Whether it is for adults or kids, the lunch box presents many dilemmas. What to pack, how much time to spend on preparing it, what will taste good a few hours after packing, what can be made ahead — these are some factors one must keep in mind while packing a proper lunch box.
A packed lunch should be a portable, less-elaborate version of a lunch you would have at home and by that, I mean well balanced, hygienic and tasty.
Carbohydrates form the base of any meal. One can choose from wholegrain bread, rotis, pita bread, cooked unpolished rice, broken wheat, semolina, pasta, potato and so on. Younger kids can do with white sandwich bread as too much fibre can fill them up quickly before they can consume the required calories. Wholegrain sandwiches, stuffed pita bread, fried rice with vegetables or chicken, broken wheat patties, semolina upma, pasta tossed with vegetables or in a salad, boiled potato or potato patties are some of the ways to build the carbohydrate
component.
The box needs to have a protein component too. You could choose from chicken, eggs, beans, lentils, cheese, tofu, paneer, yogurt and nuts. Shredded lean chicken can be a part of wraps, sandwiches or pasta. A whole boiled egg, sliced in half and sprinkled with a pinch of salt and pepper makes the perfect addition to a kid’s lunch box, and the eggs can be boiled the previous night. Cooked beans like chickpeas, black-eyed peas, dried peas, rajma can be mashed and added to vegetable patties or made into hummus for sandwiches. Cheese cubes by themselves or in sandwiches are a most popular protein option for kids. Tofu or paneer can be added to dry vegetable curries that can be used to stuff rotis to make a roll. Yogurt can be set in one of the smaller boxes and put in the fridge overnight to be carried in the lunch box. This makes a good accompaniment to rice and broken wheat based dishes, if the commute is not too long and the workplace / school has a refrigerator. Nuts are a great snacking option, rich in a variety of vital nutrients — add this to your kid’s muffins or cookies and to your salad. Carrying it in the lunch box is the best way to eat nuts while exercising portion control. Nut butters are good for spreading in
sandwiches.
Since both adults and kids need to get five to nine servings of vegetables and fruit, it is important that the lunch box has a couple of servings from this group. Whatever is going into the lunch box, make sure it is fortified with some vegetables (other than potatoes, which is rich in starch) – for example, green beans and peas in rice, cucumber and carrot sticks with hummus, red bell pepper and zucchini in pasta. Add some pomegranate pearls to raita or curd-rice, grated apples and pears in muffins, sliced banana in peanut butter
sandwich.
Nandita Iyer is a medical doctor with a specialisation in nutrition. She blogs her healthy kitchen experiments at www.saffrontrail.com

Soak 1 cup of whole green moong overnight. Drain the soaked moong and grind it with a cup of washed and cleaned raw spinach leaves, a small piece of ginger and ½ tsp of salt. This does not require to be fermented. Pesarattu can be made immediately after the batter is ready. On a lightly greased non-stick tava, spoon out tablespoon full of batter with a little space in between the pesarattu, add a few drops of ghee or oil along the sides and flip when one side is cooked. You can sprinkle sesame seeds on one side while the other is cooking. Cook the other side similarly and serve with chutney or ketchup.

