The bakery in INA Market was feeling festive yesterday – I couldn’t have put it better myself. Marry Christmax from me too!
All this chasing around after turkeys, tracking down Brussels sprouts and and non-stop catering doesn’t leave much time for blogging but I can’t let the season pass without sharing a couple of recipes without which, for me, Christmas simply cannot proceed.
The first is for Mincemeat – the best way to whip up some festive cheer, filling the kitchen with heavenly spiced fruit smells that instantly bring on that Christmassy feeling. I use the mincemeat to make sinfully moreish mince pies for drinks parties or as a dessert (preferably with brandy butter). I bought all the ingredients except suet in INA Market. Suet, grated beef fat, is a throwback to pre-refrigeration times when mincemeat was a way of preserving meat. It’s not absolutely necessary and even without it you’ll make mincemeat that’s a hundred times better than the shop-bought variety. Beef and vegetarian suet is available at Modern Bazaar in Vasant Lok – although don’t be tempted by their ready-made mincemeat, it’s way too spicy.
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So this is Laura and I at the start of our first ever ‘Upar Wali Chai’ (def: n. tea, high – decadent tea-time treats served with no restraint whatsoever) which was held at Gunpowder Restaurant in Hauz Khas Village last weekend. Thirty guests, a mountain of cakes and the sun setting over the lake made for a winter afternoon to remember.
Here’s a selection of pictures taken by the lovely and super-talented Tom Pietrasik
Pulling off these pistachio macaroons gave me some sleepless nights!
Satish and Kiran, Gunpowder’s lovely co-owners were on hand throughout both in the kitchen and front of house.
Never too young for afternoon tea!
Sigh! The Florentines and Chocolate Cake (both made by Laura) were divine.
We both thoroughly enjoyed ourselves – the appreciative noises of munching diners made all the days and days of baking worthwhile. There couldn’t have been a more blissful spot than Gunpowder for our first afternoon tea venture – thanks to all the staff there who made everything so easy for us. We’re hoping to be back with another Upar Wali Chai in January.
Contact us at uparwalichai@gmail.com
This time of year is bliss in Delhi. After prolonged, air-conditioned hibernation, it feels like the start of the long summer school holidays, with every day a potential outdoor adventure until we’re chased back indoors in Spring. The parks are full of power-walkers, tourists are taking their time at India Gate and al-fresco eating is the order of the day; happy family groups are out picknicking and we suddenly see the point of restaurants with gardens.
I always know winter is well and truly on its way when I spot the Shakakandi seller in Khan Market with his piping hot pile of roasted sweet potato – just say the word and he’ll load up a plate with scooped out flesh and douse the lot with masala and lemon juice – with optional kamrakh (star-fruit) garnish: a mini feast to ease you through those awkward times when your next meal just seems a little too far off.
My grown-up India equivalent of building dens and climbing trees, are long days spent in Old Delhi. Just a month ago the scene in the bazaars was of traders mopping their brows between bouts of haggling, recalcitrant rickshaw-wallahs dawdling in the shade, a roaring trade at the kulfi (ice cream) and nimbu pani (lemonade) stalls. My own trips were short and to-the-point, preferably with ice-cold beer waiting at home.
Now there’s energy to spare and time to soak it all up. It’s true of India generally that there’s a relish in seasonality that we’ve mostly lost in Britain. Despite the increased availability of imported food in Delhi, in the winter months we still look forward to strawberries, cape gooseberries and salad; when the temperature starts to soar again, one of the few compensations is the arrival of mangoes and the rising excitement as each new variety appears in the markets.
One of the many wonderful things about the old city is the way the food there moves with the seasons – this is not the place to go if you’re looking for year-round avocadoes – and you can still feel the intense right time, right place-ness of the food on offer. Winter in Old Delhi means dishes like the spicy nehari, a rich meat stew cooked slowly overnight and served with brains and marrow to put lead in the pencil early on a nippy winter morning.
