Home Chefs Of Mumbai – Part 41- Vinika Lakhiani

Dinning at a restaurant is preferable than to order on phone. Unless you are a food critic, or a known personality in the food industry, the food that arrives at your table at home from a restaurant may not meet its standards. Because, a special attention is paid on presentation and packing only when sending it with some purpose of good review, but for the common person, the service is completely different and mediocre.

In restaurants, different types of gravies are already pre-prepared, so all they do is to just stir fry the meat/veggies, add the prepared gravy and pack. Different kinds of sauces, such as chilly sauce, sweet sauce, vinegar, pickle etc are packed and you just have to adjust the taste as per your choice. Depending on courier service, (ranging from 35-45 minutes,) the food that arrives is lukewarm, has lost its crispiness, the veggies are completely soaked into gravy and it has no visual delight. The containers are filled upto brim, tightly packed, so very messy sometimes. Reheating is not a good option and the family is impatient and hungry.

Of course, the pandemic has been the biggest blow to their business but then ordering food from home-chef is the better option. There are been high rise in home-chefs and many of them have upgraded themselves to a professional level. Some of them have adhered to their traditional cuisine, some for cultural,  some for vegan, some for only salads,  and some as per preferential cuisine, if you order one day in advance, that is. But one thing you are sure, that the food you ordered was cooked specially for you.

Vinika Lakiani of ‘Vini’s Soul Food’ started her home-food business in July 2021

Vinika specialises in multi-cuisine food. She has items from different cuisines on her menu, such as Korean, Indonesian, Thai, Italian, Mexican, Sindhi and of course Indian. She is very passionate about desserts and recently, she has expanded into making Indian mithais as well. Especially since the pandemic started, she hoped to prepare everything that she used to crave for at home.

Growing up, her mother would cook delicious homemade meals for the family. 

“I was very lucky that my mother was an excellent cook. She taught me the basics and I also ended up learning how to cook well. My mother and my mother in law have been my biggest role models when it comes to cooking” she says. 

“I then got married to my husband, who was a huge foodie. He pushed me to try out new dishes and that is when I began to enjoy learning new recipes. We used to travel frequently; hence, I ended up exploring various cuisines and trying out new food that I had never even heard of before. Food became my passion!” she beams

She remembers of the time, many years ago when she had travelled to Seoul in South Korea for the first time. Her husband took her to a small restaurant for lunch in one of the markets over there. There was a huge wok kept above a flame on the centre of the table. She had never seen anything like that before. An extremely delicious meal was being prepared right in front of them. 

"It ended up tasting just as amazing as the entire process and experience! Cooking food on the table itself in a restaurant was a totally new concept to me! The dish was called Jjigae. It is a Korean curry with noodles and vegetables in it. It is served with rice and side dishes like kimchi" she brightens up

 After her trip to Korea, she fell in love with Korean food. “I am proud that I learned how to cook many Korean dishes and now it is a part of our regular meals at home.” She says

Vinika is happy to share the recipe of Sail Pav that is normally enjoyed in every Sindhi homes during breakfast.

1. In a mixer, take 3cups of coriander leaves, 9-10 cloves of garlic, 4-5 chopped green chillies, one sliced onion, 1tbsp turmeric powder, 1tbsp coriander powder and salt. 

2. Add very little water and grind it to a paste. 

3. Next take a pan or kadai and put 2 tbsp oil. 

4. Add the masala paste and saute for few minutes. 

5. Add about 3 cups of water and give it a boil. 

6. Add 1tbsp tamarind pulp and mix. 

7. Taste the gravy and adjust with salt and red chilli powder if want more spicy. 

8. Once its boils, break the bread (Pav) in half and add in the pan and let it soak well. 

9. Lower the flame, cover, let cook for 5 - 7 minutes and if need more water then add little. 

10. Serve hot.

You can follow her on her instagram handle  @vinissoulfood

Send a direct message on her watsapp at 9967446231

Papad Rolls With Fried Potatoes And Capsicum

 VSSS..Vishwa Seva Sindhi Sangam are celebrating 'International Papad Day' on 27th August by bonding our culture on common platform.

I am happy to share a bit of my memories and recipe of Papad Rolls with Fried Potatoes and Capsicum.

