Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Beyond kimchi
|
Machan at Taj Mahal hotel in New Delhi rolls out a Korean Food Festival
|
SPICE WAR! Chef Kim says they are far ahead in adding spice to the delicacies
Even before you see the fare, the whiff of it awaits you at the doorstep. The ongoing Korean Food Festival at Taj Mahal hotel's popular restaurant Machan has a lot to do with the aroma of the dishes and suitably so, as you step into the beautiful ground floor restaurant, the smell of the food, a tad unusual from the everyday fare, at once strikes your senses.
Not wasting much time in taking pleasure just in whiffs, one eyes the special a la carte menu and doesn't fail to notice some of the most popular Korean dishes, like Bulgogi, Kalbi Gui and Kimchi. Bulgogi for the uninitiated, is a marinated tender beef dish in soy sauce, and Kalbi Gui is a grilled tenderloin fillet with spring vegetables. Kimchi, now quite popular even outside Korea, is a fermented vegetable dish with red chilli powder and sesame seeds.
At Machan, Chef Kim Sung II and Chef Ko Gyu Chul from The Shilla hotel in Seoul have cooked up a Bulgogi Naengchae, a sliced Australian tenderloin with mesclun and ginseng soy, and two versions of Kalbi Gui. Besides the usual Kalbi Gui, the other is Yang Kalbi Gui, a dish of braised lamb chops in kalbi sauce. Kimchi varieties have oriental cabbage or fermented cucumber. Even for a dilettante diner, the dishes will go down well, particularly Bulgogi Naengchae. It has an interesting tangy taste. Kimchi, as a side dish, even with a drink, is any day welcome.
A wide choice
With as many as eight dishes as starters and a sweet pumpkin soup with kidney beans to start with, and nine main dishes in the main course, the menu surely offers something or the other that will catch your fancy. Though a special mention needs to be made of its braised sea fish dish with oriental vegetables that goes so very well with steamed rice, and also a set of cabbage kimchis dished out in small beakers.
A first-time visitor to India, Chef Kim, with the help of an interpreter, says, he has "lowered the amount of spices" in all the dishes. "Before coming to India, I thought Indians ate a lot of spices, but on arriving here, I realised we are far ahead of the Indians in putting spice in food," he says with a laugh. Though a few more dishes like Bimbibap, Samkai Thang, Kujol Phang and Sincho Lar, etc. are quite popular in a typical Korean household, the chefs couldn't make them for the diners here, as either the ingredients they need to cook the dishes are not available or the vessels they require to cook them in are unavailable locally.
"Take for instance, the round bowl similar to the cake bowl, is not available here, and I just couldn't think of making Sincho Lar without it," says Chef Kim. The duo, not wanting to take a chance, has come with some basic ingredients like omeja, yokiram, thung kephi and gokkam.
As dessert, Chef Kim and Chef Ko have an Omeja punch to offer. It has traditional fried rice dumplings and Korean puffs like gyeongdan, gangjeong, yakwa, maejakwa and dashik. The food festival is on through this weekend.
SANGEETA BAROOAH PISHAROTY
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
|
