Yes­ter­day I decided to try to make some­thing from the French Laun­dry cook­book. After brows­ing through the book for some­thing at my level (that is, some­thing sim­ple), I set­tled on a selec­tion from the canapés sec­tion, the Parmigiano-Reggiano Chips with Goat Cheese Mousse. After a cou­ple of failed attempts, here’s the final result (they were quite good, although very rich: I had trou­ble eat­ing more than a few):

Some advice for any­one try­ing to make this hors d’œuvre: if the parme­san refuses to melt (as it did ini­tially for me), sprin­kle a bit of water in before bak­ing. Not much is needed, though. My first attempt with no water resulted in a burned, but wholly unmelted, pile of cheese. The sec­ond attempt with a sig­nif­i­cant amount of water (to the point where the indi­vid­ual grat­ings of cheese stuck together) resulted in a pile of cheese that, when melted, expanded to fill half the bak­ing sheet. The third attempt with a sprin­kling of water turned out perfectly.

We’ve been back in the US per­ma­nently for about a month now and are going through all the work required to set­tle in here. While we enjoyed our time in India, we’re very happy to be home again. And, while this blog may have started in India, we thought we’d keep it alive and con­tinue our post­ing (infre­quent though it may be).

We had the oppor­tu­nity to spend a few days in Lon­don on the way home and had a great time there. One high­light was a trip to St John, num­ber 14 on the S. Pel­le­grino World’s 50 Best Restau­rants list for 2009.

St John and its founder, Fer­gus Hen­der­son, are known for “nose to tail eat­ing” and the restau­rant is famous for clas­sic Eng­lish dishes, offal, and espe­cially the sig­na­ture starter: Roasted Bone Mar­row. As this would prob­a­bly be our only visit to St John, we decided to give the bone mar­row a try.

The pre­sen­ta­tion includes three veal bones, a few inches long, stand­ing on end. These are com­bined with a small amount of pars­ley, some coarse sea salt, and two pieces of grilled bread. The var­i­ous ingre­di­ents can then be com­bined onto the bread and eaten.

Hav­ing never tried bone mar­row before, I was curi­ous to com­pare the taste to what I had read in the past — specif­i­cally that bone mar­row tastes like beef-infused but­ter. This turned out to be incred­i­bly accu­rate. It melted in my mouth like hot but­ter, but tasted like fla­vor­ful, juicy steak.

I’m very glad we tried it and, pro­vided that we put out of mind what we were eat­ing, it was very good.

The rest of our meal was much more con­ven­tional. Amy had the Guinea Fowl and I had the Lemon Sole. Dessert included Lemon Sor­bet & Russ­ian Vodka (a very good com­bi­na­tion) and Madeleines. As expected, every­thing was excellent.

With St John expe­ri­enced and enjoyed, we’re now sav­ing for a trip to Per Se. More on that later.

If you’re look­ing for a con­ve­nient bak­ery in Hyder­abad, try Bread Talk.  There are sev­eral loca­tions through­out the city, but the one we visit is right in Q-Mart on road num­ber three in Ban­jara Hills.  Every time we shop at Q-Mart we make sure to stop in at Bread Talk for some muffins, bread, dessert treats, and per­haps even lunch.  This past visit we bought their “Earth­quake Cheese Bread” and are now hooked!  The cheese is baked into the bread so with a sand­wich or just plain, it is incred­i­bly tasty!

Tonight we had din­ner at Arena, a restau­rant at the Taj Dec­can hotel. It has been touted by the King­fisher guide (a nor­mally depend­able resource we use for many restau­rant choices) as one of the best “mul­ti­cui­sine” buf­fets in the city.

For more detail, let’s review what the King­fisher guide has to say about this din­ing location:

An eatery with a truly inter­na­tional menu, Arena has one of the best buf­fet spreads that includes global and local del­i­ca­cies. Inter­est­ingly done up with fish ponds, water­falls and with flute recitals dur­ing din­ner, this is a must for gourmets.

We’ll take this line-by-line.

“An eatery with a truly inter­na­tional menu” — this is strictly true. They had one chicken dish that was Chi­nese in inspi­ra­tion. They also had some fried noo­dles of the Chi­nese vari­ety and a small “Con­ti­nen­tal” cheese tray (the lat­ter being too small). The rest of the options were Indian.

“Arena has one of the best buf­fet spreads that includes global and local del­i­ca­cies” — as might be expected from the pre­vi­ous para­graph, the spread was a bit mea­ger. More­over, many of the “del­i­ca­cies,” such as local fruit, were set on a sep­a­rate table and avail­able only for an addi­tional fee.

“Inter­est­ingly done up with fish ponds, water­falls…” — yes, there were ponds and at least one water­fall — much like you would find in the lobby of an Embassy Suites.