Manori, a fishing village located near Mumbai, is a beautiful place to visit in the monsoon, judging by the crowds that throng the ferries even on a weekday. Among them is Alphi D’Souza, CEO of the Mobai Gaothon Panchayat (MGP), a community of East Indians in Mumbai. Follow him into the village and he will lead you to his family house, which doubles up as the Mobai Museum dedicated to preserving East Indian culture.
The 240 sq ft museum comprises two make-shift sheds, built at a slight height in D’Souza’s compound and held together by bamboo poles and chutta (dried coconut leaves stitched together). Inside the two sheds are about 50 utensils, farming instruments, and other artifacts stacked up in a haphazard way.
It’s a dreary sight until D’Souza starts explaining the culinary role of these vessels. “These vessels can be used only with mud chulhas, which cannot be accomodated in flats. That’s why they (the vessels) are only used during food festivals or community solas (picnics),” says D’Souza. “In the earlier days, any potter would be able to create these vessels. The higher frequency of their use meant that they had to be replaced. Today, there are just a few potters in Mahim and a couple in Vasai who know how to make these vessels,” says D’Souza.
D’Souza grew up in a large joint family in Vakola, a locality in the Mumbai suburbs. His century-old cottage had a common kitchen where all the relatives would cook by turns. The whole house would smell of the East Indian bottle masala. “They say that bottle masala cooked in an earthen vessel is a specialty by itself,” he says. Each food item was cooked in a different utensil. The tizal, a roundish mud pot, was used for making curries. Then there was the forma for making cakes and baking piglings. “It is a big, deep earthen vessel with a cover on top. The cake was mixed, wrapped in a brown paper and put in the forma. This was then slow baked for a couple of hours,” says D’Souza. The pigling required more work. It had to be cleaned, its insides were removed, and then stuffed with masalas, cut liver and bread pieces. The pigling was a specialty meant for occasions like Christmas, anniversaries
or weddings.
Apart from heavyweights like forma, there are also smaller brass and copper vessels, as well as bharnis (jars made from porcelain) which were used for storing pickles and masalas, as well as for fermenting wines. One of these utensils is still used by East Indians in their modern-day kitchens. “The khapri, which is used to roast handbread, can be used on the stove,” says D’Souza.
There are a few farming equipments in the museum, harking back to days when most of the men in the community were farmers who worked on their own land in Mumbai. Today, the land is used to construct buildings. D’Souza’s own home has been converted into a society where all his relatives have flats of their own. All old vessels were sent to relatives’ places, and have been subsequently sold off. And it is this disappearing heritage that D’Souza’s museum preserves.

Hum purana lakir nahin khichte (I don’t draw the same old line again and again),” said Imtiaz Qureshi, bristling at my suggestion that the 83-year-old chef must have done it all by now and there was nothing new to challenge him any more. These days the original dum pukht aficionado — he was associated with ITC’s Dum Pukht line from its inception way back in the eighties — is adapting his traditional Awadhi fare to olive oil in response to diners who want a healthier cooking medium. That would be just another small ‘lakir’ in Qureshi’s cap, and he has many to boast of in a culinary career spanning six decades.
His eyes gleam in mischief as he recalls a trick he played on Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru long ago. They were at the residence of Chandra Bhan Gupta, chief minister of UP, along with Lal Bahadur Shastri, Zakir Hussein and Indira Gandhi. Soon after dinner was served, he was summoned by Nehru, who was annoyed to find Fish Musallam and Chicken Musallam on a table where the strict vegetarian Shastri was a guest. Everyone had a laugh, however, when it turned out that the ‘fish’ in the musallam was actually bottle gourd, and the ‘chicken’ was jackfruit. Even the Shammi Kebab had been made with lotus stems but artfully disguised to resemble the original dish in both look and flavour.
Here at the ITC Grand Central’s Kebabs & Kurries, where we were trying out his Awadhi dishes on the restaurant’s new menu, Qureshi watched as the waiter gingerly placed a Kakori Kebab on my plate in one piece. It’s well known how delicate is this kebab, designed to melt in an elderly Lucknowi nawab’s mouth.
Less familiar perhaps on an Awadhi menu is the Mahi Qaliyan. After all, most people would credit Bengalis with a dish of Rohu cooked in mustard oil, but Qureshi thinks the banishment of Awadh’s Nawab Wajid Ali Shah to Kolkata by the British had a lot to do with the development of the Fish Kaliya there. Even today Lucknowi restaurants like Amenia thrive in the Kolkata suburb where Wajid Ali Shah had been confined.
Mustard oil tempered with methi was in fact a familiar cooking mode for a young Qureshi growing up in the villages around Lucknow where he would watch the oil being refined in pits. He was training to be a pehelwan before fate took a hand and threw him into a job in the kitchen of a princely house in Jahangirabad. That’s how he came to grips instead with Awadh’s gift to gourmets, the
Dum Pukht.
It’s a story worth retelling, how Nawab Asaf-ud-Daulah had started a food-for-work programme during a famine in 1784. All-in-one dishes were slow-cooked in huge copper deghs to simplify the feeding of thousands of workers employed to build the elaborate Bara Imambara in Lucknow. One day the Nawab was so enchanted by the aroma wafting up from the deghs that he ordered the dish to be served in the palace. Over time, the basic combination of rice, meat, vegetables and spices took on multiple avatars with the addition of ingredients popular in royal kitchens, especially those considered to be aphrodisiacs. Today every Lucknowi cook worth his dum has his own potli with a secret spice combo.
On our table at the Kebabs & Kurries, apart from the inevitable Dum Pukht Biryani, there was a Diwani Handi of lamb simmered with vegetables in the same tradition. But it was Chef Qureshi’s Koh-e-Awadh that was the star of the evening.
Like everything else with this octogenarian chef, the Koh-e-Awadh too came with a history tag. It has its basic origins in the popular Paya, which gets its unique taste from the gelatin in a goat’s trotters. But trotters are unfit for a king, and so the goat’s shanks were used instead in royal kitchens. The shanks are meatier than trotters but also gelatinous like them, unlike the thighs or Raan. Chef Qureshi’s spin on it was to make a Korma with the lamb shanks, the meat being slow-cooked with curds and lots of cardamoms. The result was neither a Paya nor a typical Korma, it was a Koh-e-Awadh. The goat has 36 parts, the chef explained to me, and every part has its own flavour waiting to be drawn out in creative ways.
Clearly, for somebody like him, with such an intimate understanding of food, there is no need to draw the same line twice — the possibilities are infinite.

