Sauvignon Blanc

Let’s begin by misquoting the Lord to my convenience. 

A man cannot live by old-worlds alone.

Until that evening I was as loath to Sauvignon Blanc as Miles in Sideways was to Merlot. Caught unawares, I gave in coyly and over another vinous binge toasted versions of this new-world varietal with curious friends.

Crisp and refreshing Sauvignon Blanc, or Wild White, yields in almost all terroirs. Though natural acidity and early ripening keep it sharp across climes, the zing Sauvignon is loved for is born when the embracing coldness meets sunshine.

Sula bristled with what I dislike the most in vinos. An unfeeling acidity left my tongue thirsting and mouth scratchy like an overused ply-board. I chose to look on. 

Hints of Citrus and a faint scent of freshly mowed lawn notwithstanding, Niel Joubert from Paarl of South Africa just upped the clinging tartness by notches. My frown deepened.

Like most wines, Sauvignon picks roundness along the way to warmer regions. Grove Ridge of California, with the clarity of an artless belle, beamed as vibrantly as the lush backyard in spring. A typical 'Now' wine, it rallied a host of fruity notes by the tongue that almost made off sooner than had arrived. However, who wants a taste to last a lifetime? Tickled by its plainness I dubbed Grove Ridge my pick of the evening.

Hued straw-yellow bordering on green, Alan Scott - a Marlborough 2016 Savvy, was closed until we let it open up. Endowed with a racy minerality and dry finish, the lemony zest of this profound Kiwi recalled sweaty summers by the French Riviera. Measured crispness suggesting an early harvest to retain acidity [along the lines of Loire Valley Sauvignon] had a poised Alan Scott waltz away with the runner’s-up.

And, so began my hunt for another bottle of Grove Ridge!

Indian Coffee House...

That praise of one friend could irk the other was unfamiliar until last weekend. My eulogic post on India Coffee House made its iconic peer on College Street haunt like the ghost of King Hamlet, and browbeat. So, here is my humble tuppence on an urban landmark as old as the hills. #uncookedwords

At Coffee house you eat good food of sorts for a pittance. Edibles play there the second fiddle with pride, lending an unbroken basenote to talks on variety of topics. I know some who even call up tables by the patterns of blotches on top. Coffee House, to them and many others, is home second to none.

My hurried repast kicked off with Cold-coffee and chicken sandwich. A drink I would otherwise have called a swill proved 'nice’ to the colonial pairing of bread-sandwiches with sides wastefully cut off. I survived them with the helpless poise of a lewd nonagenarian. What came hard on the heels was an unyielding Chicken Cutlet resembling at best a starched burlesque queen left with nothing to titillate. Pumpkin puree passed off as ketchup turned the treat worse. With a steamy cup of 'Infusion' I called it quits.

I'm unsure if it were my being alone and unfeeling that made the lacks notoriously glare, or, a fussy tongue at last getting the better of cliched nostalgia.

India Coffee House

Besides shedding vanity what makes me travel irregularly in Metro is love of Indian Coffee. Favourably sited a hop, skip and jump from Chandni Chowk Metro Station is India Coffee House - a sprawling coffee-shop founded by Coffee Board to promote native varieties of coffee by offering the city’s caffeine fanatics a delectable fix. I unabashedly dote on their Black Coffee – a preferred surrogate for a rarer Americano. Until the entrepreneurial 18th Century, Coffee plantation in India, that had begun with the sowing of ‘Seven seeds’ of ‘Mocha’ another two centuries ago, grew as mere garden curiosity flourishing unchecked in the backyards. British entrepreneurs through systematic conquering of coffee-producing forests of Southern India, besides aiding its cultivation, soon secured India a notable spot on the Coffee map of the world. While I, a declared caffeine addict, call African coffee fruity and American, bright, curated Indian coffee, being born on volcanic soil, remains an eternal heavyweight on all counts. Enough said. I kicked off my day today with a cup of Black coffee at India Coffee House. It delighted, as always, to see whiskered waiters serve in embossed crockery a serious coffee brewed with pride and love. After all, they too served single-origin. #uncookedwords

Redemption and Pizza...

