Archive for the 'Food' Category

Ketan (Mandrem, India)

Published on December 15, 2009 in Food. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Cross-posted from http://lawolf.net.

Rating:

Next door to the Dunes is a cute little family-run guesthouse and vegetarian restaurant called Ketan. At Rs100 (about $2), their vegetarian thali is the most expensive, but also one of the most delicious, I’ve had in India. It’s also large enough that Kenny and I can share one for lunch or dinner if we order a couple of extra chapatis.

We dined at Ketan three times during our week in Goa, and each time the thali featured a different combination of vegetables and curries. My favorite thali items were the dal and the delicious pumpkin sabji. Everything was a winner though, including cabbage, beets, and gobi curry.

There was always a very cute little boy running around the restaurant and sharing his toys with the guests. He looked great in my sunglasses. His older brother, Ketan, apparently inspired the guesthouse/restaurant’s name. We also befriended Keshav, who I believe was the patriarch of the family. He gave us a ride down to Anjuna for the weekly market, and also offered a good rate on a taxi to the airport at the end of our week.

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Ketan
Junes Wada, Mandrem Beach, Goa
+91-832-2247943
+91-942-1257616
ketanguest@yahoo.co.in

Jayamahal Palace Brunch (Bangalore, India)

Published on December 6, 2009 in Food. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Cross-posted from http://lawolf.net.

Rating:

After a lazy morning playing cards at home, Archana suggested that we head over to Jayamahal Palace Hotel for brunch. She had been before, and had fond memories of the beautiful garden atmosphere, coupled with an all-you-can-eat brunch with unlimited beer for Rs 500.

When we arrived, we learned that brunch was no longer served in the garden; we were initially disappointed, until we learned that the new brunch location was at the swimming pool and that the brunch price included use of the pool facilities. We conveniently even had our swimwear with us, as we had originally intended to hit the Bangalore Club pool after brunch!

Kenny and I were still recovering from two consecutive nights of excessive wine consumption, so we did not avail ourselves of the unlimited beer, but we did enjoy unlimited fresh lime sodas (salt, no sweet) from the bar. The brunch buffet consisted of a barbecue area with delicious kebabs grilling in the tandoor (I’ve been sticking to mostly veg food lately, but I did indulge in some spicy chicken tikka), and an array of curries, rice, dal and Indian breads. The tandoor was certainly the highlight of the buffet, but the other items were passable and the dal was very good after I mixed in some spicy red chutney.

Jayamahal was a great place to spend a hot lazy Sunday and, while pricy by Indian standards, is certainly worth the price of admission if you take advantage of the pool. Hopefully we’ll be back when we return to Bangalore for the wedding in June.

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Jayamahal Palace
#1 Jayamahal Road
Bangalore, India
+91 80 40580444

Restaurant Reviews

Published on November 17, 2009 in Food. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Kenny has been reviewing restaurants on his blog for years, and I decided recently to start joining him in this effort on our joint blog. This is my introductory post; I think I’ll start cross-posting the reviews over here as well.

My brother also recently blogged his first restaurant review.

Coconut Grove (Bangalore, India)

Published on November 2, 2009 in Food. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Cross-posted from http://lawolf.net.

Rating:

Sadly, this is another review with no photos, because we dined at Coconut Grove during the period in which we were PowerShot-less (which we remedied later the same night).

We visited Coconut Grove on a Sunday evening in a large group; when we arrived, we had the run of the place (and it is not small). The dining area is a large open patio, with coconut trees and tile floors. The food is served on banana leaves and the beverages in copper cups. I haven’t been to Kerala yet, but I assume that they’re going for an authentic Keralan feel.

“The” thing to order at Coconut Grove (and other Keralan restaurants, I’m told) is appams – the appam is to Keralan food what naan, rotis, and chappatis are to the cuisines of other parts of India. It is simply a round rice batter pancake, but it’s thick and spongy in the middle, and is perfect for soaking up delicious coconutty curries. I was also told that they’re wonderful with a fried egg on top, but we had to save something for our next visit.

