Eating out at Seven Dials, London
Aside from Dishoom that serves reliable roomali roti and chicken tikka, there are several nice eating and drinking spots near Seven Dials. We could only sample a very small subset. Monmouth coffee was one. According to a reliable local source, while tea shops are on the decline, coffee shops are on the rise in London. Monmouth may have been the one that started (~1978) the micro roasting trend. Being perhaps the grandaddy of the business, they didn’t seem quite the coffee police as Blue Bottle or Four Barrel, very few coffee shops are. But they have a large selection of single varietals and brew a good espresso to make a coffee lover happy. The one at Seven Dials attracts a hipster crowd, there is always a long line, tables are shared, and you can get a croissant to go with your coffee. I do think they need some chocolate-y stuff to go with their coffee, say crepes or biscotti.
Neal’s yard dairy has excellent British cheeses and they import Poilâne bread. Like Cheese Board, they let you taste before buying and the staff is super friendly. We bought a variety of cheddars and even some Stilton. You really can live on Poilâne, Stilton and Monmouth coffee if you so wish.
British food in London
Great Queen Street Pub, an easy walk from the British Museum
British food, for the rest of us outside Britain, brings to mind fish and chips or bangers and mash. But if like me, you have grown up with Tuppy Glossop’s midnight adventures with steak and kidney pie, you wish a cook as good as Anatole who can make you just such a pie. Now with the revival of British cuisine and gastro pubs, someone just may serve you one.
Desi food in London
 Dishoom, dishoom ... |
 Dishoom with its seventies look |
 Fried calamari with a set of spicy sauces |
 Shish Kababs and roomali roti, what else ... |
 Chicken tikka |
 Naan with Keema |
A few blocks from Seven Dials, is an Indian restaurant named Dishoom. The sound of a punch landing on your opponent in Bollywood movies has the sound “Dishoom“. Kids when mimicking fights do it with the sound effect “dishoom”, “dishoom”, … So there is indeed something endearing and playful in the name. The restaurant exudes hipness, although like any other Indian restaurant the service is a bit languid. Walls are decorated with an old world charm of mirrors and pictures of Bollywood movies and stars. You can watch the tandoor in action while waiting for food. We ate here a couple times and really enjoyed the “roomali” roti with the shish kababs. Roomal is Hindi word for handkerchief. Yes, sir, these breads are indeed as thin as the handkerchief. The dough is similar to naan/pizza and they are hand rolled like pizza, swirled in air to get the thinness and briefly cooked in the tandoor. I haven’t seen roomali rotis served in Indian restaurants in US. I found the food to be competent but the menu is limited to typical North Indian dishes that westerners associate with Indian food.
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Fast food in London
Pret a Manger sandwich and crisps
It is now a little over two months since our London trip. I hadn’t meant to slip so far behind in my writing but it has happened. I can only hope that the memories have aged like cheese! We had stayed in a tiny but super-cute apartment in London, which was practically on top of the Neal’s Yard at Seven Dials. I am pretty sure that on a summer afternoon, an open window in the apartment will bring in the mingled aroma of aged cheeses from Neal’s Yard Diary. We didn’t open the windows on account of the cold but we did breakfast on their cheeses and their imported Poilâne’s bread.
Makke ki Roti – the way mom makes it
You have surely heard stories of chefs stirring sauces with their hands. My story involves my mother-in-law shaping old-fashioned corn rotis on the hot griddle with her hands. I am presenting a story here and not a recipe. I can’t follow this recipe and I won’t recommend you try.
She estimates amount of corn flour she will need based on how hungry the family is. Adds appropriate amount of grated radish, chopped radish leaves, salt, dry mango powder, hot paprika and water. Kneads to form a pliable dough.
She puts the griddle to heat on medium-high, and keeps following things handy - a bowl of water convenient to dip her fingers in, a tablespoon and a cup of vegetable oil. She shapes tennis ball sized dough in her hands and flattens each into a fat roti with her palms.
She oils the pan lightly, places the roti on the hot griddle, dips her hand in cold water and flattens the fat roti into a thinner one. Then she ladles oil along the edges so the oil slides underneath and cooks the underside of the roti.
These rotis take a few minutes per side to cook. She flips only when the underside is done and repeats the oil treatment. The flipping is done gently as the corn rotis break relatively easily due to lack of gluten.
