Hairy Goat Biryani

Unlike your average Calcuttan, I'm not really big on biryani. And emphatically not enough to make a Sunday (or even month's-first-Sunday) ritual of it.

Yes, I'll admit the seared-steamed-roasted potato unique to biryani from this city, anathema to all others, is quite a golden nugget of fluffy fun-in-a-spud. But that's just the thing — a rice-and-meat steamed dish admittedly demanding of technique is one thing; the pursuit of the perfect potato is quite another.

And it's technique that lets down most biryanis. Oh, you can have each grain separate and the meat falling off the bones from many a roadside degh — but it's no good if it's so greasy as to stick together into a lardy lump the moment it cools to a tongue-friendly temperature. There's no joy in the delicacy of good degh technique when the spices crust the meat and dot the rice with coarse speckles; furring the palate with an excess of mace and screwpine. And the rubbery boiled eggs, so prized of some, I can do without the sulphurous stink of, though I admit they add much-needed colour to a monochrome meat-and-rice-(and-potato-perhaps) dish.

The other kinds of colour in your average box of biryani, now plastic-lined paper (to the convenience of your coat and the detriment of your health), are more worrying than winsome: traditional cochineal from a ground-up insect; turmeric that overwhelms flavour and fragrance, or worse, dishonestly dangerous metanil yellow, a carcinogen often sold under the guise of 'safe' tartrazine, itself an azo dye substituting the expensive saffron...

Hair-raising enough to put you off your lunch, isn't it? So why am I even thinking of dishing up any?

The recipe made me do it.

A lick and a promise

It's been a sweet beginning to 2011. It should have been a sweet restart to this blog as well. But what can I say? It was a sunny, smoggy day, and the strawberries turned out to be soporific.

No cooking was involved in breakfast. Just splitting of flaky croissants, slathering of Nutella, slicing of strawberries — and sandwiching to sit beside a tall, dark and hot espresso.

But not for long. The last chocolate-sticky flakes and fragrant, bleeding-red berry bits were gone in under 20 seconds, and the nap was irresistible — until it was time to turn out lunch (which is the tale on another post).

However, the milestone of that first meal of the year, the decade (and the revived blog) will be remembered — and, I hope, repeated — for long beyond strawberry season. It's my newfound favourite no-cook breakfast. Sure, nothing beats a fresh-laid egg freshly and simply poached — as friends wishing me a 'sunny side up' year well know; or a superior scramble alongside crisp rashers and smoky maple syrup; and I dare anyone to turn up their noses at the fragrance of blueberry-banana muffins just popping out of the oven. But there's a luxury about the lack of effort involved in these strawberry-chocolate croissants.

There's a lot else to love.

Goodies from Greece

Finally, a post!

Even though one in which the picture speaks for itself, I suspect this journal is happy for any crumb at this point. Put it this way: If I had been half as starved as this blog has been these many months, at least I wouldn't have had a beachwear breakdown before my trip to the Med!

Though somehow, that and assurances of terminal busy-ness on the Journal-ist's part don't seem to reassure the journal much. So, without more ado, some goodies from my trip to Greece are offered here to appease it. (And as requested, no been-there-done-that Kalamata olives in the lot.)

Any guesses?

Alright, enough with the suspense already!

Ta-da! These are, clockwise from top left:

1. Cretan thyme honey — there were so many honeys, Aegean and Cretan, thyme and pine and lavender and... I confess I finally closed my eyes, leaned back on the trolley, and went eeny-meeny-miny-mo!
2. Nope, not olives, non —that's an amphora-esque jar of preserved lemons (I rather suspect they are in fact citron, though; but taste will tell, later, I trust)
3. Spoon sweet with mastiha, the famed 'gum mastic' of Chios, resin of the Pistacia lentiscus tree which grows only on this Agean island. Baggage limit and fear of broken bottles prevented me bringing home the liquor, the 'original' chewing gum, the soaps and shampoos, the chocolate, the flavoured honey, the powder to cook with, the toothpaste...*
4. Baklava, without which no trip to Greece can boast a sweet ending!
5. Okay, I cheat — there's a missing corner to this pentagram. Not pictured here, it consisted of a block of Macedonian halva — sort of a sesame-paste nougat-cum-meringue I enjoyed for breakfast in Greece — that was cleverly sandwiched in wafers to prevent crumbling and even more cleverly dosed with some mastiha to hold it all flavourfully together! (This is MIA because it went to a friend, to steady nerves for a forthcoming wedding march. S-es both, I expect an update and you are hereby directed to the Comments box below!)

A Pot of Spicy Green Anti-Freeze!

Old Man Winter's stopped to do a war-dance, it would seem — one step forward, two steps back, turn around, take three paces away, pirouette and swing to centre... Or so it seems to us as we sniffle, sneeze, cough-cough-cough with the flu. He didn't quite take us down to zero like the BBC threatened, but 4° in February is quite perverse enough by me, thanks!

