Archive for the ‘Veggie Friendly Restaurant Reviews’ CategoryNo description of our food adventures in South India would be complete without a special tribute to the dosa. As I wrote about in the South Indian summary, the dosa is a large, savoury pancake that is a staple of South Indian food.
The batter is usually made the day before the dosa is cooked, allowing time for the ingredients to ferment. Once the batter is ready, the dosa is very quick to make. A circle of batter is poured onto a hot grill and fried on each side for about 4 minutes . The filling is pre-prepared, and usually added at the end.
Dosas come with either sambar or dahl, and coconut chatni on the side.
The standard dosa is fairly thick and smooth, and chock full of filling. However, there are other types.
Rava dosas are made with semolina rather than rice flour. The batter is thinner, and seems to have more air bubbles, as the rava dosas have a slightly thinner texture with small holes through them.
Another popular variation is the paper dosa. I only ordered a paper dosa the one time because when it came out it was twice the size of the plate. I don’t know if they are usually this size… but I was too scared to try and order again.
Paper dosas are much thinner than the standard or rava dosa and consequently are quite brittle. Mine struck me as more oily than the other types of dosas - possibly because the thinness of the batter made it easier for the oil to soak right through the pancake. While not my first choice of dosa, this one was certainly a scene stealer when it was brought out to our table in the middle of a crowded restaurant. Travelling in the South of India we often encountered regional variations in the food. Kerala is a good case in point, as there were many dishes there which we hadn’t encountered in our previous five weeks in India.
Thoren is a classic Keralan dry vegetarian curry. It’s usually made with a single vegetable (for example, cabbage or beans) which is fried with spices and fresh pieces of grated coconut. It’s a quick, simple and tasty dish - the perfect meal when you have an odd vegetable lying around in the fridge.
My favourite Keralan curry was pachadi, which uses natural curd as the base for the curry sauce. The curd gave the sauce a creamy texture and a slightly sour flavour, which is a nice counterpoint to the usually sweeter Keralan dishes.
Another classic Keralan dish is Kitchadi. This can also be made with different vegetables, and uses curd in the sauce. It has a thicker consistency than pachadi, and in the version I tried the flavour was more bland and porridge like than the slightly sharper pachadi curry (but that could simply be the result of trying them in different restaurants).
Sambar (vegetables cooked in a tamarind flavoured broth) is a light, soupy curry served throughout the South. It is on most menus in Kerala, and is delicious as a topping for idlis or dosas, or as a simple, cheap meal served over rice.
And of course, if you can’t make up your mind about which curry to order, there’s always a thali set with a little bit of everything! With the end of our holiday rapidly approaching, Andy and I agreed that taking a South Indian cooking class was a priority. The relaxed town of Fort Cochin in Kerala was the perfect place to do it because many local homestays offered cooking classes on the side. Our hotel recommended we contact Maria at the Monte Carlo Guesthouse on Burgher Street. She’s not in any guide book that we know of - but she should be!
Maria’s classes are excellent value at 250 rupees per person for a vegetarian class, and 350 for a non-vegetarian. There is an extra charge of 50 rupees per person if you’d like to learn how to make chapatis. The classes take place in Maria’s kitchen and last for about three hours depending on the dishes. Bring an empty stomach because you get to eat the delicious results afterwards. One of the best parts of the classes is that Maria gives you a lot of choice as to the dishes you make. In the vegetarian version, we got to choose a ‘dry’ vegetable dish (Maria suggested we tell her our favourite vegetable and then she’d recommend a dish for it), a ‘wet’ curry, a rice dish and a chutney.
Eggplant was our vegetable of choice so Maria recommended a spicy chilli fry.We also used the class to learn how to make some of our favourite foods from the trip, including dahl, lemon rice, tomato chutney and chapatis.
Maria has an amazing wealth of knowledge about cooking. Most of what she knows come from her own experience running a restaurant, and the advice from her mother and mother-in-law which has been handed down in both families for generations.
