Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Agra and Rajasthan

To be honest, I got sick of Indian food very quickly on the two-week trip. Plus all Indian food looks pretty much the same, so I also gave up on taking pictures very quickly - one curry really does look very much like another I'm afraid. That is not to say we didn't have some great food, but I did feel like I gained 2 stone in 2 weeks with all the heavy sauces and buttery naan.

We were extremely P, and really didn't have a plan until we reached Delhi. Our route turned out to be a trip through the Golden Triangle, with more of Rajasthan tacked on the end - we had been previously more ambitious, thinking of also meeting up with Meghana in Goa and also maybe Kerala, but the inefficiency of the transport system in India really doesn't allow for that much ground to be covered in two weeks.

Agra was our first stop - I'd been before, so I enjoyed the pool whilst Carl went off to see the Taj Mahal and the Fort. Here are a few photos from my 2007 trip when I went to India with work with Norby, Edwin and Jonny - partly due to popular demand that I post some non-food pictures, but mainly so I can post a gratuitous photo of Jonny. Agra Fort is seriously underrated, definitely the most beautiful fort I visited in India:


We also went to Fatehpur Sikri on the way from Agra to Jaipur - I had agreed to go to Agra again so that I could go to this place, only to realised I'd been there before in 2007 - duh! Getting up at 3am to see the Taj at sunrise meant I really wasn't awake the first time round.

Given that we were visiting a mosque, Jonny had to do a David Beckham:

But anyway, back to food. In Agra, we treated ourselves to a dinner at Peshaweri, a restaurant owned by the ITC group in India, with many similar branches around the country (both Carl and I had eaten from the same menu in Mumbai and Bangalore respectively). Most of what's on the menu is pretty ordinary, but their prawns (again, fist sized) and their leg of lamb is unusual and out of this world. Their dal murkhani will just clog your arteries, but is sooooo good:


Moving on from Agra, we spent a few days in Jaipur, the so-called Pink City. Personally, I thought it was the least interesting place we visited - being the capital of Rajasthan, it is crowded, congested, and not really that pink - but we did have one of the most memorable meals here.

I have learnt not to trust Lonely Planet for restaurant recommendations, but this time it did good! Four Seasons (not the Four Seasons of course) is a pure-veg place, and the dishes were much more interesting to the usual Butter Chicken menus we were used to. It is also conveniently very close to an Ayuvedic massage place, where we learnt we didn't really like Ayuvedic massages. The chef special is probably the dish I remember most from the whole trip - paneer, mushrooms, pineapple in a creamy sauce - don't be put off by the pineapple, it worked:


After Jaipur, we went over to Udaipur, where Octopussy was filmed, and apparently Nicole Kidman was there a few days after we were to film at the famous Lake Palace. After that was Jodphur, the Blue City, and then Jaisalmer, the Yellow City famous for its sand dunes.


Unfortunately, as we ventured further and further out of the Golden Triangle and into areas not reachable by plane, the food did get steadily worse. The 'highlight' possibly being the hotel in Jodphur which boasted an international menu containing prawns, fish, pork chops, lamb chops, duck (which got us very excited), but only had chicken available the night we were there. Miraculously, however, I managed the whole trip without any Delhi belly - Carl wasn't quite so lucky.

So I end with a picture of one of the hotels we stayed at. Being P, we were very haphazard in organisation, but ended up staying at some very cute places with a lot of character. This one below is a little haveli (a traditional Indian rich man's house) in Jaipur, in the middle of being renovated into a hotel. The outside was literally crumbling with pigeons pooing everywhere, but inside was really quite nice. Look at the size of the bed!

All in all, fascinating trip. Such a shame I will not be able to stomach Tayyabs or Indian food for a while though.

Monday, March 30, 2009

Delhi - without the belly

Monsoon Wedding is one of my absolute favourite films in the world, and one of the few times when I bought a soundtrack to a film (Slumdog's soundtrack pales in comparison, trust me), so when Carl invited me to be his date at an Indian wedding, I just had to go, naturally. We thought it would also be nice to incorporate it with a bit of travelling around India.

