Sometimes food can be boring if we have to eat the same thing day-in, day-out. Everybody likes change and being creative in the kitchen is the best adventure one can have. You don’t need any talent to think out of box, you just need imagination and courage to try something new.
Have you tried sea food with pork? Or served mince Karela inside the pasta shell and coat it with sour cream? The idea might repel you. Imaginations can turn wild. Sometimes they just stay in our mind, refuse to emerge, but sometimes, you pick up your courage and try something weird.
The creativity sets in.
You start playing with ingredients, whipping them, curdling them, tossing them and the result is strange tasting sauces and dips. Sometimes experiments fail, but a successful one becomes your signature dish. Only you know the trick. You start using un-usual appliances and utensils for cooking, bake a soup with a loaf of bread in an egg shell, prepare spicy utappam in a waffle maker, or make seafood pies in muffin cones. The ideas are endless, some silly, some weird. But you are excused if you are able to conceptualise at least one original recipe of your own.
Creativity is having fun with intelligence.
And I love food creations of Shanti Petiwala.
The creativity sets in.
You start playing with ingredients, whipping them, curdling them, tossing them and the result is strange tasting sauces and dips. Sometimes experiments fail, but a successful one becomes your signature dish. Only you know the trick. You start using un-usual appliances and utensils for cooking, bake a soup with a loaf of bread in an egg shell, prepare spicy utappam in a waffle maker, or make seafood pies in muffin cones. The ideas are endless, some silly, some weird. But you are excused if you are able to conceptualise at least one original recipe of your own.
Creativity is having fun with intelligence.
And I love food creations of Shanti Petiwala.
Shanti Petiwala wears many hats. She is writer, editor, home cook, culinary blogger. Riot of Flavours is her canvas, and she celebrates food in all its glory. Food is very personal to her, so every dish that she cooks is made as though she would eat it all by herself.
On a regular basis, she shuttles between Mumbai and Dubai, writer and editor for business magazine in Dubai and home chef in Mumbai. The lockdown has kept her rooted inside her home and she is having the best of the time, planning, prepping and delivering meals since past two months.
Shanti specialises in home cooked Bohri food, Chitrapur Saraswat food and many of her own creative dishes.
Tomato Saar and Bhindi Bhaji, are the earliest memories of good food she remembers that was prepared by her mom, and continues to be her favourite.
She talks about many ‘first time’ memories of food
“The first time I had a real Italian pizza was in Verona. It was a mushroom pizza and it ruined all pizzas for me thereafter, after that no other pizza I had ever came close.”
She fondly remembers Surnoli, a sweet Indian pancake, known to be Saraswat Brahmin dish, it has puffy textures with holes and is traditionally eaten for breakfast “I vividly remember where I was and how amazed I was the first time I ate this Konkani sweet Dosa preparation way back in 2000.”
Being creative in kitchen, she loves to experiment with different ingredients. In one of her experiments, she used eggplant and Labneh (a smooth creamy yoghurt with no whey) and baked this amazing dish.
Shanti is happy to share her recipe of Roasted Eggplant with Labneh and Pistachio
1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees.
2. Cut the 1 large eggplant into two halves, lengthwise.
3. Score them with a knife and rub some salt into them and keep aside.
4. In the meanwhile, in a pan, put in 1 tbsp oil.
5. Add 2 clove garlic (minced) and 1 onion (minced).
6. Mix it well.
7. Once the eggplant releases some water, wash it and pat it dry.
8. Marinate in a little oil and salt (adjust according to taste).
9. Put it into the oven for 20 minutes or till just done but it holds its shape.
10. Scoop out some of the meat from the middle (take care to not tear the skin at the bottom).
11. Cut up the pulp and mix it with the onion-garlic mixture.
12. Stuff the whole mixture back into the eggplant.
13. Put it back into the warm oven. Grill it.
14. Whip 1cup labneh well. Spoon gently over the grilled eggplant.
15. Sprinkle 2tbsp of slivered pistachios and 3tbsp of extra virgin olive oil.
She announces her menu every week and deliver over the weekends.
You can follow her on @riotofflavours for new menu updates Call on her WhatsApp no 9152292940
Follow her on her Instagram handle @riotofflavours
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