TRULY CHINESE!

Ni Hao and xeixei are all the Chinese I know! But that hasn't stopped me from having a lifelong love affair with Chinese cuisine. Long before the 'food wave' or rather deluge that has permeated most nooks and corners of urban India, the fare most people ate out was Chinese, or rather what went for Chinese- the usual chowmein, chili chicken, sweet and sour chicken, the momos of course and such. Where I grew up, for some strange unfathomable reason, most Chinese eateries served the dishes along with a small plate of sliced onions and whole green chilies. In fact, most places still do. Then one got acquainted with China Town in Kolkata and above all, the eateries in Tangra. There were several Sundays of getting up early and heading to China Town for breakfast. I had a simple rule, I ate what I could recognise. The five star hotels were of course always there but in one's youth the pocket is not always that way inclined!

When you move places - literally that is - and get to know another city, learning about, being told and discovering eating joints is always a big part of life. Then you walk into one and you know  that's its for keeps. Walking into Taipan, the Chinese rooftop restaurant at The Oberoi, New Delhi, is like meeting up with an old friend. Everything is familiar and warm with a feeling of happiness and a sense of continuance. Taipan in Chinese denotes Supreme Leader and the restaurant lives up to its name every which way. This is one place where the Chinese food is as it should be -authentic to the core. In a world that seems to be hurtling by at beyond the speed of light rate and where traditional cuisines seem to acquire indefinable avatars and so called cutting edges, it feels good deep within to know that some eateries remain constant. Incidentally, The Oberoi, New Delhi celebrates its golden jubilee this year! Taipan, that opened in 1982 is course much younger but what I really love is the decor and ambiance which has remained as it was then - classy and subtle, like a regal beauty ageing gracefully.

To be at Taipan during the Chinese New Year (February 19-26) is to celebrate the Year of the Sheep with a festive menu drawn up by Chef Qian Jian. The special menu is compact but perfect, going from chicken and Chinese cabbage Jiao Zi dumplings to chrysanthemum red snapper with sweet and sour sauce to tofu with black fungus, snow peas and baby corn in a spicy soy sauce to stir fried rice noodles with Chinese cabbage and much more. The convenient part is one can have any of the dishes from the new year menu individually or as part of a  set menu, which to me couldn't have been better because if you are in Taipan and you don't binge on its wide varieties of dumplings, it seems an incomplete meal. And that is exactly what we did - making our picks from both the menus (new year and a la carte) with, naturally, help from Chef Jian.  

I have no qualms in admitting it was binging with a bang! We began with the chicken and Chinese cabbage Jiao Zi dumplings and went on to devour shrimp hargow; the signature four seasons dumplings; char sew bao and shrimp and asparagus dumplings. Every bite was a melt in the mouth affair with paper thin casings, except for the bao which  traditionally has a thick-ish casing while the generous stuffing were all delicious. For the main course we had braised pork dumpling (yes again!) in soy sauce, from the new year menu, with its tantalising sweet and savoury taste; the chrysanthemum red snapper with the delicate sweet and sour sauce; the wok fried string bans with green onion and fresh red chili - the crispness of the bean certainly requires a very deft hand - accompanied by stir fried rice noodles with Chinese cabbage from the new year menu. It was a meal that makes you feel that everything is all right with the world and the one above there is looking down on you with benign blessings.

Braised pork dumplings in soy sauce

Chrysanthemum red snapper in sweet and sour sauce

Wok fried string beans

When it comes to sweet dish, I have no hesitation in saying that  if you have a Chinese meal forget the desert and instead go with green tea. Chef Jian however had a pleasant surprise in store, the sweet date dumpling (yes, yes again!) in syrup, also from the new year menu. When it came it looked like a hardened small rasogolla in a watery syrup, but when you bite in, the date filling inside wins over your palate with subtleness. For a dish that gave nun-like vibes and look, just white and almost childlike simple, the taste was just that, restrained yet so winning.

 

Sweet date dumplings in sugar syrup

As we walk out of the rooftop restaurant, overlooking a stunning verdant spread below especially the golf club greens, you realise that for all the world experimenting with food in every which way from molecular gastronomy to what-have-you, nothing can ever score over authenticity, especially in a classy ambiance. It makes you fall in love with Taipan all over again!

CRAB-BY CALLS

There are family tales and legends and one often related in mine is how my mother, pregnant with her first child, binged on crabs! Those were not exotic dishes but simple river crabs, freshly caught and roasted over wood fire. She of course, had nothing to do with the catching, cleaning and cooking- the crabs were served on a platter and she gorged till kingdom come. I guess those days there were no doctors who told pregnant women to be careful when it comes to sea/river catch. Every time I heard the story I would somewhat shudder and wonder how anyone on earth could eat  those claw-y things. Must be hormones I would tell myself. Never play smug is what I have now learnt especially if you have a mother who salivates at the mention of crabs!

My crabby affair started rather late but once it did I plunged into headlong, eyes open and whooping all the way. It's another matter that in the years we lived in Kolkata, I would curl up my nose when it came to crabs despite the crab delicacies specially made for us at one Chinese restaurant in Tangra. I wish it was possible to self deliver a backside kick! And yes I do have a crab story too. That was the time we were living on  Baker Street, Kolkata (Yes there is one indeed, close to Bhawani Bhawan, abutting Alipore and bang opposite the South 24 Parganas  administrative headquarters). It was a ground floor flat with the drawing room windows that opened bang into the footpath outside, which meant the windows remained permanently shut. That was fine but what was not fine was I could never ever figure out why those who built the flat never made windows on the opposite wall that had a small neat garden outside, accessed through the dining room only. That, those in the know say that's what PWD flats are all about; that's the sarkari public works department. So be it. To come back to my crab story - one morning I get up early, walked down the little corridor from the bedrooms leading to the kitchen-dining-sitting area, turn left into the kitchen, switch on the light and start screaming. There were these little creatures crawling all over which in my early morning befuddled state looked like giant insects from a horror movie. There was a bucket with some water in one corner and these little crabs were crawling out of it and all over. Apparently, someone had got tonnes of river crabs for the spouse somewhat late at night and the home guard had left them in the bucket.

