The Sunday Guardian

21.12.2014

not for sale separately

Inside FINER FOCUS: Rocky and Mayur dish it out 24 Tanul Thakur talks to the hosts of Highway on My Plate and FoodMad about combing the country for culinary marvels .

PHOTO ESSAY: Looks good enough to eat 30-31

Guardian20 assembles the most tempting, inventive, bizarre, lip-smacking food-related Instagrams, from Jamie Oliver to Bombay Bhukkad.

Channel your inner master chef 33 There are plenty of culinary tutorials to be found on YouTube: some earnest, some amusing and others downright demented.

Akhil Sood shares some choice options.

Films that have great taste

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Uday Bhatia sets a drool-worthy cinematic table, with food scenes from movies ranging from The Godfather to In The Mood For Love.

TOP TABLES OF 2014 You are what you eat. And where you eat. Kalyani Prasher takes you on a culinary odyssey across the capital, awarding establishments both familiar (Gulati, The Big Chill) and off the beaten path (the chow mein guy at Adchini). So sit back and chow down.

heaven, thy name is bhavan

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Food never goes out of fashion

If you hated Lady Gaga’s meat dress or loved Katy Perry’s popcornfringed skirt, you’re not alone.

Payel Majumdar gives you the lowdown on foodie couture.

3 totally Worth

Burger To beat

A Delhi Belly

ANDHRA BHAVAN

THE BLUE DOOR CAFÉ

SITARAM DIWAN CHAND

The one word descriptor for the old Delhi phrase “cheap and best” is bhavan, and among them Andhra Bhavan still wins, because mutton fry. And poori. Generations of Dilliwallas have been queuing up outside Andhra Bhavan just waiting to be snapped at by Anna, the high priest of this temple: a sign that their turn has come and the thali is within reach. Rice with ghee and pudi, poori, dal and two types of sabzi come with the thali, and you can order mutton, chicken or fish fry. Order all three.

It’s one of the many eateries in Khan Market that all look the same: small, with painted doors. But the burger menu here is truly delish. The Texas Burger that combines smoked bacon and burnt garlic will make you want to cry tears of joy, which will make you hungry all over again, and then you can eat the classic hamburger.

Sit on the terrace for best effect.

Bouncy, textured and filled with paneer, the bhature of Sitaram Diwan Chand are so deeply fried — we mean loved — by Dilliwalas that people take the metro from Gurgaon to reach the shop at 8 a.m. for breakfast. Clearly a mystery ingredient (probably the Paharganj dust) in the chhole has kept this place popular for 100 years and most of the people you will see standing around and eating probably used to come here with their parents.

1, Ashoka Road, Connaught Place. Tel: (011) 2338 2031

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2 this is the

runners up: Viva O Viva: What a name, what a food! At Goa Niwas. And Assam Bhavan for the best tenga in town.

66, Middle Lane, Khan Market. Tel: (011) 2464 0013

2243, Rajguru Marg, Chuna Mandi, Paharganj. Tel: (011) 2358 7380

runners up: Fork You, which has an awe-inspiring total of 14 burgers on the menu. Sakley’s Old Elm Farm Lamb Burger for its name. And Amici has a great new pulled pork burger.

Runners up: The bhelpuri at Defence Colony Market and the deep fried paranthas at Paranthewaali Galli (there is a reason they are on every tourist brochure).

The Best of Your Week Ahead 21st Sunday

22nd Monday

23rd Tuesday

Drishtikon Gallerie Nvya, District Centre, Saket 11 A.M. This is a solo exhibition of paintings

by Lal Bahadur Singh. His work, a blend of oils and acrylic on canvas, is influence, on the one hand, by the mythological legends, and on the other by the changing face of urban and rural India.

24th Wednesday

25TH Thursday

26th Friday

Prelude to a Kiss Alliance Francaise, Lodhi Road 7 P.M.

Chinese Coffee Shri Ram Centre, Delhi 6.30 P.M.

In this comedy written by Craig Lucas, an old man and a bride exchange bodies after he kisses her at her wedding.

Presented by Koncoct Drama & Films Society.

Danish Husain directs and stars along with Vrajesh Hirjee in this play about two friends who are struggling artists and have unresolved tensions simmering between them.

Happily Never After India Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road 7 P.M.

Antigone Shri Ram Centre, Delhi 6.30 P.M.

Rafi Sa Koi Nahi Siri fort Auditorium, Asian games village complex 6 P.M.

Delhi-based stand-up comics Amit Tandon and Neeti Palta poke fun at the differences between the sexes and the friction this causes.

This modern adaptation of the classic Greek tragedy is presented by the Shri Ram Centre Repertory. The play is directed by K. Madavane.

Anandji Shah and Bollywood singer Suresh Kumar Raheja pay tribute to music maestro Mohd. Rafi on his 90th birthday.

27th saturday

Farhan Akhtar Live In Concert Concert Lawn, Behind GIP, Noida 6 P.M. The actor, director and occasional singer Farhan Akhtar is gearing up to rock the capital with his band. The opening act is the popular playback and solo artist Papon.

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Artbeat

t he s u n day gua rdia n 20: s up p lement to t he s unday guardi an | 21. 12. 2014 | new delhi

