We had a lovely dinner locally organized by someone who has read my whining about food in Bangalore and proceeded to put together a huge chinese banquet at a local restaurant for me, some other foodies, and various friends and family.
It was a lovely evening, and we met a bunch of interesting people, but the best part was that he and his wife offered to show us around Russell Market! Now we knew that Russell Market was where all the serious food people went to shop, but it's intimidating. There are lots of vendors for each kind of food, it's crowded and noisy, and it's hard to tell who to ask for what.
Debbie got a guided tour at 8am (I had to work!) and as a result she got introduced to purveyors of chickens, seafood, and veggies. She brought back a veritable cournocopia, including some HUGE whole fresh prawns.
If I can't find good "french" food here, then by god I'll make it myself. So the menu for last night was whole fresh prawns poached in lemon-garlic buerre monter served with chicken rice. I bought a pound of butter, squeezed out about 50ml of strained lemon juice, coarsely chopped some garlic, and cracked some black pepper. Brought it all to a simmer in the bottom of one of my pots and proceeded to make a buerre monter. Added the prawns and poached until just firm.
In the mean time I just cooked some long grain rice in the defatted chicken stock I had left over from the potatoes, onions and chicken we had last night.
Delicious.
Now I just have to figure out what the hell to do with a bitter gourd, some beans, filleted fresh fish, and some chicken breast. I'm sure I will cope.
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5 comments:
Is it difficult to make a Beurre monte? Especially to keep it from splitting?
Personally, I like bitter gourd chips along with my rice and curry. (You can fry'em...)
As for the chicken breast, pan fried with capers, lemon, olive oil and parsley, served over steamed green beans?
Fish is easy enough.
Then again, you did say you'd cope...
:P
Beurre monté is one of those things that's terrifying the first few times and boring after that. Kind of like hollandaise or mayonnaise, once you've done it a few times it's routine. Even if you mess it up it's not so hard to rescue.
The key is low even heat and getting a good start. Too hot, or not hot enough it may break.
Where do you get capers here? I love to make poached fish in a lemon caper butter. Since I don't have capers handy I was just going to make a hollandaise tonight.
Fresh capers are near impossible. Bottled/canned are available at a number of places. Try Foodworld, Gourmet Store etc...
Nice to hear that you are happy on the ingredients front. As a side note, the cyclonic storms have put a damper on the catch and seafood prices are at an all time high for a coupla weeks now. This plays all kinds of havoc on the restaurant experience (read LESS quantity and a whole bunch of strange ingredients added to pad out the dishes!), so I'd advise staying away from seafood places for a while. BLR BYTES recommended a great place for seafood, but (Yes!) the tiger prawns looked more like kittens than big cats! The taste was great though, so thanks for the recco, BB! I must say that the prices were very reasonable too, when compared to K*****a!
;)
And here's an excellent article about the importance of ingredients:
http://www.davidlebovitz.com/archives/2007/06/is_american_foo_1.html
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