Posted on by megs83

Mumbai my new abode

I never thought I would ever get an opportunity to sample working and discovering a new city but thanks to a great boss and husband moving bases, this opportunity landed in my lap. So here I am in Mumbai, trying out new stuff to cook for dinner and trying out new tastes. I am consciously avoiding chains that I can get to eat in Delhi so that my food horizons broaden. Will be writing my reviews soon so far I have had Parasi, Gujarati, Mexican, Italian, only in Mumbai cafes and street food here. A few places get my likes , some don’t impress me much contrary to what some people might say.

I have another handicap- as much as I would like to try new places I’m avoiding being too adventurous so that I don’t get Mumbai Belly (read Delhi belly) here, so I try to be innovative for dinner at home. A few experiments that I try on husband have been as follows

1. Garlic bread- All time favourite

Ingredients

1 French loaf or Garlic bread loaf

2 table spoons of butter (I use Amul)

2 small cloves Garlic crushed (depends on how strong do you want it)

Pinch of Salt

Pinch of Pepper

Pinch of Oregano

1 tea spoon Olive Oil

Mix garlic, Olive oil, Oregano, Salt and Pepper in softened butter. Cut the French loaf diagonally into 8-10 pieces. On top of each piece of loaf spoon out the butter mixture, spreading it across the pieces equally. On a baking tray arrange the pieces and let it bake till the bread top is crisp and brown but should be soft from inside.

If the tray is not non-stick  spray a little bit of Olive oil before putting the pieces on the baking tray. You can also jazz up the bread by putting alternate juliennes of tomato and capsicum after you’ve put the butter mixture and bake. Or you could also put a mixture of cheddar and mozzarella on top of the tomato and bake till the cheese has melted and is slightly brown.

2. Vegetable Au- Gratin

1 cup par boiled vegetables- carrots, mushrooms, baby corn, french beans, broccoli, capsicums (red, green and yellow) and potato (all veggies are to be cut into cubes)

2 table spoons maida

2 table spoons butter

Salt to taste

Pepper to taste

¼ cup milk

Ina non stick pan put the maida and sauté it with butter till the maida is slightly brown. Add milk to the pan stirring it constantly so that no lumps are formed. You can add water or more milk if you feel that the sauce is thick or will not cover the veggies. Add salt and pepper to the sauce and pour it over the par boiled veggies, hope the veggies are in a bowl that you want to bake the dish in. On top of the veggies in white sauce add generous helping of cheddar and mozzarella mixture and put it to bake. I usually use  100 degree Celsius for pre heating  the OTG and then keeping the dish at the same temperature till the cheese has melted and has become brown (approx. 5-10 mins) depends if your using a microwave with grill make sure you are using both microwave and grill so that the veggies are hot and the cheese slightly brown.To be served immediately.

3. My take on Cesar  Salad

For the dressing

2 table spoons olive oil

1 table spoon mayonnaise

1 tea spoon white vinegar

Salt to taste Pepper to taste

¼  tea spoon Oregano

1 tea spoon tomato ketchup

For the salad

¼ Ice berg lettuce torn into pieces and put in drinking water with ice

¼ carrot cut into cubes

¼ capsicums cubes (green, yellow, red)

5-6 Cherry tomatoes cut into half

4-5 pieces of Bread croutons

Drain water and dry the lettuce leaves on a kitchen towel , add carrots, capsicum and croutons. Mix all the ingredients for the dressing in a bowl. Mix dressing and the veggies together make sure the dressing is not runny and coates the veggies. The salad is ready to eat, you could keep the salad in the fridge as well, it tastes best when served cold.

To add Hawaiian touch to this, you can also add a few pieces of canned pineapple cut into same size cubes as the rest. For non-veg add cold cuts of chicken or cold fried beacon and mix in with the veggies.

That’s it for now, I would be writting my reviews soon, let me know if you would like a few recipes that I have tried so far

1. Golgappa jaljeera home made (gol gappey ka pani)

2. Phirni

3. Pizza including the pizza base

or

4. Moong Dal cheelas

 

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Posted on by megs83 · 3 Comments

My own Strawberry Cocoberry recipe

So one Sunday when I felt creative (read bored with nothing to do) I thought let me try making Yogurt ice cream. It turned out quite well and it tasted like Cocoberry 🙂 so here’s my recipe

250 gms yogurt (I used homemade with double toned milk)

1 Small packet Amul fresh cream

250 gms Sugar (depends on if you like it really sweet)

1 packet strawberries

4 slices of pineapple

few drops of pineapple essence

1.Cut the pieces of pineapple and put it in churned yogurt then let them freeze till solid usually takes 5-6 hrs

2. Cut Strawberries into 4-6 pieces (depending on the size of Strawberries) and add 10 tablespoon and half cup water and let it boil till it purees a little but the Strawberries should not become a pulp

3.Take rest of the sugar and churn it in the grinder, add frozen yogurt in step 1 , add 2-3 drops of pineapple essence,a pinch of salt and churn till it all mixes . You could also add Strawberries here instead of Pineapple.

