Galeries Lafayette Gourmet Festival 2013.

It’s been a little over two months that we made Dubai our home. There are times when I feel that I have been living here forever. You know how it is when regular work, home and school schedules begin and you forget about all the packing, unpacking and setting up you've been doing ever since you decided to change your postal address.

It begins to feel like you are finally home. This is my home. After all, home is where the heart is. And my heart is divided between my love for family and food.

Food. The very thought of how much there is to explore in this new city for the three of us makes me giddy with excitement. Each weekend looks promising. You know how it is when you have been living in a city forever (Read: eight years) and you've already had a taste of a LOT of places and figured out your favorites; the comfort of going to the same place because sometimes that’s all you want to do. That started happening to me. It is nice to know where you’d like to have your cup of coffee and where you’d like to dig into that creamy risotto or that prawn curry that sets your tongue on fire.

And this move to Dubai has taken that all away from me. In a good way. I am clueless. And that’s the part that I love about our move the most.A whole new world. For DH and my little chefling.

As soon as we landed here we got a Taste of Dubai (pun intended).And just last week I had the lovely opportunity of attending the Galeries Lafayette Gourmet Festival that was on from the 8^th to the 12^th of May 2013.

Much as I like going to the hidden gems in the city (Thanks Ishita for your post on Bu Qtair; we loved it) I also like going to food festivals which give me an opportunity to observe and learn and taste and meet all under the same roof. N times multiplied.

A lot of readers of Orange Kitchens are not from Dubai and so let me first introduce Galeries Lafayette to all of you. Established in 2009, the high end Parisian department store aims to bring the French spirit of fashion, beauty, food and home to Dubai. The interiors are gorgeous and it is massive! You may want to read all about the store here. I obviously am more partial to their gourmet section. Fresh and diverse produce, nine kitchens, interesting products sourced from all over the world and an inspiring Gourmet Culinary Director behind it all.

Chef Russell Impiazzi. I met him a day before the festival started and he was kind enough to give me what he called was his “five dollar” tour:). He is a man who is passionate about his work and who wants more and more people to experience fresh and quality produce and lend their taste buds to simple, traditional and delectable food. And thus was born the very idea of this first gourmet festival at Lafayette.

Bringing the producer to the store floor and connecting them with the audience. Five days of sampling exceptional produce, interacting with the people behind each of the products and of course learning and educating one by attending master classes. That for me was the festival in a nutshell.

Saying hello to fellow Dubai food bloggers whose work I have admired was the icing on the cake for me. 

I also got to taste the liquid pot of gold, Balqees raw yemeni honey…thick and amber and listen to Raith Hamed founder Balqees narrating interesting tales. So what is raw honey? Unlike the commercial honey the raw  honey comes straight from the farms and isn't pasteurized or processed which means that the nutrients and antioxidants in the honey are all intact.

We also taste ChoCo’a silky and luscious Belgian truffles.Tempered chocolate rolled with hands and coated with cocoa.

We sampled Unifrutti’s organic produce and I find myself liking their mantra of think green, eat green and be green. The red pepper from Netherland was a beauty.

And then I gave my taste buds the chance to experience heritage angus beef. Succulent served with a mild black pepper sauce and a divine mushroom sauce.Its grass fed.

What clearly stood out for me were the three that follow.

The truly exotic and fresh produce from Rungis...purple potato salad, smoked garlic smeared on bread, glazed asparagus, roasted beetroots, multi-hued roasted carrots, watermelon radish, fresh bay leaves, heirloom tomatoes and more all explained by Tony Colley himself and how the chef at the station made the vegetables shine.

