Desicritics Category: Culture: Food And Drink

Photo Essay: A French Market in Harrow

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 09:21:10 EDT

Harrow is twinned with a town somewhere in France, and every 3-4 months, its blessed with a French Farmer's Market. Small shops with typical French goods, and they do a rip roaring trade. While waiting for my little princess to finish her drama class, I wandered around there taking some photographs. Here are some of the photographs. The full slide show with higher resolution photographs is here.

A shop selling some painted china dishes

I am not really very sure what a shop selling semi precious and ordinary polished stones has to do with France, but the stones were very pretty.

Then we had a shop selling home made toiletries. They were perfumed beautifully except for the baskets of sea sponges of course, but they smelled very nice, iodine, sea weed, wet sand and the sea. Lovely.

Then we come to my favourite shop, the sausage place. This place has the most amazing variety of sausages, ostrich, lamb, beef, pork, venison, you name it.

As you can see, it was heaving with shoppers. Quite expensive, mind you, but still very nice. I usually end up buying 3-5 of them and then eating them over the next 2-3 months. Excellent breakfast food.

This was a cute shop, selling flower pots which were dressed up as small wooden men. Very cute.

Photography Times: Celebration

Vidhya — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 16:27:05 EDT

A few weeks back we headed out to Olive Garden for dinner. “We have some of the finest wines for you to start”, the maître d’ had said as he seated us at a comfortable table. That was when I first tasted Castello del Poggio Moscato – a fine sweet sparkling wine that is sure to make one surrender to its taste. It indeed was a perfect start for the dinner!

Wines have a distinct charm of their own, not to mention the health benefits generally associated with Red Wines. Wines have a special place in the field of photography as well. The color, the sparkle, the wineglass with its unique curve has been a subject of many a creative photograph.

This photograph of a rim-lighted wine glass with Red Wine is something I had been conceptualizing for a while. This area of photography is generally called the Concept Photography. Shooting a Concept photograph involves a significant analysis of the message one wants to convey. The idea was to portray the Red Wine glass as a sign of Cheer and Celebration; the reflection of the glass on the table denoting a level of sophistication and the dispersed red tinge towards the right arc of the glass symbolizing a sparkle.

The logic behind the lighting effects of this Wine glass was the fact that – when a beam of light is placed directly behind the glass, the rim of the glass reflects the light, while the wine in the glass blocks the light – thereby forming a rim-lighting effect. It required a few trials to get the positioning of the backlight to be at the best possible angle so that the rim is sufficiently lighted and at the same time there is no unwanted light falling on any other sides of the glass. Placing the glass on a shiny dark-wood table helped with the reflection on the floor.

In addition to the lighting and its angle, the photograph was shot with the aperture and shutter adjusted such that the exposure is controlled sufficiently to make the surroundings dark and to let only the light-reflected areas to show up. So after a few attempts to get the combination closest to what I had visualized – here's to all good times – Cheers!

The Kulfiwallah

Kasturi — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 18:41:32 EDT

On warm summer nights when the air is as still as those Tussauds wax statues, and you can hear the crickets go chirp chirp in the backyard. When those orange stalked fragrant prajakta flowers spread their achingly sweet fragrance through the still warm night air, and you can hear a lonely frog go croak croak from a dark corner.

Suddenly you hear that awaited - 'Kulfiwallahaaaaah'...and you leap, much like that sulking frog in the corner and make a dash to the gate. 'Aeeeee Kulfiwalle'...you yell....Kulfiwalle....idhar idhar....right here, cant you see?... You meanwhile get battle ready, as you get the youngest of the lot to quickly scout for his/her slippers, hurry hurry them on, and urge him to go...go get him here before he slinks into the night with that red caped basket of his...

All that commotion and sudden activity gets the Kulfiwallah's attention and that apparition in white comes closer, with cool respite of milky kulfi hidden in the folds of the red cloth. He gets the basket down and as he unfolds the cloth you see a dozen aluminium cones shining in the street light, nestled on a bed of salt and ice.

The Kulfiwala '...sssssk' opens the rubber vacuummed cones with his knife, pushes in a wooden stick and coaxes the creamy kulfi out for an eager audience, one by one. The Kulfi tastes slightly salty, creamy and milky cold with bits of cardamom, and someone always will want their kulfi diced on a green leaf and while the rest of us go slurp and lick with kulfi dripping down in savory urgency, they neatly dice up their kulfi further and make it last longer.