4 Sushi, because

` Meal for two: Up to Rs 500 `` Meal for two: Rs 501 to 1,200

``` Meal for two: Rs 1,201 to 3,000 ```` Meal for two: Rs 3,001 and above

wasabi hota hai

MEGU

The Leela Palace, Chanakyapuri. Tel: (011) 3933 1360 Megu means “blessing” in Japanese, and boy, do they take that stuff seriously. Chef Yutaka Saito dishes out fresh wasabi, sushi and sumibi aburiyaki using a grilling technique with a special charcoal. Best rolls: Spicy Rainbow Roll (crab and avacado) and Ebi Cracker (panko-fried shrimp). On the way out, you can pour water over a three-foot-tall crystal Buddha for good luck.

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Runners up: The Yum Yum Tree in New Friends Colony has a popular Sunday brunch with unlimited sushi, dim sum and cocktails. And tucked away in Lodhi Colony Market, is another sushi standard: Guppy by Ai.

5 Meet Your Kind

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AMICI

LODI — THE GARDEN RESTAURANT

The best place to befriend strangers, if only for the space of a coffee, is the lovely, tiny, sunny terrace of Amici in Khan Market, because most people who come here are looking for a way to avoid writing that piece they have to finish. Also, the tables are so closely set that unless you speak in whispers, you can’t help but make others laugh.

While compiling this list, we realised that some bright chap has spelt the restaurant’s name as Lodi instead of Lodhi (you only need to see your address, dude) and deducted five marks instantly. It still won the category — lovely as it is, with a sprawling green lawn that you can gaze at from an all-glass restaurant, or from its slim terrace. Some of the best events happen in its garden (including Goethe-Institut’s open air film nights), and the newish seafood-filled menu is very wow.

runners up: Monkey Bar, where the food’s great, the vibe’s easy-going and the soundtrack’s non-threatening.

runners up: Warehouse, because Connaught Place’s finally got a rooftop place to talk about! And Amour, because they have a lift to the roof (also great decor and views).

47, Middle Lane, Khan Market. Tel: (011) 4358 7191

Room With A View

On Lodhi Road. Tel: (011) 2465 5054

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7 Winsome Dim Sum DIMCHA

N-17, Ground Floor, Greater Kailash 1. Tel: +91 96432 00931 Do not argue with us, this is OUR list, and yes, we rate Dimcha above the bigger names in the city. You probably don’t even know about this place, since they like to keep themselves hidden by having the worst-marked signage in the city. However, the fairly new Dimcha has some excellent stuff — their cheung fun is light and delicate and the pork buff so buttery you won’t need hand cream for days after.

And it’s about 83% cheaper than Yauatcha, which lost marks because no one even knows how to pronounce it. runners up: Here, have your Yauatcha. And also Dim Sum Bros in Gurgaon, which first made dim sums sexy.

11 All In The Name SODABOTTLEOPENERWALA

3, Cyber Hub, DLF Cyber City, Gurgaon. Tel: (011) 3310 6291 It would be pretentious if it was not just a regular Parsi name — can’t blame them if fact is stranger than fiction, can we? SodaBottleOpenerWala tops the list of charmingly named restaurants in the city. As Rumi once said, a name that catches your attention loosens your wallet. The décor is fabulous too, and the food is great — at least for Dilliwalas who have no idea what Parsi food is all about. runners up: Punjabi by Nature; The Big Bong Theory in Shahpur Jat; and Imperfecto, though why one would go to you if you are imperfecto, one not knowso.

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8 Momo Mia! LAGUNA SIZZLERS

18, Yashwant Place Market, Chanakyapuri. Tel: (011) 2611 3662 The title of best momo in the city is a closely fought contest, and so it is with some daring that we’re sticking our neck out and voting for Laguna Sizzlers, who have probably forgotten that they do sizzlers, so popular are their momos. These pork momos have a thin skin of maida, so you don’t feel like you’re eating an eraser and even the deep-fried ones are, magically, not so oily.

Runners up: Several stalls at Dilli Haat serve very good momos, but you should start at the Arunachal Pradesh one (watch the sauce — it’s radioactive). A shout-out to QDs and their daring tandoori momos, which have become a North Campus favourite.

10 top brunch THREESIXTYONE DEGREES At Oberoi Gurgaon. (0124) 245 1234

Perhaps because they didn’t spend too much time naming the restaurant, they could really focus on the food. You cannot find better bang for your four grand than this: part of their brunch spread is Peking Duck, apart from a bottomless and endless range of top wines and Japanese, Italian, Chinese and whatnot. If you really want to eat and not linger over a glass of sparkling wine, this is the place.

Runners up: Olive for the buzz and ambience. Chez Nini because that’s the only way you can enter their lovely first floor now.

9 best

Buzz

CYBER HUB

DLF Cyber City, NH 8, Phase 2, Gurgaon. Tel: (0124) 654 3101 Calm down and be quiet: we know it’s not a restaurant, but there’s no point denying that multirestaurant-housing Cyber Hub is nothing but one giant plate of food. It’s like attending the Great Indian Wedding, with all the varied food options, or that’s what you’d think when you see how most of Delhi/Gurgaon/Noida (okay, maybe not) dresses up when they come here.

Despite that, the vibe is fantastic, especially in the winter, with wine bars and cafés spilling outdoors.

For the best atmosphere, visit during the upcoming cricket world cup.

Runners up: The really chill Café Lota at Crafts Museum, a green, airy space, perfect for an early morning chai.

15 The likeliest Place

To Spot A Celebrity NOWHERE OR EVERYWHERE All over Delhi, or not.

12 Besto

IT’S COMPLICATED

Seriously? You want to spot a celeb? We look down upon you very highly. It gives us great pleasure to tell you that you wouldn’t hit a celeb in Delhi if you spread your arms in all directions like the angry goddess, UNLESS you count authors as celebrities and then you can go up to anyone at all and ask for a signature because all of Delhi has written a book each. The last time we saw someone who actually makes news was when Omar Abdullah was still married and still in power and that was in Khan Market, so good luck.

Italiano

Tonino: 76/27, Mehrauli; Tel: (011) 2680 2633. The Big Chill: 68 A, Khan Market, Tel: (011) 4175 7588. Diva: M-8A, M Block Market, Greater Kailash II; Tel: (011) 2921 5673. Artusi: M-24, Block M, Greater Kailash II. Tel: (011) 4906 6666.

Runners up: Stop it.

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Because Italian cuisine is really popular in Delhi, there are several very, very good places, it’s tough for any honest publication to choose just one. So we’ll break it down here. For pizza, Tonino wins. For comfort-food pastas that may or may not be anything like Italian food, The Big Chill. For fish and meat mains, Diva. For the most innovative menu, Artusi. runners up: Yes there’s more. La Piazza at Hyatt is still very good. And Fat Lulu in Gurgaon has great pizzas.

Best New Entrant 13

MYKONOS

253, Shahpur Jat. Tel: (011) 6565 6002 A Greek restaurant run by an old Greek lady, the blue and white Mykonos looms over the dusty Shahpur Jat market, inviting you in with cherry tomatoes and feta cheese. (It takes its title from the tourist-attracting Greek island of the same name.) It’s so new you won’t be able to find the menu online, and all its publicity is by word of mouth. A great experience in authentic taste and flavours, Mykonos has killer moussaka, while the baklava is a veritable bed of roses. runners up: Barsoom and Social in Hauz Khas Village for introducing a whole new concept.

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14 fowl play: Butter

Chicken to kill for GULATI

6, Pandara Road Market. Tel: (011) 2338 88360 The reason Bappi Da never really, really made it is clear to us: he left out butter chicken from his moving and evocative song You Are My Chicken Fry. A clever move nonetheless, as then it would have been too obvious that he copied the menu of Gulati’s and presented the items as lyrics of this song. Do not make a mistake as grave as missing out on butter chicken in Delhi; head to Pandara Road for a choice of restaurants that serve mildly different versions of the same dish. We pick Gulati because they have neatly separated the vegetarians by opening a Veg Gulati next door.

If you fight with your date, you can stuff them in the tandoor in accordance with another age-old Delhi tradition.

Runners up: Minar in Connaught Place for a creamier version and Frontier at The Ashok Hotel, which serves a Northwest Frontier recipe.

Artbeat 23

th e s u n day g u a r d ian 2 0 : s u p p l e m e n t to th e su n day gu ar dian | 21.12.2014 | n ew delh i

Cocktails Worth Their 17 Best ‘What The Hell Is That?’ place Weight In Hangovers 16

Best ‘Why Are We Here?’ CafÉ 18

SPEAKEASY

GUNG THE PALACE

MARKET CAFÉ

It’s called Cocktails & Dreams Speakeasy, but let’s pretend we didn’t hear that and continue to call it by its saner name. A cosy den in the unlikeliest of markets in Gurgaon, Speakeasy is styled like a speakeasy (obviously) but you don’t have to knock on its door three times and feel foolish as a cow looks at you with an odd expression (we told you it was an unlikely location for a great bar). Great live acts accompany some really fab cocktails such as Bronx and Uncle Sam, but the best part is that you tell them what you like and the bartenders will make you new ones on the spot..

It’s only when you eat at places that serve authentic cuisines that you realise how bizarre those cuisines are. After years of thinking that Korean food was fried chicken and kimchi, Gung opened up in Delhi and offered all sorts of weird things — who eats rice and omelette in sweet gloop anyway? And then they have names such as hangjungsal (the dish descriptor says “pork juwls”, as if that explains everything). However, no matter how odd the name and how mucky the presentation, everything tastes so good at Gung The Palace that you’ll want to forgive them for forgetting the comma in their name.

Runners up: PCO is a speakeasy-style bar with a wizard of a bartender who loves stirring things up with off-menu surprises. They also have the best whiskey sour in the city.

Runners up: Fancy some nghui ngosing? Or some bawngsa kan? Visit Rosang Soul Food in Green Park.

The food is a bit of a mishmash of everything, the drinks can be green in colour and now they have gone and ruined the cafÈ-style seating with leathery-something that can cause a headache upon sight and yet ñ and yet ñ several Khan Market-regulars march to Market CafÈ as if in a trance. It must be habit as once there were almost no options in the market and fond memories of lingering at this sunny cafÈ looking out at the trees and hoping no one you know will walk in draw us back here. There’ll always be someone you know at Market Cafe, quietly wondering what the hell they are doing there.

SCO 23, Sector 15-2, Gurgaon. Tel: +91 98109 99086

D 1B, Near Ashirwad Complex, Green Park. Tel: (011) 4608 2663

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8, 2nd Floor, Khan Market. Tel: (011) 3310 5770

Because Money Grows On Trees 19

Runners up: If you’re new to Delhi, you’ll be dragged to 4S sooner or later. And your reaction to their cramped quarters and interchangeable fried stuff that might be vegetable, fowl or slipper will be noted and commented upon. Say you dislike it at your own peril.

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AKIRA BACK

At JW Marriott. Tel: (011) 3310 5088 If you think money does not indeed grow on trees then stop reading and skip to next paragraph. For the rest, there’s Akira Back where the fried chicken is stuffed with tiny diamonds and hence it costs 1,100 bucks and a sushi and sashimi platter is for Rs 8,000.

(What?) Leave money out of it and Akira Back has the best and longest Japanese & Korean menu in town even though it has some highly suspect vegetarian dishes such as Corn Croquette — hmm, Croquettes from Corea? Moving on quickly, and forgiving the small quirks, we give it full marks for being very expensive by which we mean very great.

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Runners up: Amaranth at The Oberoi Gurgaon for some super fresh lobster, and old favourite Indian Accent.

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22 Best Dessert

The Hand That Nurses the Mien the Hangover Of The THE ALL AMERICAN DINER Mein

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ELMA’S BAR AND KITCHEN

31 Hauz Khas Village, 2nd Floor. Tel: (011) 2652 1020 It may not serve any jalebi but it does have an apple crumble topped cheesecake which is simply amaze.

Opened as a tea room a few years ago, Elma’s created a sensation by serving scones with clotted cream and tea in dainty cups. Now we take all this for granted but still sigh with satisfaction as red velvet cake is slipping down our food pipes and mud pie is on its way.

The carrot cake is so huge, keep it on the side of the table and it doubles as a partition between you and the other tables.

At India Habitat Centre. Tel: (011) 4366 3162

UNNAMED CHOW MEIN SHOP In Adhchini Market, before the Turquoise Cottage left turn, but after Waves.

The best way to kill time in the traffic at Adchini is to hop out (not when you’re driving, okay?) and ask for the chow mein guy. It’s the very definition of a hole in the wall, a place so small that even the chow mein guy stands outside his shop and sells the good stuff plate by piping plate.

Parcelling is probably a better idea, as is asking your friends if they’re hungry. Take extras, as you’re sure to polish off a plate before you can say MSG.

Everyone knows that greasy food is the best cure for a hangover and the All American Diner opens its doors at 7 a.m., just so you can head straight from having a great time to gnawing morosely on a strip of bacon and wondering when the truck hit you. The pancakes here are so soft that you can rest your head on them and Disprins dissolve in their iced tea quicker than an Indian Parliament session.

Runners up: The Big Chill has the best banoffee pie and Spago has the best tiramisu in town.

Runners up: Go to sleep.

23 Best 3 a.m. Snack

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YELLOW BRICK ROAD

At Taj Vivanta, Khan Market. Tel: (011) 2463 2600 YBR is where all of Delhi goes when they realise they forgot to bring their keys and are too afraid to wake the household. The chirpy café at the lovely Ambassador hotel that they keep trying to make us call Vivanta comes alive between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m. when the bars close or your friends throw you out of their houses. This is when you order Kurkuri Idli Chaat and hope that your mates choke on it so they’d stop talking already.

Runners up: Late-night food doesn’t have to be exquisite as long as it’s hot and filling. The paranthas at IIT and (if you’re in the mood for a drive) Murthal are great for assuaging midnight pangs. Also, the delivery service Captain Grub does perfectly servicable burgers at the oddest hours.

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Runners up: Not too many roadside chow mein shops compare, but the closest peppery variety is probably at Moti Sweets in Malviya Nagar.

No Beef With This Baby 24

INDIGO DELI

Third Floor, Ambience Mall, Vasant Kunj. Tel: (011) 3310 5693 There is a ¼ kilo of char-grilled filet mignon in red wine sauce at Indigo Deli that we want to marry and our children will be as beautiful as the baked full garlic that comes as a side with it. It is so delicious that even the biggest wolf-downer will eat slowly, their joy overshadowed by witnessing the dwindling portion on the plate. The beef preparations at Indigo Deli are special — the tenderloin burger is fantastic and so is the roast beef sandwich. It’s truly a wonderland for meat-eating people who have a taste for the fine things in life.

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Runners up: The beef fry at The Toddy Shop in Hauz Khas Village. The same dish, but cheaper, at Kerala Food Channel in Kalkaji. Also, the pickled beef and galouti kebab at Monkey Bar.

DISCLAIMER: This is not a Best of 2014 list, which should be quite evident, but we just like to be idiotproof. We always close the issue three minutes after the last possible deadline, so all restaurants listed should still be open, but hurry.

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Artbeat

t he sun day gua rdia n 20: s up p lement to t he s unday guardi an | 21. 12. 2014 | mumbai

Foodie comrades: Exploring India’s inexhaustible palate

free verse sumana roy

For the last seven years, Rocky and Mayur have hosted some of the most popular food shows on TV, including Highway On My Plate and FoodMad. They talk to Tanul Thakur about their love for food.

Of moons and rotis

M Q. Your first TV show, Highway on My Plate, went on air seven years ago. Since then, you have combined travel and food to host a bunch of television shows. How did the journey begin?

Mayur Sharma: Rocky and I have been friends for 36 years; we grew up in the same neighbourhood, five houses away. We share a love for travel and food, and we thought the combination of the two would be interesting on TV. We had never done a food show, but still decided to give it a shot. So we wanted to keep it real: we decided that we won’t be preachy, we won’t be experts, we will just share our love and joy for India, travel, discovery and, of course, food.

Rocky Singh: The basis of our friendship has always been food. Because we have been trying and eating food from all over, when the idea of doing a travel show on street food came up, the producer, a friend of ours, called us to find out some of the places worth exploring between Delhi and Amritsar. We were able to rattle off pretty much everything off the top of our heads in terms of where to go, what to eat, how long the order would take. That’s when he said, “You guys are so passionate about food, why don’t you try television?” So we just went out there, and told our stories.

The people enjoyed the first series, and that’s how our journey began.

GUARDIAN GRUB

Q. Your shows are as much about food as they are about exploring India.

MS: When we first started travelling, we realised: okay, we know dhaba, we know Punjabi food, what else can we know about our country? Seven years ago, most people didn’t know about regional food. Everybody pretty much thought — and this is not stretching a cliché — that south of Madhya Pradesh, everybody eats idli-dosa, and north of Madhya Pradesh, aggressive Punjabis eat tandoori chicken; the east consists of Chinese-looking people, and the west has vegetarians who like sweet stuff in their food.

Of course, the food lovers knew better than that, but the general awareness and appreciation of the amazing range of cuisines we have, and how it influences the culture of a place, was missing. And that was something

Rocky Singh and (right) Mayur Sharma.

If you were to reflect on how much of the Indian cuisine we have covered, I would say, between 10 to 20%. So people still don’t know 80% of India’s food. We may have seen around 10 to 15% more, but that’s about it. We can name more than 7,500 different dishes that we have eaten in every state of the country. But is that the end? Not really.

we were determined to set right.

RS: We are uber-patriots.

We firmly believe that we have the most beautiful country in the world. When you are living in the cities, travelling along the highways and seeing the filth around, you tend to forget how beautiful India is. But the minute you step away from the beaten path and come across Indians who live in villages and remote areas, you realise the real ethos of this country.

And since we travel and meet so many people, we are in a good position to share that love with others.

day treks. So we are sort of used to it; we are travellers.

The big part of travel, three times a day, is food. We typically drive and shoot for five to eight hours, and eat, on an average, six to 10 meals from different places before we narrow them down.

We eat at places ranging from the very dirty to clean.

Can an average person do it? No. Not without practice.

Will a really seasoned traveller enjoy this? No, not initially. But once you get used to it, then it’s just pleasure.

That’s when your eyes open, and you start taking in things that a lot of people won’t even look at.

Q. Does regularly trying different kinds of food and travelling around the country take a toll on your body?

RS: [Laughs] It’s who you are. Anybody who is a professional can do anything he’s designed to do. So if you were to follow the regimen of a wrestler for one day, you won’t be able to move for the rest of the two weeks. Similarly, if you follow the regimen of Rocky and Mayur, you will be in a hospital for two weeks. Initially, some 30 years ago, we did this for pleasure. We would go for 10-day, 12-

Q. Your previous television shows have typically revolved around exploring Indian cuisines. Does the fear of repeating yourselves weigh on your minds?

MS: Not really, because we can keep the show quite fresh. We are currently doing a new show on the History Channel, which airs every Friday night, called Vital Stats of India. The show show explores India through numbers — through different topics that are dear to so many Indians: food, elections, science, cricket, and so on. We are about

to shoot a new show with [TV channel] Zee Khana Khazana as well. So we don’t ever worry about our content getting stale because the palate that we work with, which is India, is so diverse and has so much to offer that you will never have to worry about stuff like that.

RS: If you were to reflect on how much of the Indian cuisine we have covered, I would say, between 10 to 20%. So people still don’t know 80% of India’s food.

We may have seen around 10 to 15% more, but that’s about it. We can name more than 7,500 different dishes that we have eaten in every state of the country. But is that the end? Not really. It’s mind boggling that there’s still so much left to explore.

Q. You have travelled over 1,20,000 km across the country, and covered more than 1,500 food joints. What have been some of the takeaways from this journey?

MS: Despite whatever you see in newspapers and every other news channel, there’s a lot that’s still wonderful about our country. There is much to celebrate and be proud of our country. Yes, it has its warts and problems like any other country in the world. But it’s still a f***ing phenomenal place. It’s true that there are people who are struggling, but there are also beautiful stories and adventure. But, for that, you need to get out of your comfort zone and the city you are familiar with. And if you do that, India will reward you.

RS: Historically, we are one of the richest countries on the

planet, but we are slowly forgetting our core values. We are destroying our environment. We are killing our animals; creating litter and trash. We are also causing unbelievable amounts of pollution. So if we can look back at our glorious heritage for positive things, as opposed to saying: “Everyone should stop wearing jeans and sing only bhajans”, we can be a remarkable country. We went to Paris for The Gourmand World Cookbook Awards in

Despite whatever you see in newspapers and every other news channel, there’s a lot that’s still wonderful about our country.

Yes, it has its warts and problems like any other country in the world. But it’s still a f***ing phenomenal place.

2012 — the most prestigious book award in the world — and we won it that year on behalf of India [for our book Highway on My Plate].

It was such a proud moment for us. For our cooking demonstration, we served malai chingdi and crispy fried bhindi to more than 100 people. So our takeaway is that the world needs to know more about how terrific this country is, and we are going to make sure that we keep

doing it, till they understand.

Q. Would you recommend bhut jholokia [world’s hottest chilli pepper] to someone, or is it something one should just pass?

RS: [laughs] I will recommend it to everyone. The Tabasco-Capisco sauce that everybody must have tried is rated anywhere between 2,000-8,000 Scoville units [the measurement of the pungency of chilli peppers].

How fierce is bhut jholokia on that scale? 10,40,000 Scoville units. And even though I eat an unreasonable amount of spice, I am not ashamed of admitting that bhut jholokia almost killed me. So I recommend try only a tiny touch of it to just feel the fire, because that fire is pure. Bhut jholokia’s fire will clean your soul.

Q. Off the top of your head, what are some of your favourite places to eat in India?

RS: Tunday Kababi in Lucknow will top the list, which is very clichéd now because everybody knows about it, but not a lot of people were aware seven years ago. Tunday Kababi’s galouti [kebab] is a very unique product. It has over 150 ingredients, and it’s matched perfectly with sheermal [flatbread]. And when you take a bite of that, it transforms you. The next would be Chilka Dhaba in Bhubhaneshwar where, for Rs 60, you get eight giant-sized prawns done beautifully well.

That rustic road side eatery, next to a railway phatak [gatepost], has a range of food that will put any five-star hotel to shame.

y timid mother allowed herself only one piece of rebellion in her college life: she refused to eat rotis for dinner. This was in her college hostel in Calcutta.

It was the early ’70s of the last century and the war over East Pakistan had affected their menu, or so they were told. My rice-loving Bengali mother was not alone in this rebellion — many of her hostel mates joined her in calling the inedible rotis “Bata slippers”. The analogy lived on a fine line: both were terribly resistant to tear. Purnima, her roommate, did the unthinkable: she hung the dry rotis on the hostel notice board.

And as if that audacity wasn’t enough, next to it she wrote an English nursery rhyme in her beautiful handwriting: “Hey Diddle Diddle/ The cat and the fiddle/The cow jumped over the moon,/ The little dog laughed to see such sport/ And the dish ran away with the spoon.”

The man who would become my father lived in an adjacent building. From that “boys” hostel would emerge a line of Bangla poetry on a full moon night: “Purnima-r chand jyano jhawlshano rooti”. The full moon looks like a burnt roti. This was the last line of a famous poem by Sukanta Bhattacharya, a young Bengali poet who died of tuberculosis at the age of 21. That line would play out like a lost and found tune for a large part of my childhood, my father’s assessment of his wife’s roti-making abilities. When I grew older, my father passed on his annotation of that line to me: Sukanta Bhattacharya had been a member of the Communist Party of India, and how could he have cared for the beauty of the moon when thousands around him were dying of starvation in the Bengal famine. I gathered, like only an antsy teenager could, that my father didn’t particularly care very much for the moon, as he did, say, for rotis.