Impressively, Maria gave us precise instructions for each dish, but did it all from memory. As she’d recount the steps she often offer asides about how to vary the ingredients or techniques slightly to produce a different dish. If we’d been able to stop drooling long enough to write down all of her insights we would have left with 20 recipes rather than five. I really liked that Maria’s class was hands on. Andy and I were her only students that day, so we took it in turns making each dish.
Making a number of dishes from scratch, we began to understand some of the basic methods of South Indian cooking. For example, there is a standard order for adding spices to dishes. You start by frying black mustard seeds until they pop…
…then add red onion, followed by turmeric for colour…
To make dahl, we used yellow split peas that had been soaked over night and then washed two times.
The final result was delicious, with much more complex flavours and texture than the dahl I’ve made at home.
By far the most difficult dish of the day was paratha. Maria taught us how to make the paratha dough and filling. The challenge was to fill the dough with the stuffing, then shape and flatten it with a rolling pin. Changing the way you fold and roll the dough changes the type of bread you end up with.
While Maria’s practised hands made the rolling look easy, I struggled to bend my paratha dough to my will. Still, with some expert help and patience the dough was finally in a fit shape to be cooked in a pan. It was great eaten with the chutney or dahl. Of all the cooking classes we took overseas, Maria’s was our favourite and I’d highly recommend her to anyone visiting Fort Cochin. If you’d like to organise a class with her you can visit her at the Monte Carlo Guesthouse on Burgher Street, Fort Cochin, call her on 2215342, or else email her at mgeorge24in[at]yahoo[dot]com. Update: Maria’s husband George has started a blog about Kerala’s many tourist attractions called Cascade of Pearls. It has details of their restaurant and also an email link. Just in case anyone is wondering, I haven’t been injured in a freak cricketing accident or foresworn the Internet to join an Ashram in India. Veggie Friendly has been quiet because Andy and I recently returned to Australia to exercise our democratic right. Since then we’ve been between homes, jobs and Internet providers, but hopefully the wandering is largely behind us and we can stow away our backpacks in the coming weeks. In the meantime, I have some great food experiences in South India to write about and then I’ll revert back to the usual format of a restaurant review and recipe site. On my first day in India I picked up the book Rude Food by Indian writer Vir Sanghvi. Rude Food is a collection of food writing columns that Sanghvi published anonymously in the Hindustan Times while he was the paper’s editor. Opinionated, refreshing, sometimes arrogant and almost always entertaining, Rude Food is a great introduction to Indian food, its history and the main Indian restaurant scenes. While the subject matter varies widely (think everything from how to make perfect mashed potatoes to the history of South Indian staples like dosas and idli) a consistent theme of the book is the high quality of restaurants in top Indian hotel chains. Sanghvi reserves special praise for the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower in Mumbai, devoting an entire column to the history of its groundbreaking restaurants. One reference really piqued my curiosity: Sanghvi claimed the Taj’s Indian restaurant, Masala Kraft, was the best Indian restaurant in the world. This was one boast I was happy to test! Despite wearing our best clothes, I still felt underdressed when we entered the glamorous marble lobby of the grand Taj. By contrast, Masala Kraft was almost disappointingly understated in tone, situated down a hallway in an unprepossessing, internal room overlooking a shopping strand. While the decor was muted, the food was anything but. Masala Kraft is easily the best Indian restaurant I’ve eaten at, and certainly the most innovative. The menu contained none of the usual Indian standards, like Palak Paneer or Vegetable Korma. In their place was a carefully thought out list of exquisite, modern Indian dishes, the like of which I’ve never seen on any other menu.
Our meal began with a complimentary starter of pappadams, tomato sauce and fresh carrot and cucumber. This was followed by a second complimentary dish of a fried egg-shaped ball filled with potato, organic lentils and sweet yoghurt served with a tamarind sauce.
For entree, I ordered the Lal Mirch Ka Paneer, paneer cheese marinated in chillies and aniseed and char grilled. It was superb, the best paneer I’ve ever eaten. The paneer had an amazing texture, soft to the bite but still meaty and layered. The marinade was perfectly done - well-spiced, but without letting the chillies overpower the other tastes.