The kulfiwallah meanwhile counts his loot, and silently saunters away, a little lighter, taking his wares to other neighbourhoods to spread milky joy and some summer cheer. And you wait till the next week when the summer air is still warm and your tongue remembers the milky taste of cold kulfi.

Photo Essay: Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Tue, 18 May 2010 23:17:28 EDT

Well, I again got invited to have a bite to eat at Gordon Ramsey’s restaurant at the Claridges. I have blogged about this before, but at that time, I didn't take good or enough photographs. It is a fascinating place, something that I rarely get to see in detail, but then wanting to blog about it, I was 'bolshie' in asking the chaps about permission to take some photos and they gave it. I also didn't manage to get hold of the menu of what they had fed us and the wines (look at the previous blog post, there was 50% more of this), but suffice to say that I arrived there at 5 PM and left at 11:30 PM. There was just a constant stream of great food all the time.

That’s the chef’s table, inside the restaurant.

Another view of the table.

The kitchen! This is where the lowest of the low start and here they make the vegetables and side orders.

The stock pots, something that is the key to good cooking. They cook the stock over 3 days and there are two huge pots like this, one with meat and another one with vegetables emitting an absolutely brilliant aroma.

This is the fish station. That heater in the middle was hotter than hell. And the fish chef is showing us how to cook the fish.

The cleaning station and the utensils station. Man, the job looks tough.

We got the guided tour and this fellow is the main chef. Gordon Ramsey wasn't available to cook for us that day. We heard that his empire was in financial trouble and we saw him in the bar trying to poke around. He doesn't look that tall, about 5 feet 5 tops, obviously on TV, he looks big, hairy and aggressive.

Looking back at the entrance to the kitchen.

The meat station, where you can see all the steaks being prepared.

The starters being made.

Notices on the board.

The menu for the day.

The wine cellar, in environmentally controlled conditions.

This shot shows the cameras watching over the restaurant, so that the chefs can decide when to deliver the next dish. It is finely managed, you finish a course and another one is being prepared and lands on your table at just the right time.

The final touches on the dish before it is taken away by the waiters.

The dessert station.

And this was the piece de resistance for us. I tell you, this was brilliant, venison, onions, garlic, meats, vegetables, etc. etc. See the bottles of wine on the rack in the background? We went through the lot. I have only shown a few photos here, but here is the full slide show with all the pictures with bigger resolution. The food was just excellent, You can see why people go gastronomically berserk, it is just so good. One day I will go do a cordon bleu course and learn to cook and end up being 200 kilos. Ah! well.

Delhi In Soaring Temperatures

Deepti Lamba — Tue, 18 May 2010 01:51:52 EDT

Armed with umbrellas and chilled water flasks we decided to go to our local haunt, Khan Market, for some retail therapy. We stepped out of our airconditioned home into an oven of car and gasped. Heat beat against our strapped in chests and my sister squawked as she tried to hot the leather encased steering wheel.

The air conditioner was put on full blast but the car wasn't warming up. I looked out of the window and saw kids of varying ages in their uniforms dragging themselves home. They looked like dehydrated fish- gaping mouths and dazed eyes. Their bottles dragged against the dusty roads and shoulders dropped with sagging school bags. Thankfully schools were going to shut down soon but my sister told me that the school hours had been permanently shifted. Delhi kids were going to go to school early and return home early till October.

I nodded sagely. Much had changed in Delhi due to the upcoming Common Wealth Games. Delhi was being cleaned up in keeping with the typical Desi tradition of scrubbing the house clean before the advent of 'special guests'. The roads that glistened and shimmered in heat mirages were clean, the trees looked greener and there were less squatters around.

Maybe Sheila Dikshit wanted to make Delhi look like any other First World City with wider painted roads, more signals, flashy cars and of course no tonga wallahs.

But she hadn't been all that successful in her endeavours since an odd bullock cart with its turboned heat bronzed driver waited at the traffic signal alongside our car. He and his exploited bull were the touristy picture of India that the world would crazily click their digital camera at. And while they thought how exotic, we Indians would think -WTF is he still doing here? Wasn't he banned from entering the city?

