Food for thought

Celeste's parents arrived yesterday. I dont know thier names or for that matter cannot pronounce even Celeste's real name and though she quite wisely controlled her instinct and hasn't called us by our names as she would have normally done in Singapore; I know for sure that even they would not be able to pronounce ours especially my dad's southie name. But whats in a name they say when there are so many other important issues to worry about. e.g. food

So my Lucknow though is not a small town, you cannot get authentic chinese food anywhere. Its the same with all parts of India as our Indian taste buds prefer the spicy indianised chinese and that is all that you get. So our post lunch discussion yesterday was what to serve for dinner for C's parents. We dont cook meat at home and for them any meal is incomplete without meat. When asked C what constituted a special dish in her place, prawn, crab, duck came the answer. It seems that since seafood is more expensive, thats cooked on special occasions. And the cooking procedure takes 4 hours in slow steaming. They eat bland and for us to serve bland food to guests is difficult to accept.

C's mom doesn't eat beans, peas which meant that daal was out. She did not even eat eggs which was the only non veg my mom was prepared to cook at home. Curd was out too which meant that the painstakingly prepared dahi bada and chutney were not going to be used. Aloo paratha was one dish which C liked and so we assumed that her parents would like it too. We made some more plain veggies like alu gobi and indo-chinese manchurian. Somehow the dinner was done and wound up with some nice herbal black tea which was the only item they liked a lot. The yummy gajar ka halwa was also left untouched for being too sweet.

Yesterday evening I went to JJ to get some rolls and bread items which they may like for breakfast and I just could not find any item which they might like. And in Lucknow paneer bhurji all spiced up filled inside bread is offered when you ask for plain cheese roll. Anyways I picked some puffs, cream rolls and some more patties, there were no sweet bread items no muffin, donut just fruit cakes. These items went in for the breakfast today. I would think that an english breakfast would have been liked by the guests but according to my mom bread, cereal are the worst kind of breakfast served by lazy people and definitey not done on special occasions. So something had to be cooked fresh and we cooked idli with two type of coconut chutney besides other items.

They started with eating cream rolls with spoon fork and then had to switch to hands as they peices started flying off. C's dad was quite adventurous and tried one idli. He loved the tomato chutney and kept pouring more. That was good news atleast they liked something. Seeing C's dad, her mom too mustered courage to take an idli. I think our steamed rice cake is similar to some of thier breads. And then for each food item we had to explain in detail what it was. One saving grace was that since Singapore has lot of Indian population, they were little familiar with the food. Still salad was the only item which needed no explanation and was an instant hit.

Sulafest 2010

Dancing to the beats of a live band in an open amphitheatre in the middle of hills with a view of the lake , sunset and vineyard on a chilly evening is something that many Mumbaikars would crave for. A visit to Sulafest 2010 was precisely that.Visitng a winery was one of the long standing items in my to do list since the last few years. Though I have been to Martha's vineyard and California but the season was not right in the first trip and missed out on going to Napa valley in the second. So when I got introduced to Sula Wines in Mumbai and discovered that thier vineyard was near Nashik and they even had conducted tours, I was all excited to go there. I had been planning for the last 3-4 months and then found that the grape plucking and crushing season was from Jan to March and then this once in a year Sulafest came up and it was the chance for me kill many birds in one shot.

We were six people, bought tickets for the fest before hand on bookmyshow, booked a tavera and started off at 8 am in the morning. After picking the Andheri people, we now had to pick few more at Bandra and after reaching there got tempted to have a hearty Saturday breakfast at Crepestation. So we finally left Mumbai at 10 am and reached Nashik around 1pm. Once we reached the city, we looked around for Sula direction boards and I even had a print out from the website giving all landmarks and detailed directions, so we were able to reach smoothly with no wrong turns. Nashik I think is at a height and we climbed up for a while. As we approched the vineyard, there were several more smaller ones on the way and the slopes were full of vine creepers and bunches of grapes hanging from them.

Inside the Sula resort, right at the entrance were these huge barrels filled with stinking (aromatic) crushed fermenting grapes and the entire area was covered with wine plants with full ripe grapes. After freshening up we went to the tasting room which housed a bar and some eateries on the open balcony with an amazing view of the entire area, the hills and the lake. We sat there for some time admiring the view and then went for the tour. The tour and tasting for about an hour in which we went around the plants and the factory with machines imported from Italy. The guide explained to us the genesis of Sula and its wines and the wine making process. After the tour was thr wine tasting in which we tasted six wines. The wine bottles and other accessories were up for sale at a very reasonable price.

