Mandaar Sukhtankar - Romancing the Chicks: Stories, Recipes and Thoughts

A note on the Author

Mandaar Sukhtankar is currently the Executive Chef of The Park, Hyderabad, a contemporary Indian boutique hotel. He was most recently named Chef of the year 2016 at the Times Food and Nightlife Awards.

He loves to travel and explore cultures and cuisines and is an avid writer with a keen sense for capturing details. He also loves photography and playing the guitar.

Mandaar lives in Hyderabad with his wife, Meenakshia trained classical musician and son Aadia budding young cricketer.

Mandaar Sukhtankar

Stories, Recipes and Thoughts

westland ltd

61, II Floor, Silverline Building, Alapakkam Main Road, Maduravoyal, Chennai 600095
93, I Floor, Shamlal Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110 002

First e-pub edition: 2016

First published by westland ltd 2016

Copyright Mandaar Sukhtankar 2016

Most of these articles and recipes first appeared in the Deccan Chronicle, Khorma, Qaliya and Nattan Boltaan appeared in Food and Nightlife

Andhra Fire appeared in Food Lovers Magazine
The author wishes to thank them for permission to republish the material.

All rights reserved

978-93-86036-30-8

Design by Haitenlo Semy

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, circulated, and no reproduction in any form, in whole or in part (except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews) may be made without written permission of the publishers.

For my father, the Late Col Ajit Sukhtankar who passed away while I was finishing the final manuscript of this book

Thank you Dad...

- for belting out those mad jokes on every occasion, sometimes even without an occasion

- for that infectious and loud staccato of a laughter that had everyone laughing along

- for sporting that marvellous moustache

- for those great reassuring bear hugs

- for all attempts to make us punctual

- for leaving us the legacy of honesty and uprightness

- for making sure that we ate the best wherever we went

- for being the Dad that I can only hope to be.

I know you would have been incredibly proud to hold the first copy of this book in your hand.

Contents

This book would not have been possible without the extensive support of my mad, mad family, friends and well wishers.

A big shout out to:

Meenakshi, my wife, the proverbial woman behind the man who excelled in the art of depositing all kinds of footwear on my derriere in order to get work done. Thanks for pushing (and shoving) me.

Aadi, my son, for making sure I get a smile whenever I need one and for all the fun wrestling and punching that made stress disappear into thin air.

Ms Priya Paul, for the encouragement and inspiration that she is.

The Park Hotels, for being such an amazingly creative workplace.

Anushree Banerjee and Priti Kumar, my friends, ex-colleagues and PR professionals par excellence. Thanks for a decade of believing and for not giving up on me.

Prita Maitra and Sanghamitra Biswas of Westland, for all their help, guidance and patience.

Momi Mukherjee, whose beautiful photography tells as many tales as this book.

Manjula and Gayatri Reddy of Deccan Chronicle for the opportunity to write the Sunday food page which I absolutely love writing for.

Antonio Carluccio and the numerous chefs around the world with whom I have had the privilege to share the stove and chopping board, for their guidance, wit and selflessness.

AND

To my mother Bharati, for editing each article, correcting my grammar and meticulously discussing the feel of every piece.

None took greater joy in reading what I wrote.

Rehne do pyasi aanhken (let there always be longing in the eyes) wrote Mahadevi Varmaone of the greatest Hindi poets of the Chhayavaad generation, known as the period of romanticism in modern Hindi poetry. As a school-going kid in Allahabad, I considered myself lucky to have met her in person. Little did I understand the impact of those words then, but they remained with me, written in that characteristic scrawl in my tiny autograph book. Like migratory birds to a warm destination those words would fly back into my mind ever so often.

We spend a lifetime trying to satisfy our desires. Whether its that great love that we pine for or that dream car, that fabulous dress or those lovely shoes, the wonderful house or that sharp suit, the latest phone or even the last piece of chocolate cake! Have it we must, but what then? Once we have it, do we really value it as much?

In essence, we need to let a bit of the desire remain in order to completely enjoy what we have. Its when you are to have just another piece of cake, its when you feel that just a little more wine would have been great, and its when just that little bit more would have fulfilled you!

Chefs the world over have unknowingly understood this and put it into practice in multi-course menus. The next time you sit down for one, you will know!

I wish us all an immense appetite but may all those cravings never get completely fulfilled. May we always be left wanting more, may the hunger grow by the day. May we have the most fabulous meals but always leave the table wishing there was more. May we get the best wines but not really enough of them, for thats when we will truly value what we have.

Wishing you hunger and thirst, passion and pain (the sweet one of course!), and lots of love and some rejection!

After all, would life be worth living if all our desires were fulfilled?

One Sunday, driving around town, I found myself tailing a milkman on a scooter and my mind went back to when we were children. The doorbell would ring. The doodhwala with his milk can and the indispensible measure would be at the door. The aroma of fresh milk would make me giddy as he measured and poured it out.

Cut to this morning, I opened the door and saw two packets of milk and couldnt help making the comparison between then and now.

On idle holidays we would sit around watching the lawn being mowed, taking in the smell of freshly cut grass. When Grandpa brought mangoes and jackfruit from the farm, they still had the sticky sap oozing from the stem, the groundnuts came in stringy bunches with the soil still on! We had to carefully wash them before we popped them open and enjoyed them. Ditto for green gram and peas.

The town market was a crazy medley of sights and smellsthe fresh coriander in luscious tones of neon green filling the surroundings with a heady perfume. The huge mounds of long runner beans entwined like little snakes, the neat piles of bottle gourd and aubergines, the seductive red tones of ripe tomatoes, the slender pods of drumsticks, huge piles of marigold flowers, earthy looking potatoes, colocasia and yam, white garlic and pink onions with their rustling skins, big heaps of green chillies beckoning to savour their fieriness!

When the market came to town, fresh was a given, but even so, we would do the coconut-shake to see how much water was sloshing inside, the watermelon-tap to check for ripeness, the melon-sniff to make sure they were sweet enough and the okra-top-snap to check for tenderness.