You’ve all seen the word Jan bandied about as a term of endearment but have you ever seen it on a menu? Well you can now, and learn it’s a dish from Arunachal Pradesh which is made with chicken, club gourd and fermented bamboo shoot. Weird as the ingredient combinations may sound, this light soupy meat and vegetable curry tastes heavenly.
There is another odd sounding dish — Kyur, a rustic bread from Jammu. This soft flour bread (almost like neer dosa) is slightly sweet and has a few drops of ghee and goes well with any spicy vegetable. All this and many more such incredibly different dishes are presented as part of ‘Incredible Cuisines of India’.
Incredible Cuisines of India is a food fest at Kanak in Trident that aims to bring out some of the hidden cuisines, or at least a few dishes, for people to discover and relish. The fest has made an honest attempt to cover most of the states and their dishes and wins brownie points in bringing out some of the best tasting dishes with a wide selection of veg and non-veg, from starters to main course.
Chef Manik has designed the menu with help from in-house experts, so the menu includes dishes from Bihar, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur and so on. Almost every dish is prepared in home style, which give them a totally different flavour.
Here food lovers can get to know that Indian cuisine is more than butter chicken, idly, dosa, palak paneer, veg kadhai, biryani and appam and stew. This probably is one fest where vegetarians will not be stuffed with paneer and more paneer ; vegetarian dishes range from pumpkin curry, thattai , chakke ki sabzi , kanika , masala puri and a lot more. Aloo debarre is a slightly flavoured stuffed aloo tikki and serving it with a tangy radish dip makes it all the more delectable.
If you haven’t had good kebabs in a long time, try the Lamb seekh kebab which is prepared with onion and reduced milk. Bhopali keeme ki seekh is a speciality from Madhya Pradesh; these kebabs are juicy and succulent and mildly spiced.
If you want to give a break to the bread and rice, then go for the aloo chokha with litti . Oven roasted whole potatoes mashed and mixed with raw mustard oil, smoked chilli and onions has little fire-roasted brinjal added to it to make it taste even better. When served with whole wheat dumplings, with sattu inside and served soaked in clarified butter, you realise why litti-chokh is a popular speciality from Bihar.
The most surprising dish that would leave a first timer guessing is the Chakke ki sabzi . Whole wheat morsels simmered in a flavoured home style curry. Ask the chef for the preparation process and be surprised at the work that goes into making the gluten morsels. This happens to be a speciality from Madhya Pradesh.
Try the ambal from Jammu with some piping hot wheat rotis and be surprised at the amazing combination. Ambal is red pumpkin curry made in absolutely home style.
The chicken and mutton sides and mains are worth the try. What didn’t meet the expectations of the name was the thattai.
While it’s common knowledge that thattai is a light crispy snack, what came to the plate was something like a masala vada . If you can ignore the name, the dish was actually delicious, especially when combined with the coconut chutney. The fest is on till January 30.