There are certain things which can only appear in the winter months. One which makes my heart skip like a kid with a Strawberry Mivvi and one of Old Delhi’s most tightly-guarded secrets, is Daulat ki Chaat. How to describe something which should really only be served to people who’ve led exemplary lives as they finally make it through the pearly gates? In her ‘Essential Delhi Cookbook’, Priti Narain translates it as ‘milk puff’ but this merely underlines the sheer inadequacy of language to convey the enormity of the experience which eating Daulat ki Chaat entails. According to Old Delhi legend, Daulat (which means ‘wealth’) ki Chaat is made only during the cold winter nights (preferably by the light of a full moon) when gallons of sweetened milk are whisked for hours into a cloud which is then set by the dawn dew. The top layer is touched with saffron and decorated with vark (silver leaf) and by morning the Daulat ki Chaat is just solid enough to be spooned into plates and sprinkled with chopped pistachio nuts, khoya (condensed milk) and bhoora (unrefined sugar) before gradually collapsing in the heat of the day.
Exciting times here at Eat and Dust.
Those lovely people over at Gunpowder, purveyors of wonderful south indian food, recently asked me to ‘Guest Chef’ at their restaurant in Hauz Khas Village. My first reaction was to laugh long and loudly – not only have I never ‘guest cheffed’, in fact I wasn’t terribly clear what a Guest Chef is, I’ve never actually cooked outside my own kitchen.
But then I started thinking – with the days getting shorter and the nights getting nippier, what about doing a cosy afternoon tea? The advantage of tea over any other kind of meal is that most of the food can be made in advance with the minimum of last-minute kitchen drama. Astonishingly, Satish, Gunpowder’s laid back chef/proprietor was up for it so for the last few weeks my friend, and now co-’Guest Chef’, Laura (she makes very classy cakes!), have been trying out our repertoire on friends.
Life certainly gets in the way of blogging sometimes! My excuse this time is an unscheduled house move which, because of relentlessly spiralling rents in Delhi is becoming a fact of life for us here.
This is our 4th house in 4 years – you’d think we’d be getting good at it – but as we all know, there’s no quick or pain-free way to uproot.
The past three weeks have been a blur of packing and unpacking, an endless parade of tradesmen (none of whom seem to manage to leave us with broadband), and the frazzling effects of a whole family feeling out of sorts. There’s been precious little cooking and absolutely no blogging (this is being cobbled together on my phone and I feel as if I’m going to go blind!).
There was a moment of cheer the other morning though when I spotted our new neighbourhood’s sabzi wallah (veg man).
It turns out our daily greens are delivered on a horse and cart – that’s what happens when you seek out Delhi’s more ‘interesting’ locales! It gets better – not only do I get to live out an olden days rustic fantasy, according to my Hindi teacher, ‘Gori-Gari’ vegetables usually come direct from the village rather than the wholesale market in Delhi. How about that – my very own farm delivery service – now I just need to get the kitchen up and running!
As part of the chaotic process of getting our city in a fit shape to host the Commonwealth Games in October 2010, and in a bid to reduce the incidence of Delhi belly for the anticipated influx of sport-lovers, the authorities have turned their attention to the city’s eateries.
Early indications are not good: newspapers reported today that the Confederation of Indian Industry recently surveyed 1000 restaurants close to the Games Village (conceptual at this stage, obviously), Connaught Place, Dilli Haat, Greater Kailash, South Extension and found none of them reached acceptable levels of hygiene.
It’s unclear what grounds there are for optimism but the CII is chipper, “While most of the eateries that we checked have not been maintaining prescribed hygienic conditions, it is not difficult to achieve the required standards,” said a spokesman. Really? Apparently it’s all just a matter of training and the incidents like the one a friend told me about today – a rat landing in the lap of his dining companion during a recent meal at a restaurant in New Friends’ Colony – will be a thing of the past. We live in hope!
First thousand eateries get thumbs down in quality survey (Indian Express 19th October)
No-one seemed to know why the floating market on Srinagar’s Dal Lake starts before dawn, the proverbial darkest hour, a time of uneasy minds and bleak thoughts. My own first thought when the boatman came hammering at the door of our houseboat the other morning was “this is madness, leave me alone, no way! and wondered how many other potential customers regularly decided to give it a miss.
I’m in a state of panic: over breakfast at the American Embassy sports club this morning, our son announced today that this will be his last baseball season. I almost choked on my ‘Thick and Hearty’ A1 Steak Sauce! Apparently, there’s nothing we can do to talk him out of this momentous decision but it’s one which is going to leave a big food-shaped hole in our lives.
Mostly I go to Old Delhi in the evening when the city’s hardworking day is done, the kebabs are smoking and the Biryani pots are beckoning. But recently a sudden craving for pukka Aloo Puri opened up a whole new daytime world of foodie avenues to explore.
