Thursday, April 21, 2011
Monday, September 27, 2010
Monday, June 28, 2010
A look into the past
So here I was (driven by a sense of nostalgia, instinct to collect and share information and some free time), trying to figure out the history of my clan, my people, the Multanis… (read more)
Sunday, October 04, 2009
Chicken curry for one soul
It’s payback time! Out of the seven times I have cooked a subji , I have referred the internet five times. (when I say subji I’m not including the egg bhurjees and omelets and all those simple bachelors’ works of art)
And most often than not I’ve found what I needed. Today, when I planned to cook chicken curry (after having gobbled down almost four truck loads of them in my life) I called up my mother for help. A five minute call and an hour later, I tasted the best chicken curry I have had in Bangalore. I hope you can feel the same after you try this simple recipe (atleast if you stay in Bangalore).
Step 1: Get excited ! You’re going to cook chiken curry !
Step 2: Get stuff
250 gm Chicken (ask the seller to cut small pieces)
1 Garlic bulb/ Garlic paste
2 Tomatoes
2 Onions (medium sized)
Curd (need 1/2 cup)
Chicken Masala Powder (any company’s would do I guess, I had MDH) (2-3 tspoons)
Ghee/Salt/Red Chili powder (If you’re cooking for the first time in your kitchen)
Step 3: Wash the chicken thoroughly
Step 4: Marinate the chicken
Add salt (2 tspoons) , red chili powder (1 tspoon), and 2 cloves of grinded (in a mixer or otherwise) garlic / ½ tspoon of garlic paste (I used the grinded one here) to half cup of curd to make the paste. Mix the washed chicken well in the paste. [this has to be kept like this for next 30 minutes]
Step 5: Prepare the masala
Grind the tomatoes, onions and garlic (4-5 cloves) in the mixer.
Put 2 spoons ghee in a cooker and heat it.
Drop in the paste, salt (11/2 tspoons) chili powder (1 tspoon) and the chicken masala (2 tspoons) and heat it for 5 minutes.
The masala
Step 6: Mix chicken and masala
By this time, the 30 minutes of marinating should be over. Add the chicken to the masala being heated. Heat the complete stuff (keep stirring whenever you remember) till you see the ghee separating from the rest of the masala and the masala sticking on the chicken (This would take around 10-15 minutes)
Chicken mixed with masala
Step 7: Hear the Whistle
Add in water just to cover the chicken and a little more and close the cooker, to wait for the whistle. (This will take again around 10 minutes)
Step 7: Final touches
After the whistle let the cooker be by itself (turn off the flame) for sometime, till the pressure is released. Open the lid, taste your creation, check if you need to add salt (I needed to) and….
Final look and feel (don't worry there will be two bowls full)
that’s it !
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Friday, July 17, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
No burps, only farts - I
This post is out of an absolute sentiment of ‘giving it back’.
They email, hand pamphlets, call on phone, SMS and do whatever possibly they can; enticing and luring first time customers, to deliver just the opposite of what they promise.
I blog (sometimes).
I’ve been in South Bangalore for around seven months and eaten out like a hungry Mangolian (used Mongolian as it sounds interesting) at more than thirty restaurants/bars/fast food joints here. Any person from the same area would find it difficult to believe and consider me a person with less refined tastes. I don’t completely deny that, though it’s more to save myself from the excruciating agony of getting stuck in ring/hosur/bannerghatta road traffic with an empty stomach that I eat in this part of the city. The search for a good eating joint in south Bangalore has been almost futile with an exception of a couple of places. I’ll take up three restaurants for this post.
Gud Dhani - BTM Layout http://gud-dhani.blogspot.com/
Their blog says “We, at Gud Dhani believe...Restaurant...is not a place one should go on Saturday/Sundays”. I would advice that one should not go there on any day.The first thing
which really puts you off is the lack of space. The feeling is that of being clamped for room, with strange little bamboo doors separating sections.
The walls are done up with a lot of mindless cave art (the crudeness of which I find repulsive. Either keep it authentic or else modernize it, why destroy the essence?] and if that is not enough to kill your lust for food.. the menu is categorized by stupid mix of strange titles, with no theme what so ever.
We ordered kadi pakoda, dakre wali kadi, paranthas and baingan bharva trying to favor a more Rajasthani cuisine, with images of the camel from the adverts, still fresh in our minds. And then was the real dampener “with this the USP stand like a beacon, that is the Food. Cuisines here is made by finest chef from northern India Gives a finger licking taste which linger really long.” ..yes agreed ! the taste lasts as long as you go home and use your own soap (yes, no soap there) to wash your hands off the oil. The paranthas had enough oil to fry samosas for an entire fifth standard and were mediocre in taste. The baingan did not have enough masala to drive me into taking a second helping. The Kadi was edible but ‘just’.