Poetry being the equivalent of old photographs, a line ferrying us into the unconscious, that line from the Bangla poem and its association of archived moments came back to me as I read this poem from Pooja Garg Singh’s first collection, Everyday and Some Other Days: “I ate the moon and ended up/ with moonshine in my nerves/ Laden with your memories,/ a quiet boat leaves the long night shore/ I watch them spill in the darkness/ I watch them spill, unafraid (I Ate the Moon)” What is it about the moon that brings it to the dinner table more than any other planetary body? The burnt roti analogy, yes, but also the “moon” and the “dish” and “spoon” in the English child rhyme. An interesting answer came to me from an acquaintance keeping her first Karva Chauth fast: ‘The woman is so hungry that she wants to eat up the first thing she sees — that is why the moon becomes edible in the female imagination.” One cannot argue with the hungry, and so I let that explanation stay.

A few months before I encountered Pooja Garg Singh’s poem on eating the moon, I’d read about the Indian artist Jitish Kallat “memorialising” his father through his installation titled Epilogue: “In Epilogue I retrace my father’s life through all the moons he may have witnessed from the day What is it about the moon he was born on 2 April that brings it to the dinner 1936 to the day of his untimely death on 2 Detable more than any cember 1998. Epilogue is other planetary body? measurement of my father’s lifespan with the approximately 22,000 moons that he saw in the 62 years of his life, each moon is represented by a progressively eaten roti. The last moon he saw was on the night of 1 December 1998 leaving the last frame of Epilogue dark and empty, barring that single moon which appears almost like a full stop. Epilogue can perhaps be called meditations on time and sustenance...”

Had Kallat’s father been eating the moon like the speaking persona in Garg Singh’s poem? Had he too ended up with “moonshine in (his) nerves”?

This lunar calendar of eating, marked by feasting and fasting, the circle of the moon chewed and bitten into planetary geometries — does it hold our eating life in it? Amitava Kumar’s forthcoming collection of essays, Lunch with a Bigot: The Writer in the World, has Subodh Gupta’s “Full Moon” (oil on canvas) as its cover photo. The “full moon” is an empty plate with an undisciplined clutter of six forks and four knives on it. It is not a clean plate — the traces of food remain in stains.

Looking at it closely, with its title orbiting my consciousness, I could not help thinking of a Gulzar song: “Naram naram raat mein/Garam garam chand par”. The hot moon on a soft night — was it the roti or a plate of piping hot food that Gulzar was wishing for? Sukanta Bhattacharya’s poem had, in a bit of irony, called for the end of poetry in a poem. The world had no use for poetry — the world had turned prosaic in these times of hunger. When there is no food in the world, is it only the moon that we shall be left to feed on?

INGREDIENTS

METHOD

Toast

Bread Electricity Toaster

Not everyone can be a gourmet chef. Not everyone can strain and separate rice with the precision required to make the perfect risotto. If I could be the next Nigella Lawson or Gordon Ramsingh, I would. But my culinary expertise is restricted to criticising perfectly edible food or attempting an omelette and ending up with scrambled eggs instead. That said, I do make the best toast in the world.

Here’s how it goes. Buy a toaster. Buy bread. Plug the toaster in; turn that switch on. Pick out the last slice in the packet of bread, the one with the crust on one whole side. Slot it into the toaster — the softer side should be facing inward, toward the heating mechanism in the toaster (or the other way around; I can’t remember).

Wait around until the bread pops right up in its new manifestation.

Wait a few seconds because it will be terribly hot — I say this from experience. Eat.

File photo. Your dish is unlikely to resemble this, but you can try.

This recipe has only ever been tried at home. Naturally, you shouldn’t try it at yours.

Akhil Sood

Paranoid Punk

Artbeat 25

th e su n day g u ar d ian 2 0 : s u p p l e m e n t to th e Su n day gu ar dian | 21.12.2014 | mu m bai

Three Michelin-starred chefs, 45 skiers and one Italian mountain resort British gourmet chefs Heston Blumenthal, Sat Bains and Marcus Wareing cook up a snow storm (and do some skiing) at the inaugural Mountain Gourmet Ski Experience at Courmayeur in Italy, says Neil English .

NOMAD

I

t felt like a military operation — our squadron of 16 snowmobiles, reaching speeds of about 110 kmph, roared up a snowy Italian mountain churning up a whirlwind of powder smoke.

I was near the back of the pack, the pungent fumes of four-stroke engine oil filling my lungs.

Only we were not preparing for battle, but instead for a culinary assault on the taste buds of the 45 guests at the debut Mountain Gourmet Ski Experience. We were heading for Courmayeur, on the Aostan flank of Mont Blanc, for the inaugural event, spearheaded by a crack squad of British celebrity chefs.

The chefs come heavily armed with 10 Michelin stars between them: co-founder of the event Heston Blumenthal flanked by Marcus Wareing and Sat Bains. Heston rediscovered his love of skiing nine years ago and has recently undergone hip surgery, which he hopes will improve the angulation on his left ski turn. He explains, “It was a no-brainer: I love skiing, love mountains and obviously love food. I want to marry all those passions

to create what I hope will be a fantastic epicurean experience.”

Heston enlisted Marcus and Sat, he says, because he knew that they would “be able to rise to the challenge of taking over a strange kitchen in the Alps and still turn out magnificent meals for our guests”.

“I knew that Marcus already loved his skiing and that Sat, although a beginner, would be game. But most importantly, they’re good guys and don’t consider it a chore to mingle, have fun or even ski with the guests,” he adds.

Courmayeur is home to 16 quality, rustic restaurants dotted over its 70 km of pistes. So it took a discerning man with a good knowledge of the area to select one for Marcus and one for Sat. That man was Amin Momen of Momentum Ski, joint founder of the event and long-time Courmayeur visitor.

Both chefs were tasked with conjuring a feast for two consecutive nights, predominantly from local produce, that would satisfy the appetites of their expectant guests. The guests were split into two groups — to spend one night at Sat’s and one evening at Marcus’ on alternative nights. It was left to Heston to roam between tables at both venues, chatting with guests about everything

A converted shepherd’s hut on a sheltered Alpine plateau, run by talented chef Giacomo Calosi, proved a popular setting for Sat’s feast.

(From left) Heston Blumenthal, Sat Bains and Marcus Wareing.

from the food to their best run of the day.

A converted shepherd’s hut on a sheltered Alpine plateau, run by talented chef Giacomo Calosi, proved a popular setting for Sat’s feast. After boarding a private evening cable car to the ski area at Plan Checrouit, we took our high-octane Snowmobile blast up the slopes to Maison Vieille, where Calosi welcomed us with a perfectly chilled glass of prosecco, while Sat and his team worked their magic in the

kitchen.

M

arcus’ piste-side gourmet venue was La Chaumiere — run by the local Grivel family, famous in mountaineering circles for more than 200 years for pioneering successive designs for crampons. Getting here from the cable car was a more civilised affair, involving a 10-minute stroll along a snowy path, lit by the soft glow of lanterns.

The 1,000 metres of vertical drop between the top lift sta-

tion of Cresta d’Arp at 2,755 metres and Plan Checrouit below, offered plenty of skiing to work up an appetite for the all-inclusive package of haute cuisine ahead. Courmayeur’s wealth of blue, red and black groomed pistes are complemented by access to a wealth of back-country and glacial terrain so all, from novice to free-ride expert, have plenty to challenge them.

Not that there weren›t treats on offer during the day, too. Exotic hot chocolate

and moreish biscuits were concocted by Heston and served as elevenses, also at La Chaumiere. They quickly replaced any calories lost on the slopes. Sipping the luscious chocolate lava through thick vapour was a collision of hedonism and Hogwarts, with the added bonus of seeing Heston in his saloupettes, cooking it up with all the intensity of Walter White. Standing next to me, former Formula 1 Champion Damon Hill said: “I love this whole concept. I wish I had

more time to ski, and if I did, I wish I could eat like this every time.”

The Michelin-starred chefs lived up to their accolades.

Marcus’ rainbow trout chowder made me pity the hundreds of guests who ate the clam chowder I helped to make during a season working in a ski- resort hotel kitchen in Vermont. His trilogy of Herdwick lamb almost overwhelmed me with its richness; comprising complex, intense layers of flavour. And it was quite a privilege to have Marcus come to each table with a copper pot to personally ladle velvety jus over the meat.

Sat wowed me with his roasted scallops on slice of brawn with truffle emulsion.

As for his delicious ox cheek, well I’m not sure if pole dancing was de rigueur in medieval times, but soon after Sat added the mead to the meat,

the music was turned up and all hell broke loose at Maison Vieille.

For dessert, Heston had asked both chefs to take part in a tiramisu challenge. All the guests were invited to vote for the version they liked the most. Sat won — but both went miles off brief to create something not even remotely recognisable as tiramisu.

On a free day, a group of us skied down to one of my favourite Courmayeur restaurants, Rifugio La Zerotta, to indulge in lardo on bread with olive oil and chestnuts, followed by suckling pig, roasting on spits outside in the garden. The pudding was tiramisu, but a proper one this time.

Happily, the same chefs are returning for the second gourmet weekend next month and are currently dreaming up the Alpine menus that will be kept secret until unveiled to the next batch of lucky diners.

Next time, the culinary experience will start before guests hit the slopes with breakfast at Heston’s Perfectionists’ Cafe at Heathrow Terminal 2. They’ll also experience a third Michelinstar dinner by Maura Gosio, head chef at Courmayeur’s Grand Hotel Royal & Golf.

In the Aosta Valley, it seems, too many cooks don’t spoil the broth.

THE INDEPENDENT

26

Bookbeat

t he sun day gua rdia n 20: s up p lement to t he s unday guardi an | 21. 12. 2014 | mumbai

Daulat Ki Chaat: In search of Delhi’s secret delicacy In this extract from her recent book Korma, Kheer and Kismet, Pamela Timms hunts down and enjoys the famed Daulat Ki Chaat, an utterly sinful dessert shrouded in secrecy and rooted in tradition.

extract

Korma, Kheer and Kismet Pamela Timms Aleph Books Pages: 174 Price: Rs 395

B

y January the sky was, at best, a soft grey marl but some days there was just a gradual shift from ebony to slate.

Planes at Indira Gandhi International Airport were grounded by fog, lungs were attacked by a thick yellowish pall of smog and, as temperatures hovered near zero, many of the city’s homeless people died on its freezing cold pavements.

But for food lovers, those very cold weeks in Old Delhi had some compensations. The markets were full of vibrant fruit and vegetables — spinach, mustard leaf, peas, beans and deep red “desi” carrots; strawberries, citrus fruits and the brilliant bunched orange orbs of ras bhari (cape gooseberries) beaming at us.

One of the great highlights of the winter is a heavenly milky dessert that makes a brief but unforgettable earthly appearance in the gullies of Old Delhi almost as soon as the last Diwali firecracker has fizzled. From then until Holi, the Daulat Ki Chaat vendors wander through the bazaars, their snowy platters dazzling in the pale sunshine, as if a dozen small, perfectly formed clouds have dropped from the sky.

Daulat Ki Chaat (meaning “snack of wealth”) is probably Old Delhi’s most surprising street food. Anyone expecting the punchy, spicy flavours usually suggested by the word “chaat” will be disappointed.

It resembles uncooked meringue and the taste is shocking in its subtlety, more molecular gastronomy than raunchy street food, a light foam that disappears instantly on the tongue, leaving behind the merest hint of sweetness, cream, saffron, sugar and nuts; tantalising, almost not there. I’ve often wondered if Daulat Ki Chaat is a preview of what might be on the menu should we make it as far as the pearly gates.

Pamela Timms.

It resembles uncooked meringue and the taste is shocking in its subtlety, more molecular gastronomy than raunchy street food, a light foam that disappears instantly on the tongue, leaving behind the merest hint of sweetness, cream, saffron, sugar and nuts; tantalising, almost not there. I’ve often wondered if Daulat Ki Chaat is a preview of what might be on the menu should we make it as far as the pearly gates.

The means by which a pail of milk is transformed into the food of the gods, though, is the stuff of Old Delhi legend rather than of the food lab. First, so the story goes, milk and cream have to be whisked by hand before dawn (preferably under the light of a full moon) into a delicate froth, then left out on grass to set by the “tears of shabnam” (morning dew) — but not too many, nor too few. At daybreak, the surface of the froth is touched with saffron and silver leaf and served with nuts and bura (unrefined sugar). Daulat Ki Chaat is only made in the coolest months because at the first ray of sunshine, it starts to collapse. It doesn’t travel well either — to enjoy this very local speciality, a winter pilgrimage to the shady gullies of Old Delhi has to be made.

As amazed bloggers and food writers have begun to rediscover the dish, there has been a renewed interest in this culinary treasure.

Five years ago there were only a couple of Daulat Ki Chaat carts in Old Delhi; now there are perhaps 15 to 20. There is just one shop left, Hazari Lal Jain Khurchan Wale, that sells these silky white “scrapings”, down at the Dariba Kalan end of Kinari Bazaar. If you visit early in the morning, before the wedding shoppers descend, you’ll see Hazari Lal’s men out on the street painstakingly reducing and scraping milk in giant cauldrons.

The preparation of Daulat Ki Chaat is much more secretive. I ran into my guruji, Rahul Verma, at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club one night and he wasn’t encouraging.

“They’ll never show you how it’s made,” he declared definitively.

“They’re almost certainly adding something to the milk to make it set and also they wouldn’t want you to see the conditions in which they’re operating.”

Then, during one of the Civil Lines brunches, jalebiwallah Abhishek Jain said he would be happy to help. I jumped at the offer even though it was issued with dire warnings. By early February, when there were a few alarmingly warm and spring-like days, Abhishek must have felt under siege as I stepped up the pressure. Finally, he told me that he had asked the local police to get involved and promised to set up a meeting within a week. A few more days passed and Abhishek told me that one Daulat Ki Chaat vendor, Rakesh Kumar, was willing to show me his chaat being made but was demanding 5,000 rupees in exchange. Holi colours were already appearing in the markets, a sure sign of the imminent summer heat, and of the disappearance of Daulat Ki Chaat makers, so in desperation, I quickly agreed.

At 3.30 a.m. the next morning, Mr Mishra, our security guard, was curled up on the porch and I had to

climb over him to get to the waiting taxi. One of our local taxi drivers, an old Sikh man named Mr Singh, had arrived to pick me up, probably assuming it was an airport or station run. Within 15 minutes we had reached the Sri Digambar Jain Lal Mandir guarding the entrance to Chandni Chowk and although the daytime chaos of cars, rickshaws and carts was missing, I could see there was still plenty of activity on the dark streets.

The gully was a filthy dead end strewn with garbage and rubble, pitch dark and silent apart from a distant rhythmic sound. As we walked through a once-grand archway and into a small room, the sound grew louder and I was suddenly enveloped in the pungent smells of milk, last night’s dinner and life being lived in a confined space. Inside, most of the room was taken up by a bed and a mattress on the floor, both packed with people sleeping.

D

angling from hooks on the peeling walls, which may once have been blue, there were brooms, plastic carrier bags stuffed with dried-leaf plates, a giant grater with khoya stuck in its teeth, cooking pots and a lopsided clock. The floor was partially covered with old rice sacks and under the bed was a tub full of stainless steel plates and a basket containing leftover rotis. Next to it was a small stove, a blackened chai pan and a plastic tub of what I recognised as the khoya and sugar toppings for Daulat Ki Chaat. All of the food was uncovered, an open invitation, I registered fleetingly, to any selfrespecting rodent.

Then I noticed the milk pails and three large platters of gleaming white froth and suddenly I saw where the rhythmic sound was coming from. A young man with tousled hair and dressed in

clothes he had obviously slept in was perched on a low stool tucked behind the door, tugging on two ropes as if trying to control a particularly unruly stallion. The ropes were attached to a giant churning stick in a large aluminium pot from which was emerging something that looked exactly like sea foam.

The pot was set over an even larger basin filled with ice.

“Chai?” asked Babu Ram, perhaps to distract me, and quickly busied himself at the stove. While he stirred the pan, he told me that his family had been making Daulat Ki Chaat in Delhi for about a hundred years and that they make it the same way today as they always have. Every evening, 35 kilos of milk and 15 kilos of cream are delivered from a dairy. The three brothers of the family get up at 3 a.m. and froth the milk until nine. He broke off now and then to dismantle the strings from the churning stick and scrape off the foam that had gathered and to lay it gently in a wide, shallow metal dish. From the already full platters, he drained off the milk that had gathered in the bottom back into the whisking tub. When he and his brother have whisked all the milk, he told me, they sleep for a couple of hours then go out into Old Delhi to sell the Daulat Ki Chaat. The brothers work every day between Diwali and Holi, then return to their village in Uttar Pradesh to look after the family farm.

Electric mixers, he said, just don’t give the same results as hand churning.

I sat and watched the brothers at work for some time, lulled by the gentle sounds of the wordless, repetitive churning and scraping.

My soporific state was interrupted when I got up to leave and Babu Ram reminded me about the payment. I handed over the 5,000 rupees and made my way back down the dark alley, relieved to find Mr Singh waiting at the end of it. Later that day, after I’d taken a nap and my early morning adventure started to seem like a dream, I thought about Abhishek’s warnings and wondered if my visit to the Kumars’ dirty and disorganised workshop had taken away a little of the magic and mystery of Daulat Ki Chaat or even put me off eating it forever. I’d certainly discovered that morning dew and moonlight aren’t strictly necessary and if there is any magic involved it is administered by poor farmers from UP with tousled hair and threadbare clothes rather than by angels. But I was reassured that Daulat Ki Chaat is still made in the traditional way, relying on cold nights, simple ingredients and hours of whisking by hand. And I know that every year there will always be a moment just after Diwali when there will be no more welcome sight than the Daulat Ki Chaat wallahs’ snowy platters lighting up Old Delhi’s wintry lanes.

The meat and potatoes of it The

The Obliterary Journal Vol. 2 (2014) Writer/Artist: Miscellanous Blaft/Westland Price: Rs 795 We’re cheating only a little bit when we include The Obliterary Journal Vol. 2 in this column. There are at least two entries in here that are not comics, and at least two more that are mixed media works. Even amongst the ones that are quoteunquote comics, there are some that employ little to no illustrations, digital or otherwise. The one-word brief for this anthology was “Non-

Veg”, and the smartly written prologue Leg Piece sets the right tone for an endeavour such as this. All of the visuals for this 12-page long story are staged close-up photographs, shot in a sandbox that’s supposed to be a desert. The titular hero is part Django (he drags along an undisclosed, possibly lethal package with him), part chicken evangelist; wholly appetising. Extra points to the creators (Nishara K.P. and Thulasi Kumar, although the credited writer/photographer is “Durrrrk Mixer and Grinder Serial No. 30277XMO3”) for coming up with a slam dunk of an intro line: “His name is Legpiece. He stands alone... scoffing at the desert. These scorching sands cannot intimidate one who was born in an oven.”

A similar insouciance of style and presentation is found in Nochikuppam Fisherwomen Comics, which is a

paean to the archetype of the cheerful, strong-armed fisherwoman, capable of risqué jokes as well as powerful swipes of the meat cleaver. Despite the name, this is more of a photo-feature than anything else. The interviewer’s comfort level with the subjects make it a refreshing contrast from the sombre

subaltern studies project it could so easily have become.

Levity apart, this book is by no means light on philosophising, on fictional and non-fictional exploration on the ethics and the politics of eating meat. UG Goes to Kmart is the graphic adaptation of a conversation about vegetarianism with U.G. Krishnamurti, one of the most idiosyncratic thinkers of the 20th century. The illustrator on this story, Nicolas C. Grey, was a member of the underground “comix” (spelt with an “x” to distinguish them from other comics) scene of the ’90s, and his work shows the influence of comix masters like Robert Crumb and Spain.

Through Ali Sultan’s photographs of the butchers of Lahore, we get a ringside view of the business of meat-selling. These are largely unsentimental shots that

focus on the sheer physical labour spent in slaughtering and preparing a chicken. Meena Kandasamy’s How To Make a Bitch Give Up Beef was originally something that the author put up on Facebook after a wave of nasty personal attacks by right-wing Hindu groups. As is the author’s wont, this piece is angry without really “raising its voice” even once.

The Obliterary Journal Vol. 2 is also interspersed with some smartly conceptualised posters from Peta: honestly, who does that anymore?

Contemporary literary discourse has mirrored its political counterpart in shrillness, so it’s always good to see people respecting contrarian viewpoints this way. Now if only the vegetarian and nonvegetarian mafias would feel the same way. ­—Aditya Mani Jha

The Upstart Crow Manasi Subramaniam

If wine were books: Pairings for the literary gourmet

L

ight, flavourful dishes with delicate wines: “You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, to infinity, which is the number of grains of sand. The path that you are to take is endless, and you will die before you have truly awakened.” When you lightly sauté pressed garlic in olive oil, its scent will remind you of Borges. Add pasta and stir in The Immortals. You will dream of mazes and dance with devils if you add a hint of parsley and read A Universal History of Infamy. The Borgesian conundrum will make you wonder if you made the pasta or if the pasta made you.

Silky whites, like Chardonnays, for gravy-based meals: “Perhaps only people who are capable of real togetherness have that look of being alone in the universe. The others have a certain stickiness, they stick to the mass.” When you stir a lush sauce and watch it froth heavily into brackish desire, pull out D.H. Lawrence. Lady Chatterley’s Lover is a book for all sorts of nights: the lonely ones and the intimate ones. Let it seep into you — the book, I mean, not the gravy — and let it fill your heart with the multiple shapes that love can take.

Rieslings to tame the heat of spice: “I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed / And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane. / (I think I made you up inside my head.)” Wrap the richness of a spicy meal with the tired longings of Sylvia Plath. She’ll tease the pepper right out with her acid charm.

Ariel is perfect for the tangy sweetness of the Riesling. If you choose, instead, the neuroses of a drier wine, look no further than The Bell Jar. The pertness of a rich rose for cheese: “The evening’s the best part of the day. You’ve done your day’s work. Now you can put your feet up and enjoy it.” Nothing will enhance the texture of cheese better than the oaky richness of The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. Cheese is your accomplice when you avoid the drudgery of facing your emotions, Ishiguro your guide. These are your perfect companions if procrastination is your game.

L

ight-bodied reds for savoury delicacies: “And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.” The lavish lure of Scott Fitzgerald will perfectly balance any midweek mood when paired with the right meal.

For those pleasant summer evenings of camaraderie, the blustering youth of a savoury will clear your palate like Nick Carraway and the middle-aged rambunctiousness of a rich red wine will invigourate your senses like Jay Gatsby.

An earthy, rustic Italian red for warm bread. “Love’s mysteries in souls do grow, / But yet the body is his book.” Dip bread in balsamic vinegar and the poetry of John Donne. If it’s the right kind of bread, any metaphysical poet will do. Slather butter if you must, and say out loud, “I am two fools, I know, / For loving, and for saying so.”

Fruity wines for fruity desserts: “People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life, which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. It is as An earthy, rustic Italian though they were traveling abroad.” Marcel red for warm bread.

Proust will remind you “Love’s mysteries in souls of the sort of life that is best worth living just as do grow, / But yet the body a custard and a fortified is his book.” Dip bread in sherry will emphasise the sweetness of fruit without balsamic vinegar and the the necessity for added poetry of John Donne. If it’s sugar. For best results, the right kind of bread, any ensure that the wine is sweeter than the dessert metaphysical poet will do. and that Proust is wiser than you.

