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Vegetable au gratin
I wonder how many of our readers remember a place called the Sky Room. There was a time when it was said that you hadn't been to Calcutta if you hadn't eaten at this restaurant on Park Street. I certainly remember the meal I had there many decades ago. I ate a chicken a la Kiev — and nowhere after that has this buttery chicken dish been as good as I recall it was at the restaurant.
Sky Room closed two decades ago, but there are several such restaurants in Calcutta which evoke food memories. They serve dishes which are somehow intrinsically linked to the city, even if they are available elsewhere in the country.
This thought came to my mind some days ago when I was eating at a newish restaurant in Calcutta called the Amber Caf. Started by the family that runs the very popular Amber restaurant in the city, Amber Caf is in the Park Street area and serves dishes that the people of the city have embraced as their own. I see this sub- cuisine as the comfort food of Calcutta.
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Princess chicken
'Our dishes are like an institution,' says Aradhana Khullar, who graduated from Les Roches International School of Hotel Management, Switzerland, and joined the family business of food once she returned to India. 'People have got used to the tastes of certain dishes which they know of through generations,' she says. 'People have sort of grown with all this.'
Indeed, dishes such as chicken and prawn cutlets and vegetable au gratin are seen as the food of Calcutta. Or take chicken a la king — which at one point of time I used to cook at home rather well (my version consisted of chicken breast in brown gravy served in a crater of mashed potatoes). These dishes are a veritable part of the city, and are served in many restaurants. And it's not a coincidence that most of them are remnants of the Raj.
'Anglo-Indian dishes took off in the city because there was a time in Calcutta when other cuisines hadn't come up,' points out Aradhana's father, Sanjay Khullar, who runs Amber restaurant which opened in 1958 and served many of the dishes that the city loves. Some of these have now moved to Amber Caf.
One such dish is called Princess Chicken — essentially crumb-fried chicken served with a creamy sauce. 'This has been with us for 35 years or so,' says Khullar. His daughter adds that the dish was named by her grandfather, who thought it was 'a royal and grand' dish and deserved a suitable name.
Some of Calcutta's favourite dishes, says Saurav Banerjee, the executive chef at The Oberoi Grand, are so popular and well-entrenched that clients often don't even consult the menu card when they visit a restaurant.
'On our menu, dishes such as prawn cocktail and chicken a la king are so popular that you'll have people who'll only order these. Lobster thermidor and baked Alaska are the other dishes the city treats as comfort food,' he says.
Chef Saurav believes that the city's links with the British Raj are the reasons why these dishes are still flourishing. 'These are signs of British influence on Calcutta. And Calcutta proudly attaches itself to this legacy. That's why these dishes are so popular,' the chef says.
Take something like fish and chips. You get this everywhere in the country, but perhaps because of the rise of the pro-British Bengali elite as well as the taste of the Calcutta bekti, the city sees it as one of its own dishes.
It's not just the British influence on Calcutta that has led to the popularity of these signature dishes. The Americans have also left their legacy behind in the form of food.
One such dish — again a part of Calcutta's comfort food — is chicken tetrazzini, diced chicken cooked with spaghetti or other forms of pasta. The dish — which is believed to have come to the city with American soldiers during World War II — can be found in the best restaurants of Calcutta, as well as in some of the lesser known ones.
'All this is what you can call the comfort food of Calcutta,' stresses chef Saurav.
Nostalgia, clearly, is best served warm — with a bit of brown gravy on the side.
Chicken Cutlet
(serves 1)
Ingredients:
- 2 chicken breasts (each 80g-100g)
- 50g flour
- 40ml refined oil
- 1 egg
- black pepper to taste
- 5g coriander paste
- 5g onion paste
- 5g green chilli paste
- salt to taste
Method:
Marinate the chicken breasts with the onion, green chilli and coriander pastes. Season with salt and pepper. Whisk the flour and the egg together. Coat each breast with the flour mix. Deep fry in oil. Garnish with boiled vegetables and serve.
Tomato Baked Fish
(serves 1)
Ingredients:
- 5 small tomatoes
- 20ml tomato ketchup
- 20g tomato puree
- 1 fish fillet (150g-200g)
- 1 tsp chopped garlic
- 5g butter
- 60ml cream
- 30g boiled vegetables
- 30g grated cheese
- onion and tomatoes for garnishing
Method:
Boil the tomatoes. Peel the skin and take the seeds out. Mince the boiled tomatoes. Saut onion and garlic in butter and add tomato puree and ketchup. Add the minced tomatoes and then the cream. Pour the sauce over the fish in a dish. Add grated cheese and bake at 180C in a salamander till done. Garnish with onion and tomatoes and serve with boiled vegetables.