The first wine we tasted was Sula Rose Brut which is a sparkling refreshing wine then Sula Chenin Blanc, one of thier oldest and was little peppery and spicy. Third was again a rose wine but not sparkling followed by a drier but refreshing white zinfandel. Next was a red shiraz and last was last harvest, a sweet wine. Most of thier wines and fresh and ready to use as they are bottled after fermentation. Red wine goes through 2 fermentation cycles and hence its drier and stronger. Rose is made from red grapes but processed as white wine. Dessert wines are made from over ripened grapes and so the sugar content is higher. Red wines though have the same sugar content as white but tastes not so sweet because its sugar has been converted to alcohol on fermentation. By the time we had these wines on an empty stomach, we were almost tipsy and hungry for food.

Since all the food shops inside the tasting room were closed, we now headed towards the fest grounds and quickly ordered and gulped down the chicken biryani sitting on the grass against a wall. It was only after the food settled and we sat and chatted for a while that I was able to look around and notice the stalls and crowd as the effect of alcohol had died a bit and I was in a nice pleasant high. The heat was a bit too much to bear and stalls too few. We were wondering what had we paid 700 bucks for. The crowd however was really cool. All men and women nicely dressed almost like a bright sunny summer concert day at Central Park or even better. The music bands had started playing now and people started moving towards the amphithetre. We too moved in the heat but could find some shaded spot. By now I was sleepy and took a litle nap.

When I woke up, the sun was slowly going down and crowd had suddenly increased. It seems that people were now beginning to pour in around 6 ish and were all fresh to party till midnight. So I too got up freshened again and brought some glasses of rose wine and food and went to a better seating to enjoy the live band and the comedy fillers. I did not even realise when the sun had gone down and the stars had appeared. Bands kept playing one after the other and after swaying for a while on our seats we decided to go down near the stage and dance. So there ws more food and wine and more champagne and we dance to trance to the beats of Jalebi cartel till 10 pm. In the next half an hour I pulled and collected all six and we got nicely packed back into our cars. By about 2 am we reached Mumbai and by 2:30 I was on my bed ready to catch a good sleep before I catch my flight for Lucknow the next afternoon.

KGAF

The Kala Ghoda Arts Festival has been on for the last one week and I managed to visit the fest twice just to look around the stalls. I could not manage to watch any shows which were extremely packed and claustrophobic and for which I have lost the interest anyways. The first thing I noticed when as my taxi stopped at Kalaghoda was a huge kala ghoda surrounded by a few other animals elephant, giraffe and some more. After that were a host of street hawkers selling posters and some tit bits on the right side and a photo exhibition on the left side. There was also a vast fenced area with stage probably for holding competitions etc.

As I went inside the gate saw some colorful masks, kayaks, a straw horse and some food stalls on either side. Was tempted to buy strawberry bathed in choclate and it was thirty bucks each!!! So I got a good glimpse of what the items in rest of the stalls would be worth. So I had almost made up my mind for window shopping and I must say that a lot of stuff there was really a feast for the eyes. There were some clock stalls with lot of interesting ideas. Then there was one big bell probably made of paper mache with lots of small colourful bells hanging from its rim and the whole thing hanging from a tree.

There was another tree with some huge cloth bundles hanging from its branches. It looked interesting. Had they hung some white skeletons, it would have been even more interesting. On the ground was one 3D painting of a gallpoing horse in shades of grey. Amazing work in just one colour and the 3D effects were bewildering. There was one stall of hand made purses... cloth bags of Rs 2000+ almost the same range as the pure leather Hidesigns. The kalamkari work sarees really caught my eye and looked like a real piece of art, the bright colour combinations and hand prints made them a treasure I wanted to possess but could not afford.

On the left side stalls were mostly food stalls and extensions of already existing food shops, chaats, gelato and others. At the end was an amphitheatre jam-packed on both the days when I went there. All I could see and hear was lots of heads and loud applauses. On the second day I even spotted an old college-hostel mate who had just finished her performance. I remember her winning the first prize in hostel dance competition and me getting the second. And here she was still doing what she loved - dancing and here I was so out of touch with my dance for last many years. There were atleast two action points for me after this visit. Practise dance and decorate my living room wall with some intersting artifacts.