Champagne and bubbles for salty meals: “In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.” Chilled champagne will work best for Edith Wharton’s quiet optimism. Pair the nuanced insights of The Age of Innocence with the fizzy sharpness of a sparkling wine and balance the book’s sorrow’s with the oceanic saltiness of a plate of hors d’oeuvres and the world is yours.

Manasi Subramaniam is Commissioning Editor at HarperCollins India. These views are her own. She blogs at manasis.blogspot.in

words of wisdom

“So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn’t it be the other way around?”

Nora Ephron

Bookbeat 27

th e su n day g u a r dian 2 0 : s u p p l e m e n t to th e su n day gu ar d ian | 21.12.2014 | mu mb ai

How to cook up a delicious story in easy-to-follow steps

Bookworm Alley Daisy wyatt

Brussels sprouts from the kitchen of an ex-revolutionary, omelettes that abhor violence and clam chowder to help you across stormy seas; literary fiction has them all, writes Aditya Mani Jha.

comment

I

n 2007, Adam Gopnik wrote in The New Yorker, “Cooking is to our literature what sex was to the writing of the sixties and seventies, the thing worth stopping the story for to share, so to speak, with the reader.” Gopnik went on to describe how he had tried out the recipes found in the books of some of his favourite writers. Unfortunately for Gopnik, starting with Günter Grass’s fish recipes wasn’t the greatest idea in the world. The author concluded, “Eating Günter Grass’s flounder was actually like reading one of his novels: nutritious, but a little pale and starchy.”

Recipes in fiction can be surprisingly effective, if introduced at the right time, with the right tone.

Often, they are a sideshow, an amusing digression in a labyrinth, as is the case with Roberto Bolaño’s 2666.

Now, in a novel that runs into 900-plus pages, there’s bound to be a little blood spilt somewhere, but Bolaño has an entire section that describes one gruesome murder after another... for over 300 pages. I would go out on a limb and say that the author had plenty of time and space for one piddling recipe; in this case, Brussels sprouts. The recipe is by a character called Barry Seaman, who was once a member of the Black Panther Party. Seaman now makes his living writing cookbooks.

The most interesting part of this passage was the way Bolaño places the act of cooking. For the author, cooking isn’t an “art”; he

Roberto Bolaño

strips it of the pretensions of celebrity chef culture. Instead, Seaman’s character is supposed to show us how cooking your own food, just the way you like it, is a byproduct of living a tough life on your own terms, of courage and grit in the face of adversity, of an uncompromising faith in your own ability, no matter what comes your way.

“Years ago he had published a book called Eating Ribs with Barry Seaman, in which he collected all the recipes he knew for ribs, mostly grilled or barbecued, adding strange or notable facts about the places where he’d learned each

Recipes in fiction can be surprisingly effective, if introduced at the right time, with the right tone. Often, they are a sideshow, an amusing digression in a labyrinth, as is the case with Roberto Bolaño’s 2666.

recipe, who had taught it to him, and under what circumstances. The best part of the book had to do with the ribs and mashed potatoes or applesauce he’d made in prison: how he’d got hold of the ingredients and how he’d cooked them in a place where cooking, like so many other things,

was forbidden.”

I

n a way, Seaman is doing what Gopnik suggested: treating a recipe as “the thing worth stopping the story”, a digression that isn’t really a digression.

This is particularly true for someone like Bolaño, with whom every scene is anoth-

er piece in a massive, elaborate jigsaw.

In other cases, it’s the act of recipe-writing that lends itself to parody, as it is with Aseem Kaul’s micro-fiction.

In Where Shall We Go For Dinner, one of the stories in Etudes, his masterful collection of shorts, a couple fight and make up over their choice of cuisine. It’s a situation that we’ve all faced, where there are no rules, where whimsy is the only guiding force. The cyclical speech patterns that come with an easy intimacy are beautifully depicted. Conscientious Omelette, however, is where Kaul’s culinary mischief really comes to the

fore. This is a story written entirely in the form of a recipe for an omelette, a fairly refined one at that. It’s only towards the last few lines that you realise that the author has left out an allimportant step.

“Lightly sprinkle grated cheese, freshly ground pepper and salt, then carefully fold in the edges of the omelette until it lies along the diameter of the skillet, leaving the two sides clear. Take skillet off the stove and slide omelette onto the plate. Eat alone, with ketchup, preferably while staring at still unbroken egg.”

If the pain of condemned eggs and the horror of hundreds of unsolved murders is getting too much for you, here’s Bolaño’s, or rather, Barry Seaman’s recipe for Brussels sprouts to perk you up.

“The name of the recipe is: Brussels Sprouts with Lemon. Take note, please.

Four servings calls for: two pounds of Brussels sprouts, juice and zest of one lemon, one onion, one sprig of parsley, three tablespoons of butter, black pepper, and salt. You make it like so.

One: Clean sprouts well and remove outer leaves. Finely chop onion and parsley.

Two: In a pot of salted boiling water, cook sprouts for twenty minutes, or until tender. Then drain well and set aside. Three: Melt butter in frying pan and lightly sauté onion, add zest and juice of lemon and salt and pepper to taste. Four: Add Brussels sprouts, toss with sauce, reheat for a few minutes, sprinkle with parsley, and serve with lemon wedges on the side. So good you’ll be licking your fingers, said Seaman. No cholesterol, good for the liver, good for the blood pressure, very healthy.”

GUARDIAN GRUB

Italian pizza, Giorgio Locatelli My favourite place to eat pizza is Il Pizzaiolo del Presidente on via Tribunali in Naples. It was called Pizzeria Cacialli until July 1994 when Bill Clinton walked in and tried the pizza, after which they renamed it “The President’s Pizza Chef ”. I first went four years ago when we went to Naples for Johnnie Shand Kydd’s exhibition, “Siren City”. It stands out for the quality and digestibility of the dough: I always have a margherita. It’s a familyrun restaurant and a very eat-and-leave kind of place.

There’s no hanging around.

It’s how Italians interpret “fast food”.

Locanda Locatelli recently reopened in London after a £1m refurbishment (locandalocatelli. com).

Pad Thai, David Thompson This dish doesn’t have as much substance as many people think. It was created in the 1940s, a time of depression, in response to a nationwide invitation from the dictator, Plaek Phibunsongkhram, to create a dish that was frugal, healthy and easy to prepare. Strangely, the winner was the wife of one of the government officials. Her recipe was a reinterpretation of Chinese

Daniel Boulud

Mutton Pepper fry

Aditya Mani Jha The Complan Boy File photo. Your dish is unlikely to resemble this, but you can try.

noodles, with the inclusion of palm sugar and tamarind; its name means “noodles in the style of the Thais”.

There are so many places to eat it in Bangkok, everyone has their own interpretation.

Essential ingredients include dried prawns and sen jan rice noodles. There’s one place on Soi Suan Phlu Soi 8, just off Sathorn Road, opposite the main market, that does it really well. Another is Phat Thai Ratchawong on Ratchawong Street, at the top end of Chinatown. There’s also a great stall in Sri Yarn market which has been going for 40 years.

David Thompson’s restaurant, Nahm, is at the Metropolitan Hotel in Bangkok (comohotels.

T

he outed ghostwriter of Zoella’s debut novel has spoken for the first time about the online abuse she has received from fans of the popular YouTube star. Siobhan Curham said she felt compelled to speak out after being accused by Zoella’s fans of working on Girl Online to “get rich and famous”.

She said she did not know that her full name would be printed in the book, and had no intention of “cashing in” on someone else’s fame. “I did not invite any of this attention upon myself…The thought of doing so turns my stomach”, she said.

Curham also told fans who had accused her of “acting like a victim” after thanking people on social media for their support that they did not know the full extent of “what had been going on behind the scenes in this project”. In a blog post on her website, Curham said she became involved with the book because it dealt with serious issues such as “cyber bullying, homophobia and anxiety”.

She said the desire to be rich and famous was based on a “hollow and dangerous” dream, and it did not motivate her to write the book as some of Zoella’s fans had suggested. “When you build the foundation of your life and happiness on the adulation of strangers it’s like building a house on sinking sand. It could disappear at any moment,” she said. The author, who has published a number of young adult novels under her own name, said she did have some issues with how the project was managed, but said she was unable to speak about them in detail due to legal reasons.

S

American hot dogs, Daniel Boulud For me, the classic experience is Hebrew National hot dogs at a ball game at the Yankee Stadium. It’s an iconic dog with potato buns and yellow mustard that everybody eats. I got into the hot dog game in New York about five years ago when I opened DBGB Downtown, where I sell grown-up hot dogs using the best natural ingredients. We produce our own sausage and buns as well as a secret sauce that’s a blend of spicy, sweet and savoury. We also pickle our own vegetables.

he went on to praise Zoella, calling Sugg “caring a considerate” and asked people not to blame her personally for not writing the entire book herself. “I think it would be really healthy to have a broader debate about transparency in celebrity publishing. But please don’t blame Zoe personally for a practice that has been going on for years,” she said. The 24-year-old YouTube star broke records after shifting 78,109 copies of her book in the first seven days; five times as many as Fifty Shades of Grey sold in its first week.

She added that she felt proud to have worked with Zoella on the novel, saying that Girl Online’s record-breaking sales will have helped the book-selling and publishing industries. “I really hope that once this storm settles, people will focus on the serious issues at the heart of Girl Online,” she said. Curham had been outed after Penguin admitted that the novel Curham also told fans was at least partially ghostwritten. who had accused her of “To be factually ac“acting like a victim” after curate, you would need to say Zoe Sugg did not thanking people on social write the book Girl Onmedia for their support line on her own,” a Penthat they did not know the guin spokesperson told the Sunday Times. Their full extent of “what had statement was not, it been going on behind the seems, at odds with the acknowledgements listscenes in this project”. ed in Girl Online, which include tributes to “everyone at Penguin for helping me put together my first novel, especially Amy Alward and Siobhan Curham, who were with me every step of the way.”

According to the Mail Online, Curham appeared to post a blog back in August that allegedly read she’d been asked to write an 80,000 novel in six weeks. Meanwhile, perhaps due to the exhausting, controversy-ridden few weeks, Sugg has quit the internet for a while. She tweeted recently, “Bare (sic) with me on vlogmas. I’m taking a few days out and off the internet because it’s clouding up my brain. Thanks for understanding.”

the independent

THE INDEPENDENT

Three iconic dishes at their authentic best Sophie lam and nicola trup

Siobhan Curham speaks out about writing Girl Online

com/metropolitanbangkok).

INGREDIENTS

METHOD

Mutton, chopped into small-to-medium pieces 500 g Curry leaves Salt Whole black pepper 2 tsp Green chillies, chopped 2 Ginger and garlic, chopped 2 tbsp Lemon juice 1 tbsp Onions, finely chopped 2 Tomato, chopped 1(small) Turmeric powder 1 tsp Garam masala 1 tsp Fennel powder 1 tsp Coriander leaves Oil (I prefer mustard oil)

First, grind the black pepper, chillies, ginger and garlic together with some coriander leaves and water. Once the paste is made, add the mutton pieces, sprinkle some Kashmiri mirch and let the mutton marinate for at least an hour. (Ideally, the marination time should be three hours.

This makes a significant difference to the flavour.)

Heat some mustard oil in a pressure cooker. Once the oil starts to lose its deep yellow colour, add the sliced onions. Add turmeric powder and garam masala according to your taste. Keep mixing the onions with the masala powders; a little water will help with this. Fry till the onions are golden brown.

Add the tomato pieces and keep stirring. 3-4 minutes after cooking with the tomato pieces, add the marinated mutton. From this point on, you’ll have to stir the mixture very carefully and uniformly.

Add a cup of water and let the mixture boil. Pressure cook till the mutton pieces are done. If there is any gravy left, cook on a low flame for an additional few minutes. Serve with roti or rice.

This recipe has only ever been tried at home. Naturally, you shouldn’t try it at yours.

28

Young & Restless

t he sun day gua rdia n 20: s up p lement to t he s unday guardi an | 21. 12. 2014 | mumbai

Background score: The sound of muzak, drifting in the aisles akhil sood

T

here’s a place in PaliNa ka i n B a nd ra, Mumbai — a shabbylooking, unpretentious restaurant-bar by the name of Janata. It’s best described as a “haunt”, frequented in large part by the 20-35 strugglerto-mildly-successful-yuppie bracket, and many a hypothetical screenwriting collaboration has been discussed there. Janata — a spiritual compatriot of Delhi’s Defence Colony’s 4S — is packed every night to the point of sharing tables with complete strangers. The alcohol is inexpensive, food a couple of notches above edible, and the energy laidback. What’s odd is that they play no music, yet no one complains. Either the music isn’t important, or the absence of it is part of the charm of the place. A couple of 100 metres away is Toto’s, an equally iconic pub which has been playing music from the ’90s since well before the ’90s and making a killing out of it.

Farfetched as it may seem, there happens to be a connection between food and music. Not to the point of pairing (shoehorning) the two together — meals where Moroccan quail tastes best with Chet Baker playing in the background or something is satisfying, we’re sure, but they would come with a flavour or essence or sprinkling or zest of pretentious high-society snootiness — just in a less obvious way.

Brian Eno, a pioneering figure of Muzak (ambient music) wrote the album Ambient 1: Music for Airports in

The interiors of Bukhara.

What’s odd is that they play no music there, yet no one complains. Either the music isn’t important, or the absence of it is part of the charm of the place. would normally have a clear focus on the kind of music to play, how loudly, and when not to. Delhi’s now-defunct Japanese restaurant, Izakaya, used to play traditional Japanese instrumental interpretations of Michael Jackson hits. Golden Dragon used to play their selection of Christmas songs and carols around Christmas time and through the rest of the year.

Indian restaurants, highend or classy ones — say, Bukhara or maybe Punjabi

By Nature among more affordable options — often play sanitised, reworked, instrumental sitar versions of old Hindi film classics at soft volumes; continental eateries and cafés play light pop or some Spyro Gyra or

1978 — years before he tried his best to tarnish a sizable legacy by associating with Coldplay — providing some kind of blueprint for the atmospheric music one hears in public spaces. It points toward a notion that music plays a substantial enough role in the ambience and feel of a place; it defines the mood subliminally. There’s an album called Somnium,

by Robert Rich, which plays for seven-and-a-half hours, and has been designed as an accompaniment to one’s process of sleep at night.

A club — one where people go primarily to dance their troubles away and get sh*tfaced — or a fine-dining restaurant/café whose identity is built around the food

Pen & Stink

Akshar Pathak

Kenny G-ish smooth jazz. If you ever find yourself in the lobby of a five-star hotel, you might notice that the soft, piano-driven ambient music, often major key-based and happy-ish — music people sometimes dismiss as “elevator music” — is at exactly the same volume level wherever you stand, either accidentally or by (sound) design. It’s loud enough to be heard in the background when there’s silence, but you’ll almost never find it distracting.

The problem lies in those in-between places — the pubs and bars that combine drinks, quality food, décor, deep conversation, mindless dancing, karaoke and everything else. It’s easy to outline a clear principle and vision in terms of the music a place would push for, but how do you ensure numbers, loyalty, good online reviews if you’re not able to adapt to the needs of the critical mass of the pub-going population?

Too loud and you alienate the people looking to sit and chat; too soft and the ones looking to dance get annoyed. Play something elitist and lose numbers; play commercial music and risk being labelled boring and uninteresting. Play nothing? It’s one of the reasons why every other place looks, sounds, smells and feels just the same; just look at Hauz Khas Village — it’s why novelty is increasingly becoming essential.

Mumbai’s Café Mondegar does a whole power-to-thepeople thing with a jukebox — a Taylor Swift ode to love is never far away from Eminem spitting misogynist venom, but that’s not really the norm; again, more a novelty. Delhi’s Turquoise Cottage (now inside a mall in Saket but originally in Adchini) is identified with the music it has always played. It was one of a handful of places in the city (along with Blues and Haze) that played popular classic rock and rock ‘n’ roll songs — you know, Coming Back To Life, Unforgiven, Smells Like Teen Spirit, Stairway To Heaven (of course), Alive and so forth.

DU and engineering students of a decade ago — now willing corporate slaves — were patrons of this place back then, and still head there for a brief reminiscence of an innocent past. WTF (Mumbai) plays weird Mediterranean music spliced with electronic interludes on a good day, treading the waters maybe with stuff close to Amon Tobin or Beirut or Bonobo, before reverting to club hits on weekends. Road House Bluez in Andheri

West plays, as the name suggests, a liberal dash of rock ‘n’ roll music, shifting slowly to pop and EDM as the place gets crowded and people get increasingly drunker.

A place like Khan Market’s Route 04 has built a loyal patronage on the back of playing the next crop of popular rock music — Creed, Nickelback, Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit — interspersed with popular music from the decades before at deafening volumes (the levels have now been reduced either due to complaints by visitors or a police crackdown that happened a few months ago in the city). There’s also the soft rock played at Hard Rock Café. There are, of course, plenty of places dedicated to a style of music that reflects the ambience and the vibe — a lounge will play lounge music, you have dedicated places that stick to electronic music or hip-hop or the blues or whatever. But those are in the minority. The ungainly amount of “Sufi Nights” and “Disco Nights” and “Bollywood Nights” and “Commercial Nights” and “Karaoke Nights” and “Reggae Nights” suggest a distinct lack of identity, possibly due to keeping up with the rat race or hopping on bandwagons or just a scatterbrain approach. The question is: is it a bad thing or not, especially for me, as a consumer? There are already a handful of places that are dedicated to certain styles of music that would work in a social setting. For the rest, I have the world of internet torrents. Is the birdbrain approach all that bad, and what’s the alternative?

The manuscript, which he gave to Maureen, is on show today in the Manuscript Room at the British Library, along with several others on permanent loan from a kind person. The colours of the birthday-card train are still remarkably vivid.

tweet beat

# Me: Did it hurt? Her: Did what hurt?

THREE SIMPLE FOOD FACTS

Me: When you fell from a really high distance. Dating as an atheist is hard.

WE MUST LEARN TO LIVE WITH

@Sarcasticsapien

TASTE

# Um yeah I used a “z” instead # Malala meets

CALORIES

PIZZA DELICIOUSNESS

a random aunty after accepting Nobel Prize.

of an “s.” Because it’s badass, that’s why. You know what, give me back my resume. @briangaar

@thekarachikid

# Indian literary COLD

WHEN YOU’RE DRUNK

CHEESY

HOT

SALAD

PIZZA

BOLLYWOOD

festivals are to literature in India what Indian religious festivals are to religious tolerance in India. Discuss @RushdieExplains

# No I am not Arbaaz Khan @Dorkstar

GUARDIAN GRUB

Urban Urchin

Drunk tiramisu

Payel Majumdar Tiger Whisperer File photo. Your dish is unlikely to resemble this, but you can try.

Shalaka Pai

The fragrant warmth of khichdi in a bleak Prague

I

f I had a five-rupee coin for each time someone looked me up and down and said, “You probably don’t like food very much, do you?” I’d have… a pocketful of loose change. Believe it or not, I have a voracious appetite and a great love for good meals, and my scales always clock in at least five kilos underweight. Yay me.

I had a few regular food places in Mumbai. There was, of course, Madras Café, where the proprietor knew me by face because I’d show up every Sunday morning, impatiently waiting with the rest of the breakfast-seeking crowd. They also knew me as one of the two girls who loudly lamented when their appamstew wasn’t available. Then, there was Sneha, forever known to me as the beef chilli place. Over at my old workplace, we’d order beef chilli in bulk, and the entire café room would soon turn into a veritable feeding frenzy, hungry punters descending upon plates of spicy Kerala beef fry, ripping apart parottas, hovering around chairs like sharks, looking for leftovers.

Living alone at the Swastika House in Mumbai, I didn’t really cook much. My kitchen was more of a disaster zone nook than an actual cooking space, and I realised early on that it’s rather depressing cooking for one, and then eating alone, sitting on my mattress with only my laptop for company. My fridge was perennially empty. Occasionally, I’d go into productive frenzies where I bought vegetables from the market across the street and made myself meals for three days…and then it was back to calling the sandwich place near Matunga station for delivery. When I got fed up of my daily diet of grilled sandwiches, I’d go camp out at my grandmom’s place, where I was fed excellent sambhar rice, idlis, dosas and miscellaneous warm comforting food. Those weeks, I’d get phone calls from the sandwich place asking if I was okay, because I hadn’t ordered in a while.

T

hen I moved to Prague, and I’d like to say everything changed, but not much did. Our fridge is still perennially empty, and my flatmate and I eat out all the time.

One thing has changed however: I finally figured out that I can actually cook quite well, and that it doesn’t have to be much effort. It’s much more heartening cooking for other people than eating solo. I’ve realised that cooking is rather theraThey also knew me peutic, when everything else as one of the two girls in my day is chaotic I can decide to cook, walk into my who loudly lamented spacious kitchen and throw when their appamchopped onions and garlic stew wasn’t available. into a pan and make everything better. At this point, my flatmate emerges to tell me that everything smells so good, and I have to convince her I haven’t even actually started cooking yet. My repertoire currently extends to various easy pasta dishes, chana masala and rajma. Learning how to make rajma-chawal was my diabolical master stroke here in Prague. I cooked it for a large house party pretty early on in the semester, and for the rest of the night I had every single Indian student here come up to me to give me a massive bear hug. It turns out that rajma chawal is intrinsically entwined into the Indian psyche as the ultimate comfort food.

Not mine, though, and that’s why I had to conquer my pressure cooker and learn how to make khichdi. Three weeks ago, feverish, very sick and alone at home, I bit the bullet and made myself some moong dal khichdi, glaring at the pressure cooker the whole time. My experiences with pressure cookers are limited, I can never trust them not to over or undercook everything I put into them. This time, however… victory. When I opened the lid, there behind a mushroom cloud of steam was fragrant yellow, warm, comforting khichdi. I ate it all, and revelled in the familiar taste of home and the great joy of having finally bested the dratted cooker. Food is love, I think, entwined into our consciousnesses, filled with memories, and with that first spoonful of khichdi and yoghurt, I loved myself.

Shalaka Pai is a writer and a photographer. She doesn’t have Instagram (yet) and won’t spam your Facebook feed with badly watermarked photos of sunsets.

INGREDIENTS

METHOD

Cocoa powder 1 tbsp Mascarpone cheese 250 g Rum as per taste Pound cake (sliced) 250 g Egg yolks 6 Vanilla extract ½ tsp White sugar ½ cup Coorg roasted coffee ½ cup Milk ¾ cup Double cream 1 cup

Begin by getting buzzed, but stop at a level where you can still distinguish between sugar and salt. Whisk eggs and sugar.

Add milk and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly till it boils, and cook for 2-3 minutes more till it is custard consistency. Slam into freezer after covering bowl with cling film. (If anybody brings up the touchy topic of an “authentic tiramisu they had in Venice” politely ask them to make this and complaints will die. Pour some more rum down your throat at this point.) Brew very strong coffee and pour equal parts rum in it (just before the point where it becomes toxic). Line pound cake squares in a 9” round cake tin and pour coffee mixture on it. (You may drink the rest.) Whip cream and fold in mascarpone cheese. Blend in cooled custard. Alternate cake with custard layers till the tin is full. Lightly dust with cocoa powder and chocolate shavings.

This recipe has only ever been tried at home. Naturally, you shouldn’t try it at yours.

Young & Restless 29

th e s u n day g u a r dian 2 0 : s u p p l e m e n t to th e su n day gu ar dian | 21.12.2014 | mu mb ai

Paper dosas, paper cuts: Kafkaesque scenes at an IIT dining hall Aditya Mani Jha

I

t was recently revealed that the IITs have been asked by the HRD (Human Resources Development) Ministry to submit an “action taken” report. On what, you ask? Well, on the small matter of constructing separate dining halls for vegetarian and non-vegetarian students (IIT Delhi revealed that it had already stopped cooking non-vegetarian food in its hostels). Apparently, the reason behind the IITs not producing quite so many world-beaters as expected has something to do with the students consuming tamasic non-vegetarian food, as opposed to the gentle, sattvik influence of vegetables.