Fry 250 gm onions and add a kilo of lamb shanks to it along with 3 bay leaves, 10 cardamoms, 10 cloves and 2 pieces of cinnamon. lAdd 50 gm of garlic and 50 gm of ginger along with Kashmiri chillies and salt. lAdd 250 gm beaten curds and some raw onion, then stir until the gravy turns brown. lThen add a litre of water along with a mixture of cumin seeds, cinnamon, javitri and black cardamom, roasted and powdered. lCover and cook dum style. Finally, add a paste of almonds and roasted cashewnuts mixed with water. Saffron and kewra or rose water can be sprinkled at the end.

As a Holistic Health Coach, I believe in eating foods that are fresh, organic, nutritious and delicious. I also recommend whole foods — foods that haven’t been processed and de-natured. Eating healthy is about understanding your food — how it’s grown, what is in it, how it affects your body. Food can heal and nourish you. Here are a few recipes to get you started:

I love to tuck into Italian food – pastas, risottos and minestrone soup, in particular. While Italian food at restaurants can be a bit heavy on the stomach, when you rustle up pasta or risotto at home, it can be refreshingly light and crisp. I like to make my pasta healthy, wholesome and delicious.


Ingredients 

2 onions, diced 5 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped 1 zucchini, thinly sliced 1 capsicum, roughly chopped 1 large, juicy tomato, roughly chopped 1 small broccoli, roughly chopped 3 cups wholegrain pasta (I used rice and millet pasta – great for people with gluten allergy) 1 tbsp organic flaxseeds l2 tbsp organic sesame seeds 1 tbsp ground sunflower seeds Rock salt lFreshly ground pepper 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oillGrated cheese — as per taste
For the sauce:1/2 tbsp mustard saucel ½ tbsp sweet and sour red chilli Thai sauce 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oill1 tbsp organic peanut butterl3 tbsp water

Method 

Cook the pasta as per the packet instructions, drain and keep aside.Warm the olive oil and sauté the onions for a minute. lToss in the zucchini, garlic and broccoli, and sauté. Let the veggies remain crisp and crunchy.lAdd the chopped tomato and capsicum and give it all a stir. Add the seeds and cook for a very short while.lTip in the cooked pasta and give it a good stir. Add salt and freshly ground pepper, and let this cook on low heat.lNow quickly prepare the sauce. Add all the mustard, red chilli sauce, peanut butter and olive oil. Stir it well and add some water to dilute the sauce.lMix the sauce into the pasta and veg mixture, and serve hot with freshly grated cheese.

As a Health Coach, I recommend a daily dose of leafy greens to all my clients. Greens are nature’s super foods, packed with nutrients. Here is how I like to cook them.

Ingredients

A big bunch of mixed fresh greens (spinach and mustard greens), roughly chopped 5 cloves of garlic, chopped 2 boiled eggs, sliced 2 tsp flaxseeds 1 tbsp mustard sauce ½ tsp coriander powderl½ tsp chilli flakes  Rock salt and freshly ground pepper to taste 1 tsp extra virgin olive oil

