Category: bread

Indigo, One Golden Mile

Indigo at One Golden Mile, Delhi opened with much aplomb and almost soon after, celebrity chef Rahul Akerkar exited the company. Skeeter visited the restaurant both before and after his exit and here’s an account of her last visit for a winter menu tasting. One enters the sprawling courtyard, passing by their Deli, from where Skeeter remembers picking some good breads and croissants on her last visit.

On a crisp winter evening, the tasting menu started with a lovely amuse bouche of brioche topped with jam and goat cheese, with an edible flower petal that brightened the plating. A spectacular wild mushroom consomme with mini chevre tortellini followed thereafter. The consomme was light and hearty, and the tortellini paired well with it.

Amuse Bouche
Wild mushroom consomme with mini chevre tortellini

The salad of asparagus, shaved fennel & green apple, baby greens, chives and parmesan dressing was crisp, well dressed, refreshing and aptly portioned. 
Salad of asparagus, shaved fennel & green apple

As the evening wore, the table got a little impatient as the service got a little slow and we got our mushroom mille feuille with whipped chevre, rucola and porcini liquor, after a long wait. But the company on the table kept the evening warm with friendly banter. While the deconstructed take on the mushroom mille feuille with baked puff pastry assembled in crisp layers to stand over the whipped chevre was nice, the porcini were rather cold and the taste was amiss. Overall, a dish that is best not remembered.
Mushroom mille feuille with whipped chevre, rucola and porcini liquor

Faith in their food was restored with the Herb ricotta & saffron stuffed cappelletti (hat shaped pasta) with basil butter roasted mushrooms, baby carrots and parsnip puree. It was a stellar dish full of oomph and flavour. Skeeter would go back for this one.

Herb Ricotta and saffron stuffed Cappelletti
But the show stopper for the evening was definitely – the dessert sampler. With its fun, colourful, simple yet stunning plating, the dessert sampler consisted of a decadent and wonderfully flavoured smoked chocolate mousse, a sublime Belgian chocolate & hazelnut dome, a creamy Mango & Passion Cremeux and a Deconstructed Red Velvet Cake. The food at Indigo is still as good after the celeb chef’s exit and the presentation has gotten better. Kudos!
Dessert Sampler

Of Raclette and chocolate at Hyatt Regency, Delhi

Delhi winters are coming to an end and Skeeter hates bidding good bye to winters. All fatty (read yum) foods are best enjoyed in Dilli ki Sardi. So Skeeter decided to bid adieu to Delhi winters 2013-14 in style. A Stammtisch dinner at Hyatt Regency, Delhi did it for her. No one eats cheese like the Swiss and the French do. And you know you are in good hands when a Swiss chef is taking care of you. Skeeter met chef Marin Leuthard who has put together the Stammtisch menu after some pondering over which cheeses to include, what would his patrons like and so on.
Stammtisch is a friendly dinner over conversation, great wine and food. It originated in Germany where regulars meet at a table reserved for them one particular day of every week. They debate/talk on various topics. At Hyatt, there is a long table for 12 reserved for the Stammtisch where people can meet, greet and eat. There can be strangers on the table too! All unite for food and talk.

Our table on the day we visited had a rather small gathering but a rather interesting conversation that ranged from the preferred cheeses of the Swiss, to Raclette that we sampled later, on to the delightful Swiss chocolates and much more.
The buffet menu is pretty wide and changes on a rotaional basis so that guests coming back get ample variety to savour. Skeeter shall share her three favourites from the Hyatt’s Stammtisch menu.

Raclette is a Swiss cheese which is nothing short of poetry for the way it is had. You heat it over a special Raclette grill or a pan, scrape off a melted portion onto a plate. Baby potatoes, Rosti (a swiss potato pancake),  gherkins, pickled onions and dried meat are the usual accompaniments. It is so famous that almost every Swiss household has a Raclette grill. Raclette is made from cow’s milk and there are a couple of stories associated with it, the most prominent one being that the farmers had it as a nutritious meal. They would leave the cheese near the fire and go to work to come back to a melted Raclette, which, they would then have with bread. Buy the story or not, do go to Hyatt for the Raclette experience. You can skip the Rosti they serve it with or ask for a non oregano-ed/herbed version of the same. Skeeter bets it would taste better without those.
Skeeter’s next favourite was the Spatzle. It is dish which surfaces in many German, Swiss and Hungarian meals(pre-packed ones are available too). Spatzle is essentially a homemade egg dumpling which was super soft and was served with some Emmental cheese and topped with fried onions. Yum!
A white chocolate bark studded with almonds had Skeeter floored towards the end of the meal. It was showcased brilliantly: unevenly broken barks of Swiss milk chocolate with almonds clumped together in glass. It tasted great and had great visual appeal. Have never loved white chocolate like the way I did at Hyatt.
Oh and there was a fab cake spiked with Kirsch too!

