampled 4 varietals! The music is played in an old fashioned way where a real person selects a record out of the collection and plays it on a record player. Unless you want a caffeine kick that makes you want to dance a jitterbug, I recommend picking their brew of the day, grabbing a seat and watching the  extensive and non-hurried ritual the baristas follow.

Our brew of the day was a varietal from Burundi. The brew style had heightened the acidity of our double espresso which made every sip like the first one. We picked up half pound of beans on our way out but couldn’t quite reproduce the acidity on our home espresso machine. Unfortunately, they have no chocolate but I happened to have some Tcho bites on me.

Other coffee/chocolate shops of interest in Bay Area:

• Chocolatier Blue in Berkeley (more)
• Fog City News on Market (more)
• Recchiuti at Ferry Building (more)
• Tcho at Pier 17 (more)
• XoX in North Beach (more)

The smaller "bubblegum" variety

Immature seeds of palm fruit

Summer in Kolkata is typically not hotter than 100F but your skin feels like a dripping faucet, each pore that is. After a while, you don’t even want to wipe off the sweat. It is cooler to not have to make that effort. At times like this, the only remedy is to take a cool shower. As the cooling begins, feel free to sing aloud in bliss. After the shower, move as quickly as possible to the nearest air-conditioned room. Switch on the ceiling fan at full speed and sprawl on a bed – maximum surface area for the skin-air contact. When you need to be out in the heat again, do so and repeat the cooling regime.

Prying open the shell of jackfruit to reveal the golden edible cocoons

Picking up the cocoons

Palm fruit

Prying loose the seeds of palm fruit

For food, I suggest that you forego the thought of cooking. Instead survive on mangoes, jackfruit and young palm fruit seed. Mangoes are now familiar everywhere in the world but if you haven’t eaten one from the tropics, you haven’t really eaten a mango. Sindoori, Langra, Desheri, Begunfuli, Himsagar, Alfonso and various other varieties flood the markets, each with its characteristic fragrance and taste. Start with soaking the mangoes in water for an hour or so. Summers are so hot that even the fruits need a bath! OK, the actual reason is that some of the tropical varieties can make you mouth itch, presumably for more mangoes, and to prevent this itchiness soak the mangoes near the stem-end. Refrigerate. When ready to eat, peel the skin which is about an eighth of an inch thick. Some say that the best way to eat a mango is standing on the beach with waves swirling around you. But if you don’t want to get out of that air conditioned room, drag a bathtub in your air-conditioned room or air-conditioner in your bathroom. Alternately, cut the flesh in 1/2 inch pieces avoiding the seed and eat.

Jackfruits are perhaps not as familiar as mangoes. This fruit looks similar to durian without the ill-famed odor. Give the fruit a good wash, slide in a knife by an inch towards the stem end and then start to peel open the 1/4 inch thick skin. Inside, you will see golden yellow 1.5-3 inch long fleshy cocoons that come off easy. Set these aside and cool them in the refrigerator. Once cool, discard seed and the membrane adjacent to the seed and eat. In kolkata, one finds two varieties. A juicy variety with a small coccon which tastes like vanilla custard but upon chewing further results in a loose bubblegum textured masticated remain which some people may find somewhat hard to swallow or spit out. The other variety has longer coccons that are crisp textured and not juicy or custard like but without the bubblegum effect. It is practically impossible to tell one variety from other from the outside. If you can tolerate the effort, juice the first variety and use the juice to make shakes, custard or pudding. It has come to my notice that children often treat this variety like a bubblegum, interspered with playtime they chew on a cocoon until all flavor is lost. A tip for green minded folks – the remainder of the jackfruit fed to a holy cow makes them estatic and earns you some brownie points.

Young palm fruit seed is terribly seasonal, perhaps the peak lasts for a week or so. Fruit seller will crack the palm fruit with a machete and carefully take out the three seeds. At this point, the seeds are about 2 inches across and 1/4 inch thick with a thin, creamy colored skin. Take home, rinse and refrigerate. When ready to eat, peel the skin with a paring knife to reveal a translucent lichi colored soft interior. Why all this care you wonder? This soft flesh is a pocket containing coconut water like fluid inside. The flesh isn’t too sweet and is loved for the texture and coolness. As the fruit ages, the water dries up and the flesh becomes stiffer to form the mature seed. One of the popular varieties of Bengali sweet captures the ephemeral nature of this fruit by mimicry – the outside is made of cottage cheese and the pocket is filled with cane syrup.

