I’m in danger of falling way behind on my Bombay food reports. Those of you who follow me on Instagram are aware of most of my food-related activity: from fish markets to takeout to restaurants to street food. On the blog, however, I’ve only posted a report on our lunch at Soam more than a week ago. This is because the program I’m leading here has kept me insanely busy. This is all my own fault as I’ve over-scheduled us more than a little; it’s all been fun and interesting but the pace has also been intense. The program activities themselves, unsurprisingly, involve food. Here now is a brief look at the second meal we ate out together, just a few days after our welcome lunch at Soam. It features one of the cuisines I most love eating when in Bombay: Malvani. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Indian Food
Soam II (Bombay, January 2024)
We’ve been in Bombay for 10 days now. It’s been a hectic week and a half. First we were getting set up at our flat, figuring out where to do all our shopping and so forth. And then my students arrived last Sunday and we plunged into a breakneck pace of outings and activities. First up, last Monday was our welcome lunch, at the iconic Gujarati restaurant, Soam in Babulnath. The last time I ate at Soam—back in December 2018—was when I was last in Bombay, doing prep work for this trip. I ate there then in the company of my old friend Rushina Munshaw Ghildiyal. Rushina, who is a bit of a big wheel in the Indian food world, is curating our food/community-centered explorations while we’re here in Bombay, and she suggested that we kick things off at Soam. I was very quick to agree. Continue reading
India Market/Spice Bazaar (Lake Elmo, MN)
[Note: this post has been updated with more information about changes to the store.]
It’s been a while since my last look at an immigrant market in the Twin Cities metro. Eight months, in fact. My last market report from the area was of the Desi Brothers store in Bloomington back in March. I have for you today a look at India Market/Spice Bazaar in Lake Elmo. Spice Bazaar is the old name and is still the name on the signage. But apparently the store is now under new ownership and the name is about to change officially to India Market. This report, however, is based on a visit there in May of this year (right after our lunch at El Itacate, as it happens). I took lots of pictures with plans to soon post a look at this large store, but the end of my spring term and our impending summer travels put paid to those plans. And then it got lost in the flood and backlog of posts from said summer travels. I’m told that as of a few weeks ago there had been no major changes to the actual layout of the store. But please know that there’s a possibility that the store now looks different than it does in the truly excessive slideshow that follows. Even if it does, however, you should still get a good sense of what to expect there. Continue reading
Pizza Karma (Apple Valley, MN)
By the time this posts we’ll be off on our summer travels. But I have a couple of Twin Cities restaurant reports cued up to post while we’re gone and here is the first one: a an account of a couple of lunches at the new branch of Pizza Karma in Apple Valley. The first Pizza Karma opened in Eden Prairie in 2017. We had been interested but it was a long way to go for what seemed then like an uncertain proposition. During the height of the pandemic we did make it out to Eden Prairie to eat Indian pizza at Bombay Pizza Kitchen. We mostly enjoyed that meal and it strengthened our resolve to eat soon at Pizza Karma. But for one reason or another we never got around to it. That is until they opened a branch much closer to us, in Apple Valley. We’ve now eaten two lunches there in the last month. Herewith my report. Continue reading
The Weekday Lunch Thali at Godavari (Eden Prairie, MN)
On the weekend I posted the second of two reports of the lunch thali meals I ate in New Jersey towards the end of April. The first of these was at Kathiyawadi Kitchen and was really excellent. The second was at Samudhra, and while I didn’t like it nearly as much as I had Kathiyawadi Kitchen’s thali, resizing the photographs from that meal earlier last week put me in the mood for another thali lunch. My hands-down favourite thali in the Twin Cities metro—and indeed my pick for best lunch deal in the area—used to be the weekday thali at Kabob’s Indian Grill in Bloomington. Alas, as has been reported in the comments here on multiple occasions, Kabob’s no longer offers that thali. Nor, for that matter, does Kumar’s in Apple Valley still offer their weekday lunch thali—it’s been replaced by a buffet. Thankfully, Godavari in Eden Prairie—the restaurant that has topped all editions of my Twin Cities South Asian restaurant rankings—now offers a lunch thali. And so it was to Eden Prairie I went for lunch on the day after the last day of my term. Here is what I found. Continue reading
Samudhra (Franklin Park, New Jersey)
The first, second, third and fifty-fifth thing you need to know about Samudhra, an Indian restaurant in Franklin Park, New Jersey, is that they have a very strict dress code. This may well be the only thing you need to know about them; it is almost certainly the only thing you will remember about them. It’ll pop up as the first thing you see when you go to their website. You’ll be told about it when you call to make a reservation. When you arrive, you’ll see it posted prominently on the window of their foyer. When you go in, you’ll see it posted inside the foyer as well. And just in case you haven’t gotten the message, you’ll see it again before you’re walked to your table. “A lot of people have tried to come and eat here in pajamas and chappals or what?”, I asked the host; he smiled embarrassedly and then launched into a saga of how they’ve had to call the police on inappropriately dressed people. My friend and I looked dubiously at him and he petered off. Thankfully, there are no further reminders inside the restaurant. Continue reading
