The beer and wine festivals in
Mumbai and Pune kept me so busy between October 2011 and Jan 2012 that it was
impossible to find the energy and time to organise a PGC meet.
In March I discovered that all
the good food and wine had converted to Triglycerides and Low Density Lipoproteins
and were merrily coursing thru my blood stream in ever increasing numbers. I then had to reinvent myself. My reading
habits changed from BBC Good Food India to Dean Ornish’s Reversing Heart
Disease and Eat More Weigh Less and WebMD. My food habits moved from Chicken
Chettinad to pasta with 1.2 gm fat per serving and zero oil subzis. It’s a
gourmet journey of a different kind. Bye bye Amrut Single Malt, hello 0.9gm fat
per 100 gm of Dahi!! Instead of watching
MasterChef Australia, I began browsing the net for brown rice dosas and oat
idlis!! Believe me, it is not easy to dream up a gourmet meal in such trying
circumstances.
Thanks to members like Parag Sane
and Husein Upletawala who were eager to have a meet, I thought up a pizzas and
salad event. Why pizzas? Mainly because what we get in Pune is very run of the
mill. Getting a New York or Chicago style pizza is next to impossible. The
Lebanese Lahme is practically unknown. The Zather you get is a piece of maida
roti fried on a tawa!
It was a back to the basics meet
on June 3rd at my place. Though our kitchen is not restaurant sized,
it is well equipped with 2 large ovens, pizza pie pans, all related equipment
and enough space for 4 persons to work simultaneously.
All attendees had to cook. I decided
on five styles of pizzas. Vivek Mannige chose to make a New York style
(Neapolitan), Rohan Thacker was allotted Gordon Ramsay’s award winning Basil
Pizza, Husein Upletawala got the Lahme bi Ajeen, a Lebanese style pizza, Parag
Sane was tasked with the Arabic Zather pizza and I undertook Emeril Lagasse’s
Chicago style pizza. Nilesh Kale was the
Greek Salad maker. In all we were 12
attendees with the ladies free of any work. Cooking was strictly a men’s
affair.
Each pizza was unique in dough
composition, toppings and sauces.
Vivek was one up on everyone
else. He prebaked his base, brought a Ragu of his own creation and toppings and
just finished it off at my place in 10 minutes flat while we began from first
principle of rolling out the dough. It was a thin crust pizza with Ragu,
chicken and cheese toppings and utterly delicious.
Rohan apparently had more than an
adventurous time making the Passata for his pizza. The tomato sauce forced itself
out of the pressure cooker and splattered the wall! The resulting sauce was not
as thick and intense in flavour as Gordon Ramsay’s but with the fresh basil
topping and buffalo mozzarella, it was finger licking good. The base,made of a
flour and semolina mix had a soft yet crispy texture. Apparenly semolina
(rawa/sooji) is high in gluten and lends crispiness to the dish.
Parag who confessed that he and
his wife had never been successful in making a good pizza at home, came up with
a perfectly risen dough for his Zather. Which I’m sure instilled a high degree
of confidence in his pizza creating abilities. A little help from Husein
and me, he started churning them out
like a pro. The flatbread was dusted
with Zather – the Arabic spice mix – and generously lathered with olive oil
prior to being cut in appetiser sized triangles.
Husein had taken the trouble to
experiment the Lahme recipe in advance and everything went right tho we did
have a bit of problem with the oven temperature. The Lahme is the non-veg version of the Zather
and every popular in Lebanon, Syria and surrounding countries. It’s uncommon in
India. Like the Zather its a perfect appetizer.
Nilesh assembled the Greek salad –
complete with feta cheese, olives etc. - on the spot like a pro.
Emeril Lagasse is a chef I swear
by and his Chicago style deep dish pizza did not disappoint. It had chopped
sausage, pepperoni and mozzarella cheese. The base was firm at the bottom and
deliciously bready in texture. We could lift the entire 12” dia pizza with 3”x4”
spatula.
It was great fun with 5 of us
working in the kitchen, quaffing beer (London Pride Ale, Murphy’s Stout, Amstel
Light and Birra Moretti), exchanging notes and experimenting with a mix and
match of sauces and toppings!! The ladies and Vivek stuck to Sula’s Dindori
Reserve. After a long time, PGC members were finally getting to do some
cooking!
Dessert was homemade Mango
gelato. Vivek correctly identified the Kesar as the mango used in the gelato.
Deepak and Vinita Mohoni’s
daughter Madhavi – currently learning photography - took the pictures.
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