As a world first, I'm uploading a video on my blog (albeit pretty bad quality - my blackberry camera just doesn't really work in the dark)! One of the bride's cousins is a semi-professional dancer, and more weirdly works for one of my ex-clients back in London. Here she is in action!



In all, we spent about 4-5 days in Delhi, and I was very pleased to see the standard of the food is really very high here. Carl's friend Sonali invited us to The Indian Accent at the Manor Hotel in the Friends Colony district of Delhi, a newish restaurant, whose chef also cooks at the Tamarai in London. Its Asian fusion menu was by far the most interesting food we had on the whole trip, and for once I thought that the fusion worked. We started with an amuse bouche of paneer wrapped in rice paper, served very cold:


The highlight of the dish was the mekong basa fish, with a saffron infusion. Beautifully presented, I loved loved the green paste on the fish - for once I thought the spice complemented the fish rather than hid it. Superb.

I had some incredibly big prawns for my main (think size of fist!), good if not very exciting. More exciting was the dessert - a chocolate bombe with flames! Even my rubbish camera managed to capture the excitement!

The other big highlight of Delhi was actually on our last night, when our lovely host Gemma took us to Stonehouse, an uber-trendy bar/restaurant. Carl and I were so sick of Indian food by this point, so a decent Modern European place was just what we needed.

The food really was good, if you steered away from the weird combinations - my main of seabass with squid ink risotto and porcini sauce was just too much, the seabass also a little overcooked. But my starter of tuna and beef carpaccio with a sesame and kalonji sauce was just simply delicious. The perfect antidote to the thick Indian curries!

Unfortunately, I really can't recommend the restaurant simply due to the service. I'm not normally too fussed about these things, but it really reminded me that Asia doesn't really do good service.

But talking of service, by far the most fun meal was when Gemma had the genius idea of getting a sushi chef to come cook at her house. It is just such a nice idea, and the prices are really pretty reasonable (less than £20 a head). The sushi wasn't super exciting, but then we were in India - being able to have raw fish is good enough!

Given that the last time I was in Delhi, it was in a mad-rush case where we ate a lot of hotel food, I was mighty pleased with this time's food. However, things took a bit of a nose-dive when we started travelling - posts coming soon!

Friday, March 6, 2009

Tofu

Well, it is my last night in Kunming, and I'm getting rather upset. I will especially miss the people - my teachers 涛涛,龙飞 and 飞飞 (for once I will use simplified Chinese for them!), and of course my wonderful, wonderful host family. They have been absolute diamonds to me, and my homestay mum made me all my favourites for my last supper: 夫妻肺片 (Husband and Wife lung slices), and a simple tofu stirfry.

Tofu is probably the most underrated and misunderstood Chinese foodstuff there is. Foreigners only seem to eat it if they are vegetarian, but it is the most wondrous wondrous stuff. I was brought up on tofu mixed with rice, the thought of it immediately fills me with cosy warmth.

However, I did want to warn people about the tofu in Yunnan and Sichuan. I first came across it on the trip to Chengdu with Caris and Rosy: after a few hours of wandering around in the mountains, we thought we would go and have a nice bowl of '豆花' which appears to be available everywhere, thinking it is just like the lovely dessert 豆腐花 common in Hong Kong (and which happens to be my mum's 拿手 dish). How wrong we were!!!

豆花 in both Sichuan and Yunnan are savoury, naturally served with chilli. In Chengdu, it appeared to be just a big slab of slightly wobbly tofu, with chilli on the side, presumably to be mixed with rice. A Kunming specialty is 豆花米线, which I definitely do not recommend: rice threads are quickly boiled, then drained, and topped with chilli sauce, preserved vegetables, peanuts, and then a big 'pet' of wobbly tofu on top. Even a tofu fan like me struggled through my bowl - bleugh!