“…and with flute recitals dur­ing din­ner” — didn’t hap­pen. Not sure what this is about. We vis­ited at 8–9 p.m. on a Sat­ur­day evening (prime din­ing time) with no enter­tain­ment present.

“this is a must for gourmets” — our advice to gourmets look­ing for a “buf­fet spread that includes global and local del­i­ca­cies:” you would enjoy the lunch buf­fet at IndiJoe’s just as much. The dif­fer­ence? The bill at Arena was over $50 for din­ner for two. IndiJoe’s comes in at about $6.

One of the gro­cery stores we go to quite often is Spar Hyper­mar­ket in Begum­pet.  This last time we went, we decided to visit their ready-made food sec­tion, and it was quite good!

We got our lunch of four veg samosas (two each) and four vada masala (two each); for dessert, we got khaja and kova puri, both of which tasted like pas­tries that had been soaked in honey (yum!).

All this for around $2!

The Golden Dragon at the Taj Krishna hotel is Amy’s and my favorite restau­rant in Hyder­abad. You might think that state­ment reflects poorly on Indian food and Hyder­abadi cui­sine specif­i­cally — it doesn’t. Instead, the Golden Dragon is just that good.

We’ve had two sets of vis­i­tors to Hyder­abad since we’ve been here: my par­ents and brother and Amy’s par­ents. To both we have explained that the Golden Dragon is the best Chi­nese restau­rant we’ve ever been to, and in both cases I’ve detected a bit of incredulity on their parts.

Upon leav­ing the restau­rant, all have voiced their strong agree­ment with us. My par­ents insisted on sched­ul­ing another trip to the Golden Dragon dur­ing the sec­ond week of their stay with us. It’s that good.

The dishes are pre­pared by a Chi­nese chef from Hong Kong. They range widely across Chi­nese cuisines and seem to have a bit more depth than what Amy and I were accus­tomed to from Chi­nese menus in the US. The food is com­ple­mented by an excel­lent wait staff (includ­ing the man­ager who has come to know Amy and I due to our too-frequent vis­its) and great ambi­ence. Sev­eral days per week the restau­rant has live music in a tra­di­tional Chi­nese form that is very enjoyable.

On our most recent visit, we began the meal with the Golden Fried Chicken Spring Rolls accom­pa­nied by a sweet orange sauce. Not too far from the ordi­nary, but superbly pre­pared. Our pre-entree courses con­tin­ued with two vari­eties of dim sum: Cumin Fla­vored Lamb Dumplings and a Chicken & Gin­ger Dim Sum. The Lamb Dumplings are a reg­u­lar of ours with perfectly-spiced lamb in a tran­clu­cent, steamed skin. The accom­pa­ny­ing sauces are quite good, too.

For this par­tic­u­lar visit to the Golden Dragon, we called ahead to order the Beggar’s Chicken, which has to be ordered 24 hours in advance. I’ve included a short video below of Amy’s mother break­ing the clay shell of the chicken; how­ever, this dish is deserv­ing of its own post, so watch for more on that soon.

On to the other entrees. Amy’s favorite is the Crispy Chicken in Honey Chili Sauce. This is made of thin strips of chicken cut­let that are sea­soned and fried to the point of being slightly crispy on the exte­rior, but with­out any bread­ing or grease. They are then lightly coated in a honey chili (sweet and spicy) sauce and served with pep­pers. Another vari­a­tion that they also serve is the Crispy Chicken in Lemon Sauce (tastes like lemon chicken). It’s great, as well, if you don’t mind a slightly sweeter entree.

My cur­rent favorite, and my entree for this par­tic­u­lar evening, was the Dry Cooked Minced Chicken with Hari­cot Beans. This is pre­pared just as its name sug­gests, with a com­bi­na­tion of minced chicken, herbs and spices, and green beans. As you can see from the pho­tos at the top of this post, it’s about a half-and-half mix­ture of the chicken and beans. While green beans are not nor­mally my pre­ferred veg­etable, the com­bi­na­tion is excel­lent. Despite my inter­est in expand­ing my taste and try­ing a bit more of the menu, I’ve been stuck on this dish for the past few vis­its — it’s too good to pass up.

The dessert menu pro­vides a great end to the meal, but we’ll save that for a future post, as well.

One of my favorite restau­rants here in Hyder­abad is Serengeti, a com­plete knock­off of the Rain­for­est Cafe (or per­haps vice versa?) in dec­o­ra­tion only.  This “wild place to dine” serves Indian food, spe­cial­iz­ing in north­ern Indian cuisine.  

We started our meal with a minced lamb appe­tizer, which was deli­cious!  The lamb is very finely minced, which almost put me off because of the soft con­sis­tency, but one bite helped me for­get that.  It is very spicy, but each lamb patty is served on a small piece of bread to help ease the burn­ing on your lips and tongue.  

