Foodie Jaunts

Managing two blogs is quite a tall order; at least it is for me, therefore when my brother Aroop Bose took pity on me and suggested he would do a restaurant review, I jumped at his offer. This is, however, a restaurant review with a difference — the restaurant is Spice Tree but he isn’t reviewing the food available there but – on second thoughts it would be better if I hand you over to my brother, so read on…

Kong Poush Kashmiri Food Festival at Spice Tree – Taste of Kashmir
 by Aroop Bose

Goshtaba and Nadir Palak

It was about three years ago we tasted food from Kong Poush the first time; it used to be a restaurant located in suburban Mumbai. We had brought home a parcel of Goshtaba and Nadir Palak. The dishes were delightful, Goshtaba is a mutton dish, the mutton is in the form of soft balls like a kofta but not exactly the same, the mutton is actually pounded into a pulp like state before the balls are formed, the gravy is yoghurt/dahi based. Nadir Palak is a dish prepared using lotus stem and spinach as the main ingredients. Sometime later Kong Poush shifted to Goa which was a bit disappointing for us because we loved the dishes we tried. Early last month I was pleasantly surprised to receive a text message from Sunil Mattoo, the proprietor, saying that

Doi Maach - Reposting with Video.

 Approximately two and a half years back I had posted the recipe for one of the most popular dishes of the Bengalis, Doi Maach/Fish in Yoghurt or Curd sauce. Incidentally, while in the west the Indian dahi is referred to as yoghurt or yogurt, in India it is called curd. I read somewhere that it s called curd in India because just as curdled milk leaves behind whey, so also plain yoghurt in India has whey. After the curd sets and you spoon out a portion of it you will notice the whey.

Coming back to Doi Maach, the Doi Maach you see in my blog was made by my mother. For those of you who came in late, I started this blog so that I could have a record of all my mum’s dishes. Unfortunately just a few days short of my blog’s first anniversary my mother

Palak Paneer (Cottage Cheese in Spinach Sauce)

When I run out of ideas about what to have for dinner, I fall back on paneer (cottage cheese) and one of my favourite paneer dishes is palak paneer. I know there is nothing new about palak paneer, almost everybody cooks it and there might be about hundreds of palak paneer recipes going around on the internet. However, I felt  there is no harm in me adding my palak paneer to that list.

Pyaaz Kali - Reposting with Video

I have been neglecting this blog. I just launched a film blog and that has been taking up most of my time. What is encouraging is that although I have not been able to regularly update this blog, the statistics show that it does not matter to the visitors to this blog. There are some posts which get a continuous stream of visitors one of them is the Pyaaz Kali post. This was cooked by my mother, I used to then just note down the recipe.The very purpose of this blog was to have a record of all her dishes but alas, I could barely cover less than one-fourth of her dishes before she suddenly passed away.

I have been trying to cook some of her dishes and since this is the season for pyaaz kali I did try it out. It turned out fine so I thought of making a video of it. It looks a little different from Ma's pyaaz kali, I was experimenting a bit by using small  quantities of spices, you may add more, in accordance to your taste. It does not really matter if you use small quantities of spices for the simple reason that this vegetable itself has a wonderful flavour of its own.

Check out the video and for the detailed recipe you have to back to mum's  pyaaz kali

Paneer Bhurji -- Scrambled Cottage Cheese

I am now on a paneer or cottage cheese trip. My last post was Paneer Bengali Style and this time it is Paneer Bhurji. It is something which I just rustled  up one day, it tasted good and now I make it quite often.

 Actually paneer bhurji entered my life quite accidentally. I had often seen this dish in the menus of restaurants but had never eaten it. I am a little vary of eating Indian food in restaurants mainly because I cannot digest spicy food, besides that, off late I have noticed there is an increasing tendency to use khoya (thickened milk) and cream in most Indian dishes and khoya when used in food  invariably plays havoc with my digestion. Thankfully it does not affect me when used in sweets. It so happened that one day I was ordering some food at a food court of a mall in Bombay. This particular outlet - Bombay Blue - has a chain of restaurants all over Bombay as well as outlets in all the major malls in the city. While ordering the food I noticed paneer bhurji at their counter. It did not look spicy and I was a little tempted to order it. I gave in to my temptation and I was not disappointed. I

Chhanaar Dalna or Paneer – Bengali style

Once again I was compelled to take a long break. During this period mum’s anniversary went by and so did my blog’s second anniversary.

I also had some interesting foodie experience that I would like to share with you, however if you are not interested in reading about it, you may skip the following and scroll down to the recipe of Chhanaar Dalna  or Paneer – Bengali style.

It so happened, personal work took my brother and me to Pune. Whenever we visit Pune we stay at Hotel Shree Pancharatna, located close to the railway station this hotel is squeaky clean, comfortable and perfect in every way. There is one problem though they have a limited menu; we often rack our brains trying to select

Foodie Jaunts

JUGHEAD’S – THE UNRESTAURANT 

It is time for a Foodie Jaunt and the restaurant under review is Jughead’s – one of my brother Aroop Bose’s favourite restaurants. To be honest it is fast turning into my favourite restaurant too, for I have found my comfort zone. Before I hand you over to my brother for the detailed review I would like to put in a few words about this lovely place; what does one look for in a restaurant? Good food, reasonable price, service and ambience. Well the food is excellent, service is great, price is fairly reasonable but as far as I am concerned what I like best about this place  is the fact that I feel absolutely comfortable here. Going by the name and the décor the restaurant is obviously targeted at the younger generation and sure you will find loads of college students and young executives with  their back packs and laptops  but I also find families, middle aged people and senior citizens comfortably digging into their food, which came to me as a pleasant surprise for I have noticed  that senor citizens generally feel particularly uncomfortable at eating joints where youngsters hang out and unfortunately often miss out on the good food, not so at Jughead’s -- now it is over to my brother Aroop Bose.

A Great Eating Place
By
Aroop Bose

When you hear the name Jughead you are reminded of the rather cool and carefree character in Archie comics who loves to eat. The Jughead’s I am referring to is a