Eating @ Earth Plate

When the Earth’s cuisine came to one single plate!

They don’t say Thank God it’s Friday just like that. There are absolute and nice reasons behind it. This particularly Friday, we the colleagues, ganged up against one nice other colleague who was to treat on occasion of ummm….many many things. She successfully completed her Research course and officially turned into a Dr., followed by successfully completing her driving course and received her driving license and buying a brand new car and oh yes! She also successfully completed a year in the company. So, to celebrate her successful completion of many things, we asked her to treat us out. She just couldn’t say no. After all, it was only to celebrate her successes!

Since it’s a Friday and no one in the team is in no mood to work, we realised may be the food will wonders and bring us back our dedication. So, not deciding to go too far, we thought of exploring a new restaurant in HSR Layout, Bangalore that calls itself, Earth Plate. We’ve noticed this restaurant on our way back and had always wondered, so many cuisines at one place?? We have got to explore this place.

We reach and our super-food enthusiastic boss runs up the stairs to book a table for us. No buffet for us, he declared. We will go al-a-carte. And there we went deciding what each of will be having:

I ordered a Syberian Sunset (a cool and refreshing drink made of orange, pineapple, peach and apricot, topped with soda) for my drink while another colleague ordered Blue Island Ice Tea (a delightful crush of litchi, peach, apricot and mango with a dash of blue curacao topped with cranberry juice), a sweet and juicy rip off of Long Island Ice Tea, I suppose. The others, read the Boss and the treating host, our PhD qualified in this case, settled for sweet and salt Lime Soda.

Syberian Sunset

Blue Island Ice Tea

Vegetable Chimichanga (flour tortillas stuffed with jack, Colby cheese, cottage cheese, shredded carrot and capsicum, rolled and deep fried served with Spanish rice and Latino set) was my main course, two others ordered Stuff Mushroom in Smoked Barbeque Sauce Sizzler (Mushroom stuffed in spinach and cheese, served with smoked barbeque sauce accompanied with potato wedges and herb rice) and Grilled Chicken Sashlik Sizzler (cubes of boneless chicken served with rice, sweet and sour and Garlic Sauce) and lastly the good old, Chicken Biriyani. So this was a mix of food from all geographical zones. Truly, the earth was there on one table!

Vegetable Chimichanga

Stuff Mushroom in Smoked Barbeque Sauce Sizzler 

Grilled Chicken Sashlik Sizzler 

The food was good, and the ambience too. Only that it being a Friday, the place had office teams from all over. Well, guess we were lucky to have found ourselves a table. The foods were served a little late, for understandable reasons. The next time I visit this restaurant, I am going to try out the buffet menu, now that I am convinced about their quality of food.

Address: 1, 14^th Main, 17^th Cross, Sector 7, HSR, Bangalore

Zomato: http://www.zomato.com/bangalore/earth-plate-hsr/info#tabtop

Cost: Rs. 900 for two people (approx.)

Food that looks good, tastes better!

That combination of gold and white. Steaming little yellow cubes or even circles on white rice. That aroma which fills the room and make you asking for more. That taste that cannot be replicated and should be had only on special occasions. Such is the power of one of my grandma’s signature dish. Shorshe or Bhapa Chhana or Paneer in Mustard Sauce is what we call it. Yes, one of her many signature dishes that not even the best cooks and Mom can recreate.

Cooking is an art and you need to develop that skill and talent to cook the best food. It is not easy to get that right amount when someone asks you to add pinch of salt to the food or according to your taste, or even the spoon sizes don’t match when they talk about adding masalas to your food. But for my grandma, these didn’t matter. Practice and long years of cooking with love and care made her perfect. No wonder she was the ultimate decision maker when it came to kitchen and what everyone in the family will eat. Although everything she cooked tasted out of the world, her signature dishes were only meant to be cooked on special occasions such as birthdays of her sons and daughter, grandchildren and Jamai Shashti. Bowls of different vegetarian curries along with rice and dal will be put in front of the special person.

Being a vegetarian family, we have successfully replaced the non-vegetarian versions of dishes with vegetarian ones. Shorshe Paneer or Bhapa Chhana is one such example. For non-vegetarians, it is the shorshe ilish or shorshe chicken. For us, it is this delicious version.