Finding an eye for an eye too extreme a reprisal I settled for a Pizza for a Pizza instead! The woe of being fed a dull disk of dough a week ago had to be evened out somehow. #uncookedwords

Spread across a pliant flatbread of eleven inches in diameter lay princely doses of garlicky pesto, chunks of roasted chicken, jiggly Fior di Latte – a close kin to Mozzarella, briny Feta and fresh Jalapenos tossed with tender, sweet and brown caramelised onions as toppings, hemmed in impeccably by a thin cornicione, or edge, baked the Neapolitan way. That was Pollo Picante at Fabbrica Della Pizza - an ace showstopper and my darling.

Eating Pizza is making love - that all do but not alike. A gentle press from above the crust with index finger made the edge of my pizza snap and fold from middle causing the entire slice double up into a narrower triangle all set to be led into the mouth. Thus folded and dipped in chilli-oil I ate my Pollo Picante with eyes shut - gladly forfeiting the unusual glee of watching my prey happily disappear.

And, it healed my woe to the bone.

'Bashi' but not stale...

'Bashi' in Bengali is not as pejorative a word as stale in English. It more appropriately means aged - hinting at a homespun process of letting elements in any dish internally fraternize, and age, to eventually turn ambrosial. Trust in it led Bengalis to conceive 'Bashi-biye', a nuptial ceremony wishing a day old marriage appetite for life. In frame is 'bashi Luchi' wisely paired with as 'bashi Chatni', making a duo I never get enough of - a culinary antithesis of Midlife crisis, or, a wizened Gable romancing luscious Monroe in The Misfits. #uncookedwords

A no-Pizza...

Characters of any cuisine and its provenance ought to say the same thing. That clumsiness was so appealing I would have never known but for the Sicilians. In pizzas too I always sought that guileless savour of Italy. #uncookedwords

A disk of dough touted as Pizza failed its nativity with drab crust cradling measly topping like a haggard and loveless stepmom. On top Barbeque sauce and cheese toasted chicken's birthday in absentia. Medium-roast in Macchiato was dubbed as dark making me doubt an affinity I hold too close to be shot down. I am not naming the eatery that thus wrecked my repast. I'll stride in again some day as facelessly as I do - to be proven wrong and wasted with joy.

Pudding at The Cafe...

Some edibles can never be relished with a Tyrannosaurus rex or a Saber-toothed cat on one’s tail. This one is of such kind. A pristine fairy straight from the pages of Grimms’. Crested with jiggly meringue, a hefty pillar of pompless pudding letting textural richness dotted with dry-fruits mingle with bold aromatic notes of cinnamon, mace and vanilla. The taste was to die for! #uncookedwords

WHEN WOOD SWEETENS…

Serving dough of sweetened chhana [cottage cheese] to any diehard Bengali is as upsetting as wooing beloved with a diamond in the rough. 

‘Chaanch’, as wooden moulds etched with traditional motifs, breathe life into shapeless dough by fashioning unspoilt sweetmeats of Bengal. Notun Bazaar neighbourhood on Chitpur Road of Calcutta hosts a handful of those dwindling craftsmen making moulds out of wood day in, day out. Here I come to talk about that unsung lot that never gave a fig about eternity, and the art they live off. 

Some conversance with varieties of sweets, or Mishti, I deem would lift the relish of this text. Sweets of Bengal are broadly sorted into ‘Rosher Mishti’ or soaked sweets, ‘Shukno’ or dry sweets and ‘Bhaja’ or fried sweets. ‘Kheerer Mishti’, or the moist kind made of kheer, packs the best of all without being saccharine. Shondesh is dry and can either be Kora-paak (hard) or Norom-paak (soft). And, Chaanch is used mostly in adorning Shondesh across kinds. 

Curious and having always found the world of confectionery much more than that meets the eye, I set out on Chitpur Road, a timeless stretch in North Calcutta, ransacking dingy outlets stacked with wares, and probing people to discover how this art of mould-making is pulling through. A baffled but empathetic Kartik Mondal led me to Narayan Das - owner of the oldest of the outlets pursuing mould-making, who in turn agreed to give away at his best. It emerged that most of them deal in range of tools used largely in confectionery, like giant platters called ‘Barkosh’, huge flat bowls to knead dough in, different wooden bowls and rolling pins, a cornucopia of moulds, and huge wooden paddles used to stir milk, and when the oars are missing, to row too! Swelling popularity of native sweets somehow seems to have come in handy in securing an agreeable demand for various wooden wares. 

