Earthmactic

The Delhi winters are here and this is your chance to enjoy something warm and earthy!

The Delhi winters are here and this is your chance to enjoy something warm and earthy!

Iu00a0love eating, and I've a belly to prove it. Continental, Italian, European, Australian, Lebanese and American ufffd every cuisine has a history that often makes it more interesting than the food itself. For instance, the Indian Chinese menu, which is barely Chinese, was introduced by a small Chinese community in Kolkata.

The ambience here needs reworking; (below) Jungli Murgh

The staples in Lebanon, like lamb, were introduced by Ottoman Turks, who ruled the region from 1516 to 1918. Once, they were defeated in World War I by the French army, flan, a caramel custard dessert and buttery croissants were introduced by them. In Rajasthan, the food is largely influenced by nomads, whose cooking processes were largely influenced by lack of water and fresh vegetables. Indian Fine Dine Seven, for its latest promotional campaign, Khad, has turned to them.

Nomads, the ultimate chefs
To know what you're eating quadruples the joy of dining, and when the preparations are as rich as they sound, the food tastes better than it actually is. Something similar happened to me when I briefly chatted with Chef Devraj Halder about their campaign, and how nomads who live the most basic lifestyle inspired a niche restaurant in a five-star property to come up with a food festival around them. Nomads lived a life of scarcity, which affected their way of cooking. To save water, they used curd. That's why the preparations were primarily dry.

Before going to work in the morning, they would fill earthen pots with food ingredients, seal it and put it in sand. As the sun went up, it heated the sand around the pot, and with this heat the ingredients were cooked automatically. When the nomads returned in the evening, the family meal would be ready to serve. When asked how much of it has been replicated in his kitchen, the chef said: "Obviously we can't cook it in sand. We fill small earthen pots with ingredients, place them in a container which is filled with sand.

The container is heated from all sides, and that's how the dishes are prepared. It takes five-six hours of cooking, and before serving we just heat it." Frankly, the chef sounded too ambitious, and back in my mind I was not ready to buy the concept.

Surprisingly true
The restaurant, which needs to rework a bit on its ambience, was almost empty when we went, and it looked as if the eatery isn't doing good. But by the time we finished the first round of drinks, all the tables were full and everyone was enjoying the performance of a singers' troupe, which crooned everything from Woh Bhooli Dastan to Kagaz Ki Kashti.

The promotional menu has close to a dozen dishes, and we got a chance to dig into mutton khad keema, zamin doz machli, soundhi subzi, ker sangri (dried lentils and beans from indigenous plants which are extensively used by Rajasthanis in Bikaner, Barmer and Jaisalmir),u00a0 matke wali daal and baajre ki roti. Their kitchen is largely open, and I could see young chefs preparing the food exactly the way they promise.

On the open cooking counter, some chefs were opening small pots and working a bit on the ingredients before the final serving which is done in pots. Most delicacies have strong flavours of tomatoes and spices like cardamom, mace, bay leaf and cloves but their use is minimal. The moment the handis are opened, a strong smell of desi ghee adds to the aroma of freshly pounded spices. Remember the aroma which is created when the drops of first raindrops fall on parched lands? I spotted something similar in all the preparations.