The exceptional almost velvety hand cut smoked salmon by Al Fumo and very endearing Bahir Keldany who had the enthusiasm of a child and the wisdom of his many years of experience behind him. The fish that he sources is from the very best of the Northern Atlantic waters and yes he refuses to share his secret spice mix:)

And of course my master class on cheese where I ended up stuffing myself (Read: Educating) with at least 30 varieties of cheese. The section has over 240 varieties from cow, goat and sheep milk mostly from France, Italy, Spain and England. Over the one hour session Manjeet my tutor for my culinary lesson took me through the origins, the similarities, the differences of over 30 of these. Sharp, pungent, sweet, hard, semi hard, soft..we have it all. Chartreux, Perail, Morbier, Ossau Iraty,Valençay, Brebirousse, Coulommier, L'occitane, Le Roule, Cantal, Fourme d'ambert, Taleggio, Mahón, Oveja, San Simón, Manchego and more. You can see that I take my classes very seriously!

Big thanks to Chef Russell for taking out the time to meet me. Thanks to Cynthia for the invitation. And to the entire team at Lafayette for putting it all together. Another round of thanks for Soul Communications for their hospitality.

Disclaimer: All views expressed here are my own and I wasn’t asked to write any of it by either Lafayette or Soul Communications. I had such a great time there that I just had to share with all of you here. Hope you enjoyed reading it.

Image: Personal Album. 
While you enjoy reading this post with visuals.Please do not use them without asking. They belong to Orange Kitchens unless otherwise stated.

Books for Cheflings: Let's Eat by Beatrice Hollyer

Each night before Sara goes to sleep she gets to choose five books (I ask her to pick five and usually she picks up about eleven) to read with us. Post which she likes to "read" them by herself. 

She is very particular that just like on her mum's bedside table she too on hers has her mobile, a food magazine (the mag and Sara are of the same size;  a tiny one that came with the newspaper) and a photoframe! This girl...I tell you!

At four she already has her huge collection of books. And a lot of them are food related. I shared these ones with you here.

Her current favorite is Let's Eat! What children eat around the world by Beatrice Hollyer.

The book takes you to the homes of five kids who stay in different parts of the world (France, India, Mexico,South Africa and Thailand) and how each spends her day and during the course of the day what each one eats. 

Simply put the book talks about the cities/villages that they belong to, their eating habits on weekdays and over weekends and what they like and what they dislike. 

But underneath all this is what I like about the book more. The differences and the similarities between their lives and where from the child can learn a lot.

How each child helps her parents during mealtimes, how there are certain foods that each one associates with celebrations at home ( we all do that, don't we...irrespective of latitudes and longitudes), how its fun to go and shop for food and make the right and a healthy choice. And how food shared with family and friends always leaves with one with beautiful and lifelong memories.

The child begins to appreciate the differences as well. Not only the how each country has a different cuisine but also how life is different in the city and at the farm and the hardships that the less privileged ones have to face. 

The book is written from the child's perspective and has real life pictures of her/his life which my little girl loves. At the end of the book is a food glossary and also  favorite recipes from each of the kids. 

Sara says her favorite is AA from Thailand and she loves AA's recipe for the Thai fried egg. And each morning she cooks one for herself (without the fish sauce mostly) while her mum is busy screaming Sara we are getting late for school. Oh and we love to point out each country on the globe too. She also says that the bit about Thembe makes her sad for the little girl has to work really hard each day.

One thing to keep in mind is that obviously a forty page book can't do justice to all the different food habits and living habits of each country. So its more to expose them to something that is different than theirs rather than a detailed study on culture and food and certain classifications that the book portrays (not so well off in one part of the world).

The one on India did disappoint me. I think it may not be a bad idea for Sara and me to rewrite that bit soon:) 

About the author: Journalist,writer and newscaster she began her career in South Africa before moving to UK where lives now.Other books by her for children are : Our world of water and Wake up World.

Image: here and  a bad one taken with my phone.

While you enjoy reading this post with visuals.Please do not use them without asking. They belong to Orange Kitchens unless otherwise stated.

Sharing Some Cookbook Love.

That I own a pretty decent (...ahem)number of cookbooks is not a secret. For the longest time I have been getting emails that read something like this...yes..yes..we know you have many but which ones do you heart the most and why?