I have a very fond memories of my childhood when I lived with my Amma (my maternal grandmom) she would regularly invite her friends at her home in the afternoons and have papad making activity. She would give me too a small dough and ask me to roll out the papad. She would always instruct me to roll on the sides to make a perfect circle. I would help in spreading the papads on a sheet for drying in the sun. The papads would be stored in huge steel containers. There are normally two methods of serving papads..deep fried or roasted. It was practical solution of serving papad and chai to the guests, specially when there were no biscuits or toast at home..

Papads got more common when they started serving in restaurants as 'Masala Papad' that was simply deep fried papad topped with onions tomatoes and masalas. Later people made innovative snacks and now they even cook it.

I have one recipe on papad in my book called #SindhiCuisine. I decided to make something different this time, something that I have never made before. So I went into my kitchen, deep fried long strips of potatoes, cut strips of capsicum and stuffed them into papad rolls. This was secured with a string and deep fried. A gravy was made of garlic, ginger, chillies, curds and dry masalas and papad rolls were cooked in this gravy and the result was a very tasty papad rolls gravy. Do watch my recipe and do try it..you will love it...surely...

Dip Dip Drippin

In good ole days..pre-pandemic, food bloggers met regularly in close knit groups. There were many groups, large and small, identified by their interest in particular field such as food meetings for discussions of spices and recipes,  for baking techniques, for cook and share pot lucks.  Wild Asparagus Table was one such group that worked around the theme of studying the culture and food of the places around the world. It was more like visiting the city virtually and this was something that I have missed a lot.  

But our Watsapp group is active and this week I was able to engage a small group of home-chefs inside my 3BHK flat.  The theme was dips and there was a great variety of dips prepared by all that included humus, Caramel chili dip. Two dips, red pepper dip and low fat dip was made on the spot by Faiziya and Rhea.   

The table was loaded with Roasted Masaledar #grilledChicken  and #LabeneseFalafel and Tahini  by @BimbaNayak 

#PavbhajjiFodue by @Anjali Bhargava

#homebakedBread and #Humus by Binal Valand  

To add little fun to the party, we arrange a fruit salad making competition. @Rabia Patel had brought big variety of fruits such as apples, pears, bananas, berries, grapes. The idea was have a relay by each member to cut and arrange fruit on a plate within a specific time, it worked differently but the end results were good.  And the salad tasted good with caramel dip. 

Desserts were served with  #kesari kheer- saffron rice kheer made by Anjali #ThaiRedRubies of chestnuts in coconut milk by @Reetha Balsavar  

Was very happy with the surprise entry by @Ananya Banerjee, one of the co-founders of #WildAsparagusTable towards the second half of the party. 

Had a tea ceremony with flower blooming in the vase, a drama on the table, with more adrakwali chai and more dips and pita bread and Spicy and savoury #VermecelliinCheese by @Aruna Shetty.  

Our parties are never complete without food gifts. And gifts there were..some masalas and rakhee(friendship band) made by #specialchildren of my SPBschool.  and also...

Quaker energy bars by @quaker_India,  Dorito salsa and dips by @doritosindia and naturally powered energy drink by @O'Natural Mixers that are actually crafted from natural ingredients, ensuring excellent quality, superior taste for naturally enhanced drinking experience. The natural ration is 3:1 that is three parts of O'natural mixers and one part of spirit/juice/flavors&garnishing. These products are available at @Foodhall  

A small gathering but great fun with food knowledge sharing and laughter of course  

There was live demo of Pepper dip by @Faziya Soomar 

Roast 1red bell pepper. De-seed and peel, and chop roughly.

Toast 1 tbsp of walnuts. 

Blend bell pepper, walnuts, 2cloves of garlic, 1/4of a small onion, with olive oil, pink salt and pepper powder. 

You can avoid adding onion if you want the dip consistency to be thick. 

You may sometimes like to add 1tbsp of cream cheese to enhance the taste.   

Also there was live demo of Fat-Free Yogurt  by @Rhea Motwani 

1 box of Nestle slim dahi hung for 1 hour 

1tsp finely chopped green chillies 2 tsp finely chopped garlic 2 tsp finely chopped mint 2 tsp finely chopped coriander 1 sachet splenda or any sugar substitute 1/2 tsp salt 1/2 onion chopped finely 1/4 capsicum chopped finely 

Mix all these ingredients in the hung curd and enjoy with lavash or carrot cucumber sticks  

Thanks to my food community TheFBAI, and to Sam and Saloni Malkani, that I have got in touch with so many foodies. Hope this pandemic ends soon and we go back to living a normal life like we used to..