Related posts:

• Walking along the banks of river Ganges (more)

Fresh caught fish

Bengalis are enthusiastic fish eaters. We eat fried fish in rich curries. We steam fillets papillote style. We fry fish heads with rice or slow cook them with lentils. The fatty fish entrails are fried and eaten with rice. In dhabas, bones from large fish are added as flavoring to vegetables. Small bait are fried whole and eaten as snacks with tea. Fish eggs are made into fritters.

I am sure I eat a pound of fish a day when I am visiting Calcutta. So when father offered to take me fishing, I decided to follow the fish trail from source to plate. Unlike the last fishing trip, this was a visit to the a nearby village where father has friendly access to a pond. From the comfort of my metropolitan and cosmopolitan city lifestyle, I sport a very romantic view of villages in Bengal with their dirt roads and banana trees, and little kids playfully swimming in ponds lined with lotus and lilies, a vision born out of watching Satyajit Ray movies. Our air conditioned car landed us within a couple of blocks of the village pond in question. A recent windstorm had shredded the leaves of the banana plants lining the dirt path. Otherwise it was picture perfect village.

Picture perfect village

Dragging the pond

Cleaning up the fish at the village fishmonger

Our hospitable pond owner had placed a couple of wicker chairs underneath a palm tree. By the time we had exchanged pleasantries and were served the customary cup of tea, a couple of village lads were in the waist deep water with a net between them. They dragged the pond a couple of times and we were richer by four fish weighing a total of 12 lbs or so. I could see myself sitting under the palm tree for a few more hours, perhaps reading an Hercules Poirot and sipping some more hot tea but in that time, the two boys would have caught the entire fish population in the little pond. So, we left  with the fish writhing in a little plastic bag. I also bagged a banana leaf in preparation for a papillote recipe, one of the few that hadn’t shredded in the storm.

On our way back home, we went through the village market where a fishmonger scaled, gutted and chopped the fish in exchange for about 15 cents. Perhaps I left the fishmonger amused, the 15 cents were routine but being photographed was not. Upon reaching home, the fish were cleaned and marinated in a mustard sauce for an hour. Then the pieces were wrapped in banana leaves and cooked and served promptly for lunch. From swimming in water to served hot on plate in less than four hours!

Fish marinating in mustard sauce

Wrapping the fish in banana leaf

Steam/bake/slow cooked banana leaf wrapped fish

Where: Paddington, London

Why: An 8 hour layover in Heathrow

How: Heathrow-Paddington Express

Looking towards Italian garden from Queen Anne's alcove in Hyde Park. Traffic included a few joggers, a handful of tourists, a couple of hobos and an office goer.

5 minutes later ... The office goer had a great sense of timing. He managed to duck in and out of rain rather effectively.

The best thing about a short layover in Heathrow may be the Paddington express which takes you to the heart of the city in a mere 15 minutes.  We had planned to explore the area around Paddington – Hyde park, and Oxford street neighborhoods – by foot. Our general strategy as we stepped out of the station was to find our way to Hyde Park, walk along the Serpentine to work up an appetite for fish and chips, for which we had narrowed down a couple of gastropubs. The sky looked partly cloudy and the ground looked fairly wet. On account of Mr. Weatherman’s promise of a cheery and bright 72 degree day, we were ill equipped for any potential rain. Hand in hand, my better half and I stepped out on the streets towards Hyde.

Fish and chips and peas

Special of the day - Boar sausage stuffed with apples with creamy polenta

We walked by several restaurants – Indian, Lebanese, Greek and English pubs. We saw some elegant buildings and housefronts that reminded us of BBC’s Sherlock Holmes production. We watched couple of ladies walking their horses. We walked by some mews with cobblestone paths. Then we entered the Hyde park and feasted on the expansive greens. It appeared mostly occupied by tourists and some regular joggers. By now, in a matter of 15 minutes or or so, the sky had gone from partly cloudy to dark grey. Italian gardens at Hyde is where the sky decided to fall on our heads. We found shelter in Queen Anne’s alcove, along with several other passers by and hobos.

While we waited for the rain to stop, a walk along the serpertine looked less and less appealing. We decided to head back towards the hustle and bustle of Paddington and find ourselves the first decent looking pub. The first one that came our way was the Fuller’s Victoria. It looked decent from the outside and with another torrential rain imminent, very inviting inside. Old men in tweeds sat drinking tall glasses of beer. As we found our way to one of the the comfortable seats, I noticed the dark wall papers adorned with glam shots of Queen Victoria. Before my better half starting moaning about lack of wifi in this old establishment, as he is wont to be when tired and hungry, I had him order us couple of tall glasses of beer and some food – their award winning ESB, a plate of fish and chips and a plate of boar sausages on polenta.