Unseasonal weather is what we're having this winter — even the capital, long inured to chilly Januaries, has found its many Jaipur quilts, surplus sweaters, Kashmiri shawls, export-market windcheaters and parkas, designer overcoats and 'local brand' room heaters inadequate to this frosty challenge.

Fingers are pale blue and refuse to address the keyboard. Hence the long pause between posts.) Our winter afternoon's delight in the patch of sun on the terrace or in the park has shrunk into the compass of four solid walls and tight-shuttered windows topped by a roof and heated by a radiator or blower. Our habit of clutching cups of hot tea has proved useless as the beverage almost ices over before we can sip. (Oh alright, that last is an exaggeration!)

The only thing that drives feeling back into our toes and revives our fever-numbed tastebuds is a tummyful of peppery, spicy soup. Preferably with potatoes in, to create that all-essential extra padding a la Santa's jelly belly! Which makes this one, starring red mustard 'greens', a souper-dooper discovery.

Cold comfort: From Sicily, via Sri Lanka

The cold snap shows no sign of abating. Not until the weekend at any rate (over which we are promised grey skies and rain — brrr!).

As compelling a reason as can be to seek comfort amidst a cocoon of quilts. With cups of hot chocolate, mugs of tea with tulsi (Indian holy basil) and honey, tumblers of rum or brandy toddies lining up along the dresser as the shadows lengthen. All of which might slake the thirst (these room heaters are notoriously dehydrating), but leave me with a craving for a starch-induced stupor come six in the evening.

Having grabbed a hurried bowl of soup and a sandwich or salad at lunch, by this time I am ravenous. No discourtesy intended to either soup or salad, both of which are amongst my favourite meals. Just that I now need a carbohydrate fix — a bone marrow-deep sensation not unlike the chocolate craving of 3-pip-emma. Or the caffeine cold turkeyhood of 6-ack-emma.

By the time this compulsive urge has brought me to my knees, it's too late to patiently roll out parathas or proof a loaf of dough (or even knead soda bread). Fast and furious it has to be. For the Boy, the fix could have been fried potatoes or (alas for my Mauviel that it must bear this dishonour!) a pan of Maggi 2-minute noodles. For me, it's usually a non-instant pasta, wholewheat (because I like the bite — and it helps assuage the guilt from not filling up on phytonutrients first).

Last week, when some work-weary friends joined me at this critical hour, I found a fair flower to bedeck the pasta pot with. And a darker, more exotic blossom too.

Dessert worth a long drive

I spoke, it would appear, too soon.

Not that there's a fresh crop of baby beets invading the cabbage patches in the countryside here in north India. But Old Man Winter has decided to pause, do a quick about-turn in honour — or so it seems — of the Republic Day parades on the 26th. And he's brandishing his gnarled, frost-rimed stick, which has got us all snuggling under the razai (the Indian quilts, famously of Jaipur in Rajasthan).

Yes, there's a cold wave on. Which also means too little power in our electricity grids all too often. In turn, fewer opportunities to blog, and cooking's not so fun either when the water out of the tap is icy and the kitchen criss-crossed by shivery draughts.

So we insisted on celebrating with ice cream.

And unlike many a midnight mouthful of cold that we've driven out for, this was one time I can safely say the journey was not the point. It was dessert that made our day, and made the long 2-hour drive down past Gurgaon and across rutted country roads worth the while, the bumps, the dust.

'Homemade' at the new Westin, Sohna-Gurgaon (India's first Westin in fact). But it wasn't quite the dessert we ordered. What I requested in fact — and you can see as much in the picture — was comfort food at its Sunday best: waffles, after much waffling over the rather unusually brave choices on the menu (for a 5-star city hotel).

Nor were we disappointed. Ah, but they were perfect waffles for a mint-new Sunday brunch — crunchy edges crumbling crisply against the fork, the pillowy honeycomb centres soaking up the maple-tinged smoky compote it came with. But it was the ice cream, its sidekick, that stole the show — and the attention of our tastebuds.

White chocolate and dripping honeycomb. Toffee sauce and macadamia on top. Frilled with a ruff of extra whte chocolate. Just one of a dozen-odd flavours they serve at the Living Room, the Westin's all-day eatery. (Next on my to-try list is the yoghurt ice.)

It inspired a baked bite soon enough. But that's a story for another day... For now, I'd rather close my eyes and savour that unexpectedly complex bittersweet (mostly sweet, but not too sweet, underlaid by the edge of the honey). And the sunshine through the glass, glinting on that melting white snowball of a scoop, warming our fingertips and cheering our hearts as it peeked through the ruby glassware.

Nope, Winter's no scary old grouch! He's the taciturn grand-dad who comes home from the fairgrounds to settle in his planters' chair with a grunt, whom no one dares approach until he's taken out his little silver snuffbox and had his tip. (Or smoked his chillum of sweet-scented tobacco, drawn burbling through the hubble-bubble.) And then he turns out his pockets, to heap on the floor and in outstretched palms treasures both mandatory for the season and unexpected until this very year.

For that, we salute him with our thick green glasses of masala chai and mulled wine.