Eating by the Water, Again (Goa, January 2023)
Just about three months after our return from India in February, here is my penultimate report from our brief sojourn in Goa in January. As we had on our last visit to Goa in 2020, we stayed at the home of friends in South Goa, in the village of Velim. North Goa is where all the action is. South Goa is relatively staid by comparison—and once you get down to Velim and environs, there’s really not much going on. This suits us as we are not in search of action on these holidays: we want to be on the beach as much as possible and eat good Goan food and that’s pretty much it. Well, the first of those things is easily available near Velim. We love Cavelossim Beach, which is just about 10 minutes from the house and very not crowded (at least till sunset); we spend most of our time there on sun beds in front of one of the many shacks or in the water. The food is a more complicated story. Continue reading
Desi Brothers (Bloomington, MN)
Here is the latest in my series of looks at grocery stores in the Twin Cities metro that serve the area’s immigrant communities. In January I posted a look at one of the metro’s most established South Asian groceries, Pooja Grocers—way up in Hilltop. Here now is a look at a more recent arrival in the south metro. It is located in Bloomington, in the same general complex at the intersection of Penn Ave. and American Blvd. that is also home to Itton Ramen. And, indeed, we stopped in there after our lunch at Itton Ramen a couple of weeks ago. That lunch disappointed more than a little but I am glad to say that the market did not. Continue reading
Bhawan (Gurgaon, January 2023)
We’ve been following Chef Rahul Dua around for a while. We first encountered his food as relatively early adopters of Cafe Lota at the Crafts Museum. This was back in early 2014. We loved the approach there of bringing dishes from different regions of India together, sometimes in traditional, sometimes in less traditional guises and preparations. We’ve stuck with Cafe Lota ever since. I think it may be the only restaurant we’ve eaten at in Delhi on every single visit since. Chef Dua, however, had left Cafe Lota by the time of our next visit to Delhi in 2016. Along with his partner, Kainaz Contractor, he was now operating Rustom’s Parsi Bhonu in Qutab Enclave. From there we lost sight of him for a bit as Rustom’s moved to the Parsi dharamshala near Daryaganj. We were hoping to finally eat there on this trip but it shut down last summer. But during the pandemic they opened Bhawan, a delivery operation centered on sweets and snacks. And then in the summer of 2022 it opened as a sit-down restaurant in Gurgaon, just about a 15 minute drive from my parents’ place. It was a cinch that we were going to visit. And so it came to pass. Herewith, the details. Continue reading
Sagar Ratna, One Horizon Center (Gurgaon, January 2023)
I’d said my next Delhi meal report would be of a Kashmiri meal—two of them, in fact—but, yet again, I am a liar. Instead I have for you a report of a South Indian meal, an Udupi meal to be more exact. This was dinner on a day that had featured a blowout lunch at an aunt’s home . That was an excessive meal, and in true Bengali fashion, lunch was served close to 2 pm—and so we wanted to eat something relatively light for dinner. The friends we were meeting suggested an outpost of Sagar Ratna, located more or less halfway between them and us in Gurgaon, and that is where we went. Continue reading
Chettinad’ish Oxtail Curry
For someone who did not grow up eating oxtail—I think I had it once before I left India and very rarely in my first decade in the US—I do love it now in curries. It’s a perfect cut of beef for slow-cooked curries in particular. The meat becomes wonderfully tender as the bones and gelatin give depth of texture and flavour as they meld with the spices in the curry. If you can’t find oxtail near you—we get ours directly from a south Minnesota farm, but it’s also available in Middle Eastern and Korean groceries in the Twin Cities—you can use short rib or even brisket or cut up chuck. If using a boneless cut suitable for slow-cooking, you should reduce the meat to 2 lbs and add 1 lb of soup bones (ideally with marrow) for that extra oomph. The other essential ingredient here is kalpasi/dagad phool, a lichen that is essential in Chettinad cooking, and which thankfully is now available easily in desi stores in the US, and also online. Speaking of Chettinad cooking, I’m not following any specific Chettinad recipe here, which is why I call this a Chettinad’ish curry. Give it a go anyway! Continue reading
Shortbread with Cardamom and Ajwain
As I believe I have said on many occasions, I am not much of a baker—I don’t have the discipline for it. From time to time, however, I do try my hand at it. In this case, I was moved to make shortbread for the first time after helping our younger boy make some for a school project. The recipe he was given to work with was not very good and so I felt the need to redress it with some better shortbread for our own consumption. I looked around the interwebs for recipes, found them mostly interchangeable and finally settled on Melissa Clark’s Shortbread, 10 Ways in NY Times Cooking. For the base, that is. In her variations she suggests some spiced versions and I took that as encouragement to devise my own additions. I made it with powdered cardamom seed and ajwain [affiliate link] sprinkled in with the dry ingredients as they were mixed. You can therefore view this a variation on her “Spice Shortbread” variation. The resulting shortbread has a flavour, though not the texture, reminiscent of the Indian nankhatai and makes for a killer accompaniment with masala chai. Give it a go and see what you think. Continue reading
