As a family, we are cooking together. My in-laws are stuck here in Bengaluru with us. They came from Delhi and couldn’t get back because the lockdown had started. So, cooking has become the main activity of the day. I think that the best way to spend this time is to cook something nice and share it with the family. That is the way I am looking at it.
Yesterday was a vegetable fajita day along with broccoli and almond soup. For lunch today, we had Indian food. There was pan-fried arbi, masoor dal, aloo gobi, rice and chutney. My wife has cooked dinner today: appam, vegetable stew and pomfret masala and we are having a glass of red wine. She and my son also made a French vanilla cake with sprinkles on top. I am pescatarian technically so it’s a feast for me today.
My wife is also trying her hand at Thai green curry with vegetables and Thai red curry with prawns. That is the combination she likes to follow. We had a very nice, spicy, tangy salad that day made with raw mango, cucumber, cabbage and carrot with a Thai-style dressing. These are the things we have been cooking at home. It’s been a mix of various things: from Mexican and Thai to regular Indian khana .
Basically, everybody is contributing. Some things are being cooked by my mother-in-law, some by my wife and some by me. My 14-year-old daughter is also very fond of cooking and cooks often. She made a cinnamon roll the other day. My son, who is 12 years old, doesn’t cook often. Once in a while, his mother will tell him to help her, or learn something, and then he will.
- Ingredients: 150 gm cauliflower florets; 150gm carrot cut into cubes; 150 gm potato; 150 gm green peas; 150 gm French beans, cut into one-inch long pieces; 150 gm button mushroom, cut into halves (optional); 1 finely sliced onion; 2 slit green chillies; 2 tbsp finely copped ginger; 4 cracked whole green cardamom; 1 tsp whole black pepper corn; 1 1.5-inch cinammon stick; 8 cloves; a few curry leaves; 500 ml coconut milk; 100 ml water; 2 tbsp coconut oil/ sunflower oil; salt to taste
- Method: Heat oil in a pan, add cardamom, clove, peppercorn, cinnamon and allow them to crackle. Add curry leaves followed by onions and stir-fry for a couple of minutes over medium heat. Add ginger and slit green chillies and stir-fry for a minute or so more before adding the vegetables and continuing the cooking process for a couple of minutes. Add water and coconut milk and bring to boil. Reduce heat to simmer and cook for 15minutes or so until the vegetables are tender. Server with appam or Kerala red rice. Recipe by chef Abhijit Saha
I am also developing new menus. We are planning to change the menu for Red Rhino, a microbrewery in Whitefield. I am also working on the new menus for the airport lounges in Bengaluru. The lounges are undergoing a complete makeover and will hopefully be opening soon, after the situation is over.
To do trials at home for some dishes may be possible, but it is difficult without all the different ingredients that you require. Some simpler dishes, we can do.
My advice is that [now] is a great opportunity for those who don’t cook to learn how to cook and share their dishes with their family at home. Right now, you can’t share it with friends (laughs) because of social distancing. We are following that. We are not going out at all except to buy essentials like medicines and vegetables.
Before the lockdown, on March 1, a day before my birthday, we had a great feast at home. I invited a lot of friends and I cooked Italian food: mushroom risotto and two types of pasta. That was a great evening.
In this series, some of India’s popular chefs and restauteurs will be sharing their lockdown cooking habits and recipes with us over the next few days.