Method 

Warm the olive oil in a wok and add the chopped greens. lToss in the garlic and sauté for a few minutes, till the greens become soft. lAdd the sliced boiled eggs, flaxseeds, coriander powder, mustard sauce, chilli flakes, salt and pepper. Cook for a quick minute till the flavours meld and serve hot with wholegrain toast.lTip: Instead of eggs, you can use pieces of grilled chicken or fish. If you are a vegetarian, substitute eggs with boiled sweet potatoes.
Chandana Banerjee is the founder of Luscious Health, a wellness studio in Bangalore. You can find out more about this at www.luscious-health.com

It was after round one of Project Puran Poli that I threw in the (ego-stained) towel and called my mother. It was a bit after one am, and despite her exhaustion, she rallied. “I don’t understand why you decided to do this,” she said, after 20 minutes of instruction on how to scrape the burnt flour off the pan. “This is a bit beyond your skill set, beta.”
It was the night after Ganesh Chaturthi, and the air outside was thick with distant music and the acrid smell of burnt firecrackers. Cooking had always seemed to me an efficient — and tasty — way of usurping another culture’s traditions. Whether it was Hanukkah with its deep-fried goodies, Christmas with a roasted leg of turkey and mashed potatoes, or Japanese food with miso soup and sushi. I had tried my way around the global dining table with varied success.
It was a week before Ganesh Chaturthi that I realised that one of the ‘foreign’ traditions that remained completely alien to me, were those surrounding this festival. After two years spent in this city, it remained more or less a time of even more torturous traffic than usual, noisy streets, and most importantly, delicious food like puran poli and rabdi, that I would partake of from friends and colleagues. Cooking this food, I felt, would serve as a sort of initiation into being a more authentic ‘Mumbaikar’.
Puran poli didn’t even have the decency to appear simple, so that I would be able to blame the debacles on my over-confidence. It requires the cooking of the sweetened chana dal mixture, which is then rolled into a flour encasing. Cooking the chana (gram) dal was simple enough — once the mixture, supplemented with sugar, nutmeg and cardamom powder, was thickened, it was kept aside. The dough, which constitutes the outer covering, is made of wheat flour, flour and oil added to water.
The recipe called for the chana dal mixture to be rolled into ping-pong-sized balls and placed neatly within a larger ball of the dough mixture. But this concoction was not one to be tamed by the rolling pin. The chana dal spilled messily out of its encasing. Determined to carry on, I attempted to bake this anyway, which resulted in the sticky, obstinate mess that eventually led to a call to my mother.
She advised me to rework the chana dal mixture, this time letting it thicken some more, and not to over-stuff the flour ball. The second attempt led to an unknown mistake — that completely mystified my mother, leading her to tell me bluntly that she needed to sleep, and good luck with the rest — that culminated in the puran poli crumbling apart like a disturbed thousand-year-old fossil. At this point, my annoyance — and sleepiness — was winning over my stubbornness. After half an hour of sulking and throwing the rejected sampled into a now-overflowing dustbin, I tried again.
This time, I rejected some of the recipe’s suggestions. I let the chana dal thicken for much longer than instructed, and made the flour balls more resilient by adding more flour. In what can only be described as a miracle, and had me doing a muted victory dance around the kitchen, the puran poli sizzled and browned obediently on the stove. Though the edges remained a tad undercooked, I declared it a victory — as any cooking experiment would be at 4am — and moved on to the rabdi.
I would advise anyone attempting the same jump into the deep end of the culinary pool to start with rabdi, which was bafflingly simple to make after the puran poli. Milk and condensed milk is mixed together and then heated till it reduces to one fourth of the original amount. Add 10-15 strands of saffron (difficult to procure, but worth it), three drops of rose essence, and around a dozen chopped pistachios. Stick it in the fridge, and eat in its entirety (only leaving a small amount for colleagues) after an hour to reward yourself for working so hard.
I don’t know if I feel like a part of this city any more than I did before I cooked and felt sleepy for the rest of the day. I also spent the rest of the day being annoyed at traffic, sitting briefly at Nariman Point with a friend, and catching a movie at Regal. So I guess for the time being, I’ll let myself qualify as a Mumbaikar.