When I received the mail from #IndiBlogger regarding this contest My Beautiful Food! from Borosil, I was thrilled. Although I am not a food blogger yet, I have been toying with the idea from the time I have started cooking and trying out new recipes. Participating in this contest is only my way of embarking on this new journey. Since this is part of Round 1: Alphabet Soup of #BeautifulFood and requires posting of no images, I am only sharing the recipe that we follow.

You can make Shorshe Paneer this way:

• You need to prepare 2 tablespoons of mustard paste by mixing mustard powder in water and keeping it for 10 minutes or by making a paste with soaked mustard seeds for 10-20 minutes and mixing it in a mixer. In the meantime, chop paneer into cubes (about 20-25 pieces).
• To the mustard paste, add salt according to taste, 3 tablespoons of curd and 2-3 green chillies and mix well.
• Keep the paneer for marinating in the mustard paste and leave aside for a while.
• In a non-stick or heavy bottomed wok which has a fitting lid, add 2.5 tablespoons mustard oil and heat it up properly.
• Add the marinated paneer and stir properly. Bring the heat down to low heat level and keep the wok covered with lid for 4-5 minutes.
• Open the lid and check the water that has been released from the curd. Stir the paneer again and add salt, if you feel is required. Cover the wok once again for about 3-4 minutes.
• Open the lid and cook for about 1-2 minutes and stir to mix the paneer properly. Turn off the heat and serve in a beautiful glass serving dish from Borosil. Serve with hot plain white rice.

PS: Serving is as crucial as cooking the food. You can check out different kitchen glassware from Borosil here. 

Pure bliss is Davangere Benne Dosa & Thatte Idli on a Sunday morning!

Wake up on a Sunday morning and the thought that crosses your mind is a good and tasty breakfast. Wish you had the super mom/ super woman who prepares every kind of breakfast that her family wishes on that MTR advertisement? At least I wish sometimes. The feeling of a yummy breakfast going to your stomach is enough to lift your mood and let you plan an entertaining Sunday ahead. In my two and half years in Bangalore, experiments with food in my own kitchen has been many. The same also goes for hearing out suggestions of trying out different kinds of traditional Karnataka cuisine at the most obvious places. So, this time, us friends, decided to wake a little early and have breakfast that our minds could also relish. We zeroed upon having Benne Dosa and Thatte Idli this time!

Originating from the city of Davangere, Karnataka, Benne Dosa is also referred to as Butter Dosa. The uniqueness of Benne Dosa is that it is made up by adding butter while preparing a normal dosa. It is similar to other usual and regular types of dosa, the masala or the sada or the set dosa, but is comparatively smaller in size. These dosas are made of rice batter and heaps (read, lots) of butter. A liberal spoon of butter is sprinkled before serving that adds to flavour and enhances the aroma of the dosa.

Photo credit: scribidomagazine.com

 You can try out varieties such as Benne Khali Dosa, Benne Open Dosa and Benne Masala Dosa. I had a plate of Benne Masala Dosa (the masala was boiled and mashed potato with butter and salt) and to be honest, the butter was too tempting to keep my mind shut for a moment and not think about calories that day!

Photo Credit: The Hindu

When it came to trying out Thatte Idli, the mere view of the soft round giant idli on the plate took my breath away. It was also served with a dollop of butter on its soft surface that melted and made it a buttery idli to be eaten with sambar and coconut chutney. This awesome steam-cooked delicacy is a must have if you are ever willing to try out the cuisine of Karnataka. Thatte means plate in Kannada and the advantage of using plates for preparing this type of idlis is the control over use of batter to make idlis according to an eater’s preference.

Photo Credit: Commons.wikimedia.org

If you want to indulge on Benne Dosa and Thatte idlis without traveling to Davangere, you can find it in many of the well-deserved traditional Karnataka cuisine restaurants in Bangalore itself. And if you’re abroad, especially USA and Singapore, you may be lucky enough to find these listed there as well.

Well, we had our share of pure bliss on a bright Sunday morning here:

Davangere Benne Dosa is located at 118, 13^th Main, 4^th Block, Jayanagar, Bangalore and a meal for two will pinch as much as Rs. 50 in your pocket. You may want to try this on the coming Sunday! :D

PS: It is a pure vegetarian dosa joint.