Alas, even devil has a smart looking tail. I liked the fact that the waiters were polite and inconspicuous, the way I prefer. The meal for two cost us around 200 Rs. which would have been decent if the management would have put more effort in finding the USP backing chef and an interior designer rather than spending time in mindless campaigning. If I were Nikhat Kazmi and this was a movie I would have given it 1 star. Go there only if all other places where you can utlize your sodexho coupons are shut down for ever. It’s a confused place with tasteless food.
Tasty Bites (No, Tasty is not a dog) , Jayanagar
I missed it the first time I went looking for it. It’s really tiny and besides a bar (the distinctive Bangalore bar, with a standing counter and mucky seating area, with chicken bones on the floor) and a bakery, and camouflaged sometimes between these. But this only till a point that you eat here once. After that, you are surely going to remember the place.
Lot has been said about it on mouthshut, burp and so on, so will not rant the cheap/north Indian/ homely food story. What I like about this place is the speed, quality, the swarm of lady chefs and Uncle, The Efficient – IV – The Man with the Cap.
He takes orders with accuracy and courtesy (standard welcome note “Haan beta bolo”) in Hindi (also in Kannada/English when required) and then shouts out loud the same to the ladies, who like well-organized ants quickly get on to the task. Though mostly the sabji is precooked, rotis are freshly delivered to your plate.
My favorites here have been kadi pakoda, bhindi dry, baingan bharta, kale chane and palak paneer, though the rice kheer is the real winner. The thick sweet dish tastes of Horlicks a little and should be surely tried.
Since not many seats are available, it is suggested to either be early (before 8:30 for dinner, I haven’t had lunch there) or else get the food packed. A sumptuous meal will cost you around 70 Rs.(including the Kheer which is 25 Rs.) NK Rating : 4 Stars (I thought of giving 3 and ½ but then realized the stupidity of the concept)
Inchara, JP nagar
What caught my attention first was the mystery surrounding the location of the restaurant. You suddenly ‘identify’ it. It is strangely advertised (there is signage all around JP nagar advertising the name, though not pointing in any direction) and oddly located (edge of the residential area).
So when I finally did identify it, it was not without much fanfare. It seemed like a wedding of a former Prime Minister’s daughter was being held there. There was a flood of cars and I parked well 500 mts away from the gate, on the roadside.
It was a ‘mela’ inside too, waiters running around, sounds of bottles, laughter, loud, out of place and sick 90’s Bollywood music (before Rehman came and saved an entire generation). After watching this commotion, the only reason why we still ventured inside was exactly the same commotion, or rather to seek an answer to it.
There was a couples section and thinking of all those times when I would’ve smirked and made fun of such kitsch arrangements, (why did they ever make the word hypocrisy ? Bloody hypocrites!), I found a table there for me and my wife. It had to be a chosen table, for I’ve never had so many mosquitoes feasting on me in such little time. It was only after a bottle of strong beer, four reminders and a snarl that the waiter finally lit a ‘kachua chaap’ near the table. By then, I’m sure all the WBC’s in my body were fighting with the viruses the little monsters would have left in my blood.
The waiter was only keen on dropping beer. Rest of the items had to wait for what seems like a week in an airplane, where it has been announced that it would be landing shortly.
Finally, when it did arrive, the food was pretty ordinary. There is very little that can go wrong in a tandoori chicken but these guys still managed to serve bad tandoori chicken ( the chicken was not as healthy as the mosquitoes they look after). Even White Horse (more on this JP Nagar restaurant later) serves more and better in less money. Among the other ordered items we couldn’y really figure out which was what, so difficult to comment on.
Ordinary food, odd ambience, sorry music and horrendous service. NK rating: 1 star
They email, hand pamphlets, call on phone, SMS and do whatever possibly they can; enticing and luring first time customers, to deliver just the opposite of what they promise.
I blog (sometimes).
I’ve been in South Bangalore for around seven months and eaten out like a hungry Mangolian (used Mongolian as it sounds interesting) at more than thirty restaurants/bars/fast food joints here. Any person from the same area would find it difficult to believe and consider me a person with less refined tastes. I don’t completely deny that, though it’s more to save myself from the excruciating agony of getting stuck in ring/hosur/bannerghatta road traffic with an empty stomach that I eat in this part of the city. The search for a good eating joint in south Bangalore has been almost futile with an exception of a couple of places. I’ll take up three restaurants for this post.
Gud Dhani - BTM Layout http://gud-dhani.blogspot.com/
Their blog says “We, at Gud Dhani believe...Restaurant...is not a place one should go on Saturday/Sundays”. I would advice that one should not go there on any day.The first thing
which really puts you off is the lack of space. The feeling is that of being clamped for room, with strange little bamboo doors separating sections.