Like most Indians Delhi-ites offer lip service sympathy to the poor, bemoan the squaller and use their own ancestoral refuge status to show that they too rose from the ranks of adversity and made it. But somewhere in the climb they left compassion behind or in their generosity patronised the poor.

Most American cities have a 'downtown' and if Delhi is to have a town down it would start all the way from the plush Chanakya puri area to Greater Kailash area. That is the core area that Sheila Dikshit and her cabinet are hell bent in keeping cleaning and there are no Indian hobos to be found lurking around in that area. While Rudy Giulani cleaned up Times Square our very own Sheila Dikshit cleaned up South Delhi to the best of her abilities. The Delhi concept of 'downtown' is a hype First World kind of look.

We drove under the shades of the Chanakya puri trees and reached Khan Market. Despite the heat the place was crowded and the people thronging the place were models of latest fashion. They were beautiful immaculate people- the delhi-ites who never perspire no matter how oppressive the heat.

I stepped out of the car and wondered why I continued to sweat despite the cool airconditioning of the car. I was no longer a Delhi-ite but a Bangalorean with sweat glands. We walked down the sidewalk and entered into the cool refines of the over priced shops and I told my sister that this is probably what Dubai felt like.

And she replied sagely -yes, thats what Dubai feels like. I grinned - another hallmark of a Delhi-ite. Most upwardly mobile Delhi-ites are world travelled. They are at par with the rich of the First world countries but work twice as hard for their money;P

My younger sister elbowed me for saying that and laughed in jest. Most Delhi-ites do. In and around Khan Market there were little shops tucked into nooks and crannies and there were also immigrants from Bihar and UP there manning the parking lot or acting as guards to the shops. They all looked fresh and none seemed to sweat. They had become Delhi-ites in their own ways.

We shopped quickly and ran back into the car. Plonking the bags in the back seat we again gasped. The water in the flask was no longer cold and our drive for retail therapy had also cooled some what.

There was still Karol Bagh on the check list. But neither of us had the guts to weather that blazing shopping zone and like most middle class Delhi-ites decided to either go to Select Citywalk mall or cross the border and visit Ambience Mall.

There are Delhi-ites cannot bear the heat anymore and these are also Delhi-ites of the old who were used to power cuts, fanning ourselves with newspapers at night, sleeping under the stars in our balconeys (if nothing the fear of thieves keep them in when inverters fail) and who loved their dessert coolers even in the rainy months.

And though I agree the heat is inhumane but the airconditioner and plush enviornments are no longer a novelties but necessities. Some would see it as Delhi evolving but thats still the crust of Delhi, the layering of the pie underneath is still Delhi of the old. And its the kind the Common Wealth lovers want to hide. The bullock cart riders, the occasional mahout and his elephant, the sadhus and yes even the squatters.

Once the games are over they will be back. Once the guests leave we Indians tend to go back to live the way we always did- general sloppiness and lethargy is a way of life and thats something that will sneak back soon enough.

Delhi will never be Delhi of the old but nor will it be Singapore and thank god for it!

Idli, Sambhar and Chicken 498a

Sumanth — Tue, 6 Apr 2010 17:35:50 EDT

It is said, "498a is like ordering Idli Sambhar in a restaurant". Even restaurant owner can refuse to serve you Idli Sambhar, but no police sub-inspector(PS) can refuse Chicken 498a.

Wife: I want to order a 498a against my husband...

PS: Sure Madam, would you like to order some toppings?

Wife: well, let's see... How about his parents too?

PS: Of course Ma'am, does he have siblings? We can offer their inclusion for free!

Wife: Is there a dessert?

PS: Oh yes. We have DV pudding, Ice Cream 406, 420 and 506. Which one would u like to order? By the way, this DV pudding is specially prepared by USAID.

Wife: What's that? Sounds like some AIDS Virus.

PS: No Madam. USAID is a special training institute for Chefs like me. Like a virus, it has spread all over the world. At first this dish was made by Joe Biden in US Senate and it started the franchise here recently. Women in US love it.

Wife: Wow!! Will they allow me to enter into US after eating that pudding?

PS: No Madam. For that, you have to first go to US somehow and order a separate dish called VAWA, made out of Idli RAWA. And then, they will give you green card on a hot Tawa.

