I feel sorry for all our neighbourhood meat shops. In every colony, there is a shop where you get, apart from fresh meat, marinated chicken and fish. If you are lucky, you get ready-to-cook lamb, too. Some of these places are rather good, some eminently forgettable. But they do help when friends suddenly turn up for a meal. You rush to the local shop, get your chicken lollipop or tikkas, fry and grill them at home, and you have something tasty to offer your friends.
Conversing with butcher
Afghani chicken
Now, of course, you don’t even have to go to the butcher’s. My local butcher is a great pal of mine, and whenever I drop by there, we talk about haleem and nihari, and where one should go for the right kind of kababs. He has an array of ready-to-cook stuff, too, but I don’t usually buy those. For, I must admit, I am not greatly fond of the orangish chicken and meat pieces that you find in glass counters in most of these meat shops.
But then, as I discovered recently, you can order some neat ready-to-cook stuff from online stores. For a while now I have been ordering my fish and chicken from an online outlet called Fresh to Home. A few days ago I tried out another popular online delivery outfit called Licious. And then, when two of my friends said they were coming home for dinner last week, I decided to order some ready-to-cook dishes from Licious.
I asked for some prawn zafrani, Bengali-style chicken cutlets, fish tikka, and creamy Afghani chicken. The food was excellent, and the rates were really low. There was a scheme on, because of which every dish came at a discount.
The prawn zafrani (10-12 pieces), for instance, is for ₹297, but I got it for ₹ 262; the eight pieces of chicken cutlets were for ₹199 but were being sold that day for ₹169, fish tikka for ₹239 (actual price ₹319) and Afghani chicken for ₹224 (otherwise for ₹299). I put the cutlets in the air-fryer, and within 10 minutes, we had a plate of crispy chicken chops. I don’t know why the cutlets were called Bengali for they didn’t much look like Bengali cutlets, which are usually oblong or rectangular. But they were hot, and went really well with kasundi – which is a sharp mustard sauce popular in Bengal. We stir-fried the prawn zafrani, and those came out well, too.
The prawns were crunchy and the spicy masala on it was just right. The friends enjoyed the fish, again shallow-fried, but I think we went wrong with the Afghani chicken. We should have grilled or perhaps lightly sautéed it. Instead, we put the chicken in a tomato-based sauce, which, I fear, didn’t come out very well. But we live and learn.
Licious has some other nice stuff, which I’d like to try out: The lamb chapli kabab (₹297) and habanero chicken wings (₹149 for ten pieces), for instance. They also deliver quail, rabbit, and duck.
As I said, I feel sorry for our local butchers. What will happen to them if we all go online? I think I shall follow the middle path – visit my butcher now and then, and order online when friends suddenly drop by. Let everyone blossom.