We ordered several curries for the table:

  • Chicken Stew – the most popular appam accompaniment, a coconut curry with chicken and potatoes. I was actually a bit disappointed by this one, as the flavors were bland compared to the other spicy tomato-ey curries that we ordered.
  • Veggie Stew – a vegetarian version of the above.
  • Kuraliach Kadi – crabs in a fiery red masala with a hint of tamarind. Spicy and delicious, but lots of work dissecting the crab.
  • Nadan Chemeen Curry – this was basically the same as the Kurialach Kadi, but with prawns instead of crabs. The prawns were slightly less flavorful than the crab meat, but much easier to eat, so I think this dish actually wins for overall enjoyment (we ended up ordering a second round of this one).
  • Kozhi Melagu – a Chettinad chicken dish with a masala curry and black pepper. Yum.

Coconut Grove was delicious and fun. I can’t wait to go back with the camera.

Coconut Grove
No. 86, Spencers Building, Church Street
Bangalore 560 001, India
+(91) (80) 25596149

Hotel de l’Orient (Pondicherry, India)

Published on October 23, 2009 in Food. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Cross-posted from http://lawolf.net.

Rating:

All of the India guidebooks rave about the excellent French food in Pondy. From my experience so far, I’m not quite convinced, as most of the places we’ve checked out seem to offer generic “continental” food that often appears more Italian than French and not particularly exciting. Last night we took a short walk to check out menus at three of the restaurants that both the Rough Guide and the Lonely Planet recommended: Madame Shante’s, Rendezvous, and Le Club. We found all of them rather uninspiring, but along the way we passed the Hotel de l’Orient, and were compelled by the gorgeous setting and live music to stay for dinner.

The hotel is a beautiful converted heritage house in the French Quarter. Like many of Pondicherry’s heritage houses, it features a lovely open-air central courtyard, which is where they’ve set up the restaurant. There were a couple of musicians playing guitars and singing American and British piano-bar-favorites with French accents (an effect made even stranger by the fact that they were Tamil).

I would classify the food at l’Orient as “French-Creole” rather than strictly French; many of the dishes on the menu were obviously French takes on Indian dishes, like curries and local South Asian vegetables.

We were very hungry when we arrived. We ordered a citrus salad with dates and figs in a rosewater dressing, a shrimp “cassoulette,” (apparently not a misspelling of “cassoulet”) and a lady finger curry (“lady finger” is the local term for okra). The food took a long time to arrive, and the bread that was placed on our table looked like a baguette, but tasted stale and chewy (typical for India, but a travesty in a town known for its French food and pastries). The salad was refreshing and quite a nice combination. The shrimp cassoulette was rich and creamy, in a green sauce that we wanted to lick off the plate. It was served with roasted potatoes, which soaked up the extra sauce nicely. The lady finger curry was enjoyable for the first few bites, but there was some strong flavor in the sauce that I tired of quickly.

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Courtyard restaurant

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Ladyfinger Creole curry

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Shrimp “cassoulette”

The food was good but not amazing. The service was gracious and polite but slow. The ambience was fantastic. Overall, it was a very nice romantic setting for dinner in Pondy, and likely better – and more unique – than most of the “French” restaurants that the guidebooks recommend. And because this is India, we were in and out for about $10 US.

Hotel de l’Orient, Pondicherry
17, Rue Romain Rolland, Pondicherry 605001
Phones: 0413-2343067, 2343068, 2346589

Quinoa-Beet Salad

Published on June 30, 2009 in Food. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , .

Kenny and I invented this salad recipe a few nights ago, and if we must say so, it was quite delicious.