The chips were fat and crisp. The fish was flaky and crisp. The sausages tasted sweet, the accompanying mushroom gravy worked well with the polenta. Were we at a gastropub – a few Mizune leaves decorated the boar sausage! The brews were light and hoppy. We sat there for a hour or perhaps two. In San Francisco, in that amount of time, a table would have served four different groups of people. Not here. While groups of people sat discussing various issues in an animated fashion, the only significant movement was the sky that went through various shades of light and grey. We had slowed down considerably as well. Perhaps due to the jetlag, or food/alcohol induced stupor or perhaps because we were on a vacation. In any case, it seemed too dangerous to order the steamed apple cake.

We were worried that we would be served microwaved fish and chips, but we could not have found better food had we spent hours on chowhound. We had expected a bright day which we shouldn’t have. It was indubitably expensive but it equally indubitably worth getting out of Heathrow airport. All in all, a glimpse of London that matched all the years of reading and musing about London.

Butcher, the sandwich shop

Cochon Butcher at New Orleans, is a two part restaurant near the well trodden conference center. Butcher is the sandwich counter and Cochon is the restaurant. Both are hip and popular and both serve excellent meats. On our last trip to New Orleans, finding a good eatery near the conference center became imperative. We decided to go to Butcher on day one and we kept going there for lunch until well after the conference had ended. Normally, we would have sampled several of their sandwiches but we decided to do for the Cuban sandwich on day one and that became a repeat order. The pig in this case is a suckling one (cochon du lait). Between their high quality breads, fresh pickles and excellent meat, it is hard to find faults even for a nitpicky eater like myself. Their boudin and  salads are equally excellent. What was hard was eating all that and then paying attention to the conference content. Still harder would have been to not eat such excellent sandwiches to the last crumb.

Dinner was a more elaborate story. The highlight was popcorn fried alligator with a sauce worth licking the plate clean. Since the trip, the chef owner Stephen Stryjewski has won James Beard Award. Here are some assorted photos from the two …

Menu at Butcher	Coleslaw
Boudin	cochon muffaletta house made meats, provolone, pickled peppers + olives
Popcorn fried alligator	Smoked beef brisket with horseradish potato salad

Cafe Du Monde @ Night

If you come to Cafe Du Monde in the morning, the place is like a zoo. You have to watch seated customers to catch for signs of a table about to be vacated – people taking their last beignet bite, wiping their mouths of the traces of the powdery white sugar. Then you rush to the still warm chairs and wait for your turn for the table to be cleared. The mostly Vietamese staff won’t pay any attention to your energetic gestures. Their coming and going will make little sense. Your turn will come when they are ready for you.

In the meantime, you can watch other customers. A mom taking a break from her hectic day with a plate of beignets, reading a magazine with one eye and watching her child sleep in the pram with other. A group of old friends or perhaps sisters, getting together for a chat, with what seems like several servings of beignet for each. And hoards of tourists.

Beignets

They only serve beignets and coffee at Cafe Du Monde. Beignet here is like a crisp savory doughnut that is topped with a mound of icing sugar. Don’t inhale your beignets or the icing sugar will give you a coughing fit. A bite into a beignet brings home a faint pork fat taste. Traditionally fried in pork fat, the cafe kitchen has long since moved to vegetable oil sources. But the 150 year old taste of pig fat from the fryers still linger. Or perhaps it is the air of New Orleans that swirls around volatile compounds from pork fat, carrying them from one kitchen to another. Coffee is a scalding hot liquid with traces of chicory in it. It’s only use is to cleanse your mouth of the sugar and oils.

Late night is an entire different story. You can certainly find the yourself to be one of the few customers. The wait staff is the younger smart phone generation. You have to wait slightly longer for your beignet but otherwise nothing changes. Sounds of a whaling sax or a throaty gospel singer will reach your ears. A string of horse drawn carriages line up opposite and you may hear or smell the horses. The sidewalk astronomer with his reflector telescope will meet you on most nights. He doesn’t look anything like his web-photos these days.

Beignets of New Orleans are a must have. But beignets are not born equal so, watch where you ask for a plate of these.

Fritzel's @ NOLA

I am watching David Simon’s Tremé now, so I am planning my next trip to New Orleans around Tremé. However, during my last trip, like other first time tourists in New Orleans, I was bound to Bourbon Street. Fritzel’s, the European Style Jazz Bar on Bourbon street, proved to be a nightly attractor. It was packed almost every night, jam packed on the weekends.

You can end the night with a trip to Cafe du Monde. And if you ate all your beignets, an amateur side walk astronomer with his telescope will show you the moon spots or rings of Saturn.

Photos from Fritzel’s …