Wife: Vahrevah!! You mean they make Idlis there as well. Americans are great chefs.

PS: Yeah. There is always something cooking in US. However, there is nothing spicier than Chicken 498a. Even American women travel to India to order this dish here.

Wife: Really? Wow!! Is it tastier than Chilli Chicken by VahChef Sanjay Dhumma?

PS: Well. Sorry to say, Sanjay had been kidnapped by some jerks in a Chinese restaurant and he is forced to train them in preparing new dishes. Poor Sanjay!! He was such a great cook. Now, he is cooking for some jerks in that restaurant called SNIFF.

Wife: Oh no!

PS: By the way, our special guests include wives and fiancees of cricketers.

Wife: Really??

PS: Yeah. Manoj Prabhaker's wife is our regular guest. Yesterday, Shoaib Malik's ex-girl friend came with her entire family.

Feasting Fasting

Anuradha Goyal — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 07:47:26 EDT

Last week we had the first Navaratras of the year. These Navaratras are not as celebrated as the one that precede Dussehra sometime in October, but none the less for the believers of Shakti, the importance of these Navarartas is just the same. Most of the believers would go vegetarian during these 18 days in the year and would try and eat food without Onion and Garlic. Quite a few of them go to the extent of fasting for nine days. The idea is to eat simple, let your body be free of extra work that it needs to do to digest what you eat and spend some time with your spiritual side.

It seems today in the world dominated by media and marketers who would not leave any opportunity to push their products, the whole premise of Navaratras has changed. The newspapers are filled with advertisements of Navaratra special food at all leading restaurants. The food chains announce that they are going completely vegetarian and you can safely visit them and enjoy your food as usual. The Vegetarian chains put up a special menu for those on the fast. They have invented so many recipes for the fasting population that it would take few Navaratra series to taste all the items on the menu. Special sweets made of items permissible in food for the fast are churned out, which are definitely heavy on the stomach for all the ghee and dry fruits that are inserted to justify the high cost attached to the items.

In this era of consumerism, are we stretching things too far? I read advertisements saying that ‘Why should you not be able to party during fast?’ Now, is there anyone being forced to fast? There were mouth watering photographs of the innovative dishes that while I was not even fasting, I went out and tried those dishes. The dishes made out in such a way that though technically no ‘Fast’ norm is broken, but the whole purpose of fast becomes meaningless. Like, Papdi chat made out of Kuttu ka Aatta, rich mithais being made of the same and some ‘Unavoidable in Delhi’ Paneer dishes made so that you do not miss Paneer for 9 days.

I want to know how successful these Navaratra special campaigns have been. How many people would have actually fasted per se but hogged on these special meals? Or was it the non-fasting junta rushing to these outlets to taste the ‘different’ food? Just curious…

Lahore: Rants and Raves Unrelenting

Halima Khan — Thu, 4 Mar 2010 00:12:51 EST

While I rant to prove how passionately Lahori believe in preserving their taste buds it will be unfair of me to neglect the cultural activity and the entertainment this city is bursting with. But then of course no denying that it all does end up on food! The wedding season which seems to be in season all year round but reaches the climax around November and December and lasts till February? Wedding can be considered the most elaborate occasion on the family event calendar with 'dholkis' 'mayo' 'mehndi' etc spanning over months before the eventual day. Fun and frivolities mark the celebration all through. The preparations involve shopping and the dowry for the bride, which is a traditional gift of clothes, furniture etc to the newly weds. The exquisiteness of the lavish food is the real delight of this whole affair.

To add to this traditional and religious celebration of matrimony Lahore hosts people from worldwide to welcome spring annually and to boost its festivity of Basant. Kite-flying and dance and music mark the occasion, giving people an opportunity of entertainment. These opportunities of entertainment are definitely not rare in Lahore. Independence Day in August shows the same fervor and free spirit that Punjabis boost of.

However every year what really puts Lahore on the international platform is the World Performing Arts Festival; where the only language that binds everyone is art. To add to this ritual of promoting peace and inter-cultural exchange another event that is gaining momentum is the Annual Marathon.