And here we thought that this had something to do with the lack of research incentives, the all-round air of cosy complacency and the obsession with the bottom line (read “package”, that marvellous euphemism used by Indian students when they are too bashful to say “salary”) shown by IIT students in recent times.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The truth is that the champions of both sides of this debate are equally illinformed. Meat-eaters: when was the last time you enjoyed

a quality non-vegetarian meal inside an IIT dining hall? The correct answer, as always, is nineteen seventynever. Ghaas-phoos group: what’s wrong with your eyes?

Aren’t we eating our carrots these days? That’s not paneer on your plate; that’s the mess in-charge’s cruel and unusual recipe for tyre gratings in soya sauce.

If either side had an iota of pragmatism, they would realise that the problem with IIT food isn’t the absence of meat. The food is more like its own problem, really.

During our first year in college at IIT Kharagpur, I witnessed an electoral victory so thrilling it would have bored the pants off a bank teller. The clinching issue that finally swung the proceedings of the election (from eyeball-stabbing agony to only mildly painful) was a candidate’s puffed-chest proclamation that if elected, he would double the quota of boiled eggs allotted to every student at breakfast.

But wait, what would that accomplish for the vegetarian students? Wouldn’t he lose votes there? What about those vegetarians who ate eggs? What about those eggtarians who liked omelettes better than boiled eggs?

Where would the excess eggs come from? Will this poultry

A braveheart once tried to wolf down a plate of what was being passed off as chhole-bhature.

The tensile strength of the bhature was that of a honeycomb, the chhole spices felt like the bees.

Later that same day, there was an unsuccessful suicide attempt in the hostel. Hostel authorities, till date, deny that the two events were related.

An IIT Kanpur dining hall.

coup make up for our paltry medals tally at the inter-hostel sweepstakes?

There were two very important observations to be made here. One, that the average IIT student thought about the ideal breakfast much more than he or she actually ate an ideal breakfast; or, you know,

Goa’s coolest new beach shack by our correspondent

It’s that time of the year when everybody you know is making a bee-line for Goa. If you do end up tagging along with a friend, we know an exciting new place that you can cool your heels in. Easily the sweetest spot

menu) for kids to go nuts in and a warm welcome for your dog(s) if you’d like to bring them along.

Baxter’s is run by six young friends from Bombay and New Delhi; Fateh Akoi, Ahilya Akoi, Aftab Sidhu, Cyrus Dalal, Mankaran Johar and chef Honey Mishra.

B e t w e e n Ya k h n i P u -

any kind of breakfast. Two, that even students who were just a couple of months into their IIT stay were so inured to the crappy hostel food that any form of succour was seen as an all-you-can-eat ticket at the Taj. One couldn’t blame us.

Fungi and butter had

roughly equivalent chances of ending up on your slice of bread. The paper dosas could give you paper cuts, as could the rotis; the latter were not recommended for asthmatic students, for what if your friends joined you in a fun game of slap-the-atta?

Planes have disappeared in

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thinner sandstorms. The gravies were an exercise in national integration: not only did they all taste exactly the same, they brought Punjabis, Gujaratis, Biharis, Marathis and just about everyone else together, in their hatred of dinner-time.

A braveheart once tried to

Pizza Hut introduces Doritos crust pizza

Missouri bar offers six-shot special called ‘Michael Brown’

wolf down a plate of what was being passed off as chhole-bhature. The tensile strength of the bhature was that of a honeycomb, the chhole spices felt like the bees.

Later that same day, there was an unsuccessful suicide attempt in the hostel. Hostel authorities, till date, deny that the two events were related. We, of course, have our doubts.

During our last weeks on campus, we had no classes.

There wasn’t much to do apart from flitting from office to office in search of no-dues certificates that proved, once and for all, that you hadn’t nicked an eraser, a library book or a supercomputer from IIT. During these days, we saw construction workers everywhere. And then we realised that there were sandwich shops, fancy new canteens, even, gasp, a Baskin Robbins store about to start business on campus. There were murmurs that a Mc-

Starbucks to offer wireless chargers at its outlets

Donald’s would follow suit.

It’s not as if we were replacing our crap food; they were simply siphoning off the funds of these soon-tobe lakhpatis, a sort of preemptive TG (target group) marketing trick. Author and journalist Sandipan Deb had claimed, in his memoir, that bad IIT food was simply a trick to prepare a Spartan bunch of growling, ravenous brainiacs who would take over the world before dessert.

This was similar, only more cynical, more like: We know that once you get out of here, you’ll shift from this crap food to a different species of crap food.

Allow us to make your introductions.

We proved to be wise beyond our years. We took our chances with the lethal paper dosa and the war veteran chhole-bhature, for one final week. If all else failed, we could always live hard, die young and leave our beautiful corpses behind.

Iconic ’90s cereal brand French Toast Crunch returns

17 Venezuelan prison inmates die after prolonged hunger strike

Something is brewing in Okhla The Dalmias are, in the nicest possible sense, coffee geeks — something that is reflected on their website.

Twelve varieties of singleorigin coffee (grown within a particular geographic region, and associated with a specific taste) from 11 countries are listed; only one — Mysore Arabica — is from India.

uday bhatia

Baxter’s in Goa

on the Ashwem-Morjim stretch in North Goa, Baxter’s is a posh shack that will let you check in any time you like, but you’ll find that you can never leave. (No reason to panic, they won’t ever play that song.) For those of you more than familiar with Goa, Baxter’s is where Bardo used to be; not-quitewalking-distance from Marbela. Except it’s all been reworked into a space that offers every kind of traveller a reason to hang out for ages. Sprawled over three acres, Baxter’s has an inside-outside restaurant, a beach bar, a little gazebo for live music and a string of stalls (Nida Mahmood, Origin 1, Dhoop, and Neon Planes are permanent stalls) that runs along one side. Beyond this lies a lazy stretch of soft sand and a young surfing instructor that grins way wide. There’s also a dedicated (and supervised) space (and soon, a dedicated

lao, Awadhi Beef Pasanda and treats from the tandoor that have this delightful way of melting in your mouth, meals come pre-plated so you don’t have to strain your brain trying to order complementary things from an a la carte menu. After all the hard work that you’re going to put into eating, we recommend rolling over and doing nothing for the next couple of hours. When you start to get fidgety, saunter over to the pool table for a game or seven, indulge in a spot of kayaking if you’re the sporty type or just mosey on over for a dip in the sea. Whatever you do with the rest of the day, DO NOT MISS THE SUNSET. Perhaps its biggest draw, Baxter’s claims some of the most dramatic sundown views this side of Thalassa, best enjoyed with a tall glass of Goan Sling or Coconut Fennytini. There’s also a Boutique Bazaar every Friday with live music.

Okhla, industrial and unlovely, is the last place you’d expect a gourmet coffee firm to set up shop.

Yet, that is where Kaffa Cerrado is located. Started by the Dalmia siblings, Krittivas, Saudamini and Rasalika, 18 months ago, the brand gives consumers across India the opportunity to order single-origin coffee — what Jules from Pulp Fiction would call some “serious gourmet shit” — and coffee-making equipment online.

Domestic coffee consumption in India (1,25,000 tonnes last year) has grown at a steady 5% since 2010. What the Dalmias are concentrating on is the small but growing portion of this market that is particular about the coffee it drinks. Thanks to a decade of Barista, Café Coffee Day, Costa Coffee, Starbucks and the like, Indians have finally started sorting out their lattes from their espressos. Some have taken it a step further: buying espresso machines, grinding their own beans. These are the kind of people who are likely to appreciate the difference between Uganda Bugisu and Indonesia Mandheling; to understand why it’s important that Ethiopia Washed Sidamo has “striking acidity, flowery notes of jasmine and lavender, fruity notes of papaya, wild cherries and moun-

Kaffa Cerrado pack.

tain berries”.

The Dalmias are, in the nicest possible sense, coffee geeks — something that is reflected on their website. Twelve varieties of single-origin coffee (grown within a particular geographic region, and associated with a specific taste) from 11 countries are listed; only one — Mysore Arabica — is from India. The rest are imported in raw bean form from traders in Europe and elsewhere: the Dalmias don’t

deal in the kind of volumes that allow them to import directly from the country of origin. What ought to further delight coffee aficionados is that, after choosing a particular blend, the website gives you a choice as to how you’d like your coffee ground — for a moka pot, Chemex filter, south Indian filter, French press or Turkish pot. (You can also order as whole roasted beans.)

Krittivas shows us the large, shin-

ing silver roaster in the basement, surrounded by gunny sacks with different bean varieties. He and his siblings operate it themselves.

Because they’d like their customers to receive the freshest possible coffee, most of the roasting is done on order. “From the first day onwards, there’s deterioration in flavour,” Krittivas says. “If you have it in the first month and then you have it in the sixth month, you’ll be able to tell a slight difference in taste.”

They try to ship within 48 hours of an order. Even their expiry date, he says, is six months, as opposed to the two years that many international brands stipulate.

Today, Kaffa Cerrado is being

supplied to a couple of restaurants and cafés in Mumbai and Delhi like Bread & More, Fio and New York Pizza Slice. Still, the Dalmias would rather push for their brand to enter people’s homes. “We eventually want to supply more to home, for personal consumption,” Krittivas says. “We have seen over the past few years there’s been an increase in home machines; that people have started to get into coffee more.” Like all good revolutions, this one too starts at home: they’ve managed to convert their mother into a nosugar black coffee enthusiast.

Kaffa Cerrado may have the best selection of international beans, but it’s hardly the only Indian website to sell coffee online. Indianbean.com offers single-estate coffee sourced from estates in Coorg and Kodaikanal, and delivers all over India. They have a small but well-described selection, some useful tips on coffee-making, and like Kaffa Cerrado, offer different kinds of grinds. Then there’s Devan’s, who’ve been in business since 1962 and who have a store in Khanna Market, New Delhi. Their branded coffee — helpfully divided into mild, medium, strong and very strong — is available on their website in various grounds. They also have several varieties of tea: proof, if any was required, that although India is developing a taste for premium coffee, it still subsists on chai.

30

Picture Essay

are BFFs ‹3 tty little food collages.

Strawberry and rhubarb full of photographs of pre is ) USA es, gel An s (Lo JuliesKitchen

t he sun day gua rdia n 20: s up p lement to t he s unday guardi an | 21. 12. 2014 | mumbai

And yet another one got #n aaned. Roger Federer vis its Bukhara for the world Inspiration, recipes, rec famous naan. ommendations, review s. Foodtalkindia (New De certainly the capital’s (an lhi, India) is d perhaps the country’s ) biggest online food com munity.

THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO #MMM

th e s un day gua r d ia n 2 0 : s uppl e m e nt to t he s unday g ua r d i a n | 2 1 . 1 2 . 2 0 1 4 | m um ba i

indulge in a surprise its on my front porch to tra por ting edi m  fro ak Took a lunch bre , cold beer, hot chicken Chicken Shop. Humid day of course you’d be right to expect the m fro ry ive del ch lun so USA) is a photographer, Pauloctavious (Chicago, And he delivers. s. our col g ikin str and beautiful compositions

A beautifully dark roaste d brew, tart strawberrie s and catalogue reading. morning calm before hea Saturday ding to work.

Scissortongue (Mumbai , India) is a young Mumb ai-based gynecologist and two really cute kids. He also father of minimal style that we lov draws and photographs a lot of what he eats in a stark, e.

Picture Essay 31

l with the if you leave me by a bow to be any satsumas left re the ect exp not do Please fills her words, “Help yourself.” t time food surgeon” and , NY) calls herself “a par lyn ook (Br ck . dro oon ean Rubbl ke you sw ugh pretty things to ma Instagram feed with eno

In its early days, haters criticised Instagram because all people seemed to want to do on it was take pictures of what they were eating. Breakfast of champions. My coffee. This dessert. That burger. Oh, look: casual cupcake. Beer, sunglasses, sunset, sea. Arty shot of single mango against an out-of-focus background, because “Tilt Shift” for president...

The streams were endless, and the hashtags were out of control (#nomnomnom, #foodgasm, #foodporn).

So everyone decided to take a wee break and focus on cats for a little bit instead. My cat, your cat, stray cat, random cat, fat cat, rescue cat, internet cat, fluffy cat, scaredy cat. Then came the little (ongoing) affair with extreme close-ups of people’s feet. (You say why, they say why not?) And then, the selfies took over. Maybe pictures of food aren’t that bad after all? Between photos that make our stomachs rumble and recipes from world-famous chefs that you can try at home, we’re actually really enjoying this trend now, so we’ve put together some of our favourite #foodheroes from around the world. Bon appetit!

a nimbu. ’t give you lime, so carry edar, Thane. They still don ml Ma at o Pa al Mis al!

Saturday Speci ay ely! Jai Maharashtra. ngry. Street food, highw Sacchi. The chaas is lov ay boy who’s usually hu mb Bo a is iew ia) rev Ind , and bai eat at BombayBhukkad (Mum -about top tables... he’ll taurants in the city, talked mour. hu of ch pin a n, the dhaba thalis, obscure res and, every now and sm sia hu ent e, eas al equ them all with

I decided to try making wa fflecones from scratch. then this sorta happened.

Christinehmcconnell (Ca .. lifornia, US) is an artist, photographer and baker. some pretty crazy stuff Which means there’s in here.

Every year the December Cronut™ flavor is one of the most anticipated. He Dark Chocolate Raspberr re it is: Valrhona y Chambord (with raspbe rry dusted sugar)! #Cron DominiqueAnsel (New ut York City) is a French pas try chef who invented the croissant hybrid, the “cr doughnut and onut”, which was one of the biggest food trends this year.

Recipe of the day is my warming Thai ch icken laksa with sp or lunch ready in 15 iced noodles and bu mins. Recipe over on tternut squash broth jamieoliver.com JamieOliver (Englan . Guys this is a quick d). If you don’t alrea supper dy know why you sh ould be following th is guy...

s #yoghurt #driedblueberrie #waffles #carrots #kiwi t she has the tha art d foo l ica ims Don’t be mad, be hoppy! wh kes and eats all this ma ) any rm Ge , rlin (Be Idafrosk . h for the rest of us to see decency to first photograp

Orgasm, by our friends @a .gosto #MaleCooks Malecooks. Because rea l men cook sinful, beast ly things, as it turns out. of the sort of porn all wo This page is full men can get on board wit h.

gs food enthusiast, speMonday midnight cravin n Bleu-trained chef and rdo Co Le a is die foo bal Urvika Kanoi aka theglo rld cuisines. cialising in French and wo

32

Technologic

t he sun day gua rdia n 20: s up p lement to t he s unday guardi an | 21. 12. 2014 | mumbai

Apps for the kitchen: Cooking up a storm with smartphone chefs through the intricate steps and even answers queries like “Should I peel the ginger before chopping it?” with a YouTube video that explains how a spoon is the ideal weapon to accomplish this task.

sanshey biswas

T

he food delivery business has definitely benefitted from the introduction of apps like Foodpanda and Zomato, which help to zero in on a place with the assistance of ratings and reviews. The real innovation, though, has been in the “cooking assistance app” field. Using a tablet with your hands covered in flour or water is not advisable. That’s when you need apps to tell you there’s another way.

My CookBook (Recipe Manager) for Android Since Google Glass isn’t a luxury most can afford, Android Wear has been dabbling in

Cooking with Knit

cooking with the partnering of smart device apps like My CookBook and Cookpad Recipes. The apps bring you recipes based on the keywords you throw at them. Before you start cooking, or even you set out to shop for ingredients, you can export the recipe to your smartwatch. Having the recipe on your smartwatch is convenient because it allows you to flip between steps with a swipe of the chin even when your hands are messy.

If you’re among the lucky few that own a Google Glass, Knit has demonstrated how a user with literally no cooking skills can use this app to whip up Gressingham Duck with very little extra effort. The app guides the user

game gear

trols from predecessors, the user interface was the new Metro UI. It allowed the food to take centre-stage by hiding the settings, controls et al off-screen (a swipe would bring them back). Besides looking at food-related stories and news, the apps also served as a recipe book. You can add recipes to the app

iCookbook If you’re feeling left out because you don’t

own a Google Glass or a smartwatch, don’t fret. One of the first attempts to make cooking easier for users of smart devices with messy hands was via iOS. Even though the iCookbook app is available on all the popular platforms, only iOS lets a user flip through the steps in a recipe with voice commands. You can look up recipes based on occasion, ingredients, cusine, ratings or try out the featured ones for the month. You can also use tools like how-to videos and a conversions and substitutions guide to enhance your versatility in the kitchen. The app also has special recipe packs for things like gourmet burgers or silly snacks from time to time.

Food & Drink for Windows For PC or Windows tablets, the advent of Windows 8 brought a package of new apps for work and play. The Food & Drink app really stood out. Borrowing the hands-free con-

by uploading pictures or scanned images from a recipe jotted down on paper. When you’re in a recipe, not only does the handsfree mode let you navigate with gestures, a meal planner lets you come up with an entire course based on the collection of recipes you build over time.

When it comes to cooking, apps can only be useful to a limited degrees of effect. That’s why we’ve also seen projects setting out to create devices that monitor and assist our diet — devices like Vessyl, a sipper that monitors your calorie intake, to Chop-Syc, a smart chopping board that also serves as a PC and weighing machine that guides you through and modifies recipes on the fly.

Comics from the Web

Candy Crush Soda Saga

Platform: Android, iOS Genre: Lifestyle Price: Free With apps like Zomato and Foodpanda, looking for home deliveries at any time of the day and contacting them has become easier than ever. The only thing that stuck around was fumbling for change. Just Eat is an app that stands up to its name by letting you pay for your food within the app. That means no more trips to the neighbourhood ATM just because you’re out of cash and want to order food. You can even search through menus and let the app find you eateries based on your location.

Go Dutch Plates by Splitwise Platform: iOS Genre: Utilities Price: Free Splitting the bill on those wild nights out is a task not to be meddled with unless you’re sober. This app from Splitwise simplifies the chore by asking for the total amount and then allowing you split the individual expenses depending on the individual orders with simple swipes.

Night riders FrnDiNeed Platform: Android Genre: Social Price: Free

Developer: King.com Publisher: King.com Platforms: iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Browser (Facebook) Price: Free

GUARDIAN GRUB

Just Eat

Amit Goyal

Sugar high: Crushing candy just got sodalicious

If you have been tormented by endless Candy Crush requests, you’re not going to like this review. But if matching coloured candies in sets of three or four and clearing out a grid of candies using striped and wrapped candies is how you have been getting through boring board meetings, long commutes and your mother’s best friend’s nephew’s wedding ceremony, this is full of good news.

Following up on their smash hit Candy Crush Saga, King.com has finally released its sequel titled Candy Crush Soda Saga. If you have been living away from all sorts of human contact for the past couple of years, here’s a short primer on Candy Crush: the game is a take on the old school “match three formula” established by games like Bejeweled many years ago.

You match three candies by swapping their positions on the grid to complete objectives and levels. While games using this mechanics have been around for many years, King.com’s Candy Crush Saga is what redefined the whole genre, and won audiences the world over.

Hungry? No call, just eat

www.poorlydrawnlines.com

website of the week

With the few cabs on the road and even fewer that are affordable, a night out in the city can be pretty stressful unless you’ve got someone to drop you home. FrnDiNeed, from the folks at Smart Tube Entertainment, is trying to makes our cities safer to travel in. This app uses geo-location to help users find friends (phone contacts and Facebook) in the vicinity to chat with (without mobile data), plan a trip, send distress signals, ask for a lift and organise carpools.

www.wtfsigte.com

Foul-mouthed SOS for when you’re too hungry to think straight The transitions are slicker, and King. com actually got the London Symphony Orchestra to create the soundtrack.

One of the primary reasons why Candy Crush resonated so well with people was its delectable, mouth-watering visuals that completely immersed users in its sugary dessertfilled colourful universe.

Those with an eye for detail will immediately notice an upgrade in presentation.

The animations of existing

as well as new gameplay elements are smoother and more detailed. The transitions are slicker, and King. com actually got the London Symphony Orchestra to create the soundtrack.

There’s no doubt that Candy Crush Soda Saga is a grander, more immersive experience.

From the gameplay perspective, the introduction of ‘Soda” is the major change.

When Candies that look like soft drink bottles are popped, the soda in the background rises higher, causing candies immersed in soda to move up when something above them is popped, rather than moving down when candies below are popped. This

change in mechanics takes a bit of getting used to, but as a direct consequence the levels are immediately more engaging for those who are reaching their limit with the lack of variety in the original Candy Crush Saga.

As a result, the game allows for new types of objectives, such as finding bears stuck in honey, or raising objects to a particular height by popping enough soda bottles.

The gameplay is still not changed to an extent that would attract people who don’t like the original. But for those who enjoy Candy Crush Saga, getting Candy Crush Soda Saga should be a no-brainer. Happy crushing!

Vegetable Au Gratin

Sanshey Biswas (“The tech guy”) File photo. Your dish is unlikely to resemble this, but you can try.

Far bigger than the meaning of life itself is the question of where one should go for a meal on any given day. The possibilities are endless and expanding at a frightening pace thanks to a seeming boom in the hospitality industry (because most food is utterly inoffensive to the sentiments of our hypersensitive people — except anything made from cows and pigs).

The website www.WTFSIGTE.com is one among a host of solutions that have cropped up in recent times, from online restaurant aggregators to social media groups with flowery prose, contrasting opinions and outrage. What sets apart WTFSIGTE — translated loosely as: Where the f*ck should I go to eat — is its impatient and dismissive temperament; there are no pleasantries and cheery dispositions

when it comes to these guys.

The site will access your location if granted permission and present an option for a meal nearby. And it will not play nice. “Why don’t you f*cking go to Shri Balaji Vaishno Dhaba?”, with a link to said dhaba and a small Google map showing its exact location. The user can either go to the place recommended,

or it can click on “My location is f*cking wrong” if that’s the case. You could also click on “No, that place looks like sh*t”, and the site will recommend an alternative, and will keep on doing so until you get tired or run out of places to visit or finally decide on something. Another option, in case food is not your cup of tea, is to click on “Actu-

ally, I’m f*cking thirsty”, in which case the site will redirect you to www.WTFSIGTD. com (which should be fairly self-explanatory). The unpleasant language might put some people — who’ve never heard of the internet — off, but WTFSIGTE gets the job done, and guarantees a few laughs, if nothing else.

— Akhil Sood

INGREDIENTS

METHOD

Milk 500 ml Onion (peeled) 1 Bay leaf 1 Cloves 2 Nutmeg powder ½ tsp Butter 50 g Flour 50 g Leftover vegetables, chopped (FYI: tomato is a fruit) Lots of grated cheese (preferably mozzarella) Salt and pepper to taste

Heat the milk. Throw in the onion, bay leaf and cloves. When it comes to a boil, switch off the heat. Strain the milk.

Parboil the vegetables. (Note: Keep the pan on low heat hereon unless you know what you’re doing.) Heat a saucepan. Place the butter on the pan and watch it melt. Now you’re ready to sprinkle the flower over the molten butter and stir till the butter and flour are one. Soon, the mix will become slightly brown. Add milk while you slowly stir the mix, preventing any lumps. Now keep stirring and add the parboiled vegetables. Stir till the mix thickens to a consistency of your liking. Pour into a baking dish and garnish with grated cheese. Heat in the oven at 180°C till the cheese turns a little brown.

