All posts tagged: South Indian Cuisine

My Favourite Food Festival – Aquafest 2016 @ Karavalli (Residency Road)

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It’s time to indulge! Karavalli’s famed Aquafest is back and is going to leave you in raptures till the end of this month. A veritable feast from the sea, Bangalore’s most esteemed dining institution brings to you sublime flavours of the southern coasts. Like every year, the menu is a careful composition of recipes gleaned from homemakers with a deep love for their cuisine, perfected in the rustic kitchens of Karavalli over 26 years. Chef Naren and team have an outstanding menu this November and I for one am always surprised on how they keep pushing the perfection envelope!

Masala Fried Fish for rasam rice and other world problems

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Yes, I know what you’re thinking. A recipe for Masala Fried Fish?? I mean, how basic right?! You chuck some chili and turmeric paste and deep fry the fish and it’s done. Fini. Like honestly, why even bother listing it here. But I have, because we make this at home very often and it’s used as a bait to eat the rasam rice. It’s part of the family repertoire of quick fix meals when all we want to do is put our legs up and chill or in most cases, order in some greasy Chinese.

Donne Biryani – Bangalore Style

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I’m not certain we can call this Biryani in the purest sense of the word. But the debate on what constitutes Biryani has been raging for decades and I don’t have the time or the inclination to delve into its subtleties. For me, Biryani will always be a one-pot meal of rice and meat cooked together with spices, served with aplomb on a Sunday afternoon. Sundays would be incomplete without Biryani in our house, though logically it had no place in Andhra-Karnataka cuisine.

Dakshin’s new menu – A century in the making! (ITC Windsor)

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Being a South Indian myself, I am wont to think that I don’t need to dine out in a restaurant that specializes in South Indian cuisine. Why, my mom could churn out the same things at home and I would probably like that better because my palate has developed a taste for it over the years. This deluded thought process however, has robbed me of one of the best fine dining experiences the city has to offer – till today. (Ok, it was three weeks ago, but let’s not get that specific!). Dakshin has been rated time and again as one of the finest South Indian restaurants in the country (It just won the Times Food Award for the third time in a row this Sunday). Specializing in authentic coastal and regional specialties of the five Southern states (Telangana included) – it strives to recreate the splendor and diversity of a cuisine that is definitely not restricted to Idly-Vada-Sambhar. The restaurant has taken it up a notch and now indulges us with an array of …

Aquafest 2014 @ Karavalli (Residency Road)

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My favourite festival at my favourite restaurant in Bangalore is back! Aquafest at the Karavalli started 24 years ago and has become an event to look forward to every year. A seafood lover is assured of a sublime experience till the end of this month! Karavalli (the land by the sea) has distilled the best cuisine secrets from the bunts of Mangalore, the Kodavas, the Malayalees, and the Goan Portugese to bring them under one roof. And Aquafest is the crown jewel, where twenty new Sea food preparations with as many seafood varieties, will be dished out from the kitchen as well as the ‘West Coast Grills Station’. And for those who love their classics, the Karavalli Signature Collection is also part of the festival.

Syrian Christian Delicacies @ Karavalli (The Gateway Hotel, Bangalore)

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Karavalli has a long standing tradition of training its chefs in the kitchens of traditional homes and still continues to procure ingredients from the original source. As a tribute to household recipes that can be lost in the pages of time, Karavalli makes a conscious effort to bring this back into our memories and taste buds by hosting traditional food festivals. This February it plays host to Mathai Achayan and his Syrian Christian delicacies.  God’s own country has a host of different communities that call it home and each one of them has a special way of treating local spices like red chillies, coconut, pepper, fresh fish and meats to bring out something completely unique. In Kerala, the Syrian Christian food is a little different from the regular Kerala Hindu Sadya, becaue of the addition of non-vegetarian elements to the meal. The most noted contribution of the community to the cuisine of Kerala has been the hoppers, duck roast, meen vevichattu and the istew (stew). Mr. Mathai hails from the Vattukulam, in Kottayam district, which …

Chicken Ghee Roast (Warning – It’s Red Hot!)

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Why am I giving you a recipe for a crazy-red-hot dish in the middle of summer? Have I lost my bonkers (and my taste buds)? Ahem ahem… that was a nice opening spiel, don’t you think? Now, getting down to business. If you think about it – all the ‘hottest’ food in the world comes from the ‘hottest’ places. Mexico, Indonesia, Andhra Pradesh, Nagaland…all famous for foods that send you running, to pack your tongue with ice! Logically, you would expect these people to be sipping on watermelon juice and eating a cucumber salad and not trying to replicate the external temperature assault, internally! So why do they do it? The wisdom of ages pours forth now (actually this is a result of being a closet trivia junkie!). Spicy food is your best bet to cool down. Capsaicin, the chemical in all spicy food is in cahoots with our central nervous system to help regulate the temperature in our body. It starts by increasing the blood circulation and dilating capillaries – resulting in more of …

Red and Green Coconut Chutneys for Idlis or Dosa

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Featured in Tastespotting.com on 18th Sep 2012 I was the kind of South Indian kid who always liked her Dosas more than her Idlis. The crispy buttery pancake always made my mouth water a lot more than the healthier alternative – The Idli. The only place I would crave an Idli was this little cart near Commercial Street. There are more than a dozen idli sellers with similar wares in and around the area but I always gravitated to this one. The reason was simple – the chutney’s! This man made the most awesome red and green chutney’s to go along with the idli’s. People would queue up in front of his cart from 7:00 pm upto 9:00 pm. His stock would never last beyond that! The whole exercise of ordering in this place is an art – of War! You jostle through the crowd to reach a point where he can actually see your face and hear you. Then you scream out your order (no dilly dallying) and squirm your way out of the …