Voila! They are ready to serve. The rotis are crisp on the outside, melt-y polenta-like inside. Traditionally served with mustard greens that has been cooked for hours into a buttery smooth piquant sauce.
Eggs and toast – never had it this good …
Eggs and toast
Following serves 2:
Soft boil couple of eggs, preferably from organically fed and farm raised hens.
Cut up two slices of fresh sourdough bread into thick cut french fry style pieces. Heat a tablespoon of olive oil on a pan and saute these bread slices until golden and crackle-y.
Crack open the top of your soft boiled egg, add some fleur de sel and freshly ground black pepper, dip the fried bread sticks in the yolk and enjoy.
Cup of espresso at the end with a slice of pannetoni is nice but not absolutely essential for a great start to the day.
Pimientos de Padrón with a touch of sesame oil and flower peppers
Padrón peppers tossed with smoked salt and sichuan peppers
These Spanish peppers have caught on in San Francisco Bay Area. Last few years they were expensive and scarce at the farmer’s market, a small basket for $5. This year, our neighborhood Asian market has a large bag of these for $5. Last year, I fried these peppers in oil until blistery. This year, I got lazy and decided to push these under the broiler. Surprisingly enough, they came out at least as good as fried if not better.
Yet another Delhi street food
This is one of the great street foods of Delhi – daal pakodas (fried lentil balls) served with grated radish and carrot and topped with chutneys. Like a small plate of chaat, this is a multi-dimensional exploration of tastes and textures. The pakodas are crunchy and the lentil is tangy. The pakodas are neither too dense nor too fluffy and provides a nice bite. Grated radish and carrot adds a refreshing crispness. Horseradish overtones and bitterness of radish and sweetness of carrots adds to the dimensions of taste. Coriander/mint chutneys are savory, tart, and gingery. Tamarind chutneys bring the taste of molasses, and dates.
 Home grown radishes |
 Frying lentil balls |
 Fried lentill pakodas |
 Add grated carrots and radishes |
Desi style Okra fritters
Following recipe serves two –
- Start with a dozen tender okra. Wash and dry thoroughly.
- Slit open with a paring knife and stuff a pinch of the following spice mixture – 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp amchoor (dry mango powder), 1 tsp anardana (dry pomegranate seeds), 1 tsp toasted and crushed cumin, 1 tsp red pepper powder
- Prepare a thin cake like batter by mixing 1 cup of besan (bengal gram flour) or chickpea flour with sufficient water, a pinch of salt, 1/2 tsp cracked pepper, 1/2 tsp anardana, 1/2 tsp crushed coriander seeds, 1/2 tsp nigella seeds, 1/2 tsp turmeric powder, 1/2 tsp of red pepper powder/flakes
- Prepare a mustard oil bath for frying – 1-2 cups depending on your fryer.
- Heat mustard oil to smoking.
- Coat the okra in batter, a few at a time, and fry until golden.
- Drain on a paper towel and serve with chutney.
Stuffing Okra with spices
Container gardening this summer
Aside from several batches of microgreens and salad greens, the bounty this summer has been quite varied.
 Fenugreek leaves |
 Lemongrass |
Summer squash
Oregano
Chocolate, some more?
Askinosie Chocolate Hazelnut Spread ...
Balancing hazelnut and chocolate can be tricky. My better half has been wanting to take a crack at making a chocolate hazelnut spread. He eventually will, but for now, after some suitable procrastination, he surprised me with mail order from Askinosie, a chocolatier we have grown fond of over weekly doses of Scream sorbet. With chocolate as good as Askinosie, you don’t want the chocolate flavor overpowered, even with something as good as hazelnut. This spread is nearly perfect and since its arrival, has made its way on our home made biscotti, and crepes. A more recent guilty pleasure is with s’mores (marshmallows and graham crackers).
... with smores
I am mulling over the thought of crepes, chocolate hazelnut spread and marshmallows a la Breizh.