Sondesh dough is prepared by tossing cottage cheese briskly with sugar over low heat. Designs are carved into blocks of Mahogany or Teak deep enough to leave defined imprints when pressed against such dough of desired consistency. Textual designs celebrating ‘Bhai-phonta’, ‘Rakhi’ and ‘Shubho-Bijoya’ attract occasional demand. Bulbous cast of popular Jalbhora comes from a designated mould. Alongside the classic and the generic ones, contemporary and bespoke shapes and motifs endow the sweets with character, relevance and often humour. Regular moulds range from two inches to ten in size depending on the dimension of patterns etched in. Though artists seem to treat all designs with creative equity and even-handedness, what immemorially remain the most popular in Bengal’s households are butterfly, fish and conch-shell. 

Future of mould-making existentially hinges on flourish of confectioneries. With many of them now turning to technologies to fast scale up, fear of losing out sooner or later to moulding machine is what haunts this age-old handicraft the worst today. I trust due aid and patronage through state-owned initiatives would as much save both the craft and its practitioners from avoidable oblivion as would please countless souls of Bengal who can never get enough of sweets. And, that lot shows no sign to stop swelling.

Mould-making on Chitpur Road

It takes a lifetime to see forms in the formless, shapes in the shapeless. And, art in the artless. Elegant utensils immaculately hewn out of wood are sold on the streets of Calcutta as commonly as sleaze rules the nights of Amsterdam. I ransacked shops on Chitpur Road for handcrafted wooden ‘Sondesh’ moulds, that have been fast replacing the dearer kinds made of terracotta or stone. Wooden rolling pins and boards too sold there for a pittance. It appeared the outlets dealt in the range of tools primarily used in Bengal’s confectionery, like Barkosh - the giant wooden platter for kneading dough or displaying wares, and as huge paddles used to stir kheer, and, when the oars are missing, row boats too!

Hand-churned Sharbats

Located on Chitpur Road, a stretch officially older than the Calcutta we know, this nameless Sharbat shop serves some unique hand churned varieties. Tucked inside a hole in the wall, it packs the wherewithal to whip up surprising quenchers at the drop of a hat. Deem yourself lucky if you find one without breaking a sweat, and luckier if you can bring yourself to swilling all that it graciously offers in exchange for a doit. I tried Rose with a spicy twist, and loved. Calcutta abounds in such self-effacing wonders.

Milee Droog again...

Yes, I eat out more frequently than tigers hunt for a living. That's what my foodie family had for lunch at Milee Droog on Thursday. While my son sided with variants of roundness, wife and I remained as firmly apart as a porcelain square and wooden disk. Lush Caesar salad of crispy Romaine lettuce with home-made garlic breads, and briskly bold Tomato and Basil soup on side, both lovingly tempered to suit a revolting stomach, are what Gogol's roundels cradled with warmth. A disarmingly white plate threw savoury Lebanese chicken, served with Pita-Hummus, into an appealing relief, urging wife treat the meat more with the empathy of vegans than the midday fury of an unfed carnivore. Choice of spring chicken made the treat a celebration of herby tenderness. Pizza, to me, is like Annual Budget that always has more to it than meets the eye. Laid on a crust that stiffens too fast to be loved long, a gorgeous Mexicana with all the regular suspects like San Marzano, Mozarella and bell peppers as toppings pleased with verve and freshness. Ending meals with something as eternal as coffee always tickles. Milee’s brisk Americano made memories of evenings at Third Rail Coffee in New York gush back, bringing an unhurried end to a reassuring repast.

Taal-michri

I almost heard Clemenza insist – ‘Leave the Cannoli, take the Michri’.

Palm-candy, or Taal-Michri, makes a lifelong thief out of just about anyone. As a lad of eight or nine I’d routinely pull a stool near the rack to reach the bottle of Michri for a passing taste of heaven, having always found asking for it more circuitous than stealing. That practice continued unabated, expanded and turned increasingly discreet along my growth from a wary robber to an unworried rebel.

