Rainy days are here again so head to Raina's...

Think rains and you can almost smell the fresh, wet earth. But the olfactory association doesn't stop there. It almost always brings with it the smell of steaming hot coffee or tea and all those wonderful snacks that you grew up on. If rains do this to you, then there's one place which can make rains easy on you - Raina Ruchi Centre, (#28, Girls School Street), near Triangular Park, Seshadripuram, Bangalore -560020.  This small store run by Vijaykumar (9845221083) is like a one-stop shop for a vatiety of snacks, both North and South Indian. You get varieties of mixtures, namkeens, dals, peanuts, murukkus, kharis, khakhras, biscuits and other fried stuff. You also get a few interesting North-South fusion flavours here. You also find ragi-based snacks that add an innovative twist to some traditional snacks. Calorie counters, this place has some stuff for you, but you would be advised to give up the counting when shopping here. Introduced to this place and its goodies, by my friend Sapna, my personal favourites are the bite-sized Chintamani "nippattus" - deep-fried, savoury, crisp discs made of rice flour and seasonings of til, roasted peanuts, channa, coconut, hing and curry leaves. The bite-sized "pani puri puris" with pudina flavour that are sold here are melt-in-the-mouth. Some of their mini-khakhras come from Bombay. Their masala pasta is notable too. Though priced a little steeper than other snack stores, this store promises fresh stuff made in good quality oil. All in all, well worth a visit, if you are in that neighbourhood, before the rains come pouring down again......

Fickle over figs!

Figs were an early childhood aversion with me, given their unusual texture. But, having a generous neighbour with a fruit-laden fig tree helped. Later, I graduated to aquiring a taste for them, so much so that I wondered why I nursed an aversion in the first place. A recent article by Vikram Doctor on figs - (http://blogs.economictimes.indiatimes.com/onmyplate/entry/little-luxuries-this-little-fig)
brought back all those memories. I learnt with surprise that figs were inflorescences (arrangement of multiple flowers) or false fruits where the curved-in base of the flower is the fleshy, edible part enclosing the flower. But, serendipity knows no discretion. Just as accidentally as I'd learnt this, I also learnt more "disturbing" facts about them from Dr. M. B. Krishna, last Sunday on my Lalbagh walk. The figs are pollinated by very small wasps that crawl through the orifice in the middle (a.k.a ostiole) in search of a suitable place to lay eggs, whereafter the fruit grows seeds. Without this pollinator service fig trees cannot reproduce by seed. In turn, the flowers provide a safe haven and nourishment for the next generation of wasps. This accounts for the frequent presence of wasp larvae in the fruit!!

Whoever would have thought that the humble fig had made me - a vegetarian into a "vermitarian"!!!! I don't know if I can still pig it out on figs, now......

Apologies to all fig-lovers for spreading this niggling bit of trivia, which I'm sure you wouldn't consider trivial.... unless of course wasp-larvae are acceptable as or alongwith delicacies! Call me a pig for this?....

Kamat Lokaruchi, Ramanagara, Mysore Road.

While on a road trip to Mysore, one of the must-dos is to have a meal at Kamat Lokaruchi at Ramanagara, right next to Janapadaloka. There are three kinds of meals on offer wth an unlimited supply of buttermilk - absolute manna for the hot summer months. Jolada rotti oota is a typical North Karnataka style lunch with the main course comprising of hand-pressed jowar rottis, served with brinjal yaennagai and kaalu (lentils), soppu (greens), shenga pudi (spicy peanut powder), rice, rasam, sambhar, curd and the usual works. The Ragi mudde oota has on offer ragi mudde (finger millet dumplings) with soppina saaru as the main course, followed by two palyas, rice papad, rice, rasam, sambhar and curd . The Karavali oota is a very interesting variant. It includes Pathrode (though small in size and a little non-descript in taste), Heeraekai Pode, plain akki rotti (Malnad style)/Coorg otti with kurma and kootu, oththu shavige (stringhoppers) with kai haalu (jaggery sweetened coconut extract), horsegram papad with curd-flavoured fried chillies, rice, rasam sambhar and curd. All meal options include  a banana for fruit. You can even eat the regular favourites like Dosas, rottis, puris, holiges, etc based on the time of the day you go and availability. As a parting shot, don't forget to pack "one for the road" - some ragi nippattus (the best that I've had, sometimes even better then the more popular, age-old, rice version) and antinunde (Dink laddoos made of edible tree gum, jaggery, dry fruits, copra and other flavourings).

Supper and theater!