Red Fort and a food walk in Old Delhi neighborhood
My fondest childhood memory of visiting Delhi includes the Sound and Light show at Red Fort. Visiting Red Fort as an adult is a bit of emotional roller coaster ride for me. Looking at the damage caused by years of artillery practice during British Army’s residence here can be depressing. On the other hand, it is an exhilarating place to watch visitors from small towns of India, their excitement very palpable and uplifting. Away from the congestion of Old Delhi, vast spaces such as Red Fort make your imagination soar. While it is practically impossible to imagine Yamuna flowing next to the fort, it is relatively easy, thanks to Bollywood, to imagine the beautiful Moghul women in their flimsy silk sarees walking by Yamuna fed Nahr-i-Behisht in Rang Mahal. In any case, Red Fort is still a place that awes, particularly if you live in Delhi. For this photo series from summer of 2009, click here.
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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.
One more reason to go to Ferry Building
 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.
Coffee and Chocolate at Four Barrel
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.
Chilke ki roti – Vintage punjabi cuisine
Chilke (husk) ki roti
This recipe is from my grandmother’s generation that believed in the motto “waste not want not” and uses the husk of lentils to lighten up the traditional roti. Following recipe serves two.
Preparing the lentil: Take a cup of green mung bean (split or whole). Rinse the beans and soak overnight. If using whole beans, prepare for the beans to sprout and let the bean sprout for a day or so which eases removal of husk. When the beans are ready, place the lentils in a large container and fill with water. Gently rub the lentils to loosen the skin. Collect up the skin that floats to the top. Squeeze the skin to drain all water and set aside. If making daal from the washed and de-skinned lentil, click here for one particular recipe. The sprouts can be served as a simple salad when mixed with salt, pepper and lime juice.
Vin d’Orange
Homemade Vin d'Orange
Found a DIY Vin d’Orange recipe on NYT. Substituted rosé with white, used ceylon cinnamon instead and skipped the vanilla bean – ended up with something that is nevertheless wonderful. For a recipe as simple as this, quality of ingredients is definitely critical including the quality of rum. Best time to make this is when the oranges are tree ripened. Our version is made with Cara Cara oranges. It is a delightful summer drink when mixed with carbonated water.
This summer in India, we found a variety of refreshing summer drinks. Oh Calcutta in Kolkata served a thinned buttermilk and Keffir lime mocktail, and a roasted green mango vodka cocktail.Visit to friends gave an opportunity to try out FabIndia‘s sweet and salty drinks – lemon ginger, aloe vera, amla (gooseberry), and fruit punch. Keep an eye out for my experiments with buttermilk and Keffir lime.
How to take on the summer heat in Kolkata
 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.
Eating fish in Calcutta
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 my 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 he has friendly access to a pond. From the comfort of my 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 a picture perfect village.
 Picture perfect village |
 Dragging the pond |
London in 4 Hours
When: 1 pm on a weekday
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.
“Shorshe Ilish” aka Mustard sauce Hilsa fish
 Hilsa rubbed with turmeric and salt |
 Mustard paste |
 Add Hilsa to wok |
 Toss the fish in the wok |
Since this dish is being cooked on day one of my visit to homeland, clearly this one is among my favorites. Between “posto” and “shorshe ilish“, it is hard to argue which one is the more quintessential expression of bangla soul. If you are thinking that being vegetarian or not produces a clear choice, stop right there ’cause Bengalis consider fish to be the vegetable of the sea. So there.
The key to this dish is the quality of the mustard paste. Poorly ground mustard paste will result in a bitter dish. So pay particular attention to the quality of mustard and how you grind it. Typically, hilsa fish is used for the dish but for those of you who don’t live in the vicinity of Ganges delta, weep and then feel free to improvise.
Ridge gourd “posto”
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Writing from the Kolkata land. My mother is busy in the kitchen making some of my favorite foods. Posto is the Bangla term of a vegetable curry made with white poppy seed paste. One can use a variety of vegetables including potatoes, eggplant, or okra but my favorite uses ridge gourd.
Following recipe from my mother’s kitchen serves 6-8 people. One key feature of my mother’s cooking is use of mustard oil. The pungency of the oil does wonders to the flavor of the dish. Start with some fresh and young ridge gourd, about 1.2 kgs or so. Rinse, peel and chop (1/4 inch semicircular rounds) to make about 1 kg of gourd. Peel and chop 2 medium potatoes in 1/4 inch dice.
Cochon Butcher, Pigs and other good eats
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 …
Beignets of New Orleans
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.
Fritzel’s Jazz in New Orleans
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.
Locomotoring 