Andy choose the Bhalla Chat, lentil dumplings soaked in a sweet yoghurt and topped with date and ginger relish. This was an unsual dish to my tastebuds reared on Western food. The lentil cakes were soft and didn’t have a strong flavour, while the very sweet yoghurt sauce was seasoned with salt and pepper and had an almost eggy mayonaise flavour. We’d given careful thought to our choice of mains. There were so many intriguing dishes, like snakegourd and drumstick curry, turnip cooked with peppery lentil dumplings, and paneer tossed in sorrel leaves. However, anticipating that we would be feeling full, we choose a simple vegetable dish and a dal. Of course, these were not “boring” choices. The vegetable dish was Bhavnagari Mirchi, green peppers stuffed with a pickled potato mash, while our Dal Maa Sabut was a delicious combination of black dal in a tomato and cumin sauce.
They came out together and were served onto large individual dishes by the exceptionally friendly waiting staff. The green peppers with pickled potato mash was a welcome respite from the heavier curries we were used to for dinner. The pepper flesh was delicate and soft, while the pickled mash added bite. The dal was proof of how satisfying simple foods can be. As Andy said, the sauce was a wonder, somehow managing to be rich without being heavy. By the end of the meal we were so impressed that we asked the waiter to give our compliments to the chef. We were very pleased when he sent the chef out to meet us, so we could give them to her in person!
We hadn’t ordered dessert as we were very full by this stage, but the chef insisted on sending out a complimentary tasting plate with some traditional Indian ice cream called kulfi, and a light milky pudding. Andy and I were lucky to eat at Masala Kraft during the Hindu Navratri festival, as Masala Kraft had put on a special, vegetarian friendly menu. All the entrees were vegetarian, as were 20 of the mains. Before we left I checked the standard menu, and was reassured to see that many of our favourite dishes, like the paneer starter, were also part of the regular service, and that there was always a good selection of vegetarian dishes on offer, including seven vegetarian mains. Masala Kraft is not cheap by Indian standards. Our meal, without wine, came to over 2000 rupees (or $70 Australian). However, the quality of the food is superb, and I doubt you could find the equivalent food in a Western country for this price. More than that, the food was clever, modern and innovative, suprisingly rare features of Indian restaurant menus where you often find the same traditional dishes repeated ad nauseum.  One of the best parts about travelling in India is that you can experience regional food which is unavailable overseas. Such an opportunity came on our way to Mumbai when we stopped briefly in Ahmedabad, the capital of Gujarat state. Gujurat is a smaller state in the West of India. It’s known for its textiles, commitment to vegetariansim, and peace-loving son, Mahatma Gandhi. While only there for 24 hours, we wanted to make the most of our time by trying the unique Gujarati cuisine at the renowned Agashiye restaurant. Agashiye is a vegetarian restaurant that serves authentic Gujurati food. Everything is carefully prepared, down to the metal plates that the food is served on which contain special health-giving properties to purify the blood and restore memory. The experience is unsual and elaborate. First, you choose between two sizes of meal, the contents of which change daily. We elected for the smaller meal - or more accurately the least large one. After paying we were led to the top floor of the hotel, and guided into a brightly lit ante room which had touches of Japanese austerity in its decoration and low seating. We were given a welcome (non-alcoholic) drink, and two starter dishes to share. The first was small, coin-shaped fried potato cakes. The second was unlike anything I’ve tasted in India: cube-shaped pieces of soft, sweet, steamed bread (farsan) served with a mint yoghurt dressing.
After our starter we were taken to the restaurant proper. Set on a rooftop surrounded by a high wire fence, and overlooking the city skyline, I had a fleeting impression of being in New York. We had no idea what to expect from the rest of the evening, but fortunately a bevy waiters soon visited our table bearing all kinds of interesting food.