Salad:
1 cup quinoa (before cooking)
~3 Beets
A few stalks of asparagus
A few sprigs of mint
Chunk of feta (this is a standard measurement)
1 orange, peeled and separated
A few shallots, diced

Dressing:
Orange juice
Lemon juice
Olive oil
Kosher salt

  1. Cook the beets. We usually wrap them in aluminum foil and pop them in the oven for 30 minutes or so. Boiling works too.
  2. Cook the quinoa using the instructions on the box (this is usually 1 part quinoa:2.5 parts water, boil and then lower the heat and simmer until the water is mostly absorbed).
  3. Blanch the asparagus.
  4. After the quinoa cools slightly, put it in a bowl. Chop and add the asparagus, shallots, beets, mint, orange, and feta.
  5. Shortly before serving, mix the dressing, and dress the salad.

How to Open a Coconut

Published on May 11, 2009 in Food. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

Kenny and I had a few friends over for dinner on Saturday evening, and we decided that coconut ice cream would make a nice complement to the fresh mangoes that our friend DeAnn had offered to bring for dessert. There were several choices of coconut products at the store, including cans of coconut milk, dehydrated shredded coconut, and fresh coconuts in the produce section. We opted to try a combination of fresh coconuts and canned milk for our ice cream.

There was just one problem once we arrived home from the store: we had no idea how to actually crack open the coconut’s hard shell to get at the goodness inside. We looked at our array of knives, and couldn’t imagine that any of them would be particularly effective. After a short aborted attempt with our bread knife (I don’t recommend this, we actually bent one of the teeth), I suggested getting out our saw:

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Kenny made some progress with this approach, but it was slow going, and we worried that it was unsanitary. So he asked me to consult the web. A search for “how to open a coconut” took me to howtoopenacoconut.com, naturally.

Following those instructions, Kenny made quick work of the coconut:

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Using a hammer and nail to punch a hole in the coconut

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Letting the juice drain out through the hole

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Now, the fun part – smashing the coconut to bits with the hammer 

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Et, voila!

Unfortunately, once we finally got the coconut open it just didn’t taste quite right. We ended up throwing it out and opting for a bag of shredded coconut from the grocery store. But at least we learned something; I suspect that our newly-acquired coconut opening skills will come in quite handy on our next trip to visit Kenny’s parents in Florida.

We used this recipe for the ice cream. It was delicious.

Baba Ghanoush

Published on April 17, 2009 in Food. 0 Comments Tags: , .

I seem to have lost my favorite baba ghanoush recipe, but this one worked great in a pinch. I didn’t have any cilantro, so I skipped it, and I only used half the quantity of olive oil (1/4 cup rather than 1/2). Yum.

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Half-eaten baba ghanoush

Of Sunchokes and Celery Roots

Published on April 8, 2008 in Food. 2 Comments

In the office a few weeks ago, I wondered aloud what one does with a sunchoke, aka Jerusalem artichoke (I had one in the refrigerator at home that I needed to use). In response, my boss sent me a recipe for cream of Jerusalem artichoke soup, which I’ve made twice now. It’s rich and decadent and fantastic. If you try it, it’s imperative that you also make the chestnut and parsley pesto to top it off (well, I made mine with shitake mushrooms instead of chestnuts, since chestnuts are nowhere to be found in the Seattle area in the spring. But shitakes worked pretty well).

I’m trying the same recipe tonight with celery root instead of a sunchoke. We’ll see how it goes.

Update 10:27 PM: The celery root variant was amazing. Yummmmm.

Alternative Homemaker

Published on January 30, 2008 in Food. 0 Comments

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My good friend Anjali is one of the most creative people I know. In the 12+ (!) years that I’ve known her, there has never been a time that she hasn’t been working on a new project (or three). These projects have included (but have not been limited to): jewelry-making, sewing her own clothing, knitting, making decorations for theme parties (and coming up with ideas for theme parties), papier-mache, designing outrageous Halloween costumes, and developing interesting (and attractive!) concoctions in the kitchen.

That latter interest has recently led her to make her first foray into the world of blogging, so that she can share her creations and the results of her experiments with the world.

My favorite posts so far are:

…with many more on the way. I can’t say the various attempts at bacon ice cream really do much for me, but I am a chickentarian after all.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention — by day she’s kicking ass as a first-year medical student, and this is somehow done during her copious amounts of free time.