You and Me and Cuppa Tea

I have seen Prasik hill many times from a distance, on my way to my SBP Special School at CBD but never really ventured that far. Yesterday, my friend suggested we go up the winding path to admire the view from the top. It’s a beautiful drive up the narrow snaky lane with a panoramic view of the city below, a beautiful temple, some interesting villas and now an artistic tea store called You, Me & Cuppa Tea.

I was utterly besotted by the entrance itself. Cluster of umbrella, Warli painting on the walls, large jute curtains, and teacup designs everywhere. The ambience was good. The mood was set perfectly to relax on wooden tables.

It is a large place suitable to socialize during ladies tea party, or high-octane social events, or even have small lit-groups and there are smaller cozy rooms with floor furniture for private gathering to write, compose and bring ideas to life.

Everything revolves around tea, not the cutting chai, mind you; the Rs5 cuppa chai that you get at every Mumbai street, Nah! This is a place for tea ceremonies. This is the place where you can experience a wide range of assorted tea of around 170 varied flavors that are fruity, minty, peach, chocolate, citric etc. and different types of tea like oolong, blooming, rooibos, herbal infusion, green, black, mate, etc. of different seasons like winter, fall. It’s a place where there are different pots for brewing different types of tea, in different shapes of cups/mugs and different bites of snacks with every sip.

We left the choice of selecting the tea for us to teaologists, who knew how to brew a special blended tea for us to have a different experience.

He brought blooming bud and inserted in the transparent pot containing warm water. It was fascinating to watch the bud open in the glass teapot and bloom into pretty colored flowers as the bud seeped in.

This is called artisan or flowering teas. They were hand tied by tea artists and include some flavor of fruits and jasmine along with a beautiful design.

The saffron tea was served in tiny glasses that contained almond scrapings. The flavors were very refreshing

We had cookies and cakes with tea, but on their menu card there were some interesting sandwiches and pizzas, maybe next time when I am more hungry

 “TEA LOVERS SOCIETY” Now that is what makes this place so interesting! A community where like minded people and Tea Lovers from different walks of life share experiences, Art, Culture and Business, this is one of the prime objectives behind the conceptualization of "You Me & Cuppa Tea".

Rating ; good

Ambience; good

Bathrooms: unclean, needs improvements

Address:

Everest Housing Society

Parsik Hill, sector 26,27

CBD, Belapur.

Navi Mumbai

Thai Cook-Up at APBCookStudio

I have made many trips to Bangkok and each time, Thai food hogging starts immediately after landing, catching the first bite at the airport, stopping at street stall for a second bite and ordering the third meal at home.

The romance of Thai cuisine dates back many years ago, in another century, when relishing food was purely aping the taste of my cousins. They liked so I liked. During my long summer holidays, my cousins in Bangkok would take me to narrow food lanes, in the interiors of the city, thick with fragrant smoke. We would sit on plastic furniture and eat the most unique dishes, sometimes slimy stuff, sometimes deep fried critters, and sometimes sea-food infused with herbs, rich in taste, so spicy that I had tears staining my cheeks. The taste was enchanting and whenever I asked what I was eating, they would say “Just eat, don’t ask”

Thai food is the riot of flavors of sweet, sour, salty, bitter and spicy, all in balanced proportions. On another holiday in Bangkok, I had attended Thai cookery class to learn the basics of Thai cuisine. Most of my knowledge on Thai authentic meal comes from learning from house help in my cousin’s home. But for travellers, I am told, there are number of premier cooking schools introducing rich Thai cuisine heritage, offering personalized, individual, family and group culinary courses. It will be interesting to get insight into the unique art of Thai Cuisine.

Some of the major hotels like Oriental hotel, Dusit Thai hotel and some more popular hotels provide cooking course for their visitors based on creditable choices of the menus served at their restaurants.

I have many good memories of Bangkok and those memories were refreshed this week, when Rushina Munshaw invited me to her APBCookStudio for Thai Cook-up by Tourism Authority of Thailand.

The feast began with a lemon-grass drink, followed by Thai bhel and then a cooking demonstration for making Green and Red curry paste, chicken in basil and Thai curry. We were then grouped in pairs, to cook up the Thai dishes at our own cook stations.

It was a fun afternoon, cooking, eating and enjoying the morning, meeting other food lovers, was happy to meet Raynah Coutinho, Public relation manager, who shared her experiences of living in Thailand informing us about different point of interests.

I am happy to Share with you the basil chicken as demonstrated by Rushina.

Please note, for vegetarians, mushrooms can be substituted for chicken

Kai Phad Kaphro (Basil Chicken)

Courtesy Rushina Munshaw

Ingredients

250gms boneless chicken breast, cut into small pieces

2tbsp oil

3 cloves garlic, crushed

2-3 red chilies dissected and chopped

2tbsp fish sauce

pinch of sugar

20 Thai Basil leaves +12 deep fried for garnish.

Method

Heat oil in wok, add garlic and chilies, stir fry till golden brown

Add chicken, stir fry till it changes color

Season with fish sauce and sugar and continue stir frying for 3-4 minutes

Stir in the fresh basil leaves

Garnish with fried basil leaves and sliced chilies and serve with white rice.

Rushina had given me some freshly made red and green Thai curry paste to take home. Sunday was a treat time for my family and they loved the Thai curry that I made for lunch.