The meal proper was an intricate, and filling, affair loosely made up of three courses. The first two were mains, built around roti, and a mashed lentil dish called “khichdi”. The third was a dessert course. The main meal is served as a thali, a round tray containing numerous small sized dishes. The roti course comes with four varietes of vegetable dishes. Two use seasonal vegetables, one is gram based and the last is potato based. There was also a yoghurt palate cleanser, a dahl, and a large, sweet bowl of dessert (Gujuratis don’t hold with the silly notion that you only get dessert once you’ve finished your main meal) . The dishes were thoughtfully prepared and not unpleasant, but the flavours tasted strange to my palate and I didn’t adjust to them during the meal. Unlike usual Indian curries and dahls, the Gujarati dishes are served very sweet. The only exception was the potato dish, which had a bitter, almost nettle like, taste. After a feeble attempt at finishing our roti course, the waiters reappeared with the “khichdi”, which has a thick consistency like porridge. It is eaten with “kadhi”, a sweetish dairy-based sauce. In a pleasant change from usual Indian thalis, the main meal also came with a large, fresh chickpea and tomato salad for us to share. Oh how I miss my fresh food! We were also given a colourful selection of chutneys and pickles.
About half way through the meal we were presented with the “etiquette card”, an English language guide to the food on offer and an explanation of how to eat it politely. This was very helpful, although a little late, as I had already broken one of the three cardinal rules. The dessert course was a delicate dish of creamy, home made ice cream, a highlight of the meal. It was accompanied by paan (betel nut leaves) which is traditionally chewed in India. Despite having diligently read our etiquette card, Andy and I struggled to figure out what exactly we were meant to do with the paan (the fresh green leaves were stuffed with a powdery like substance). We ended by putting the leaves and all in our mouths… then spitting it out two seconds later when the mixture hit our tastebuds. Maybe that was right and it is an acquired taste… or maybe not. While I didn’t enjoy the taste of Gujurati food as much as other dishes in India, I appreciated that the meal was so exquisitely prepared and found the experience of eating at Agashiye unique and thought-provoking. Andy and I were determined not to leave India without taking at least one cooking class. Afterall, there’s no point falling in love with food that you can’t recreate at home. Our first opportunity came in the lakeside city of Udaipur in Rajasthan. While there are a lot of cooking classes to choose from, we opted to go with the Spice Box, a local spice store whose owner, Shanthi, runs vegetarian cooking lessons on the side.
The class covers a number of popular Indian dishes, including palak paneer, malai kofta, vegetable biryani, chapati and vegetable cutlets, as well as spiced masala chai, and Kashmiri saffron tea. With so many dishes being taught in around three hours, the experienced Shanthi moves the class along at a fast pace. This is not a problem, however, as you receive a copy of the recipes and take turns to make the different dishes so the techniques are easy to remember.
I found the class really useful. While I’ve always loved Indian food, I’m not good at deciphering the different spices that are present in a finished meal. Learning the dishes from scratch gave me a whole new insight into why dishes taste the way they do.
Khadai paneer home-style - all capsicum and paneer, just the way I like it Throughout the class we picked up lots of interesting information about Indian cooking. For example, masala chai is always made with Assam tea, and home cooked Indian food is very different from the food you find in restaurants, using far more vegetables and far less sauce.
Whipping up a palak paneer I was also surprised at how fast the curries were to make. I’ve always been taught that curries need to be simmered for hours, but that doesn’t make a lot of sense when you consider that a home cook has many other demands on their time.
My favourite dish of the class was the malai kofta. The sauce was delicious, using lots of interesting spices like green cardamon (reserved for sweet and milky sauces), aniseed, cinnamon, white poppy seeds and watermelon seeds. And I was fascinated to learn that you make the unspiced, deep-fried potato dumplings separately from the sauce, and only combine them at the end.
Taming the chapati One of the most fun dishes to make was chapati. After making and rolling the dough, we transferred it on to a hot pan to cook where it quickly puffed up into a delicious bread.
The best part of the course was eating the delicious finished products at the end of the lesson, although as the only two in the class we couldn’t finish the food no matter how hard we tried. This class was ideal for beginners who want to get better acquainted with classic North Indian dishes. As Shanthi says, the only thing you need to bring to the lesson is a bottle of water and a big appetite. |
Bad Behavior has blocked 346 access attempts in the last 7 days.