What is mash-up?” I prodded Chef Manu Chandra before we got to the gleaming stainless steel kitchen of LikeThatOnly, which looked like something out of a sci-fi lab. Here, at the chef’s latest entrepreneurial venture in Bangalore’s Whitefield, “cuisine parameters are junked in favour of a happy mash-up,” I had heard, arousing my curiosity. The chef wasn’t ready to reveal the secret so quickly though.
Instead he spoke at length about the evolution of cuisines across the globe. How, despite the hue and cry over what is “authentic” to a region or its people, there’s nothing carved in stone about it. “Culinary traditions have been constantly changing ever since man began to cook. For instance, today’s Punjabi food is barely anything like what Punjabis ate a 100 years back. So is it with every community.”
Trade, the availability of new ingredients, and other factors have been influencing and subtly transforming cuisines everywhere. So, Chef Chandra has only disdain for those who tom-tom about authentic food. “What period in the past decides authenticity?” he asked.
“So is mash-up like fusion food?” I persisted. “You’ll see,” he said. It was well past noon when we reached the restaurant after about an hour’s drive from central Bangalore. A little too late to cook and then eat, I thought to myself.
The chef wasted no time in niceties. He walked into the kitchen — me in tow — nodded to a few, scrubbed his hands, took out a knife and plate, and started to pick and choose ingredients that would go into my first mash-up meal. It took him two minutes to put together finely chopped lemon grass, garlic, fresh red chilies, galangal, and onion. Kafir lime leaves became deveined, paper-thin slices in mere seconds. By now the wok was hot. A spoon of olive oil went into it, and in quick succession, the ready ingredients. He stirred it for a bit, sprinkled salt and pepper, and added cubes of fresh basa fish, some mussels, clams and a generous splash of white wine. It sizzled, simmered, smelled delicious, and was done. Start to finish, it took him about five minutes.
That, entangled in boiled spaghetti tossed with kaffir lime and coriander, would meet me a little while later.
The chef now led me out to the open kitchen counter facing a dining space. I could hardly wait to eat, but wait I had to for another five minutes, as the chef whipped up a beef and jalapeño taco, complete with bean sprouts, fresh coriander and garlic chips. Who said Mexican taco means ‘small lunch’, I thought while chomping through the different textures and tastes of the tortilla, tender, juicy beef slices, crunchy sprouts, fresh Chinese cabbage and crushed peanuts. I could taste each one of them distinctly. “Was that authentic Mexican taco, one could argue. I put it together with the ingredients I knew could go together instead of blindly following a handed down recipe. Fresh local vegetables can add so much to a dish,” Chef Chandra made his point.
“I avoid staying strictly within cuisine parameters when it comes to ingredients since terroir should have some role to play in it too.”
The seafood pasta came next. The juices of mussels and clams had coated the spaghetti well, and the flavour of kaffir lime and galangal (Thai ginger) gave this “supposedly” Italian dish — the Chinese were eating pasta well before the Italians, the chef had pointed out to me earlier — the perfect Eastern twist. And I thought cheese was must for pasta! “See,” the chef smiled. “I find taking out an ingredient rather than adding one usually improves the flavour of a dish.”
The menu at LikeThatOnly isn’t all mash ups from Asian and Western cuisines, however. For the sticklers who hate to experiment, Chef Chandra has some ‘authentic’ dishes too. In fact, to do a successful mash-up, you have to first master a variety of cuisines. Chef Chandra grasped the fundamentals of these cuisines at the Culinary Institute of America in New York, then honed his skills at famous kitchens around the world.
So there is nothing mishmashy or hodgepodgey about this chef’s mash-ups really. On the contrary, each ingredient that goes into a dish is by design to cajole a subtle flavour. v_malavika@dnaindia.net

Even through the dense sheets of heavy rain, the tall vertical white sign is unmistakable. It says ‘Toddy’ in both Malayalam and English, inviting passersby at one of the many busy roads in Udayamperoor, Ernakulam district.
But it might as well have been an item of adornment because five minutes after crossing the sign we are hopelessly lost and stop an old, lungi-clad man for directions to the toddy shop, locally known as kallu shap (‘kallu’ is liquor in Malayalam). It is tough to read his expression: it wavers between astonishment and disgust at having been stopped by a seemingly desperate woman who wants to get to the nearest liquor shop in broad daylight.
After several bends in the road, misleading signs and judgemental old men, we pull over at the Mullapandal toddy shop, where we wait for a good ten minutes before we can find parking space. And once inside, we jostle for standing space with drunk men, who loudly object to our taking pictures before calming down with more toddy. Clearly, nothing can be a deterrent once a Malayali makes up his mind to get sloshed.