4. Add half the packet of Amul Fresh Cream to the above the mixture (make sure everything is cold including the cream otherwise it’ll become butter) churn it in the grinder lightly to make it smooth

5. Freeze the above mixture and churn it in the grinder lightly before serving as you’ll get crystallized ice cream

Serve the churned mixture with the pureed Strawberries in step 2

Let me know how it came out!

 

 

 

Posted on by megs83 · 6 Comments

Ai nayi: Review of Ai

So as our weekly ritual, we went to spend the Sunday trying to figure out a nice place to eat. I had heard from Prateek that Ai’s Sunday brunch is supposed to be good.

So after I saw Sanctum since, reflexly hubby goes off to sleep after wearing the 3D glasses, we went to Ai. As usual the husband was given drinks menu and me the brunch menu (I wonder why?why can’t women order drinks for men?) Khair, so the menu looked impressive- there was beef, pork,chicken and fish. So started with salad which has 4 types of lettuce -iceberg, green and red, the got 3 sake size little cups of 3 types of soup- miso, miso with tofu and tomato infused with jasmine- this sucked big time! with cold starters of some sort of Sashimi – highly avoidable.

Now time for starters which surprisingly where hot and fresh but again didn’t have much imagination or variety so there were different types of skewers- Pork, Chicken, Mushroom,Fish they all tasted the same as they were dipped in barbecue sauce which is very off the shelf. What impressed me was there was this guy who served us freshly made sushi at our table, so i tried beef, salmon and asparagus. Its a no-go place for vegetarians for sure they have no choice if you don’t want to eat mushroom or asparagus.

Only 1 pre-made sushi was served which again had salmon in it hence, very little choice. Then the main course came so I ordered prawn curry with rice and hubby ordered veggies with noodles- the prawns were unimpressive but the veggies curry was good and the noodles were better than eating plain rice. The desserts had 3 really small portions of creme brulee, some sorta gooey brownie and ice cream hovering around average, with freshly glazed fruits and recommended Darjeeling tea ice cream.

I will give Ai numbers only for style and will recommend that you experience Yum Yum Tree at New Friends colony they are great – the service is good, the food imaginative, they’ll bring all the entrees and dimsums that you would ever want to eat. But let me warn you they don’t serve a main course. So it’s deserts and entrees, dimsums and lots of Jasmin Tea.So the last time when we went everyone wanted to eat noodles also so the cook specially prepared stir fried noodles for us which were so-so but I will give him marks for the effort he put. Also, the Maitre D here is more active and the service never subsides. Recommended food here are their glass dumplings with Prawns and their entree made of pork ribs.

 

Posted on by megs83 · 2 Comments

This is what I call food

Had promised to write on Monday and now its Friday and I’m still sorta stuck with lots of work, hope its understandable considering that I was out of action for 5 days 🙂
OK!so as promised here’s the list of places that I absolutely love and I have special memories attached to them so that makes it doubly uber cool 🙂

1. China Club- Awesomest place for lovely food, nothing beats Chinese here I can’t claim it’s authentic as per the dishes I ordered and but it tastes just so right. The story behind this is that my best friend of one time had come to India from States after a really really long time and he invited me for dinner and I dolled up and met him at ‘The China Club’ ofcourse, the bill was exorbitant and I didn’t know I could eat so much, we finished an entire bottle of Australian white wine (sorry forgot the name) with tiger prawns as starters and the main course was Pork chilli and Lamb conje. LOVED it!! we ate and chatted for 3 hours. Can never forget that!guess what during the days of News-X had seen Peter Mukerjee also there sounds like a big deal.

2. There’s nobody else I would trust with ordering apart from Vijay, he’s a real foodie and I just request him to order for me whenever he’s there. We had gone on a work trip to Mumbai and I was dying to eat some good sea food so off we went to Gazali. Man!we started with Kokam Kadi and for starters had fried Bombay (Mumbai) Duck, then we ordered crab so the live crab clicking to glory. But the click click! turned into an awesome garlic butter shredded crab, roomali roti, Yellow Fish curry and meat.

Gosh! my mouth is watering already!

3. Solar Topi- Recommended to me by my ex-boss Kannan, he’s a Cancerian and a foodie like me, he suggested this place, its opposite ‘The China Club’ the food is nothing special roti dal sabji 😛 but had loved the ambiance its pristine white and feels like your sitting in a British Raj tent! Had taken my to-be and now my husband there, after he refused to eat anything at China Club. Don’t know if it exists any more, my haunt has changed to Delhi now.

4.Italiano-Had gone there after a grilling work out in gym trying to get this curly haired bomb interested in me. This place has awesome ambiance they light a candle on your table and the lights are dim, with the interiors made of stone/brick and guess what it was awesome because of this mid feb- mar type weather with a little bit of rain hanging in the air, I could smell summer and this really hot guy 😉 same Italian fair that you get every where bruchetta, crostini and the likes, I liked their mushroom risotto. Was located at Nathupur, don’t know if it exists anymore.