Thrilled to bites…

…as always, I am.

Food, ummm, rather ‘good’ food, lifts up Skeeter’s spirits like nothing else.
On a gloomy Sunday, completing work early at office, she went to Khan Market to book her copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Sadly, the market was closed, as it is on any other Sunday. Memory weakness is at its best with her. Duh!
The idea of heading back home seemed boring. She headed to her favourite place in town – Market Cafe, instead. Unaccompanied. It did not matter as it would have at other eateries around town (funny stares you know). She chose a ‘perfect’ corner table as her abode for the next two hours that she was there.

And now, comes the food. The Chef was to prepare ‘Baked Goat’s cheese on Walnut bread with Za’tar’ for Reeta Skeeter. It should have been ‘Goat’s cheese on baked Walnut bread with Za’tar’; some mistake there while preparing the menu card. Anyway, the waiter was to serve the same with Pepsi.

Goat’s cheese, known to commons (hehe) as Feta, is her new fetish, the Feta fetish. Not many people like it; you got to love your cheese to love or even like Feta. And Feta can be sheep’s milk cheese too. If purchasing you got to pick yours carefully, else you would end up tasting the other version.
Coming back to the dish that she’d ordered. The portion was enough for her. The price was a wee bit on the higher side, but was definitely worth it. They could’ve baked it a bit more. Next, she ordered ‘Coffee Explosion’. This was a sundae. From the bottom to the top it contained: Crushed brownie, fudge sauce, coffee ice cream, coffee powder sprinkled on top of the ice cream, nuts all over and two biscotti. It tasted heavenly, and made up for all the coffee Skeeter has not had to have in about three years now. But by the time she reached the bottom , she had to STOP eating, else she would’ve fell sick. It was too heavy on her tummy.
In all, it was an enjoyable afternoon with the self. She looks forward to many more!

Tomatillos: Recipes and legends

Call them Tomarillos, Tomatillos, Promodoros, Tomatas, Tomatoes or what you please. Tomatoes are Tomatoes. Eat them raw, make yourself a Bloody Mary, put them in ur vegetables, make a yumilicious tomato Soup, extract their juice, make a pizza topped with Tomatoes, throw them on each other(as they do in Spain’s Tomato fight)…You will never pass a single day without crossing a tomato in your kitchen(unless it is by choice).
Here are a two good uses, I put tomatoes to:
Bread Pizza
Take a slice of bread (white or brown), spread some tomato sauce on it. Top it with finely chopped Tomatoes, onions and green chillies. Top it all with mozzarella cheese and bake it in the oven, till the bread is crisp and the cheese, melting…. You can obviously add your own twist…. Instead of green chillies you can use red chilli flakes, or if you don’t like chillies, put in a dash of oregano or top with olives.

Cheese and Tomatillo Grilled Sandwich
It is the simplest and quickest recipe. Put on your grill toaster. Meanwhile chop/slice a tomato. Put it on a slice of bread (brown bread tastes good with this recipe). Top with loads of mozzarella. For seasoning, either use peppercorns (freshly crushed) or oregano. Cover with another slice of bread. Grill for 2 mins till the bread turns crisp. Enjoy!
Legend & Trivia
The legend goes that tomatoes were known in some places, especially the U.S. as ‘love apples’, at other places as ‘wolf peach’, ‘devil apple’ etc. They were considered unfit for eating as people thought they were highly poisonous. Probably the strong odour of the leaves and stems made people develop this notion. However, this did not prevent them from using tomato plants as decorative plants. Ex-U.S. President Thomas Jefferson once ate a tomato in public to prove to people that it wasn’t poisonous!!!