In the kallu kitchen
The shap has both a common area and private rooms, each with a few chairs and a table thrown together, where a group or even a family can eat. Earlier, the kallu shap was mainly a blue collar hangout joint, but now it attracts all kinds, from college students to celebs.
It's the small office room in the shap where customers head for their takeaways. Here, a rickety old wooden table doubles up as a cash counter and the shap manager Subramanium’s computer. When we meet, Subramanium is busy scrawling the day’s accounts on the wooden table with a white chalk as and when an order is placed. “I am too used to this,” he smiles sheepishly, when he sees us staring at the desk. He readily agrees to let us pop into his kitchen and instructs a worker to lead us there.
The heady smell of toddy is slowly replaced by the scintillating aroma of raw spices, freshly grated coconut, cooked meat and fish curry as we approach the kitchen. Six to seven women are hard at work, bending over massive aluminium vessels, stirring curries and squinting through the smoke. Unlike hotels and restaurants, kallu shaps have women running the kitchen just like in most Kerala homes. These ladies start work at 8am, and make more than 20 different dishes in sufficient quantities to feed more than 300 people every day.
The head cook is Radha, who has been working at kallu shaps for more than 15 years, churning out karimeen fry, kappa (tapioca), kakka (mussles) fry, karimeen polichadu, prawns, crab, fish head curry, rabbit meat, duck meat and pork, with generous infusions of chillies, kuru mulaku (pepper) and coconut. So does she make all this yummy spicy stuff at her home too? “It never turns out the same at home. At the kallu shap, we have so many ingredients. And because we make it in large quantities, the frying happens in a lot more oil than we use at home,” says Radha.
At Radha’s behest, we order a plate of prawns fry, karimeen polichadu, kappa and fish curry. For karimeen polichadu, pearl spot is first soaked in turmeric water and then marinated in a peppery masala ground with ginger, garlic and shallots. Five hours later, the fish is fried in coconut oil, then wrapped in a plantain leaf and steamed.
At our table, a seductive smell of coconut oil, spices and fried onions emanate from our karimeen fry. Once we open the banana leaf, the aroma hits us in full force, leaving us momentarily stunned. The flavours of the spice mixture, coconut and karimeen come together like a symphony, thanks to the long marination. While the prawns have a balanced taste of tamarind, red chilli, coconut and cashewnut, the curry is so spicy that it makes our
eyes water.
Why is the taste of this food almost impossible to replicate at other restaurants and hotels? For one, all dishes are still prepared on wood stoves. The women grind and prepare their own masala mixtures. The men at the shap buy meat, vegetables and other provisions everyday in just the required quantities, so that they never have to use stored items. Also, as Radha shyly points out, a woman’s hand can make a dish extra delicious.

a rabbit in the curry
Some 15 kilometers from Kochi city is the
Nettoor Toddy Bar, strategically built to face the backwaters. Here, rabbit meat is the house speciality, says Padmini, who runs the kitchen with one other woman. The toddy shop also used to serve crane meat, before it got banned.
“Rabbit meat is the hardest to cook,” says Padmini. “You have to cook the meat for almost three hours before you can use it.” Crushed ginger, onions, spices, coconut and water are cooked together in an aluminium vessel till it reaches a semi-solid consistency (called vazhattiyathu). The rabbit is then added to this mixture.
Padmini opens one of the spice tins and invites us to smell her specially grounded curry powder. One whiff is all it takes to leave us salivating.
On its own, kallu shap food might seem too spicy but when coupled with toddy, essentially a sweet drink, the combination is tough to beat, we are told. And so, we sit down with a plate of puttu (rice cake), fish curry and a glass of toddy to put the theory to test. Sure enough, the fish curry is so spicy that we are tempted to gulp down the toddy like water. But the alcoholic drink’s inherent sweetness puts the fire out, helping the meal strike a delightful spicy-sweet balance throughout.
“Fish curry that is a day old tastes the best,” explains Rameshan, one of the helpers at the shap. “It gives the tamarind and all the other spices time to mingle and settle down, giving the curry a very powerful flavour. Customers specifically ask for fish curry that is a day old.”
Two days later while dining at an upscale hotel in Kovalam, we order the karimeen polichadu, hoping to revisit some of that mind-blowing flavour. It 's a damp squib, devoid of salt, or any other distinctive flavour for that matter. It seems a very bland version of the kallu shap’s karimeen polichadu. That's when it hit us. The kallu shap has spoilt us, probably for life. p_anu@dnaindia.net