(Pro tip: Make sure the milk has cooled down to prevent lumps.)

This recipe has only ever been tried at home. Naturally, you shouldn’t try it at yours.

Technologic 33

th e su n day g u a rd ian 2 0 : s u p p l e m e n t to th e su n day gu ar dian | 21.12.2014 | mu mb ai

How-to recipes courtesy lushes, loonies and loveable metalheads AKHIL SOOD

H

ow did people learn things they didn’t already know before How-to videos on the internet? It’s a mystery is what it is. In the spirit of things, we look at four popular YouTube channels that are either a) thoroughly entertaining and fun to watch, b) informative, or c) downright mental.

Headbanger’s Kitchen www.youtube.com/user/HeadbangersKitchen

of Makhija’s food, usually non-vegetarian, is great to eat and looks amazing, heartburn, meat-sweats, maybe a bout of harmless arteriosclerosis are very real possibilities. Take, for instance, his signature dish, the Bacon Bomb: it contains about 700 kg of pork, beef, bacon, goat, chicken — a small zoo basically.

And two buckets of cheese.

Auntie Fee www.youtube.com/user/auntyfee

FULL SPECTRUM

Recipes features a woman — presumably named Madhura ­— ­­­with a genuine enthusiasm for cooking and sharing her recipes. We haven’t yet tried any of her recipes so we can’t speak of the quality of the food she cooks, but the stuff looks edible enough. And the best part: the zeal with which she describes the process. It’s like looking into the eyes of a madman but without the madness.

The Necro chilli con carne, made with members of Third Sovereign as the guests on the show, or The Heaviest Chole Bhature In The Universe (featuring Gojira) may sound intimidating, but they’re actually delicious.

My Drunk Kitchen www.youtube.com/user/MyHarto

process. She cusses at the cameraman, the camera, the food — she teaches you how to make “Dumb Good Mac and Cheese” — even the utensils. Yet her words, they don’t hurt; it just seems to be her way of showing affection.

She does budget cooking, special recipes, food of all kinds, and while it doesn’t look all that appealing, the process does make us believe it probably tastes A-OK.

We were under the impression that metalheads, especially those in bands, only drank the blood of sacrificial goats and chomped down raw fish — bones and everything — for high tea and snacks. Sahil Makhija, frontman of Mumbai’s gruesome death metal band Demonic Resurrection, breaks that (misplaced) stereotype quite comprehensively with a hugely-popular cooking show that also retains a deep metal aesthetic to it. Each episode features a rolling conversation with a popular metal musician/band, and a dish prepared by Makhija, with the nomenclature of the band very much influencing the name of the dish.

So while the Necro chilli con carne, made with members of Third Sovereign as the guests on the show, or The Heaviest Chole Bhature In The Universe (featuring Gojira) may sound intimidating, they’re actually delicious. We should add the small qualifier that while most

Madhuras Recipes [sic] www.youtube.com/user/madhura94

If the f-word were an ingredient, Auntie Fee would be the Anthony Bourdain of the cooking world. As it stands, Bourdain is the Bourdain of the cooking world, so that metaphor’s gone to the dogs a little. In any case, Auntie Fee is a middle-aged black lady with a sharp tongue and a filthy mouth, and she cooks and puts up videos on YouTube. Every third word is a curse or a biting insult of some sort. Her video for making Turkey Wings begins with the cameraperson imploring her to “get this over with”, which is followed by a strong rebuke by her: “Don’t tell me what to do… this sh*t is very serious”, after which begins the

BLOG SURFER

The web-space is littered with irony and post-irony and facetiousness and obtuse deflections and monologues. So an odd, out of place instance of earnestness can often seem refreshing, if only fleetingly — because that too has its novelty. In any case, Madhuras

Snacking with the stars Samantha Lee made her first bento (Japanese lunchbox) to teach her elder daughter to start eating on her own. Her blog has a collection of her delightful bento box designs, along with step-wise tutorials.

My Drunk Kitchen is a YouTube cooking series started by a woman who has now become an internet big shot (which, in real terms, means absolutely nothing). She gets drunk, runs around, cooks some stuff. She might be internet-famous now — and the show is legitimately really funny — but there was a time (in 2011) when she just got drunk one night and shot a video of herself cooking. And then uploaded it. What we’re left wondering is…why? What would make a seemingly affable, fun, interesting person with time to kill one night, and a bottle of wine handy, pick up a camera and shoot herself cooking in her kitchen? Is it a profound sense of loneliness that lies at the heart of every being? Or the other kind — the one where you just want to make friends and have people like you? Or is it just another way to make it online? Who knows, and after a couple of glasses of wine and some badly-cooked chicken, who cares?

Frying without the guilt

www.eatzybitzy.wordpress.com

GADGET REVIEW Philips Airfryer Rs 14,995

GUARDIAN GRUB

The Philips Airfryer is a healthier way forward for deep-fry lovers. The Airfryer is best decribed as a neat trick. The device uses 80% less oil than conventional fryers. The result is the same delicious crust, accompanied by a well cooked core, but with less oil.

The Airfryer works on convection like a good old

Butterscotch Pudding

oven, circulating hot air through the enclosure the food is placed in. The food becomes juicy and tender as a result of this time-tested method. The trick to that crispy crust is brushing oil over the food before putting it into the Airfryer. In case you apply too much oil, the Airfryer takes care of that as the excess oil drips through the mesh (which the food is placed on) and collects in the compartment under it. Similar to an oven, Airfryer can be pre-heated if the recipe requires you to. Theoretically, because it works on the science of convection, you can bake, roast or even grill food in it. Because it needs very little oil, using it in a room without exhausts won’t leave the place full of smoke.

Cleaning the Airfryer is also easy, since all the parts that come in contact with the food are removeable and non-stick coated.

And to add to the package, it comes with a temperature control paired with a timer. ­— Sanshey Biswas

INGREDIENTS Milk Sugar Fresh cream Vanilla custard powder

Grow your meat: The Rs 2 crore hamburger

T

he war between vegetarians and non-vegetarians has gone on forever. So much so that one of the foundational myths of the Semitic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam is the story of Cain killing Abel. Isaac Asimov, the great science fiction writer, introduced the story in his guide to the Bible as a classic zero sum game fight between farmers and hunters. Cain is described as a farmer, who would go on to become the “father of cities” (although this is only the Torah and the Bible, in the Quran he is only described as the eldest son) while Abel is described as a nomadic pastoralist with his flock of sheep and goats. In the Torah and Bible, God accepts the sacrifice of Abel, but not that of Cain, and in a fit of jealousy and anger Cain kills Abel. Thus the quintessential first murder in Semitic mythology is that of a farmer killing a pastoralist.

There may be some truth in this observation, in that farming requires large fenced-off areas, while pastoralism and hunting require large grazing spaces and complex environments.

The two have never been able to co-exist. With the demand of farming slowly eating into the habitats of the free-ranging species that were hunted, today hunting exists as either a hobby or the avocation of small communities that are isolated from much of the world. Nevertheless, the violence has never been one way. Whether it was Scythians arriving upon the Greeks, the Turks (from areas like today’s Xinjiang) rampaging through China, or the Mongols crushing the great Mesopotamian civilisations, pastorialists have pillaged enough settled communities based on agriculture to even the score.

Nevertheless, the past is the past; what do we do now in a world where the agriculture-based civilisations have comprehensively won the day? In fact, even the meat that is largely consumed today is grown on “farms” of one sort or the other.

There are few “free-range” options, and all of them require a huge amount of land. In fact, a 2006 study by the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization estimated that belching by cows were the cause of the largest amount of methane gas in the world, contributing 28% of the total. As a greenhouse gas, methane is directly responsible for global warming. Moreover many such “factory farms” follow incredibly inhumane practices, crippling animals and even feeding them a diet which includes flesh, leading to a very large percentage of meat available in European and American supermarkets containing disease-causing bacteria.

S

o what is the ethical non-vegetarian to do? One option is, of course, to cease eating meat altogether. The problem is that the global trend is going the other way. In 2008 the U.S. President George Bush and his Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, sparked controversy by blaming rising food prices on growing demand in India and China. Actually they were correct, and a huge part of that demand was meat. While meat consumption in the U.S. is actually falling (a bit), in countries like China, Brazil and India, it has increased by as much as 50% in the last decade as their citizens What do we do now demand more meat with their food. And this trend is projected in a world where to continue in this direction. agriculture-based How do we find this much more meat without more cruelty, more civilisations have disease and creating a global won the day? warming catastrophe? One answer may lie in meat grown in laboratories. This is what Professor Mark Post at the University of Maastricht has been doing since about 2008. He now heads an initiative called “Cultured Beef”. Last year he field-tested the first hamburger made from beef grown in a laboratory. The critics, though remarking on some differences found that the burger passed their expectations. The beef had been grown from stem cells taken from a cow, and grown in a broth including blood. On the other hand, the Japanese have asked if he can do the same thing with whale meat, and a Rabbi or two has suggested that such meat could even get kosher certification. Post is not alone. Andras Forgacs, the CEO of Modern Meadows has created beef chips, using similar methods. The problem remains the cost. Professor Post’s burger costs something like $3,50,000 to make, or more than Rs 2 crore, although he suggests that the prices will come down sharply as technology improves. And he boasts that such meat would cost only 55% the energy, use 1% of the land, and create only 4 % of greenhouse gases that normally harvested meat would. That, at least, is a goal worth achieving, even with Frankenbeef.

Omair Ahmad is a Delhi-based writer, still making up for being a failed science student. His last book was Kingdom at the Centre of the World: Journeys into Bhutan (Aleph, 2013).

METHOD ½ litre ¾ cup 200 ml 4 tbsp

For garnishing: Chocolate syrup/caramel crumbs/cream/ strawberries.

Mihika Jindal

Omair Ahmad

Take a heavy bottom pan to heat sugar on a low fire till it caramelises. Simultaneously, mix custard powder in lukewarm milk. Make sure the custard powder dissolves completely, without leaving any lumps. (We will call this a “custard concoction” for easy reference.) Now, mix the caramelised sugar to the custard concoction and put to boil. Continue boiling and keep stirring till it gets very thick (consistency similar to, let’s say, halwa). Pour the thick mixture into a mixer and churn it till it smoothens. Pour it in glass bowl and refrigerate (Only to chill, don’t freeze it). Garnish the pudding with some chocolate syrup or sprinkle some caramel or top it with a strawberry or two.

Legal Eagle File photo. Your dish is unlikely to resemble this, but you can try.

This recipe has only ever been tried at home. Naturally, you shouldn’t try it at yours.

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Masala Art

the sunday guardian 20: supplement to the sunday guardian | 21.12.2014 | mumbai

BBC to adapt J.K. Rowling’s crime novels J.K. Rowling’s crime novels, written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, are coming to British television. The BBC will adapt The Cuckoo’s Calling and its follow-up published earlier this year, Silkworm, into a series. The BBC said Rowling will “collaborate on the project”, but the number and length of episodes are yet to be decided. Danny Cohen, the BBC’s director of television, said: “It’s a wonderful coup for BBC television to be bringing J.K. Rowling’s latest books to the screen. With the rich character of Cormoran Strike at their heart, these dramas will be event television across the world.”

mark Wahlberg will star in transformers 5

Seven choice cuts: Fine dining at the movies noticed a very similar scene in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel.

UDAY BHATIA

I

Blue is the Warmest Colour Food is at the heart of Abdellatif Kechiche’s 2013 Palme d’Or-winning film. The way Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos) devours that falafel at the beginning of the film hints at hidden appetites that she will soon go about fulfilling. Later, a teary mess, she’ll stuff her face with chocolate. Then there are the two witty, extended dinner scenes: the first at her house, the other at her lover Emma’s. The contrasts between the two — spaghetti versus oysters; talk of art versus more practical matters — is an early indication of the difference in their backgrounds, and the potential flashpoints for their relationship.

The fourth instalment of the Transformer series, Transformers: Age of Extinction, didn’t open to stellar reviews, but the film still managed to garner more than $1 billion at the box office. The commercial success of the film prompted Paramount Pictures to announce that Transformers 5 will hit the screens in 2016, but the details of the fifth film remain sketchy. Michael Bay, the series director, will not return to direct the next film, but Mark Wahlberg, who joined the franchise with the last film, said in a new interview that he’s committed to “a couple more” films in the franchise.

The Godfather “Leave the gun, take the connoli” is a catchphrase famous enough to have inspired the titles of two unrelated books: Take the Cannoli: Stories From the New World and Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: A Wiseguy›s Guide to the Workplace. The line is uttered in the film by Clemenza, the jolly mafia hitman, after he and his partner have finished killing a former associate. The line — ad-libbed by Richard Castellano — is both funny and casually chilling in its acknowledgment of the utter normalcy of murder in these hoods’ lives. Clemenza’s also involved in another memorable food scene in the movie, when he

A still from In the Mood for Love and (top) Blue is the Warmest Colour.

In Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino places his heroine Shoshanna, a Jew hiding under false name in Nazioccupied France, in the midst of a jaw-droppingly difficult situation: she’s forced to sit and eat at the same table as the man who killed her family many years ago.

teaches Michael how to make spaghetti sauce.

Goodfellas It begins with Henry Hill unassumingly stating: “In prison, dinner was always a big thing.” A stand-out even among the many memorable set-pieces in Goodfellas, the prison dinner scene is memorable primarily because it doesn’t skimp on the

little details — whether it’s Paulie slicing garlic very thin with a razor or Vinny insisting that he hasn’t used too many onions in the sauce. Director Martin Scorsese uses this scene to suggest their exalted status; how, as “wiseguys”, they were untouchable.

Its influence can especially be seen in the lingering attention that’s paid to food in nearly every episode of The Sopranos.

Le Trou A very different sort of prison food scene occurs 14 minutes into Jacques Becker’s 1960 classic Le Trou. We watch as a guard meticulously checks the food items sent in from the outside for the inmates. He spins the eggs to check whether they’re filled with something heavy, slices the slab of butter into four and the loaf into two, and empties the sugar cubes into a bowl. In the midst of this, Becker cuts to the inmate’s broken, imploring face. It’s a remarkably efficient way of showing how prison can break a man’s spirit even when the authorities aren’t being cruel or highhanded. Alert cinephiles would have

The Gold Rush In The Gold Rush, Charlie Chaplin goes through a lot before he manages a square meal, including being mistaken for a giant chicken and almost being shot by his hallucinating partner, as well as being forced to eat — with great ceremony, it must be said — a boiled shoe. When he does sit down for a proper dinner surrounded by female company, it’s understandable that he’d feel the urge to play with his food a little. Stabbing two dinner rolls with his forks, Chaplin manipulates them to resemble the legs of a ballet dancer. After the more expansive pratfalls earlier in the movie, this is an example of Chaplin zeroing in on something very small and specific and creating a classic gag. In Richard Schickel’s documentary The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin, Johnny Depp discusses the dance of the dinner rolls, which he appropriated for Benny and Joon.

“Approaching the roll dance, when you see the thing it’s very simple,” he says. “It’s so difficult. It’s so difficult. It’s something that Chaplin just did in an instant, just came up with like that...”

The fate of Spider-Man still remains uncertain

DeGeneres’ Oscar selfie tops Twitter’s most-tweeted entertainment moments Ellen DeGeneres’ Oscar selfie is still breaking records. The picture clicked on the night of the Oscars, which DeGeneres hosted, went on to be the most re-tweeted picture of all time, a feat it achieved in under an hour. As the year draws to a close, the picture topped Twitter’s list of most-tweeted entertainment moments with nearly 2,55,000 tweets per minute. The second most re-tweeted tweet came from Justin Bieber, an inspirational message to his fans that read (or rather screamed, considering it was in all-caps): “YOU ARE ALL WORTHY NO MATTER WHAT ANYONE SAYS >> BE STRONG GOD IS WITH US ALL> MY BELIEBERS CHANGED MY LIFE> I WILL FOREVER BE GRATEFUL.”

GUARDIAN GRUB

Inglourious Basterds Food has often been linked to tension in Quentin Tarantino’s movies — the Big Kahuna burger in Pulp Fiction, for instance, or the rice-eating scene in Kill Bill Vol. 1. In his WWII revenge fantasy Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino places his heroine Shoshanna, a Jew hiding under false name in Nazi-occupied France, in the midst of a jaw-droppingly difficult situation: she’s forced to sit and eat at the same table as the man who killed her family many years ago, Hans Landa, the “Jew Hunter”. She eats her strudel carefully, trying to draw as little attention to herself as possible. Landa, on the other hand, attacks his dessert with such delight that the viewer can practically taste it. (Good food — besides other markers of luxury — is a recurrent feature in films about the decadence of the Nazi higher orders.)

The scene reaches breaking point when Landa asks for a glass of milk — something he did prior to ordering the killing of Shoshanna’s family.

n the Mood for Love Wong Kar-Wai populates his movies with food that’s as attractive and filled with suppressed emotion as the people eating it. In his 2000 masterpiece In the Mood for Love, Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung), two lonely souls who’ve realised that their spouses are having an affair with each other, share a meal that’s impossibly loaded with meaning. With impeccable control and humour, Wong makes their growing fascination for each other evident.

The mundane particulars of their dinner (she coquettishly asks him to order for the both of them; he asks “You like it hot?” when she tries the mustard) resonate with the thrill of illicit attraction.

Last week, the Sony leaks revealed that the studio discussed working out a deal with Marvel to include Spider-Man in Captain America: The Civil War. The plan fell through, but the talks between the two aren’t over. The Latino Review reported that a 60/40 kind of arrangement with respect to Spider-Man is still on the cards, with Sony retaining creative control. There are also reports that if some kind of arrangement could be made to bring Spider-Man back to Marvel or in conjunction with Sony, it would be a complete reboot, dropping all the cast members from Marc Webb’s films (which means no Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone).

INGREDIENTS

Litti Chokha

Bhagat Singh Rawat Ye Olde Guard File photo. Your dish is unlikely to resemble this, but you can try.

Wheat flour Ghee Curd Baking soda Salt Sattu Ginger Green chilli Coriander Jeera Ajwain Mustard oil Pickle spices Brinjal Tomatoes Mustard oil

METHOD 400 g 2 tbsp 3/4 cup 1/2 tbsp 3/4 tbsp 200 g 1 long piece 2 to 4 pieces 1/2 cup 1 tbsp 1 tbsp 1 tbsp 1 tbsp 400 g 250 g 1 to 2 tbsp

For litti’s stuffing, you need to wash, peel and finely chop ginger.

Break the stems of the green chillies, wash and finely chop them.

Take out sattu (a mixture of split bengal gram, oats, wheat and barley) in a utensil, put chopped ginger, green chillies, coriander, salt, jeera, ajwain, mustard oil and pickle spices in it. Mix all the ingredients properly, and sattu pitthi is ready. For making litti, break medium-sized pieces from the dough. With your fingers, expand the pieces to two-three inches diameter in length. Place around one tbsp pitthi on it, wrap up the dough piece and close from all the sides. Press the stuffed pieces to flatten it a bit, and litti is ready for frying. Now heat the tandoor, place the stuffed pieces of dough in it and cook by turning their sides regularly till they turn brown. For making chokha, wash brinjals and tomatoes, and then fry them. Allow them to cool, peel the skins, and keep them in a bowl and mash with a spoon. Put the chopped spices, salt, oil and mix properly. Litti chokha is ready.

This recipe has only ever been tried at home. Naturally, you shouldn’t try it at yours.

Masala Art 35

the sunday guardian 20: supplement to the sunday guardian | 21.12.2014 | mu mb ai

WORDS

HOLLY

“I’m speaking out as an audience member who is going to the cinema, and noticing there’s a problem here because I don’t see women being represented.”

Assured acting enlivens an indie imbued with love for cooking video drome

— Jessica Chastain talks about the lack of meaty roles for women in Hollywood.

Abhimanyu Das

the art of cooking “In L.A. I didn’t know what to do apart from going out every night.”

T

— Lindsay Lohan reflects on her tumultuous days in Hollywood.

“I’ve made movies where people say it’s their favourite, but they don’t take it seriously because it just didn’t seem to break through commercially.”

—Richard Linklater on life after Boyhood.

“A therapist would have a field day.”

— Angelina Jolie on directing Brad Pitt in By the Sea.

A still from Big Night (1976).

into food and its preparation stand in for a whole lot else.

Campbell Scott and Stanley Tucci’s big-hearted, graceful and irresistible 1996 indie Big Night is one of those films, presenting the culinary arts as one representative slice of that special subset of human endeavours that serve to connect people, enrich their lives and help them realise their ambitions. It’s a movie about art, independence and the spine it takes to practice both at the same time.

Tony Shalhoub and Tucci play Italian immigrant brothers Primo and Secondo, co-owners of the Paradise, a restaurant in a late-1950s New Jersey town.

Secondo is the realist and the efficient face of the establishment, keeping things running by the skin of his teeth.

Primo is the moody, sad-eyed artist, perpetually lurking in the kitchen and plotting flawless risottos while cursing a lucrative nearby establishment’s subpar food. Both brothers are hardworking and extremely talented but

Cooking is presented here as a legitimate fine art and, as such, passion and purity in its practice is venerated to the highest degree. Primo is a hero for refusing to dilute his aesthetic sense, muttering darkly about “the rape of cuisine” at Pascal’s place while slaving in his own kitchen over classic Italian dishes like the labour intensive timpano that serves as the big dinner’s highlight.

Primo’s pride-filled refusal to tailor his old school Italian cuisine to spaghetti-andmeatballs American tastes has caused business to slow almost to nothing. On the verge of bankruptcy, the brothers begin to consider the very real and heartbreaking prospect of returning to Italy with their tails between their legs. Opportunity, however, arrives from the unlikely corner of Pascal (an ingratiating Ian Holm), owner of the aforementioned rival establishment. It turns

out that he knows famous bandleader Louis Prima and is agreeable to sending the big man and his entourage to the Paradise for a special dinner that could boost the eatery’s reputation. And so begin the preparations for a blowout meal on which the brothers’ fortunes (and the last of their savings) ride.

Cooking is presented here as a legitimate fine art and, as such, passion and purity in its practice is venerated to the highest degree. Primo is a hero for refusing to dilute

his aesthetic sense, muttering darkly about “the rape of cuisine” at Pascal’s place while slaving in his own kitchen over classic Italian dishes like the labour intensive timpano that serves as the big dinner’s highlight. It’s probably no accident that Primo’s dilemma — cater to broad tastes or risk dying out — is mirrored in Tucci’s chosen medium of cinema. Primo’s is the universal struggle shared by all (or at least most) artists: the fight to retain an independent authorial voice while still drawing a loyal audience. And that audience is crucial. If Primo is the auteur and his food is the artistic product, the diners are the community brought together by it. A strange lull comes over the satiated consumers of Primo’s work, a new appreciation not just of food but the people they just shared it with. Communal dinners at the Paradise are like watching an excellent film with a crowd that really gets it. A brief but distinctive kinship results from the common experience, pre-existing

A film about phoning home and getting wrong numbers

cinema scope

PK

CINEMA SCOPE

CINEMA SCOPE

uday bhatia

GUARDIAN GRUB