Chana Masala, Take 5
It’s been almost two years since my last chana masala recipe and that seems like a dangerous length of time. I still have a large stock of Rancho Gordo’s desi chana—which I don’t think they are carrying anymore or planning to bring back. When I cook them, I tend to cycle between the three recipes for those chickpeas that I’ve previously posted (here, here, and here). Of late, however, I’ve hit upon a variation that I like quite a bit more than those. Part of it is that the preparation involves a not unusual method of cooking the chickpeas with a bit of baking soda. This helps them soften up very nicely (and much quicker than without even in my old-school pressure cooker). The masala meanwhile is made very tangy with a fair bit of tamarind and cumin (along with other spices). It’s very tasty indeed and I recommend it highly. If you don’t have a large stock of desi chana and don’t have easy access to an Indian store, you can just use regular Rancho Gordo garbanzos (but you may not need to use the baking soda in that case). Whichever variety of chickpeas you do use, I think you’ll like it. Continue reading
White Bean Stew with Coconut Milk
This recipe came about largely because in mid-November of last year I purchased a large and extremely attractive bunch of cilantro from the green market at Hmong Village in St. Paul. Not only did the cilantro have the thickest parts of the stems attached, it also had the roots. I used half the roots to make a fusiony beef short-rib curry and came up with this recipe to use up the rest along with the rest of the thick stems. If you can’t find coriander root near you, just use more of the cilantro stems—the flavours are not the same but it’ll make for a tasty variation. Another important ingredient here is one of my favourite beans carried by Rancho Gordo: alubia blanca. These small, white beans cook up very fast, even without soaking, and have a delicate flavour that goes really well with the flavours of the coconut milk and the green puree. And the creamy texture of the beans likewise matches the texture of the stew. Now, you might ask yourself if this is an Indian dish. I’m not aware of any traditional, regional dish that resembles this (though, as always, it’s a large country and I’ve only eaten a very small fraction of its foods), but as far as I’m concerned the approach is very Indian. You can categorize it as you like. Continue reading
Goat Neck Curry with Potato
As you’re utterly sick of hearing from me, this past year we have been getting a whole goat from a local small farm and splitting it with friends. Processing happens at the excellent Dennison Meat Locker and our half is cut to my specifications by the butchers there. I actually send them links to Youtube videos of Pakistani butchers cutting goat and they follow their lead! Quite apart from the appeal of getting high quality mutton/goat cut in the proper desi style, a big advantage of getting a whole/half goat is getting all kinds of different cuts. Among these is the neck, which is very bone-heavy—which means curries cooked long and slow with those pieces have excellent flavour and rich texture. Such was the case with this curry with potatoes that I first made in early November, and which some people have been calling for the recipe of ever since I posted a Reel of the finished dish on Instagram. Here it is now. Continue reading
Tiranga Dal
It’s been a while since I’ve posted a recipe for dal (this Un-Makhni Dal, cooked with a smoked pork hock). Typically, my dal preps are with single dals. Today’s recipe, however, is for a mix of three dals of three different colours. Hence the name: tiranga or tri-colour. Mixed dal preps are quite common in North India—and I myself have previously posted a recipe that uses four different dals. This is similar, except it leaves out the toor dal and the tadka is not identical. Which is to say, it’s different. This is for me very much a cold weather, comfort food dal. (This is only a personal thing.) It’s a hearty dal with good texture to it and I like to use a lot of julienned ginger in the tadka. You should feel free to tone that down if you like. It goes very well with rice or chapatis and I’ve also enjoyed it very much directly out of a bowl. See how you like it. Continue reading
Keema with Potatoes, Peas and Green Onions
We split a goat from a local small farm again with friends this fall. I like everything about the mutton we get from this farm but I particularly enjoy cooking with the keema/mince. The slightly gamy flavour and the texture of coarsely ground mutton/goat is, in my opinion, unparalleled for most Indian keema and kofta/meatball preps. Or maybe I think so because that’s the only kind of keema I ate growing up. In fact, the flavour of goat keema is also crucial to hamburgers in India. At any rate, I find goat keema the best pairing with robust spices. In this case I deploy a bit of kabab chini or cubeb/tailed pepper [affiliate link]. It’s sold in desi groceries and you can find it online as well. You have to be careful though as the term kabab chini is sometimes used for allspice as well—look for a brand that specifies cubeb pepper on the packaging. As with any good keema prep this also features potatoes and peas; and at the end I dump in rather a lot of chopped green onions. I fully admit that this is because I had purchased a rather massive bunch of vibrant green onions from Hmong Village in St. Paul the weekend before I made this and needed to use them up—but they brought very good flavour and texture. Continue reading