Michri, a spinoff of unrefined Palm-sugar, is produced round the year by reducing to crystals the boiled sap of Toddy Palm trees of Bengal. Considered both healthful and popular [how absurd!], it is used extensively in native desserts as a modest and 'caramelic' sweetener. Interestingly, the English word Candy owes its origin to Michri’s ancient name ‘Khondo’.

And, I still steal it!

Sanjha Chulha

I enjoy Punjabi food either in Punjab or by the roadside!

Pounded mutton skewered and coated in minced Chicken, grilled and then cut into firm yet juicy cylinders liberally sprinkled with green herbs rendered Jugalbandi Kebabs differently delicious and texturally bold. Skilled layering of unalike meats without making either lose flavoury uniqueness both intrigued and stoked for life. Thus finding semblance of Tricolour in food of Sanjha Chulha on Republic Day to me was a patriotic happenstance.

How could something good enough to be described in a line be so luscious and lingering? Pind da kebab, as juicy chunks of chicken filled with fresh cheese, first melted in mouth to eventually delight with a velvety aftertaste. Ghee-rich and tasty Dal-Makhni teamed well with tender Butter-naans. Things took a turn for the worse when sterile kebabs dipped in a spicy goulash posing as Kandahari Chicken betrayed how dismayingly war-free, read dull, a warlike Kandahar has now become.

Why am I growing so increasingly peevish towards menus with no last page?

An unplanned meal...

Some surprise by not changing. And, some by changing too often. But, a very few, like Milee Droog, manage to surprise by not changing to change too often. The thoroughness they overhaul the Menu with is promising. #uncookedwords

That something as flavourous as Mushroom Ragu could blend so selflessly with Mozarella, Sanmarzano and marinated Chicken to top a pliant Pizza had remained unfamiliar until I hesitantly bit into their Pollo Lazio. Its taste still lingers.

Fresh Basil pesto lent greenness, a crisp kick and a great deal of poise to Pizza Pollo Genoves’ meaty savour. But, by then I’d already pledged my troth to Lazio’s tasteful excess of tomatoes.

Celebrating Chardonnay

Let's face it. No matter how hard we split hairs over theories on wines, mouthfeel always has the last laugh.

Over a recent wine-tasting session I saw a motley commune, that had me in it too, celebrate possibly the most misconstrued wine of the New World. Chardonnay.

AG Forty-Seven, a produce of Mendoza region of Argentina, struck with an opulent, tropical earthiness played out on citrus basenote, leaving behind an adorably acidic but fleeting aftertaste. I loved how each sip of it kept stoking a longing for another. Having fared off the charts with ease, AG had me unapologetically hold out my Tulip for generous reboots whenever offered. It danced its way to the top for having so nicely added a bold streak to that evening’s canvas.

Sips of Gran Moraine Yamhill-Carlton Chardonnay 2015 following a hearty row with beloved hardly leave one go any far in cherishing it, whereas a merry mind fills reams on its most worthless version. However, Fratelli Chardonnay offered my happy-self nothing to write home about - tasting almost like lapping up a steely surface daubed with a tangy citrus that clings far too long to tongue. It was, at best, the worst I had that evening.

Yellow tail’s Australian, plain-sailing and fruity bouquet was eclipsed in the crowd of vying vinos. Though its dominant sweet note turned out to be utterly misplaced and discouraging, I’m up for risking another evening with it. That’s the upside of having never joined the ABC [Anything But Chardonnay] lot. Yellow tail easily came third in rank.

Staying true to the fact that wines bloom after mixing with oxygen, Lutzville Chardonnay 2017 tarried yielding distinctive spice-notes until its third sip. Dryness of North-Western Cape of South Africa lent it an unusually drying finish dotted with citrus and lime traces. Bitterness that I briefly felt was negligible. Lutzville Chardonnay on taste ranked right after AG.

There are ways to read wines. Robust sensory reading is what I follow with firmness. As in the world of wine, it is too democratic and farfetched to expect the aromatic notes untwine to all with equity, enjoying wine in all its plainness is what is eternally, and conveniently, recommended.