here are many movies that simply admire food from a distance, laying it out before the camera like an exhibition in an art gallery, gleaming and unattainable. Think of the gorgeously lensed repasts from period movies such as Vatel and The Remains of the Day or the school feasts in the Harry Potter films. In the evolution of filmic cuisine, they’re the equivalent of oversized CGI action sequences, visually sumptuous but not entirely satisfying. Then there are the movies that make you smell, taste, crave the food, and rub your face in the subtle artistry that goes into it.

Few scenes I recall can make my stomach rumble louder than when Ray Liotta’s Goodfellas voiceover walks us through the preparation of his crew’s makeshift prison dinners, thrown together with smuggled ingredients but adding up, nevertheless, to a mouth-watering final product. It’s the sight of Paul Sorvino slicing thin slices of garlic into a pan with his razor blade that really helps me taste that sauce. But then we have the movies in which the love and labour that goes

ties are strengthened, confessions are knocked loose (“my mother was such a terrible cook,” exclaims one customer) and enmities are temporarily forgotten. The sublime feast that prompts these ecstatic reactions is shot with such skill that the images appear to activate all five senses, transcending the merely visual and seemingly reaching into our noses, palates and salivary glands to work their magic.

Big Night is obviously a labour of love and a family affair besides. Written by Tucci with his cousin Joseph Tropiano, co-directed by Tucci and his old friend Campbell Scott, featuring a small cast that’s clearly on intimate terms, it’s bubbling over with community spirit and brotherly love. The former is grounded in the fertile mix of precisely sketched characters stirred into the confident, often lyrical screenplay. The latter is the cornerstone of the film’s success, animated in contrasting fashion by the two fantastic leads. Tucci’s Secondo is reserved and polished while Shalhoub’s Primo alternates between fiery indignation and quiet genius. Both, however, are endlessly lovable. The clashing styles spark up a wealth of dramatic friction while still conveying the deep bond that exists between them. The best scene in the entire film is wordless, showing the duo work silently as a unit, making a simple omelette to share for breakfast. Adrift in a foreign land, all they have is each other. Whether or not they ultimately save the restaurant is almost irrelevant in the end. What matters are the lessons learned together in the kitchen, only a few of which have anything to do with cooking.

Director: Rajkumar Hirani Starring: Aamir Khan, Anushka Sharma, Saurabh Shukla In his last film, 3 Idiots, It begins as all good movies do, with a spaceship hover- Hirani used Aamir Khan’s ing over a desert and a naked character Rancho to point man clutching a transistor out the soullessness of our radio. The man, or rather, education system. PK is more the alien, will go on to assume of the same: Rancho has been the name PK; he’s played by replaced by another outsider, Aamir Khan, whose pro- and education by organised truding, otherworldly ears faith. Hirani and his comust regard this as destiny writer Abhijat Joshi would fulfilled. By the time TV news have you know that religion, reporter Jaggu (Anushka especially in its enterprise Sharma) comes across him, form, is based on fear, that he’s acquired clothing and it’s exploitative and drives a a Bhojpuri accent. He tells wedge between regular peoher his story, and she shelves ple (presumably the film’s auher skepticism about his in- dience). Few sane minds will terplanetary origins quicker argue with this, and that’s than one might have thought the problem: the film’s main possible. From then on, it’s a thrust really isn’t news. But search for the locket that’ll al- it’s breaking news in the movie, low him to contact his home which just makes its makers planet. Oh, and along the look naïve.

Unfortunately (for me, not way, Rajkumar Hirani solves for Hirani), this seemed to religion.

Vodka Maggi

Tanul Thakur Hodor File photo. Your dish is unlikely to resemble this, but you can try.

be a minority view. The audience I saw the film with chuckled when PK attached stickers of gods to his cheeks to avoid getting slapped.

They roared when he told godman Tapasvi Maharaj (Saurabh Shukla) that his messages weren’t getting through to God because he has a “wrong number”. And they looked visibly moved when he staggered around an idol shop, praying to be sent home. After a while, I began to feel like I, not PK, was the alien — removed from the populace, observing them, taking notes.

Hirani is one of the smartest filmmakers in the country, and it’s killing his films.

No director has a better grip on the viewer’s jugular, or a better sense of when to go for

the kill. A flagrant example is the scene where he stages one of the most unnecessary bomb blasts in recent Hindi film. Nine out of 10 directors would have milked the shock by adding voices on the soundtrack. Hirani, instead, opts for a Mukesh number, and it’s mesmeric.

In its programmatic brilliance, the scene reminded me of the suicide in 3 Idiots — so manipulative, yet so wellexecuted.

Hirani’s eye for colour and eccentricity is intact. There are sequences that work precisely because they’re so strange, like the one where PK accosts a terrified blueskinned Shiva in a public toilet. But Hirani’s tendency to explain things that really don’t require explication is

a drag; only his first film, the blithe Munna Bhai M.B.B.S, was free from this. It’s a highwire act — his films, with all their debunking, make the audience feel smart, but he’s really treating them like children, telling them how they ought to feel. The soundtrack does much the same, pouring syrup over anything faintly emotional.

It’s staggering how well this film fits into the ongoing reality show that is Aamir Khan. When he’s on Jaggu’s show, tears streaming down his face, he might as well be hosting his own Satyamev Jayate. He’s beyond acting now, he’s into righting wrongs (as, quite sadly, is Hirani). His performance in PK is something for sure — but is it something worthwhile?

With his shuffling walk, flailing limbs and perpetual bugeyed expression, he offers up a tour de force of mugging for the camera. There was an audible sigh from my friend when Khan said “Sarat manjur hai”; he’d uttered the same words all those years ago in Lagaan. The Aamir of today may as well be an alien for all the resemblance he bears to the Aamir of Lagaan.

Manipulation of an audience’s emotions is an integral part of cinema. The trick is to somehow keep them from seeing the wheels turn. If you can figure out how the magician achieved the illusion, it isn’t magic at all. PK professes to expose manipulators, but its own visible efforts at manipulation undercut its authority.

INGREDIENTS

METHOD

Maggi 2 packets Vodka 30 ml Some sobriety and a lot of self-belief (the reverse order works just fine as well. #TrueStory)

Put one and a half cups of water into a cooking pan. While you wait for the water to boil, you can mull over some existential questions, one of them certainly being, why am I even doing this? Look around, the water has begun to boil. Add the Maggi masala to the boiling water. Now break the noodle cakes into pieces, and put them into the mix. If you are feeling restless, you can also stir the mixture, but even if you don’t, it’s not a big deal because you have to be an incredible hack to mess Maggi up. I know what you are thinking right now: don’t touch the vodka bottle. NO! STOP IT. DON’T. TOUCH. IT. When you are almost done cooking, which will always be more than two minutes because we have been lied to all our lives, go berserk with your vodka on the cooking pan. Stir the new mixture vigorously for five seconds. Switch off the gas. Once you are done cooking, eating and (hopefully) not dying, spread the joy.

Feel free to use the hashtag #VodkaMaggi. You are welcome.

This recipe has only ever been tried at home. Naturally, you shouldn’t try it at yours.

G-Style

G-Style

36 th e s u n day g u a rdian 2 0 : s u p p l e m e n t to th e su n day gu ar dian | 31.07.2011 | n ew delh t he i sun day gua rdia n 20: s up p lement to t he s unday guardi an | 21. 12. 2012 | mumbai 37

On the lips, on the hips: Food chic takes over the fashion world payel majumdar

W

hen it comes to wise sayings, people love being contradictory. They’ll ply you with warnings about how obsessions are dangerous (this is the same crowd that stopped YOLO from becoming a thing), but if you go ahead and be all dispassionate, they will tell you that the middle of the road is the most dangerous place to be. The same goes for fashion advice — it is the realm of the unexplained and the self-contradicting.

This might help explain why Lady Gaga’s meat dress, which broke Instagram in 2010, was criticised for being insensitive towards animals (sheep in particular) and considered hideous in general. Following which, it became a fairly largescale trend to wear your food on your sleeve. Foodinspired clothes have been thrown in our faces — there is no escaping the asymmetrical pita wrap or the French fry buzz cut.

It was Lady Gaga who in-

a “Who Wore it Better” popcorn dress face-off.

While Nicki looked like a popcorn tub (we aren’t taking a nasty dig here, that is EXACTLY what Nicki was going for) Katy had giant kernels attached to her red and white striped dress

spired it all, like many other things in our everyday life, (such as an alarming breast milk ice cream being called Baby Gaga). One nice sunny day in 2010, Lady Gaga woke up and put on breakfast (and last night’s leftover meat) and every fashion journalist cried tears of lard for her genius.

In other pop wars, Nicki Minaj and Katy Perry had

(Thought: why do popcorn tubs in the U.S. look like a folded-up version of the Stars and Stripes?).

Closer home in 2014, who can forget the vintage styled pineapple bikini Rihanna donned while model-

Candy couture came to a head with a Herschey’s Kissesinspired wrapper dress worn by Jourdan Dunn. Corn syrup was printed all over Lindsey Wixon’s ballroom dress.

(Clockwise from left) Katy Perry in her popcorn-inspired dress, Jeremy Scott’s tribute to McDonald’s in his fast foodinspired collection for Moschino at the Milan Fashion Week 2014, Rihanna’s pineapple print bikini.

ling for Madonna’s coconut water brand CocoVito? (I, for one, would have liked to.)

It inspired pineapple print pant suits, beachside shades of the cheap and ridiculous variety, pineapple print socks, sandals, shift dresses, handbags and umbrellas.

Pineapples had a tough year, what with having to keep up a perfect cylindrical shape with the right-sized perky crown.

Food also influenced couture this year, with Jeremy Scott’s diabetes-inspired Autumn/Winter 2014 collection for Italian brand Moschino in Milan. This stoner-luxe collection had a blood red shirt dress with a huge yellow coloured M etched in the middle (M for Moschino, M for munchies). A big blue loopy satin-y bow endorsed the front of a Fruit Loops print dress. McDonald’s glasses weren’t far behind either. Candy couture came to a head with a Herschey’s Kisses-inspired wrapper dress worn by Jourdan Dunn. Not to be outdone, the corn syrup that has colonised all American fast food was printed in swathes all over supermodel Lindsey Wixon’s ballroom dress.

From here, there is no telling which direction food couture will take. To find out whether actual food enters into the fashion business, we will have to wait till the end of 2015, we reckon. Or Lady Gaga’s next big concert.

The best cooking lessons in Spain If paella is your thing, Valencia is the place to go. The Spanish Thyme Traveller’s Valencia Paella Project teaches students how to cook an authentic version of Spain’s most celebrated dish.

Chloe Hamilton

Beronia Cooking School, San Sebastián Food tour company San Sebastián Food is opening a new cookery school in association with the five-star Hotel Maria Cristina, which accommodates students during the course. Beronia Cooking School will be kitted out with a state-of-the-art kitchen, offering courses for all levels of ability. It will be run by Michelin-starred chefs and local artisans. The school is located in the heart of the city, just 100 metres from the traditional food market, La Brexta, where students can buy their ingredients. Bookings are currently being taken for classes and courses starting from March 2015.

República Argentina Kalea, 4, San Sebastián, Gipuzkoa (00 34 943 421 143; sansebastianfood. com). A Basque Kitchen course costs €485p (Rs 38,160 approx. ) and includes two nights’ accommodation in a deluxe bedroom with breakfast.

GUARDIAN GRUB

Cook and Taste, Barcelona Spice up a Barcelona city break with a lesson in Spanish cookery. Cook and Taste’s

lead by an English-speaking guide.

Calle Cristo, 5 Llanera de Ranes, Valencia (00 34 96 225 41 48; thespanishthymetraveller.com).

Course costs €650 (Rs 51,145) including three nights’ accommodation at the Vincci Palace hotel with breakfast.

the Jabugo Denominación de Origen (DO) area, which produces some of the finest Iberian ham and as part of the course, students visit celebrated ham producers. Finca Buenvino runs several cookery courses a year for groups of four to eight people.

Los Marines, Huelva (00 34 696 201 553; fincabuenvino.com).

Five-day course from €800 (Rs 62,948), including four nights’ full-board, an excursion to a ham producer, and a copy of the “Buenvino Cookbook”.

Finca Buenvino, Andalucia This B&B-cum-cookery school is ideal for those who like to know exactly where their ingredients come from.

Finca Buenvino Bed and Breakfast is in the heart of

Annie B’s Spanish Kitchen, Andalucia This Andalucian cooking school is the perfect choice for the health-conscious cook: a culinary break with an emphasis on cutting out carbo-

A traditional tapas spread.

half-day Hands-on Cooking Class and Gourmet Market Tour begins with a guided walk around the city’s La Boqueria market before students head back to the school to learn how to make a variety of traditional dishes including tapas and paella. Everything is then put to the taste test at the end of the day.

Carrer del Paradís 3, Barcelona, Catalonia (00 34 93 302 13 20;cookandtaste.net). Halfday course and market tour costs €78 (Rs 6,137 approx.), including wine pairings and a

recipe booklet.

Paella Project, Valencia If paella is your thing, Valencia is the place to go. The Spanish Thyme Traveller’s Valencia Paella Project teaches students how to cook an authentic version of Spain’s most celebrated dish, which originated in the region. The three-night break includes lessons in food history, culture and ingredients, a cava tasting and a trip to a winery and bodega in the nearby countryside. The trip is also

Anarsa

hydrates. Set on the hilltop Andalucian town of Vejer, Annie B’s six-day course includes four classes, a visit to the Barbate fish market, and a Spanish wine and sherry education, not to mention daily power walks. The package includes accommodation in one of three nearby hotels.

Casa Alegre, Viña 11, Vejer, Andalucia (00 34 620 560 649;anniebspain.com). Six-day course from €965 (Rs 75, 931 approx.), including a five-night stay at Casa Amaro, room only.

london eye ANTONIA FILMER

Eat, drink and make merry with old London institutions F&M Christmas Glory Fortnum and Mason in Piccadilly is the queen of luxury stores.

It is particularly renowned at this time of the year for its delicious confectionary, Christmas puddings and speciality teas.

The store is actually humming with 25,000 visitors on a busy day, all looking for that special something for someone special.

The new, highly decorative chocolate boxes are special enough to keep your jewellery in once the chocolates have all gone.

F&M have always had the edge on luxuries. Husbands make their annual pilgrimage to shop for their wives and everyone dreams of an F&M hamper full of rare cheeses, foie gras, Christmas cakes and spiced biscuits in musical tins, jams, pickles, chutneys and nutty nougat.

The jewel in the F&M crown is the bespoke hamper into which you can pack your every culinary whim. A popular whim this year is the Three Kings Mince Pies, tiny, spicy fruit pies freckled with gold dust and flavoured with myrrh from India and frankincense from Arabia. There is something for everyone, including an enticing display of “stocking fillers”, little jars of mulled wine jelly, sparkling marmalade and minibottles of Buck’s Fizz, made from oranges, prosecco and Marc de Champagne.

Under the direction of Kate Hobhouse, Chairman, and Impresario Managing Director Ewan Venters, F&M are spreading their wings and taking the brand out into the world with a new flagship shop in Dubai and the opening of pop ups at Somerset House skating rink. F&M have a 17-room Christmas market and a smaller version at Lane Crawford in Hong Kong. The real news begins on 19 December, when F&M are opening the Island Bar at Terminal 5 of Heathrow Airport, where you can enjoy a pre-flight glass of very cold vintage Krug for £40 (West End price £55) while you shop.

The Cinnamon Club This expensive restaurant in Westminster was converted from a Library in 2001 and served their millionth customer this year.

A typical lunch session in the pre-Christmas season serves 350. The décor has retained the calm of the original library and the walls of the mezzanine are still shelved with books. At ground level the tables are nicely spaced apart, with comfortable caramel-coloured banquette seating lining the walls and a large fig tree taking centre stage. The menu is an adventure of tastes: fenugreek and cumin, coriander and mint, chili and cracked pepper, mango and The menu is an coconut, all in unusual combinations with meats (beef, adventure of tastes: partridge and venison) and fenugreek and cumin, fish (halibut, lobster and cod) prepared Indian-style with coriander and mint, unique masalas, chutneys chili and cracked and raitas invented by Chef pepper, mango and Vivek Singh and his team. coconut, all in unusual Vegetarthe vegetable kebabs and the kadhai-style paneer combinations. stir fry, and those with a sweet tooth will relish the gulab jamun served with rasmalai or even the garam masala Christmas pudding.

the independent

Hedonism Hedonism Wines could be described as a spiritual alcoholic paradise. It’s one of the most beautiful shops in London: situated in the heart of Mayfair, the store twinkles with refracted light from the glass and gemstone-coloured liquids of rare provenance. Evgeny Chichvarkin, oligarch émigré from Moscow brought his passion for fine wine and five-star retail expertise to London in 2010. Previously, Chichvarkin operated 5,000 mobile phone retail outlets in Russia, so he knows a thing or two about service. His young CEO Tatiana Fokina interviewed 600 applicants to select the staff of 30. The emphasis is on knowledge and friendliness – between them, the staff members speak 16 languages.

Perusing the artwork on the labels of the miscellaneous spirits or the beautiful lettering on the inviting collection of Russian vodka is like being at art exhibition. The selection is mind-boggling, with 1,400 whiskeys, more than 3,000 spirits, and down the art nouveau bespoke cast-iron staircase to the treasure trove of world wines, 8,500 lines in stock, with an eight-digit total value.

Collectors come from all over the world to find some of these ambrosias; there’s a waiting list for specific bottles. The rarest whiskey is an 1890 Dufy American single malt (£12,043). Some folks would say the most delicious whiskey would be one of the four very dark Macallan Lalique single malts in limited editions of 400 bottles (£23.5K to £35.5K).

INGREDIENTS

METHOD

Hotel Viura, Basque Country Head to the Basque province of Alava to master the art of making traditional pintxos — the Basque version of tapas.

Guests at the Hotel Viura can learn to prepare 12 dishes, such as potatoes riojano and gazpacho, and combine them with local Riojan wines.

The class is taught in the hotel’s kitchen in the village of Villabuena de Alava. If you fancy a tipple afterwards, head to the wine-tasting bar for a sampling session with the sommelier.

Calle Mayor, Villabuena de Alava, Alava (00 34 945 60 90 00; hotelviura.com). Double rooms start at €110. The classes cost €50pp.

Maida Gram flour Condensed milk Milk Sesame seeds Baking powder Oil to fry anarse

½ cup ½ cup ½ cup 1-2 tbsp 2 tbsp ½ tsp

Mix maida, gram flour and baking powder in a bowl. Add condensed milk and bind the batter. If the batter appears to be dry, then add some milk. Keep the batter thick so that it is easy to make balls from the batter. Take some oil in a pan and place it on the flame for heating. Dust your hands with some dry flour and take a little amount of batter. Roll the batter into balls. Dust these balls with sesame seeds and roll again.

Heat oil, and fry the batter balls on a low flame until they turn golden brown in colour and serve hot or cold.

Ashish Kumar Designer and Candy Crush Champion File photo. Your dish is unlikely to resemble this, but you can try.

This recipe has only ever been tried at home. Naturally, you shouldn’t try it at yours.

G-Style 37

th e s u n day g u a rdian 2 0 : s u p p l e m e n t to th e su n day gu ar dian | 21.12.2012 31.07.2011 | n ew delh i

DISHING IT OUT

town town about && about

Selected recipes from some of India’s top chefs & cocktail masters

Winter menu

CRISPY ROAST DUCK

CRISPY GARLIC SHOOT TEMPURA ROLL

Executive Chef Adam Fio Cookhouse, Epicuria, Nehru Place T: +91 98101 31341 The winter menu at Fio includes dishes like cheese salad with roasted chickpea, burrata and asparagus; Mushroom Angel Hair Soup served with truffle foam and oil; braised pepper lamb with barley risotto; roasted vegetables lasagne and baked orange cheesecake.

Meal for two: Rs 3,500 plus taxes

Tuscany tale

Hyatt Regency Gurgaon

Duck Orange preserve Beetroot, diced Orange segments Beetroot Sugar

300 g 30 g 20 g 50 g 1 kg 250 g

Butter 500 g Balsamic vinegar 20 ml Sliced potatoes 3 kg Clarified butter 500 g Cheese parmesan 100 g Salt to taste

METHOD

A history lesson

Taj Mahal Hotel New Delhi

YERA MELLAGU Chef Veena Arora

INGREDIENTS

San Gimignano, The Imperial, Janpath T: (011) 4111 6608 Indulge in delicious Italian cuisine with authentic delicacies like grilled scallops with beetroot and caviar, braised leeks with parmesan cheese and salmon-baked pumpkin-ginger and lemongrass sauce.

Meal for two: Rs 13,000 including taxes

Chef Amit Chowdhury

To make the beetroot marmalade, boil beetroot in a pan, peel and grate it. Heat a pan on slow fire, add butter and sugar till sugar gets caramelised. Add beetroot to it and cook until soft.

Finish with a dash of vinegar and salt. To make potato tart, slice potatoes thinly. Add salt and clarified butter to it. Line a tray with butter paper and arrange the potato slices on the tray. Sprinkle parmesan in between. Cover with aluminium foil and bake in the oven at 180 degrees. Cool the potatoes once they are cooked and keep in the refrigerator. Cut the potatoes in rectangular blocks. Marinate the duck with salt and orange peels, and roast in oven at 160 degrees until cooked.

Sear it in a pan till the skin is crisp and golden brown. Heat a separate pan and sear the dauphinoise potato till golden brown. Heat up the marmalade and orange preserve in different pans. Arrange the potato, marmalade and preserve on the plate. Arrange the duck on top of marmalade and put jus. Garnish with dices of beetroot, orange segments and fresh herbs.

INGREDIENTS Japanese sushi rice Water Sushi vinegar Soya sheet Fresh garlic shoots Tempura flakes

The Spice Route Imperial Hotel New Delhi

250 g 500 ml 50 ml 1 4

Japanese mayonnaise 1 tbsp Black and white sesame seed, broiled 1 tbsp Wasabi paste to serve Gari (pickled ginger) to serve Soya sauce to serve

METHOD INGREDIENTS

Jumbo prawns Onion, chopped Ginger and garlic Tomato Star aniseed Kalpasi

4 60 g 5g 20 g 1 2

Dry red chilli Curry leaves Salt Red chilli powder Coriander powder Black pepper powder

1 15 g 5g 3g 3g 3g

METHOD

Marinate the prawns with a mix of salt, red chilli and turmeric powder. Fry the prawns and keep aside. Heat oil in a wok and add the three whole spices (star aniseed, kalpasi and dry chilli) and stir. Add onions, curry leaves, ginger-garlic paste, red chilli powder, chopped tomatoes, coriander, black pepper powder and garam masala and stir. Then add the fried prawns and stir for a while. Serve hot.

FROM THE

BAR

Wash the rice in running water for three minutes. Strain it through a strainer and keep for 30 minutes. Cook by absorption method with the above-mentioned amount of water.

Cool it to around 35-40 degrees and mix the sushi vinegar very quickly. Set aside for use later. Make sure to cook the rice very carefully and mix the vinegar with it very fast, so that the vinegar is not absorbed by the rice. Use a flat non-corrosive substance, preferably wooden, while mixing the rice.

Spread the soy sheet on top of your sushi mat and grab a handful of rice. Spread the rice evenly on the sheet, keeping a little space on top. Put a line of Japanese mayonnaise in the centre and top it with the tempura fried garlic shoots and tempura flakes. Roll it up and give it a nice square shape. Cut it into six equal parts and serve with wasabi, gari and soy sauce.

While making sushi rolls where the rice is inside, take less rice than than when the rice is outside. Also, make sure that the roll is nice and firm by sealing the open part with water while rolling it.

MOHIT VIJ

ANKUR CHAWLA

Club Bar, Oberoi

JW Marriott, Aerocity

Baluchi, The Lalit, Barakhamba Road T: (011) 4444 7777 A special menu by Chef Satyabir Tyagi offers dishes from the royal kitchens. The recommended dishes are anari dahi gujiya, kakori kebab and gucchi (mushroom) ki galaouti. The health conscious can pick from subz ki seekh, sprouts salad, appam, curd rice, tandoori broccoli and samudri jhinga.

Meal for two: Rs 3,000 plus taxes

Secret Santa

KENTUCKY SPICE INGREDIENTS

GUARDIAN GRUB

Hyatt Regency Gurgaon T: (0124) 618 1180 A Christmas menu, with a buffet consisting of a wide assortment of signature dishes like rotisserie chicken, Turkish pide, nasi goreng, bao with vegetables & hot garlic sauce, kai kari korma with kal dosa, lamb randang and mee goreng.

Meal for two: Rs 4,200 plus taxes

Whiskey 60 ml Mint syrup 10 ml Tobasco sauce 3 dashes

Ginger ale 90 ml Lime wedge 1

METHOD

In a tall glass filled with ice, measure the whiskey, mint syrup, Tobasco and ginger ale. Squeeze the lime and stir.

Garnish with an orange peel and serve. For best results, use Jim Beam whiskey.

Spicy Masala Sandwich

Munish Dhiman Sher-e-Punjab File photo. Your dish is unlikely to resemble this, but you can try.

MELON ARMOUR INGREDIENTS

Vodka 60 ml Fresh watermelon chunks 4

Fresh mint leaves 5 Cranberry juice 30 ml Lemon juice 15 ml

METHOD

Muddle watermelon and mint leaves in a shaker. Add vodka, cranberry juice and lemon juice. Shake the cocktail well with ice. Strain the cocktail into a chilled martini glass.

Garnish with a fresh slice of watermelon.

INGREDIENTS Bread slices 3 Chopped onion 1 Chopped tomato 1 Ginger-garlic paste (optional) ½ tsp Fresh cheese, evenly sliced Cucumber, grated Carrot, grated Coriander 1 tsp Tomato ketchup To taste

