If you balk at jalebis with mutton curry, try fish sauce in cocktail. Mumbai chefs reveal the bizarre food pairings that rock their boat
Recently, an amusing Twitter thread had us thinking about all the "weird" food pairings that we have secretly fancied. It all began when YouTuber and beauty blogger Jackie Aina, 31, from Los Angeles, revealed that she loves adding mustard to yogurt. She then went on to ask her followers to share some of their favourite weirdest food pairings. A man confessed to 'dipping an Oreo in coffee' and a woman shared her love of 'French fries dipped in Coke.' We decided to go ahead and ask Mumbai chefs about their bizarre concoctions that turned out to be unexpectedly delicious.
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Jalebis with railway mutton curry
Chef Avinash Saha,Typhoon Shelter, Lower Parel
No amount of cringe and eye rolls from family members can stop Avinash Saha from eating hot jalebis with mutton curry on the side. He even makes it a point to recommend the pairing to curious onlookers. Some take to it, some don't. "I tell people never judge a strange food pairing, until you've tried it," says Saha, executive chef at Lower Parel's Typhoon Shelter.
Pic/Sneha Kharabe
"Because the spiciness of mutton curry cuts the cloying jalebis. Despite that, the latter manages to remain crunchy," he says. But it's not just any mutton curry. The one that has him in its thrall is served at a dhaba in Durgapur, West Bengal, where he grew up. The dhaba and the jalebi store - both still running - are located near the ground where Saha used to play cricket. "It was a ritual to have the railway mutton curry, as it's called, and jalebis after playing a match. Once I happened to put both in the same plate and, voila, it was one of the best things I had eaten," he laughs. Later, he tried pairing it with other Bengali sweets like rassagula and gulab jamun, but it did not match up. "I still make it a point to go there and eat whenever I visit Durgapur."
Onion cordial and fish sauce in a cocktail
Chef Nikhil Abhyankar, Miss T, Colaba
Ever thought that the cocktail you're sipping on might have fish sauce in it? Chef Nikhil Abhyankar of Miss T would have never concocted this seemingly outlandish drink if it wasn't for a trip to Vietnam last year. "We were conducting R&D for cocktails for the restaurant, and met Vietnamese chef Tran Duc who introduced us to some local ingredients.
Pic/Suresh Karkera
That's where we came across the aged fish sauce," he says. Abhayankar's initial idea was to work off a classic Gibson which is traditionally garnished with a pickle onion. However, in place of the pickled onion, he used onion cordial, a syrup made of Parmesan cheese, onions and sugar, and to add some more South East Asian zing, he added a 365 days' aged clay pot fish sauce. "Considering the onion cordial and fish sauce have a distinct taste, the result was an edgy, yet smooth cocktail." The drink is available at the restaurant.
Chicken liver with beetroot
Vivek Swamy, Out Of The Blue, Bandra
If there's one thing that chef Vivek Swamy has learned, it's that people don't take to chicken liver easily. "If somebody loves it already like I do, then they gobble the dish up. But if I try convincing a customer it's 50 per cent hit or miss ratio," says the head chef of Bandra's Out Of The Blue. Yet, he decided to use chicken liver for a themed sit-down event few years ago.
He chose to pair it with beetroot "because it has a very specific quality to cut down the metallic taste from the liver and offers sweetness and earthiness to the final product". "It made a lot of sense in my head, but I wasn't sure about others," he laughs. It was fashioned into a bread spread for a crostini. He admits a lot of people were wary of trying it, but once they sampled it, they were sold.
Mackerel with plums
Chef Sandeep Sreedharan, Escabrahm, and Mahe Goa
By his own admission, Sandeep Sreedharan, founder of private catering venture Escabrahm, is hard to impress. That holds true even for his own culinary creations. So, if he adds plums to mackerel, know that a lot of thought has gone into it. "Mackerel is a fatty fish with a strong taste and flavour of its own. The character is such that it pairs well with something a bit tarty like plum or strawberries," he says. The reason for choosing the two ingredients is linked to his uncle's home in Ooty, where he spent a large part of his childhood.
"The bungalow was surrounded by plum trees, where I would pluck the fruit and eat it raw. At night, my aunt would slow cook mackerels for dinner. When you think back, it all comes together. Just like the mackerel and the plums won't work individually, but when slow cooked together it is infinitely delicious," he says. To balance the flavours, he sprinkles podi (gunpowder) and spiced coconut milk to the dish. The dish, now on the menu at Mahé Goa, Anjuna, is turning out to be one of their most fast moving items. Sreedharan hasn't stopped at that. His other whacky pairings include moringa flowers with shark head, methi seeds with rice and jaggery kheer, and lacto-fermented kanji with dried fish and moong.
Crispy squid and jackfruit
Chef Raymond Wong, Hakkasan, Bandra
The Guardian's recent article described jackfruit, as "a spectacularly ugly, smelly, unfarmed, unharvested pest-plant native to India." Among the many who have stood by the fruit is Raymond Wong, expat head chef of Bandra's Hakkasan. "When I was in India, one of my fellow kitchen team members had just come back from his hometown and brought fresh jackfruit.
I loved it," he says. So much so, that he even took some home to Malaysia. Back home in his kitchen, he had a sudden brainwave of adding it to a wok dish that consisted of crunchy squid. " I've noticed, although we [Malaysians] eat jackfruit a lot, we never tend to use it while cooking. So, to use a fruit like this in a hot preparation is unheard of in South East Asian cuisine and will never be found," he says. The result of his experiment was a well-balanced dish, with the sweetness of the jackfruit blending with the slight saltiness of the squid. "I tossed a simple sweet chilli sauce that was not too strong on the palate. All in all, it was wonderful balance of flavours."
Cheese, bacon, strawberry jam and chipotle omelette
Chef Victor Manuel Murguia Mancilla, Sancho's, Khar
Mancilla won't forget the summer of 2000. He was visiting a friend in his hometown Mexicali, Baja California, after nine months of being on board the Sun Princess cruise ship. "I was famished after pulling off all-nighters in a row, and when I opened the fridge, the only thing we had was a couple of eggs, a bit of strawberry jam and a little chipotle adobo, almost dried up in the tin," he recalls.
Pics/Shadab Khan
Unable to think of anything better, he decided to whip up an omelette. All he had to do was pour the batter, flip it, place all the ingredients on it and then fold it. "It turned out to be one helluva snack because it had all possible flavours; it was smokey, crunchy, cheesy, spicy with a nice hint of sweetness from the strawberry jam. Who would have thought!" he laughs.
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