The cafe at RangaShankara offers a good mix of ethnic and international cuisines for the hungry theater enthusiast. The cafe ambience is eco-friendly and casual. Weekday shows typically start at 7.30 pm, which leaves room for theater-goers to grab a light pre-show snack and drink. The Cocum juice and lassi are really good. Sabudana vadas and vada paavs are just right and fly off the shelves as soon as they arrive. There's light to heavy dinner fare too like Biryani, akki/ragi rotti, paav bhaaji , pasta and sandwiches. The akki/ragi rottis were probably the most authentic Mysore-style rottis I've ever eaten outside of people's homes. Bang on target with the taste! Overall, one can eat a satisfying supper (or dinner) at the cafe, within the convenience of the theater.

Suggi-o-suggi!

Restaurant: Suggi - A taste of Malnad, New BEL Road. (I believe that its pure veg. twin is in Basaveshwaranagar, opp. Panacea Hospital).
Cuisine - Karnataka - Coorg, Malnad, Mallandur (that's what the menu card said!!)
Ambience - one notch below fine dining, but definitely better than your average multi-cuisine melting pots.
Service - was a bit tardy for a new joint.
Meal for two - veg - a la carte around Rs.600, thalis around Rs.200, non-veg - combo meals around Rs.400, a la carte around Rs.800.

If you understand the Coorg Otti, Paaputtu, Kadumputtu, noolputtu or the Mangalorean Akki rotti, kai kadubu, neer dosae, ragi amblee or the coastal appam, idiyappam - this is the place to come to. This New BEL Road eatery seems like it goes all out to pamper the non-vegetarian palette, just as its counterpart is a pure veggie puritan. Maybe that explains the amazing combos of the above-mentioned foods with chicken/mutton/fish curries made in the local styles. But vegetarians fret not, the spread may not pamper you, but you definitely won't come back hungry. A fellow vegetarian that I am, I tried the Suggi basket (one each of Akki rotti, Appam, a very small idiyappam, kai kadubu and neer dosa) with the Badanaekai Gojju ( pricey for a humble badanaekai dish at Rs100+, tasted like a melange of eggplant with mushrooms, maybe the latter explains the price) and wasn't disappointed. Though IMHO, the neer dosaes and ottis could've been better. The Veg Thali was good, but not great at (I think) 90 bucks for akki rotti, yennae badanaekai, soppina saaru, rasam, rice, akki happala, majjigae menasinakai, run-of-the-mill characterless pickle, mosaranna, neeru majjigae, ragi amblee(absolutely without character!) and paayasa (very nice - semia with jaggery and coconut milk undertones) and a very tangy red mango-based chutney. I asked for the house specialty - "Wild jungle mango curry" and was gently reminded that it wasn't available in the current season.

Verdict - If you are a carnivore, then this place gives you a taste of cuisines that never before were available outside the Hindu Military hotel format - Kannadiga cuisine in a fairly neat ambience, though I don't quite know how much of an overlap there is here with its cousin, the Andhra cuisine. Vegetarians get a curtain-raiser on the local cuisine, though I wouldn't say that accounts for much. OK for a try or two, maybe it would be worth the while to try the pure veg twin at Basaveshwaranagar.

Yugadi - my share of bella!

This Yugadi has been special for me for the sweetest of reasons - bella (jaggery). I was blessed with a serendipitous discovery of the famed Mangalore "ole bella" - dark, brown palm jaggery, in a neighbourhood store. Not only that, a thoroughbred city-girl that I am, I finally got to appreciate the nuances of various forms of  jaggery - I was very generously allowed to taste exotic forms of jaggery like karupatti vellam/ thaati bella (palm jaggery) and norae bella (special form of sugarcane jaggery). As if this was not enough, definitely the jewel in the crown, rather, the icing on my (jaggery) cake was the taste of "nolen gur er sandesh" I had just this evening, courtesy, my Bengali friend. She managed to fly down the very last batch of them with her - nolen gur (date palm jaggery) is highly sensitive to temperature and so at the max - a day's shelf life; nolen gur season ended much before the start of IPL-  in Jan itself! Bless her! Oh! the small, sweet pleasures of life!
For a "gur taste of bella", head to http://muse-a-day.blogspot.com/.

Mascarpone cheese.

My 3-4 year long quest for Mascarpone cheese in Bangalore finally ended on Saturday, 13 March 2010. I found loads of Mascarpone cheese, sour cream, cream cheese and a mind-boggling variety of other cheeses in the new Spar Hypermart at Mantri Square, Malleswaram. Maybe a trip down to Bannerghatta Road Spar would have solved my problem earlier. I've also heard the Gourmet Spencer's on MG Road stocks such stuff, but I'd never tried there. So, Italian cheesecake recipes here I come!!! More on the subject after my (mis)attempts at cheesecaking!!!