While there is no dearth of opportunities to kick off your boots and enjoy good food and have good fun, Lahore also offers the best shopping experience. So if you decide to keep your boots on and want to gear up for an unforgettable spree that's exactly what this city has in store for you. International brands and local chains to retail outlets; Liberty, Anarkali, Shahlmee, there's everything of every sort! Hafeez Center is the biggest computer market, and the prices you'll find here can't get better.

As the population in Lahore has increased from estimated 6 million to estimated 10 million the city has expanded and the suburban population is constantly moving outwards. The previous residential areas are being turned into commercial centers. All this development has resulted in development of the upbeat Liberty Market, MM Alam Road, Jail Road with the finest office buildings and the Main Boulevard with the largest shopping centers.

If I could sum up Lahore I'll do it like everyone else does - this city doesn't sleep. Even late at night or even earliest in the morning there is sense of continuous on-going activity. It makes you feel alive, the raw energy that runs in its streets and boulevards. The tradition and culture so rich that it has even seeped into the westernization attempts; do don't worry if the Big Mac here tastes a wee bit different. Lahore may have spiced it up a little!!

Fiction: Bitter Coffee

IdeaSmith — Tue, 2 Mar 2010 06:22:51 EST

The Corner Coffeeshop was open for business but its traffic was at a lull. It was too early in the evening for the post-work crowd, too late for the students and AC-enjoying unemployed to be hanging around.

Outside, the sun had gone down but that curious combination of atmospheric density and light's acrobatic bending made it seem like daylight was still around.

Such were his thoughts, where another person would have called it twilight. He grimly thought to himself that she would have referred to Van Gogh's 'Starry Nights' while all along he'd be thinking of the diagrams in the physics textbooks about light refraction.

He was already seated on the bar-stool near the window, his bag on the seat next to his, to save it for her. In front of him was a cappuccino. With deliberate precision, he emptied two sachets of sugar into the cup and tossed the empty packets into the dustbin near the end of the table. She preferred espresso shots but he couldn't stand their acrid taste. But he didn't want another lecture on calorie count either.

Outside, the object of his ruminations had just neared the door and was standing but not entering. Then she squared her shoulders, took a deep breath and walked in.

He saw her from the corner of his eye and put down his coffee mid-sip to receive her kiss. To his surprise, she turned, picked his bag off the seat and sat down with it in her lap. A second later, she seemed to have second thoughts and put it on the table.

Then she turned and said in a rush.

I need to tell you something and I need you to not interrupt. I’m going back to Delhi tomorrow.

But…

She held up her hand.

Don’t say anything. I’m going. The ticket is booked. And it’s one-way.

Her face was set in an immovable mask. She looked beautiful. But unrecognizable. Like a cold, marble statue that was displayed in someone else's house.

When you called me here for coffee, I thought you were trying to rekindle the romance in our relationship.

Her stiff expression didn’t change. She hadn’t even put her bag on the table. He tried again.

I know we’ve been arguing. But we’ve been through worse stuff. It’s…what are we doing?

She wavered and in a slightly watery voice said,

You’re having coffee. I’m leaving.

Come on, you don’t have to do this. Let’s talk about this.

Let's not.

she said. And those were her last words to him. He would think about that often. For such a talkative person, she was leaving him with so little. As if she didn't want to spend another precious minute or word on him.

Across the street, she plugged her earphones into her ears and switched on the iPod. It wasn't serendipitous, the song that came up.

Why she had to go, I don't know, she wouldn't say
I said something wrong, I long for yesterday
Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play.

She'd been listening to the Beatles all evening on her way to the coffeeshop. It helped her relax and focus.

He hadn't said anything wrong. How do you tell someone that they had never said anything right in the first place? How do you explain that after three years? And how do you erase the memory of your own wrong choices?

You don't. You just stop and turn away.

She turned the corner and stopped under the street lamp. She asked herself, shall I reconsider? and turned to look in the direction of the coffeeshop.

It was dark now and the bright lights of The Corner Coffeeshop were attracting their clientele in now. She couldn't see him anymore, there were too many people around. Night had fallen.

Should I?

And in the same breath, the thought crystallized into realisation.

Let me not.

She took a deep breath and walked away.

Coffee was never going to be anything but bitter after this.