Next came our entrees.  I always order the same meal: Murgh Jehen­giri.  It is a bone­less chicken dish, with a tomato and yogurt sauce.  It tastes a bit sweet, and if the sauce came in a cup, I’m sure I would drink it!  This isn’t nec­es­sary, how­ever, because of the breads!  They are per­fect for dipping.

My favorite bread is the Malai Warqi Paratha, which is sim­i­lar in taste to a crois­sant.  I didn’t end up shar­ing at all, but ate the entire serv­ing.  How else would I fin­ish my sauce?

Ryan usu­ally gets the Onion Kulcha.  It’s a type of flat bread (sim­i­lar to naan), but it’s stuffed with onions.  It’s excel­lent at Serengeti.  

For Ryan’s entree, he ordered a paneer dish.  You can see it in the pic­ture, next to my Murgh Jehen­giri.   The paneer in this dish is served in lit­tle white cubes, but they also have other options of paneer served dif­fer­ently.  For those of you who do not know, paneer is cot­tage cheese and is a pop­u­lar dish among veg­e­tar­i­ans (and there are quite a few veg­e­tar­i­ans, espe­cially in South­ern India).  

In addi­tion to our entrees and breads, we ordered the Dou­ble Tadka Dal.  If you are unfa­mil­iar with dal, it is made out of lentils, and in this case, yel­low lentils.  It is a nice con­trast to the rest of the spicy foods, being actu­ally a lit­tle bland.  If you’ve had dal at Indian Restau­rant, USA, then you’ve prob­a­bly tasted some­thing very sim­i­lar to Dou­ble Tadka, or Yel­low, Dal.  That is to say, it’s noth­ing special.

We didn’t have dessert on this visit, but with as much as I love Serengeti, I’m sure we’ll be back again soon.  I might even order some­thing dif­fer­ent next time, for the sake of this blog.  We’ll see…

Amy’s par­ents are cur­rently in Hyder­abad, which means we’ve had sev­eral great meals over the past few days as we’ve shown them the city. So far we have vis­ited La Can­tina (Mex­i­can), Lit­tle Italy (Ital­ian), and Zafraan Exot­ica (Indian). We for­got, how­ever, to bring our cam­era for any of those meals. Tonight, we remem­bered the (video) cam­era for din­ner at Fusion 9, a multi-cuisine (nine cuisines, or so they claim) restau­rant in Ban­jara Hills.

As these are frame cap­tures from our new Flip Mino HD, the qual­ity isn’t great, but it should give you an idea of the food.

The ambi­ence at Fusion 9 is good, although it is a bit dark for my taste. Sadly the ser­vice was lack­ing, but that is not at all uncom­mon here. It’s ironic that in a coun­try where the waitstaff-to-diner ratio is extremely high, the ser­vice is so often mediocre or below expectations.

The food, though, was excel­lent. We started with the Ara­bic Mezze Plat­ter with hum­mus and falafels as well as the Chicken Tem­pura with Wasabi Driz­zle. We’ve had both appe­tiz­ers on pre­vi­ous trips to Fusion 9 and they are two of our favorites. The hum­mus in par­tic­u­lar is quite good.

Amy’s dad ordered the Sea Bass Ponzu. The fish was light and moist with a per­fectly seared crust.

Amy’s mom had the Risotto with Sliced Chicken and Wild Mush­rooms. Although good, it did not quite mea­sure up to the rest of the entrees.

Amy enjoyed the Whole Wheat Fet­tucini Tossed with Gar­lic Shrimp, Pesto, and Pep­pers. I typ­i­cally avoid whole wheat pas­tas, but her dish was an excel­lent com­bi­na­tion of pasta, veg­eta­bles, and other flavors.

I had the Lamb and Chicken Duet, which con­sisted of pan-seared lamb scal­lop­ini and chicken breast in a sherry reduc­tion with tar­ragon and demi-glace. It was very enjoy­able, as well. The chicken breast was per­haps a bit pre­dictable, but the lamb was pounded into a thin cut­let and pan-seared with a small amount of bread­ing. It was very ten­der and per­fectly cooked.

I also ordered the Baked Cheese­cake, which I have had once before. It is a tra­di­tional baked cheese­cake topped with crunchy, sweet crumbs and an assort­ment of fresh fruit (straw­berry, water­melon, and apple).

Finally, Amy and her mother shared the Siz­zling Choco­late Brownie. It’s a brownie topped with a scoop of ice cream and placed on a heated plate that is cov­ered in choco­late sauce. The result is a caramelized choco­late brownie that even I enjoy (as some­one who is not that fond of choco­late desserts). The fol­low­ing is a short video show­ing the choco­late sauce boil­ing on con­tact with the heated plate: