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Ginger, chillies and some sauce

Photos: K. Ananthan

A first for Coimbatore Mongolian food festival

Mongolia is the 19th largest country in the world, declares Wikipedia. A little irrelevant perhaps. But, not when one is faced with the task of reviewing a Mongolian food festival. I hate to admit this, but until I went to the festival, I believed that the Mongolians were an extinct race, the last of whom was Kubla Khan.

Single course meal

Not surprisingly, I was wrong. Mongolia is very much a strip on the map, throbbing with life and with a history worth mulling over. But the Mongolians apparently do not believe in a very flamboyant cuisine, probably because of their nomadic origins. The festival hosted by Little Italy, however, is a vegetarian version of the Mongolian way of dining.

It's a single course meal (read no soups or desserts). You have a choice of flat stick rice, Singapore Herba, flat noodles and Chin noodles. You are politely instructed to fill up your bowl with the vegetables you like and hand it over to the chef. The vegetables look like they've been freshly plucked. There is Chinese cabbage, broccoli, zucchini, leeks, red cabbage, lettuce and yellow capsicum.

While you find a table, you can watch the chef toss the vegetables into the pan along with the rice or noodles you have picked. But, the ingredient that determines the taste of your dish is the exquisite sauce that is added to it. The sauce is made from freshly ground spices and condiments. "These sauces are authentic and not available in the market," says Chef Randhir Singh Negi from Uttaranchal who is an expert in Mongolian cuisine.

The chef's own favourite is the sour ginger pepper sauce, which has red chillies, ginger paste and other spices. One is less likely to have tasted something like the compow sauce, which is made of bamboo shoots. The dable sauce is for those who don't mind the flavour of lemon grass.

"The vegetables are not boiled or cooked. Added to the rice or noodles along with the sauce and a bit of Olive oil, the nutrients remain intact," Negi says.

The sauces are spicy, and exploding in the mouth like little crackers are the crisp noodles. It is indeed a very different culinary experi ence for most of us who have been used to the routine fare of Chinese and Indian. Along with the vegetables, you could also add a few more delights into your Mongolian platter. Freshly cut mushrooms, corn pellets, spring onions and even paneer.

"People in Coimbatore love to experiment with food," says Ankit Agarwal, Managing Director of Little Italy. Though popular in large hotels and even wedding parties, Mongolian food is not very common in this part of the country, he adds.

A platter is a little over Rs.300 including the `local taxes extra.' So, if you visit the festival as one big happy family, each one could choose a different sauce, rice, or vegetable. Or else, there wouldn't be much to experiment with.

The festival is on till the end of the month from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. For reservations and details contact: 0422-4516159.

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