Tiramisu three ways

Big, we were once told, was small. Today the wise men have reached another conclusion ­­— small, they say, is big.

And nowhere is this more apparent than in some of the top restaurants in the country.

Chefs are coming up with small plates that satiate big demands.

Among them is an old favourite of mine — chef Ranveer Brar. Readers may recall that he was the executive chef at The Claridges Hotel in Delhi when he left for Boston a few years ago to open a restaurant called Banq. Several awards later, he is back in India — this time at the

Novotel Mumbai Juhu Beach Hotel — where he is doing wonders with small plates.

Small plates with small helpings have been around for a while. But what the chef is doing is adding to the tastes and flavours of these dishes with the help of molecular gastronomy.

Molecular gastronomy, as we know, is the sdistilling of flavours and forms of food. Beetroot, to give an example, can be presented (after a few elaborate steps in the kitchen) as a blob of foam or in the form of air.

“Air is the perfume of beetroot, in this case. You bite into a cookie and get the essence of beetroot,” chef Brar explains. “So you end up with a small plate that’s more scintillating and tantalising. That’s the new trend.”

Small plates have been catching on across the world for various reasons. One, people are more health conscious and no longer feel the need to eat a lot when they dine out. Two, they are experimenting more with food. And three, they feel they get their money’s worth when they have various kinds of dishes in small quantities in one plate.

“We have been offering small plates in sour restaurants,” says chef Veena Arora, the consultant Thai chef of Spice Route at The

Imperial in Delhi. “If someone likes something in particular, they can always ask for a bigger helping,” she says.

Chef Brar stresses that a small plate is a meal in itself. “The idea is to compress flavours into a bite or two bites. Everybody wants to taste more in their mind than they are spending. For the same money, taste and nourishment, they get to appreciate more flavours,” he says. That’s why, in a salad that he calls New Age Insalata Caprese, he serves mozzarella balloons with olive oil powder and basil foam.

Mozzarella balloon with olive oil powder and basil foam

Often, the chef cooks a particular ingredient in different ways. For instance, in a small plate he can offer two different presentations of the same fish. If it’s cod, he can give a small portion of wine poached cod and another of char grilled cod.

Small plates work especially

well with desserts. Now that India has become a hub of diabetics — 62.4 million people and counting — people are a bit iffy about eating huge desserts. But Indians also have a sweet tooth, so they can’t really say no to a rich tiramisu.

So chef Brar presents in one platter tiramisu in three ways (au naturel,

tiramisu chocolate praline and tiramisu foam). The portions are small and the foam is so light that you don’t feel guilty. Or he does a small plate of passion fruit curd and chocolate mousse tart — which he serves with liquid popcorn.

Small plate, clearly, is what the

future holds for us. Mayank Kulshreshtha, executive chef of ITC Sonar in Calcutta, points out that people are happy with small helpings. “It’s high time we reinvented ourselves. We used to earlier serve huge portions, but people don’t want to eat so much anymore,” he says. If a diner finishes a large steak, he won’t even touch the side dishes, he points out. “Now we need to resize a portion, and price it accordingly,” he suggests.

And if that’s not good news, I don’t know what is.

Poached black cod with green tomato confit and white balsamic tomato vinaigrette (serves 1)

Ingredients

• 180g cod fillet • 5cm piece of leek • 5cm piece of celery • 5 spinach leaves

• 2 thyme sprigs • 1 lemon • 200 ml Sauternes wine • 10g butter lseasoning to taste • 10ml olive oil

For tomato confit: • 1 halved green tomato • 2 garlic cloves • 100 ml olive oil • Seasoning to taste

For balsamic vinaigrette: • 5ml white balsamic • 10ml extra virgin olive oil

• 1 chopped tomato • seasoning to taste

Method

Marinate the fillet with olive oil, lemon juice, thyme and seasoning. Place the fish, leeks, celery and spinach in a saucepan. Poach the fish in the wine until it’s done. Finish with butter. For the confit, put tomato, garlic and seasoning in a saucepan. Add olive oil. Cook on low temperature. For the vinaigrette, put chopped tomato, olive oil, white balsamic and seasoning in a bowl. Mix with a whisker. Serve the fish with the confit and the vinaigrette.