5. Olive Bar and Kitchen – The ‘lazy’ review can be found here, my hubby and I had gone there for Christmas brunch, guess who we bumped into Mr. Chidambram himself with no fan fare, just with a glass of red wine, my husband was like- ‘that’s him right?’ I said ‘ya we shouldn’t stare :)’ he smiled at hubby as hubby works for a news channel and has a fancy designation 😉 show off me, but I think this was paisa vasul, saw a couple of girls from my batch at college, some looked the same, some plumper. By the way I have never had such awesome turkey,its was perfect, all types of cheese had fun drinking wine,picking at food and they actually had sweet potato skewers,not my favourite but they tasted good.They also gave us some plum cake in a jam bottle. I was figuring out how did get the cake in the bottle ? May be they just baked it in the bottle? The service that day was terribly slow and if your sitting under the tree then be careful we had larvae trying to eat some pasta.

6. Mom’s Kitchen -Located in Central Goa near Panjim City, on our last trip to Goa, hubby and I hired a scooty and spent the whole day doing stuff that we would do on a weekend, try a new place to eat and watch a movie. I wanted to eat Goan fair so after we saw ‘Clash of the Titans’at Inox,on our way back to Cidade Goa (its was HOT! & April)we stopped at Mom’a Kitchen to eat Goan home cooked food.I loved the Dal and I had chicken broth with Cheeselings 🙂 reminded of the fights that me and Ira had on cheeselings, I was terribly plum and my sis skinny still she would beat me up on chips and cheeselings.

7. House of Ming- My first five star date with my ex I’ll never forget we saved up so much to eat chinese here 😉 We had wok fried noodles and lemon chicken dry specially made for us, we didn’t want gooey lemon chicken so requested the maitre de to get a dry lemon chicken, it was basically fried chicken with lemon sauce on top- yum. It’s located at Taj Mansingh Delhi, I still remember the chopsticks white with shiney silver top.

8.Fresco- Have been here on three occasions already , at Ambience Mall twice and at Janpath once -all celebratory lunches ,first occasion, Rahuls’ Cherry Honda and to celebrate a great pitch with the girls Rashmi and Kudrat. At Janpath the business card did the trick, just a little bit of thank you and the fact that Fresco was newly opened got us the best service, the pizza was freshly made and served at our table, didn’t like the deserts so a cake was specially made for us. 😉 now I like being pampered

9.Bukhara- At the Maurya, I know for sure one place where hubby gets best service, the business card does the trick, loved the wine, the kabab platter. I think Dal Bukhara over rated. Steady and sadly the standard has been slipping here.

10. Punjab Grill- Love ordering in this place when I’m with my side of the family, chicken shikan works for me here, no roti and only boti. Thsi time when my sister was travelling with her hubby my nephew (Anay/googley coz I love his cheeks) took them here, Kurkure are nice, the chaap is awesome but if you want to order a platter then that’s the best option here or anywhere including Punjabi By Nature or Colonel kababs. That reminds me Dahi Meat at Colonel Kabab is good. Then we had good ol’ butter chicken and naan. Gosh, I was stuffed and they had the left over the next day!That’s a hearty meal.

Let me know what all would you like me to write about, More restaurants or something else? Would love to know your opinion on this.

Posted on by megs83 · 3 Comments

Can’t take the foodie out of me!

Have been battling fever and stomach infection since 25th night, so today that  I am  in a condition to sit upright I thought that I need to share this amazing recipe by Nigella Lawson that I saw yesterday on TLC. Even though my stomach revolted with the thought of any other food apart from curd but this had my heart strings tugging. Well this is basically a mid night snack that she suggest but I feel its a great dessert and it’s easy to make ,unlike Nigella I guess most of of us don’t store half/ cooked yummies in the fridge to dig out at night (BTW I read somewhere that mid night snacking is a disorder). So here goes the recipe-

Nigella says slightly stale bread I’ll say 1 day old white/ milk bread – 1 piece cut into 2 halves
1 egg
1 table spoon vanilla essence
5-6 Fresh Strawberries
1/4 lemon squeeze
250 gms Plain sugar
250 gms Icing sugar

So just whip the eggs and the vanilla together and let the bread pieces soak in the vanilla and the egg, turn it around once your done with the steps given below
Churn the strawberries and icing sugar in the blender with the lemon squeeze till its a puree
Heat some butter(about a tea spoon) with a dash of oil so that the butter doesn’t burn
Add the step 1 pieces of bread and shallow fry/ saute them in the pan on both the sides till they are crisp
Roll the crisp pieces of bread in normal sugar

Serve the way it is with the Strawberry Puree

PS- I know I said I will write about the uber cool joints I promise will write about it on Monday around lunch that’s the time I’m most inspired 🙂