This is how I made Thai Curry

Ingredients

500gms Chicken thigh cut into strips

100gms coconut powder dissolved in 2 cups of warm water

½ cup green curry paste

3tbsp vegetable oil

5-6 Thai chilies; cut slantwise

5-6 kaffir lime leaves

2tbsp tamarind juice

½ cup Zucchini, diced

½ cup button mushroom, halved

½ broccoli diced

4-5 basil leaves

1tbsp fish sauce

1tbsp palm sugar

1 chicken stock cube

Method:

Stir-fry chicken thigh strips till fragrant

Add a cup coconut milk and chicken stock cube

In another wok stir-fry green curry paste and sauté till fragrant

Transfer the curry paste mixture in the chicken coconut broth and continue to stir gently till it is mixed.

Add mushrooms, broccoli and Zucchini.

Leave until cooked and then add the remaining coconut milk

Adjust the seasonings as desired using fish sauce, sugar, kaffir leaves, basil leaves, chilies, tamarind juice and sugar.

Serve hot.

New Zealand Cook-Up Contest

Social media is an amazing medium of communication. It brings you closer to people, whom you would never meet personally. Moreover, it brings out the creativity in you.

Last week, Beacon Holidays organized a contest on social network, in association with New Zealand Tourism and Food Bloggers Association, inviting people to write in just 12 words on what they would like to experience in New Zealand cuisine. participants were asked to submit their entries using the tag #TasteNewZealand.

I posted my entry at Beacon Holidays: “I would like to experience ‘tea’ the main meal of the day.

I won the first phase of #TasteNewZealand and was invited to participate in cook-up contest at the beautiful set up at APBCookStudio

I was one of the five participants that won the contest and we were to go to second phase of contest by cooking a dish at the cook studio (owned by Rushina Munshaw Ghildiyal) using any of the three ingredients, lamb mince meat, boneless lamb and/or kiwi.

I was competing with most creative participants who cooked up some of the most amazing dishes

I chose to make Minced-meat pie.

Normally when I make pies, I use the ready-pastry dough that we get at supermarkets. Its easy, you just make the filling, pack it inside pastry dough and bake it.

But here, I took the risk of making the crust from the scratch and baking in the oven, I was not familiar with. The crust refused to bake after the filling and it was a huge flop.

Embarrassing! I lost my chances of winning a free stay of 4nights 3days to Queenstown.

It was Aarti  Basrur who won the handsome prize, holding that expensive envelop in her hand and posing with the hostess.

Aarti's dream of wanting to experience Urban NewZealand cuisine infused with Maori cooking techniques saw the light of the day.

Yes, she was the lucky one, who will enjoy the fruit of success. She was the one who made pomegranate lamb kababs and Kiwi chutney that judges (Rushina Mushaw and Sameer Malkani) were praising profusely; they said there was surprise element at every bite.

I had loved Renita’s Palova and it was so good that I was asking her to pack her bags for the trip. Her melt-in-the-mouth dessert was amazing!

Purabi Neha made Kiwi Lamb Cutlets with Kiwi sauce that were really delicious and her presentation of spreading the Kiwi fruit around the cutlets was a nice visual creation, but there was only one winner of the big prize and she missed it by only one point.

Mohit Choitrani made interesting dishes using Kiwi and meat. He made Sweet Brushetta, Classic Shepard Pie and refreshing Kiwi Smoothie

The atmosphere at the APBCookStudio was very vibrant with audience waiting to taste the dish. It ended with a grand feast cooked by Rushina and her staff

My entry………….that won me a bottle of wine.

 Mince Meat Pie

Mince meat pie is the traditional Kiwana Kiwisine and is still the norm in many homes

Ingredients for the crust

1cup flour

½ cup cold unsalted butter

1/2tsp salt and powder sugar mix

1 egg

Ingredients for filling

1tbsp oil

200gms mince meat

2 medium onions (finely chopped)

1tsp garlic paste

2tbsp tomato sauce

2tbsp cornstarch

1 chicken/meat cube

50gms mushroom

50gms cheese (grated)

1tsp black pepper

chopped black olives for garnishing

Method for crust

1.    Mix flour, salt, sugar, unsalted butter in a bowl

2.    Make a dough using ice cold water if necessary

3.    Wrap it in sling film and refrigerate it for an hour

4.    Remove from fridge and roll it to the size a little large than the tart pan.

5.    Line the tart pan with butter and spread the rolled out dough

6.    Pinch holes in the dough

7.    Bake it for 25minutes, till crusty

8.    Fill it with filling

Method for filling

1.    Fry onions in oil till light brown

2.    Add crushed garlic

3.    Add mince meat

4.    Cook till water dries up

5.    Add tomato sauce, chicken/meat cube, corn starch

6.    Leave it to cool

7.    In another pan sauté chopped mushroom with salt and pepper

8.    Grate cheese

Assembling the pie

1.    In the baked crust lined tart pan, coat the edge with egg.

2.    Add the filling of cooked minced meat

3.    Layer it with sautéed mushrooms

4.    Layer it with grated cheese

5.    Garnish with tomato sauce and black olives

6.    Bake it for 20 minutes at 350 degrees

My special thanks to Tanvi and Rachna who were always willing to help and made thing easy for us.

Lessons that I learnt

Don’t experiment at the cook-up-contest, attempt only those recipes that you specialize in.

Understand the oven, before using it

If things go wrong, try something creative to change the recipe

or else, just accept the fact:

That sometimes things go off tangent, nothing to fret about, it does not reflect on your cooking, its just bad luck.

Then, there’s always next time….

Image courtesy Beacon Holidays