Travel Review: Bheemeshwari Fishing Camp, Cauvery

Deepti Lamba — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 11:34:29 EST

Last weekend we wanted to get away from the city for a short trip and living in Bangalore makes such sojourns possible. We went to Bheemeshwari, a fishing camp managed by Jungle Lodges Resorts, the Karnataka Government-funded company that runs fine camps in Karnataka sanctuaries. Bheemeshwari is about hundred kilometers from Bangalore, about 40 km from Kanakapura. We drove out of the city at eight in the morning and were there by ten, much to our surprise.

The roads were butter smooth except for a few patches where a small nondescript town, a few miles before of the camp, wore a war torn look. It was quite a disturbing and dusty drive through the dilapidated town but then the deciduous greenery and rolling hillocks re-appeared and the gentle Kaveri ran parallel to the road.

As usual, there were monkeys and plastic bags littering the landscape. It seems that the Nilgiri hills are the only hills devoid of ugly fluttering plastic bags. We drove on and reached Bheemeshwari. There are two other camps along the Cauvery operated by Jungle Lodges, Galibore and Doddamakali.

The Bheemeshwari Fishing Camp has tented huts, Cottages and Log Huts. We stayed in a cottage facing the river close to the reception. The dining hall was a quite a walk for us, but one we thoroughly enjoyed. The Fishing Camp is child friendly, the food is a little spicy but delicious and the people who work there are considerate, such as Mr. Anthony, the resident coordinator, who roams around with an unloaded rifle which he points at the monkeys when they get a little too noisy.

The area is well lit and unlike B R Hills, where lights go off at ten in the night here the rooms not only has electricity through the night but each unit has an AC.

The cottages are reasonably priced -Rs 7000 for adults and 50% less for children under ten.

As usual there is no television and no cell phone connections. Its a place to relax, play with kids on the nets, play swings and of course go fishing.

The resident monkeys are quite genial, not the rough and intrusive variety we've seen elsewhere. There are also large squirrels and other small wildlife.

Swimming is not allowed, as there are whirlpools and the occasional crocodile. We spotted our first crocodile sunning itself on one of the river rocks within a few minutes into our arrival at the Camp and those around us were also excited to spot the croc without going on a 'river safari' (boat ride).

The Cauvery river is teeming with Mahaseer. These are gorgeous fish that can grow up to three feet and when caught they have to be released back in the waters. Fun fishing, as they call it, takes place early in the morning and late afternoon. We could not go for fishing since we were with kids but there were local kids at the camp who helped us fish with nothing more than a twine tied to wood. They made clumps of Ragi balls on the hooks and with a mean swing threw the line in the water.

Initially I shouted - 'Money making Scam' to Aaman as I waited holding the twine. But within five minutes there was a tug and I was screaming as I pulled the line in. I caught my first small Mahaseer, and it was gorgeous.

The slime that coats the fish made it slippery and as it flipped on the ground one of the boys caught it quickly, Aaman took a picture and we released it back in the waters.

Aaman too caught a Mahaseer, though a smaller one.

We also went on a boat ride on the Coracle. Since the boats are round we twirled around in the water and my heart thumped due to my fear of deep waters. The kids enjoyed the boat ride and were hungry pretty soon.

When we returned we had coffee, tea and sanwiches and I made Aayan read the sign that warned that swimming wasn't allowed in the waters since there were dangerous whirlpools and crocodiles in the river.

The fishing camp has a lot of photographs showing people holding the big Mahaseers and its a matter of luck whether one catches fish or one can get none. We managed to catch the baby ones without much effort and were tickled pink about it.

The food at the camp especially at night was drool-worthy. At 7:30 in the evening they had barbeque - there was tandoori chicken, pakoras and beer. People sat around and chatted and then at about 8:30 we had our dinner.

The way back to the cottage was well-lit and we didn't stumble around like we did back in BR Hills.

We saw this strange branch shaped like a monkey - it fooled many people.
We slept well at night and morning had a scrumptious breakfast before we headed back to the city.

Its best to have a heavy breakfast before heading to the camp. The rooms are available after 12 noon and food is available only from lunch time onwards.

Like us most people landed up early and on empty bellies. Also its important to carry munchies, books and other activity items like cards and board games. Remember, do not feed the monkeys nor swim in the waters no matter how calm and inviting the Cauvery may look.