The walls are done up with a lot of mindless cave art (the crudeness of which I find repulsive. Either keep it authentic or else modernize it, why destroy the essence?] and if that is not enough to kill your lust for food.. the menu is categorized by stupid mix of strange titles, with no theme what so ever.
We ordered kadi pakoda, dakre wali kadi, paranthas and baingan bharva trying to favor a more Rajasthani cuisine, with images of the camel from the adverts, still fresh in our minds. And then was the real dampener “with this the USP stand like a beacon, that is the Food. Cuisines here is made by finest chef from northern India Gives a finger licking taste which linger really long.” ..yes agreed ! the taste lasts as long as you go home and use your own soap (yes, no soap there) to wash your hands off the oil. The paranthas had enough oil to fry samosas for an entire fifth standard and were mediocre in taste. The baingan did not have enough masala to drive me into taking a second helping. The Kadi was edible but ‘just’.
Alas, even devil has a smart looking tail. I liked the fact that the waiters were polite and inconspicuous, the way I prefer. The meal for two cost us around 200 Rs. which would have been decent if the management would have put more effort in finding the USP backing chef and an interior designer rather than spending time in mindless campaigning. If I were Nikhat Kazmi and this was a movie I would have given it 1 star. Go there only if all other places where you can utlize your sodexho coupons are shut down for ever. It’s a confused place with tasteless food.
Tasty Bites (No, Tasty is not a dog) , Jayanagar
I missed it the first time I went looking for it. It’s really tiny and besides a bar (the distinctive Bangalore bar, with a standing counter and mucky seating area, with chicken bones on the floor) and a bakery, and camouflaged sometimes between these. But this only till a point that you eat here once. After that, you are surely going to remember the place.
Lot has been said about it on mouthshut, burp and so on, so will not rant the cheap/north Indian/ homely food story. What I like about this place is the speed, quality, the swarm of lady chefs and Uncle, The Efficient – IV – The Man with the Cap.
He takes orders with accuracy and courtesy (standard welcome note “Haan beta bolo”) in Hindi (also in Kannada/English when required) and then shouts out loud the same to the ladies, who like well-organized ants quickly get on to the task. Though mostly the sabji is precooked, rotis are freshly delivered to your plate.
My favorites here have been kadi pakoda, bhindi dry, baingan bharta, kale chane and palak paneer, though the rice kheer is the real winner. The thick sweet dish tastes of Horlicks a little and should be surely tried.
Since not many seats are available, it is suggested to either be early (before 8:30 for dinner, I haven’t had lunch there) or else get the food packed. A sumptuous meal will cost you around 70 Rs.(including the Kheer which is 25 Rs.) NK Rating : 4 Stars (I thought of giving 3 and ½ but then realized the stupidity of the concept)
Inchara, JP nagar
What caught my attention first was the mystery surrounding the location of the restaurant. You suddenly ‘identify’ it. It is strangely advertised (there is signage all around JP nagar advertising the name, though not pointing in any direction) and oddly located (edge of the residential area).
So when I finally did identify it, it was not without much fanfare. It seemed like a wedding of a former Prime Minister’s daughter was being held there. There was a flood of cars and I parked well 500 mts away from the gate, on the roadside.
It was a ‘mela’ inside too, waiters running around, sounds of bottles, laughter, loud, out of place and sick 90’s Bollywood music (before Rehman came and saved an entire generation). After watching this commotion, the only reason why we still ventured inside was exactly the same commotion, or rather to seek an answer to it.
There was a couples section and thinking of all those times when I would’ve smirked and made fun of such kitsch arrangements, (why did they ever make the word hypocrisy ? Bloody hypocrites!), I found a table there for me and my wife. It had to be a chosen table, for I’ve never had so many mosquitoes feasting on me in such little time. It was only after a bottle of strong beer, four reminders and a snarl that the waiter finally lit a ‘kachua chaap’ near the table. By then, I’m sure all the WBC’s in my body were fighting with the viruses the little monsters would have left in my blood.
The waiter was only keen on dropping beer. Rest of the items had to wait for what seems like a week in an airplane, where it has been announced that it would be landing shortly.
Finally, when it did arrive, the food was pretty ordinary. There is very little that can go wrong in a tandoori chicken but these guys still managed to serve bad tandoori chicken ( the chicken was not as healthy as the mosquitoes they look after). Even White Horse (more on this JP Nagar restaurant later) serves more and better in less money. Among the other ordered items we couldn’y really figure out which was what, so difficult to comment on.
Ordinary food, odd ambience, sorry music and horrendous service. NK rating: 1 star
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