Crabs? Does one eat crabs? The home guards looked at me as one would at a child saying no to ice-cream. That's where girlfriends come in - and they did, two of them. We rushed through work and rushed back to tackle the crabs. The two did and we squatted down on floor cushions and had a feast. Well, I had a bit here and there but watched others go loco. A Bombay-based banker (then it was yet to be Mumbai), the spouse's batch-mate, dropped in suddenly. Everyone offered him crabs. Those were the days when newly married and all that, forget crab tongs and the paraphernalia, we didn't even have a fully furnished home. The Bombay-banker, took a big claw and sigh, the claw got to him first -the cut was long and bleeding and all washing, Dettol, cotton pads, gauze bandages finally managed to stench the blood flow somewhat.

Somewhere my equation with crabs changed - ate them/eat them everywhere, anywhere and in any style, though the Singapore chili crabs remain the perennial favourite. Like a continuing story, the daughter first wouldn't touch it with a bargepole and then, like all neo converts developed an almost rabid passion for it.  For a family of crab lovers, strangely I never cooked them at home. I still couldn't get myself to handle them prior cooking, till last Christmas that is. A dear friend from Kolkata, on a visit, decided that Christmas eve meal would be a sea-fare and not the usual giant leg of ham etc. So off she trotted off to INA Market with her daughter and came laden with crabs and more crabs and jumbo prawns.Apparently she first bought the sea crabs though her first choice is river crab and suddenly, in one corner shop she spied river ones and naturally she had to have them too. The duo threw us out of the kitchen and set to work and .............

Crab-ilicious!

  

Prawns to pine for!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then of course there had to be plum cake from Nahoum's, New Market, Kolkata, dark, luscious, scandalous and to-be-pounced-upon at all cost. 

One moment, it was big and the next- nearly gone!

The recipes that my friend followed was ultra simple, I have always believed that when the main ingredients are to die for it is absurd to go for a complicated recipe. All that the crab dish had was ginger-garlic and garam masala, salt and coriander garnish.The prawn recipe was another simpler affair and all the more delicious for it.

Like someone testing hot waters by tipping in a toe, I decided that it was high time that yours sincerely tackled the crab in my own kitchen. Like all first timers one decided it had to be Singapore chili crab, my style that is, and nothing else. The first attempt was less than passable. But of course, you don't give up, do you. And I went at it again. It was about two and a half  kg of sea crabs and here's how I went about it:

Crabs, 21/2 kg (before cleaning)

Ginger-garlic, 2 tsp, minutely minced

Onion, 1 small, minced

Red pepper, 2, minced (Actually bird's eye chili or tiny red chillies should be used but some in the family have no capacity at all to eat anything even remotely chili spicy!)

Tomato puree, 250gm

Indonesian ketchup, 2 tsp

Shrimp paste, 2 tsp

Salt, to taste

Sugar, 1/2 tsp ( I use what we call mishri, tiny powdered sugar bits because wedding invites or Diwali gifts somehow seem to have mishri packets tagged!)

   

Heat a wok, toss in the ginger-garlic mince, stir briskly briefly, add minced pepper and stir, add onions and stir briskly. Throw in the crab pieces and stir fry for a while till a tinges of orange appear. Meanwhile in a glass bowl mix the tomato puree with the Indonesian ketchup, shrimp paste, salt to taste and the sugar (if you want the gravy slightly thick mix in a teaspoon of cornflour too), pour over the crab pieces and mix well. Cover with a lid and let it cook for 4/5 minutes on simmer, stirring occasionally. 

That's all that needs to be done.

    

                                       

And guess what we had it with? Since I had no clue on how to make the Singapore style Sala pao (the steamed buns served with the crabs) and didn't want the botheration of looking up the menu on the Internet, I decided that, like or lump it, it would be Yorkshire pudding as accompaniment. Call it cuisine corruption of the highest order or whatever but boy did it work! It was just perfect to mop up the slurp-y gravy.

While making Yorkshire pudding I follow a simple formula - the eggs, the flour and the milk should be of the same height, yes same height! Take a glass jar or bowl and break in the eggs (I used 5), mark the height carefully and pour in the eggs into a bigger bowl. It is best to mark the egg-height on the outside of the glass jar/bowl because you have to dry the inside to put in the flour, the level has to be exactly the same height as that of the eggs. Get the drift? Pour the flour over the eggs. Then pour in room temperature milk, yes up to the same level and pour that over the eggs-flour. Put in a pinch of salt and pepper and mix thoroughly. Let the mixture stand for at least half an hour; it would be  best if you could let it rest for more, maybe a couple of hours.  Heat the oven to 250C. I use muffin cups. Grease the cups generously either with butter or oil and put in the empty greased muffin cups into the oven. Yes please empty cups! It will take a minute or two for the muffin cups to heat up thoroughly and the grease to start smoking. Take out the muffin tray and instantly fill in each cup up to halfway. Be careful as there is lot of sizzling and splattering. Put the tray back into the oven (250C) and bake for about 15-20 minutes. Keep an eye as you can see the pudding puffing up furiously. Take the tray out - fat Yorkshire pudding and crabs- that's some combination!

Time to head to the kitchen..................................