The first time I heard about the mystery spice must have been around 1998. I had just started writing about food, when a youthful chef from Taj Coromandel, Chennai, came visiting Delhi for a Chettinad food festival. He showed me the spices necessary to make the iconic Chettinad chicken, and there it was, nestled amidst…
Which came first – the chicken or the egg? And no, I’m not asking this with reference to the bird flu scare. It’s the first question I asked Chef Arun Tyagi, Corporate Chef of the MBD group of hotels when I visited a festival of breads that featured 100 different varieties. On the other hand,…
There’s a certain point on the map of India, north of which ‘South Indian food’ tends to be a one-size-fits-all panoply of dosas and sambhars with minor, if any, variations to distinguish them. In fact, all four southern states have an abundance of cuisines. Geographical location – coastal or interior – and community both play…
Think Kashmiri spices and you will automatically be reminded of saffron, that most expensive spice that grows nowhere else in India except the Valley. However, on my annual pilgrimage – or would it be more (politically) correct to call it Hajj? – I came across facts that I had never suspected before For instance, in…
A few decades from now, they’ll probably be asking a riddle: what started in China, became popular in Japan, was expounded in California and became a hysterically frenzied cult in New Delhi? The answer, as anyone who has visited the capital in the last decade knows, is sushi. The Chinese character was first found in…
It never fails to amaze me how Kashmiri wazwan has percolated the consciousness of every foodie in the country, yet how few know anything at all about Kashmiri bread. At the most basic level, there are three types of bread that are eaten morning and evening: tchot, lavas and tchachvoru. All are made with wheat…
Think that commercial kitchens around the world do nothing but churn out food? Imagine that all chefs think and behave in the same fashion? Some of my chef friends reminisce about kitchens on the other side of the globe. When Chef Ravitej Nath, Executive Chef of Trident Gurgaon went to Hilton Beijing for an Indian…
Ritu Dalmia, the feisty lady behind the Diva brand in Delhi, turned 40 a few months ago. Besides the frenetic juggling that she does, between writing cookbooks, managing a fine-dining Italian restaurant and five cafes across Delhi, catering for top parties in Delhi, Mumbai, Thailand and Italy travelling across the globe like a restless ghost…
The rise of North India’s first family of food can be traced to one man alone: master chef Imtiaz Qureshi of Dum Pukht, the signature restaurant at Maurya Sheraton Hotel and Towers in New Delhi. Chef Imtiaz started his career in the family’s butchery business. Like the other two well-known Muslim cuisines of India: Kashmir and…
Ever wondered about the planning that goes into a restaurant? “It’s not unlike having a baby” chorus husband and wife team of Janis Fraser and Sumer Arora. When Janis and Sumer decided to go into the food business, they called in food consultants Under One Roof to thrash out a concept, plan a menu, design…