SHISO LEMONGRASS MARTINI INGREDIENTS

Fresh pineapple 4-5 chunks Lemongrass 1

Lemon juice 15 ml Gin 60 ml White powdered sugar 5 g

METHOD

Muddle fresh pineapple chunks along with lemongrass.

Add lemon juice and 60 ml gin to it. Fill the shaker glass with ice cubes. Shake and strain into a martini glass.

Garnish with shiso leaf.

METHOD My family members eagerly wait for Sunday mornings, because that’s when I become the chef for the day and they become guinea pigs for my food experiments. This is one of my favourites. Toast two bread slices and cut the sides of the third slice evenly. Toss chopped onion and tomato along with ginger garlic paste in butter/olive oil for three-four minutes on medium flame till it changes colour. Add coriander, salt and chilli as per your taste. Mix grated cucumber and carrots in mayonnaise or cream. Keep the roasted sides of the bread on two ends, and spread homemade coleslaw inside. Put the slice without the crust in between. Spread onion, tomato and coriander paste on the slice and keep a fresh cheese slice on it. Add salt to taste and grill. Enjoy with a hot cup of coffee.

This recipe has only ever been tried at home. Naturally, you shouldn’t try it at yours.

38

Lazy Break

the sunday guardian 20: supplement to the sunday guardian | 21.12.2014 | mumbai

Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau

Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller

Wizard Of Id by Parker and Hart

B.C. by Johnny Hart

Sanity Preserve by Veena Ganesh Rao

everyman crossword Across

Duplex by Glenn McCoy

1

2

NO 3556 3

4

5

6

7

8

9 1 Vulnerable at home? See about vicious mongrel (8) 10 11 5 Harry’s after drink for pet (6) 1 0 Rim round gold dish (5) 1 1 Spanish general sent over 12 13 14 Take a spoonful, continue duck and partridge (9) working.

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everyman crossword

NO 3556

The sunday crossword

vegetables (8)

Down 1 Editor supporting one politician over energy check (6) 2 Peace slogan in lodge, since lines altered (7,2,6) soLUTIon no. 3555

Grand Avenue by Breen and Thompson Everyman No. 3554 winners

soLUTIon no. 3555

Everyman No. 3554 winners

Peanuts by Charles Schulz

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3555 C H I N A T E N T A T I V E stead words.

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kakuro

mind

games

How many times can you subtract the number 5 from 25?

squares within them have to be arranged symmetrically.

Solution scribble space

soLUTIon no. 3555

Everyman No. 3554 winners

B L E S S A M C C H I N A K G R R O B A O M E S T O R T E O R E D R U O G P L A Y H O N F L A N C A I I I S P E A R

I N G S B L A A U R M T E N T A T I U T N G E R T R E D F O A A E P A N A C I L B H T H C R U S A O O R S A R D T O G E T A E G E S T E R A G N I I T E O P E N E N D

S T R V E A R D W E A T D E R U E S E E D

Answer:

Foxtrot by Bill Amend

Once. After the first calculation, you will be subtracting 5 from 20, then 5 from 15, and so on.

Up & Running by Gray and Shack

abridge 1 8 Round in rear (5,2 1 9 Matters publicat 2 0 Go to a n treatme 2 4 Deserte

Jumble puzzle magazines available at penn

WOLLYS

Lazy Break 39

the sunday guardian 20: supplement to the sunday guardian | 21.12.2014 | mu mb ai

MAYFIN

THAT SCRAMBLED WORD GAME

by David L. Hoyt and Jeff Knurek

Jumble puzzle magazines available at pennydellpuzzles.com/jumblemags

Unscramble these six Jumbles, one letter to each square, to form six ordinary words.

CATTHH

BEMMEL

©2014 Tribune Content Agency, LLC All Rights Reserved.

HALLET

SYPMIK

WOLLYS MAYFIN

Horoscope

VEENUSandal SANDAL Veenu

Aries

Taurus

Gemini

Cancer

Leo

Virgo

21 march - 19 april

20 april - 20 may

21 may - 20 june

21 june - 22 july

23 july - 22 aug

23 aug - 22 sept

Your life can be imbued in the coming year with increasingly wonderful moments if you eat more pulses and greens and cut down on your sugar and starch.

Amongst other things, this means that tubers are out for a while and so are sweets, pastries, chocolates et al. Out of the pulses, those which are red or yellow in colour will fan your inspiration levels, thus allowing you to make the most of beneficial influences.

Eating brown bread will make you assertive in a calm, assured sort of way. If you’re not too clear about whether to go ahead or remain in a “yesno-perhaps-a-little-later” stage, go for steamed spinach leaves eaten with chopped vegetables cooked in a copper wok.

Eating cauliflower cooked with garlic and onions on Mondays will make you come alive in the year ahead. Eating whole green chillies after they have been fried to a golden brown with green peas and mushrooms on a Wednesday will make you more adventurous. If your romance has run into unexpected problems, try eating mashed turnips mixed with fresh fenugreek leaves and cooked in a pot with a lid on a medium fire. Consuming baked cauliflower and spinach leaves baked to a crisp followed by a vegetable salad with fresh lemon juice sprinkled on it will bring new offers your way with regularity. Eating jackfruit flavoured with tomatoes and parsley will enable you to make the kind of investments that will leave you with no regrets.

Eating finely chopped, square pieces of carrots marinated in home-made curd and cooked over a medium fire with a few fresh mint leaves and fresh coriander leaves will make it easier for you to attain your desires in the coming year. Consuming vegetables or chicken that has been marinated overnight in cashewnut paste and skimmed milk and cooked lightly with a minimum of spices will enable you to build beneficial new bridges with people who count. Eating boiled vegetables or steamed fish laced with pomegranate juice will give you most of what you’re seeking in the financial sphere. If you want to add more excitement to your love life, try eating cabbage and cauliflower cooked together along with the leaves of radish.

Consuming chicken or vegetables of your choice to which have been added both basil and rosemary will bring you quick gains in the year ahead. Eating a mixture of a pulse of your choice cooked with vegetables which are white in colour will enable you to deal confidently with road blocks. Eating brown bread dipped in gravy made from grated onions, ginger, garlic, green coriander, tomatoes and cloves will enable you to plan boldly. Brown bread dipped in honey and eaten with a glassful of white pomegranate juice or lemon tea will enable you to achieve the performance levels you’re seeking.

Mushrooms roasted on a coal fire and eaten with brown bread with a garlic topping will provide you with chances to land a financial bonanza.

Ve g e ta b le s , chicken or fish which have tangy spices added to them will yield exciting experiences at every level in the coming year. Eating cauliflower, green peas, and lotus stems baked in an oven will enhance your ability to spot good openings before others can latch on to them. A fruit pudding with apple predominating will enable you to put in that extra bit into your efforts. Eating prunes together with five almonds and five cashew nuts will bring you unexpected new offers. If you make ginger fizz a part of your daily diet along with bananas with some rock salt sprinkled on them, new ventures will be easier to get off the ground. Ladies finger cooked with onions and bitter gourd will give you good results.

Pulses, especially the red variety cooked with almonds and spiced with powdered coriander, cumin seeds, dry mango powder, black pepper powder and mace will open up a whole new world of opportunities for you. Brown bread eaten with a mixture of mashed vegetables to which have been added plenty of spices of your choice — and don›t forget the garlic — will give you returns from even the most unpromising situation.

Fruit juices, especially orange and pomegranate, with a dash of powdered black pepper and a couple of drops of rum will lead you to thinking like superman or superwoman. Eating organic food on a regular basis will keep you tuned to reality — to your advantage, obviously.

Libra

Scorpio

Sagittarius

Capricorn

Aquarius

Pisces

23 sept - 22 oct

23 oct - 21 nov

22 nov - 21 dec

22 dec - 19 jan

20 jan - 18 feb

19 feb - 20 march

It’s a mix of traditional cooking and fast food that will add more than one unexpected windfall to your “I want this” list for the coming year. Eating red dal cooked in coconut milk and garnished with fresh ginger and green coriander will ensure that you’re on the “top of the ratings” chart. A mixture of broccoli and mushrooms cooked with lemongrass will make you daring and articulate — professionally, business-wise and in love. Drinking a glass of sherbet daily made from cardamom extract, rose water, and silver foil with sugar to taste will ensure that you improve upon the percentage of experiences that bring you joy.

Rice cooked in meat broth (vegetarians can use tomato juice) and garnished with medium ground black pepper and rock salt will allow you to push through ideas that will yield quick benefits. Among junk foods, hamburgers eaten with a combination of tomato sauce, mustard and mint chutney will enhance your ability to spin great ideas. Club sandwiches that have peanut butter as a filling along with others of your choice will give a fillip to your image. Mocktails with pineapple juice will release you from dull patterns of thinking. If you feel you have all the ideas but fall short of translating them into action, try eating vegetable/chicken cutlets, wafers and cream of mushroom soup .

If you’d like to lift your output from the ordinary to the extraordinary in the year ahead, try eating a combination of traditional and fast foods on a 60:40 basis. If you want to infuse more zing and zap into your interactions, try eating a combination of legumes and green leafy vegetables. If you feel you need to reach new heights of achievement, make it a point to add roasted cumin seeds and roasted fennel seeds to a dish of your choice on a regular basis. The most exciting ideas — professionally, financially and romance-wise — can be yours to savour if you eat food which has been marinated in herbs of your choice for at least three hours and then cooked in a clay pot on a low fire.

If you eat jackf r u i t co o ke d in mustard oil and garnished with rye and onion seeds and a few leaves of holy basil, you can look forward in the coming year to a string of unexpectedly beneficial happenings. If you’re happy but tense about the outcome of your efforts, try eating a mixture of mushrooms and green peas which have been marinated in whey before being cooked. Doing so will remove many of your doubts and allow you to view the future with greater clarity and self-assurance. If you feel your thrusts to reach higher are not leading anywhere and you’re beginning to tire of the state in which they seem to have become “concretised”, try eating a mixture of spinach, fenugreek and leeks.

So you’ve always kept your re s o lv e t h a t you’re not going to get into in any spats. But now, with the year ahead being an exceptionally active one for you, that resolve will be under threat. Is there anything you can do about? Yes, you can: try eating avocados stuffed with pieces of oranges and pineapples at least thrice a week. If you have no such resolves but would like your associations to remain smooth, try eating babycorn cooked with green peas and carrots. If you’ve already got new professional and business plans, consuming aubergines cooked in a paste of finely ground green chillies, coriander, onions, and almonds would get you the desired results with few problems.

Consuming soups and stews will ensure that your life vibrates to satisfying new rhythms in the year ahead. Soups which have a pungent touch to them would enable you to keep up a lively tempo in your new endeavours. Vegetable stews would be preferable to non-vegetarian ones if you’re to retain an equitable balance in your relationships. If you feel that you’re not using your potential fully, try eating vegetables marinated in a spicy curry paste and then lightly cooked in peanut oil. Generally, the spicier the food at home, the more improvements there will be in your professional and business spheres plus your love life.

Now arrange the circled letters to form the surprise answer, as suggested by the above cartoon.

PRINT YOUR ANSWER IN THE CIRCLES BELOW BEMMEL

’

SYPMIK

Now arrange the circled letters to form the surprise answer, as suggested by the above cartoon.

PRINT YOUR ANSWER IN THE CIRCLES BELOW

’

Answer :

Answer :

SLOWLY EMBLEM THATCH INFAMY SKIMPY LETHAL After their success at Kitty Hawk, the Wright Brothers thought —

SLOWLY EMBLEM THATCH INFAMY SKIMPY LETHAL THE SKY’S After their success at Kitty Hawk, MARCH THE LIMIT the Wright Brothers thought —2, 2014

THE SKY’S THE LIMIT

MARCH 2, 2014

Quick crossword no. 11,305 quickword

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Across 1 Bleak (6) 4 Printed multi-coloured cotton fabric (6) 9 Shrub with pendulous purplish-red flowers (7) 10 Cricketing approach? (3-2) 11 Belgian province (5) 12 As a result of that (7) 13 English explorer, killed in Hawaii (7,4) 18 Walk through mud (7) 20 European — wife (5) 22 Accessory device (3-2) 23 Avoid (7) 24 Window projecting vertically from a sloping roof (6) 25 Eerie (6)

Down 1 Breakfast item — go on and on (6) 2 Mother-of-pearl (5) 3 Admire (7) 5 Steed (5) 6 Either positive or negative (3-4) 7 Breeze (6)

8 “Peter Pan" villain (7,4) 14 In(to) pieces (7) 15 Corpse (7) 16 Christmas or Easter, perhaps? (6) 17 Breathing with difficulty (6) 19 Prick (a boil) (5) 21 Anglo-Saxon aristocrat — old Scottish clan chief (5) Want more? Access over 4,000 archive puzzles at guardian.co.uk/crossword.

Stuck? Then call our solutions line on 09068 scribble space 338 248. Calls cost 60p per minute all times.

Service supplied by ATS. To buy the new book of Quick Crosswords vol. 4 for £6.99 incl. p&p, call 0870 836 0749

Gems

COLOURS

Steeped in myths and legends, countless beliefs and fascinating tales are related about the mysterious powers of gems and precious stones. Since ancient times, gems and precious stones have been associated with the zodiac signs and even in these digital, hi-tech times, continue to be credited with possessing immense power to bring good luck, good health and happiness. Here, based on your sun sign, are the kind of foods that will gel well with the power of your special gems for 2014 and enable you to make the most of this year end.

Colours are known to exert powerful effects both on people and their surroundings.

Here, based on your sun sign, is a guide to food colours that will help you give shape to some great ideas for the coming year.

ARIES: Peridot: Leafy vegetables TAURUS: Opal: Oranges GEMINI: Yellow Sapphire: Tubers CANCER: Cat’s Eye: Salads LEO: Emerald: Pomegranates VIRGO: White Sapphire: Spicy food

LIBRA: Ruby: Baked food SCORPIO: Tiger Stone: Stews SAGITTARIUS: Pink Diamond: Barbecued food CAPRICORN: Blue Sapphire: Lightly cooked AQUARIUS: Pearl: Bananas PISCES: Diamond: Soups

ARIES: Tomato red TAURUS: Fenugreek green GEMINI: Eggplant purple CANCER: Pale cabbage green LEO: Broccoli green VIRGO: Cauliflower cream

LIBRA: Radish white SCORPIO: Carrot red SAGITTARIUS: Onion pink CAPRICORN: Pale orange AQUARIUS: Beetroot maroon PISCES: Potato brown

VAASTU GUIDE

Powerful Numbers

Vaastushastra or the Science of Architecture was accorded great importance in ancient India. Today, Vaastu Shastra and its benefits in ensuring a happy, prosperous, peaceful life have been rediscovered. The term ‘Vaastu’ is actually derived from the Sanskrit word ‘Vas’ (dwell) and is similar in many ways to Feng Shui, the Chinese science of placements and balance. Objects and their placing, shapes, materials, colours, directions are also an integral part of Vaastu. Here, based on your sun sign, are the best vegetable and fruit combinations to place in a basket in your kitchen or in your dining area to attract favourable new influences for the year ahead.

Indian astrology bases its calculations basically on nine planets. It is interesting that the numerical system also has nine numbers as the base, with the rest being repetitions. In numerology, each of these nine numbers has an occult meaning or significance. There are various methods of numerology which can be applied to improve our lives. While some numerologists go by date of birth numbers alone, others go by name numbers and still others rely on a combination of the two. Linking numbers to sun signs also yields interesting results. Here, based on your sun sign, are good dates for interactive activities in what remains of this year.

Last Week’s Solution No.Solution 11,304

P R C O S L A I C S C O R A L P E N

UM O R N T V A G R E I N V G L U E T E

I C A E R T W H D E E U L D D E E R

E

L O C UM I I A G L U T E N A A A A T C H D O G A E E N T I A L S T L U S E L A R D N T F H O O K A H A L C S MU D G E

ARIES: Oranges and bananas TAURUS: Fenugreek and pineapples GEMINI: Radishes and cucumbers CANCER: Tomatoes and cabbage LEO: Brinjals and cauliflower VIRGO: Apples and papayas

LIBRA: Green peas and pomegranates SCORPIO: Beetroot and turnips SAGITTARIUS: Yellow capsicum and bananas CAPRICORN: Spinach and pumpkins AQUARIUS: Jackfruit and red capsicum PISCES: Oranges and green gourd

ARIES: 22, 24, 28 TAURUS: 21, 26, 30 GEMINI: 24, 27 CANCER: 21, 24, 26, 30 LEO: 22, 24, 29 VIRGO: 24, 30

LIBRA: 23, 25, 30 SCORPIO: 21, 23, 26, 30 SAGITTARIUS: 22, 26, 28 CAPRICORN: 23, 27, 29 AQUARIUS: 22, 27 PISCES: 21, 25, 30

sudoku fact of the matter

1913 Arthur Wynne’s “word-cross”, the first crossword puzzle, is published in the New York World.

Each Sudoku has a unique solution that can be reached logically without guessing. But who has that kind of time? Enter random digits from 1 to 9 into the blank spaces. Every row must contain one of each digit.

40

Finalé

t he sun day gua rdia n 20: s up p lement to t he s unday guardi an | 21. 12. 2014 | mumbai

Still Life

arjun raj nirula

“We don’t eat golgappas anymore!” The evening snacks of chaat are prepared in the backstreets of Old Delhi. Most of the sooji ka gol gappa supplied to the various sweet shops and to the famous caterers are hand-made by Mukesh, his wife and his family. There are many such families that dot the bylanes of Old Delhi, all working tirelessly to feed the thousands of local, tourists and visitors that throng the area.

Curated by Reed Harrison and Arjun Raj Nirula as part of the These IndiansTM project. (Follow These IndiansTM on Instagram (instagram.com/theseindians) and Facebook (facebook.com/theseindians)

Presenting the grub that tyrants grabbed

a idnay the life

Kapil Bhandari, Mohammed Asif (23) Owners, Owlcity (All night food delivery service)

‘We ended up smoking all of the unsold cigarettes ourselves!’

Where did you get the idea of opening an all-night food service? How long have you been in business?

We opened around three months ago. One night we were just sitting with friends when we realised we had run out of cigarettes. We tried finding a seller online but couldn’t get one. So we thought, why not open a place that delivers cigarettes to people late in the night? We decided to set up a place of our own and we began from the next day — we stacked some packets of cigarettes, put a few food items on the menu, printed out some pamphlets and that was it. But selling cigarettes was our USP — we thought it would sell a lot. But it didn’t. So we ended up smoking them ourselves (laughs).

What do you guys do during the day? Do you work somewhere?

Not a regular job as such, but we just registered our security and surveillance agency today. That will go on the floors soon. We never wanted to do a regular nine to five job. We tried a few tele-calling jobs, which were very boring.

Where do you deliver, and till when?

We deliver all over Noida till five in the morning. Now the demand has been rising so we are planning to expand our manpower and hire a few delivery boys. As of now, we manage everything — the cooking and the delivering.

Have you ever got a really unusual delivery order late in the night?

One night, a guy called us and said: “Bhai, phoonk ke baitha hoon (Brother, I am really stoned).” Some people asked us to deliver a bong as well.

JOHN WALSH

I

n her Gourmet Cooking School Cookbook, published in 1964, the British chef Dione Lucas recalled when she worked in the kitchen of a Hamburg hotel in the 1930s. Under one recipe, she wrote: “I do not want to spoil your appetite for stuffed squab, but you might be interested to know that it was a great favourite with Mr Hitler, who dined at the hotel often.”

It is hard not to be fascinated by the food choices of political monsters, an area of learning where we can match our experience, our enthusiasms and dislikes, against people whom we otherwise take to be notquite-human. So hurrah for Dictators’ Dinners by Victoria Clark and Melissa Scott, a digest (if that’s the word) of the favourite dishes and top snacks of 20th-century autocrats. It’s part history and part cookbook, so you can astound your friends by serving them Fidel Castro’s

sea turtle soup.

Mussolini disliked pasta, claimed mashed potato gave him headaches and loved rough-chopped raw garlic with oil and lemon (his wife, understandably, tended to sleep with the kids.) You discover that Stalin’s favourite chef, Spiridon Putin, was the current Russian President’s grandfather, and that the Man of Steel enjoyed six-hour banquets where the intake of semi-sweet Khvanchkara wine often left distinguished guests puking and incontinent. His favourite dish, chicken with walnuts and spices, is a sludgily offputting grey mess.

Hitler’s favourite was petits poussins à la Hambourg, or baby pigeons stuffed with tongue, liver and pistachio nuts; and yes, that’s despite his being the world’s most famous genocidal vegetarian. He steered clear of meat, hoping for relief from his chronic flatulence, a condition for which his doctor injected him with, among other

Idi Amin.

things, deadly nightshade, Dr Koester’s Anti-Gas Pills (rat poison) and “essence of Bulgarian peasant’s faeces”.

Colonel Gaddafi also had a problem with uncontrollable wind, the result of drinking camel’s milk. He sometimes used his condition as a weapon, to emphasise important points in interviews. A pal of Silvio Berlusconi, he liked Italian

pastries and pasta dishes, but his first choice was a Libyan national dish, camel meat and couscous (with optional prunes to render it less revolting.)

Another Middle Eastern despot, Saddam Hussein, emerges as a fastidious chap, obsessed with cleanliness and portion sizes. The beef and lamb delivered to his 20 palaces (where they

all made three meals a day, in case he showed up) had to be farm-fresh and trimmed of fat, the shrimps and lobsters leaping fresh, the olives sourced at the Golan Heights. He had a weakness for Western treats; Mateus Rosé, Old Parr whisky, boxes of Quality Street. When he was captured in 2003, they found eggs, honey and pistachio nuts in the fridge with a half-eaten tomato salad and a near-empty box of Bounty bars.

Several African dictators seem to have drawn accusations of cannibalism from enemies, but the truth about their eating habits is often mundane. Idi Amin (“I don’t like human flesh.

It’s too salty for me”) ate as many as 40 oranges a day, believing them to be aphrodisiac, and, when living in exile in Saudi Arabia, loved pizza and Kentucky Fried Chicken. At state banquets, to wind up visiting heads of state, he served bee larvae and fried grasshoppers.

Most Revolting Snack award goes to Hastings

Banda of Malawi, who favoured mopane worms (the large caterpillar of the emperor moth), dried and eaten as a snack like crisps.

“Pluck the worms as they cling, feeding on the leaves on the mopane trees,” reads the recipe on page 78. “The worms will excrete a brown liquid on contact with human flesh…”

Most Foodie Dictator award goes to Kim Jong-Il of North Korea. His personal chefs jetted all over the world to buy Iranian caviar, Thai mangoes and Japanese rice cakes with mugwort.

Live lobsters were airlifted on the Trans-Siberian Express. An army of women had to ensure every grain of rice was the same size, shape and colour. And his fugu (blowfish) chef reported that he “enjoyed raw fish so fresh that he could start eating it when its mouth was still gasping and its tail still thrashing”. It’s nice to find a deranged tyrant who actually behaves like one at suppertime.

THE INDEPENDENTv

Inside the booming breastaurant industry TIM WALKER

It’s Sunday lunchtime in St Louis, close to the very middle of Middle America, and there’s a healthy crowd at Hooters for the weekend’s big football game. This particular branch of the beloved, reviled restaurant chain is within spitting distance of the city’s Anheuser-Busch brewery, and the clientele is suitably Budweiser. There’s a group of roofers at the next table, drinking “Big Daddy”sized beers. Across the beach-themed dining room, a pair of uniformed cops chat over nachos.

My waitress is a friendly brunette named Kate, whose tight vest top is emblazoned with the brand’s “Hootie the Owl” logo. Like every “Hooters girl”, she has on a pushup bra, tiny orange shorts and white knee socks. In October, she won the Hooters Girl of the Month award, doubtless deserved.

Fortunately, there’s a napkin on my table with her name and a heart drawn on it, because otherwise I might have had to glance at the name-tag that’s pinned to her chest — which is exactly the point at which the etiquette of a joint like Hooters becomes complicated.

A promotional photograph featuring waitresses at Hooters.

This isn’t a strip club, where the whole idea is for men to stare at women’s chests, but nor is it just another restaurant. Hooters is to TGI Fridays what Page 3 of the Sun is to Page 3 of the

Mirror. A chain of sports bars founded in Florida in 1983 by six US businessmen, staffed almost exclusively by scantily-clad young women, Hooters may seem like a prehistoric concept in the era of

third-wave feminism. And yet, in an otherwise flaccid restaurant market, “breastaurants” are ballooning.

In 2011, as the rest of America’s food service industry struggled to emerge from the Recession, the three biggest breastaurant chains in the US behind Hooters each enjoyed sales growth of at least 30%. The Attentive Service Sector (ASS), as some prefer to call it, outperformed all of its mid-range competition, such as the family-friendly Applebee’s, and Bennigan’s, a chain of Irish-themed casual dining spots. One ASS brand, Twin Peaks, is the fastest growing restaurant

chain in the US, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.

Twin Peaks girls are offered discount rates at gyms and tanning salons, and encouraged to follow a special diet menu to prevent them popping out of their cleavage-squeezing plaid tops. “We only hire spectacular talent,” Twin Peaks CEO Randy DeWitt has said: “They have to fit into that costume.” Eric, a Yelp reviewer from Houston, is a convert: “Hands down better wings than Hooters if you are looking for some big juicy ones,” Eric writes. “Speaking of big juicy ones...”

THE INDEPENDENT