True, what purpose does that long list serve? :)

Now...I would have loved to write detailed reviews of each book (that I will keep for another day) but for now what I am sharing with you is some cookbook love on the orangekitchens facebook page with little notes about how they've touched my life (I'll be adding more to this list pretty soon)

I really do hope that you will enjoy going through the list and the notes. Please feel free to share your views,your questions and your recommendations for me to try out new recipes from the books that I already own (I love revisiting my cookbooks all the time) and of course the names of your favorite books (hello! new books).

And now I'll get back to working on a similar exercise for all the food memoirs & other literature on food I own and most certainly the ones that belong to my chefling.

Happy reading & cooking.

Roasted Sea Bass with tapenade and cherry tomatoes.

I have seen two kinds of people. Those who hate the sea bass and those who...well don't. I definitely belong to the second group. For me the sea bass works perfectly. Simply because it has such a mild and clear taste (in the sea bass haters group the same would be called tasteless :)) that it takes the flavour of  any sauce, herb, or a marinade so beautifully.

Now that I have established my love for the bass. Let me also share my love for the olives. Sara eats the spanish green ones by the cupful and I have a soft corner for the kalamata. It used to surprise me when at two she would fill her little pink bowl with green olives and finish them in no time. They are pretty acidic and sharp after all.

Apparently the girl loves intense flavours and who am I to complain. Oh and just so you know here I am droning about her love for olives but she completely rejected this tapenade and requested for olives and peanuts and cherry tomatoes ALL separately in the three compartments of her plate. Point noted. The girl doesn't like them combined AT ALL, she said.

Roasted Sea Bass with tapenade and cherry tomatoes.

Feeds two hungry parents and a little girl.

Ingredients:

3 thick sea bass fillets cut into bite sized pieces

1 cup cherry tomatoes cut into halves

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

1 cup tapenade

Juice of a lemon

Freshly ground black pepper

Salt to taste

Fresh thyme and toasted peanuts to finish

For the tapenade:

1/2 cup kalamata olives, pitted
1/2 cup Spanish green olives, pitted
1/2 cup walnuts
4 cloves of garlic (reduce the garlic if you don't like it very pungent)
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
Add anchovies,capers, pinenuts, if you'd like to.

Instructions: 

1. For the tapenade: Combine all the ingredients in your mixer and pulse till it becomes a coarse paste. Leave it in the refrigerator for an hour or two if you have the time (it helps develop the flavours). If you are hungry and want that fish now, go ahead and use it immediately. It will still taste good.

2. Preheat the oven to 150 degrees celsius. 

3.Arrange the fillets into a baking dish and scatter the cherry tomatoes all around them.

4. Add enough olive oil to cover the fish and tomatoes. 

5. Spread the tapenade over the fillets and squeeze some lemon juice over. Sprinkle a tiny bit of salt ( the tapenade has a lot of salt too) and pepper.

6. Bake in oven until fish turns opaque, 20 to 25 minutes. 

7. Garnish it with thyme and peanuts and serve.

Enjoy.

Images : Personal Album

While you enjoy reading this post with visuals.Please do not use them without asking. They belong to Orange Kitchens unless otherwise stated.

Mapping food.

Was cleaning my laptop and came across this India food map. 

How many of these states has your tummy paid a visit to? My score is 26. 

A good reminder of how scrumptious our country is and how there is always so much more to explore. 

Image : I don't remember the source I think it may have been zomato. If any of you know the source please let me know.

Playing tricks with little Sara.

Today was Sara's first day at her new school. The poor baby got up (Read: was made to) at an unearthly hour; 0530 hours. 

On getting up she asked me why was she being sent to school at night! It was pitch dark. I told her may be it was God being mischievous with her by hiding the sun since it is April Fool's day today. That sure made her little eyes sparkle and soon she jumped out of her bed to make new friends at her new school.

I was ofcourse there to meet her at her bus stop in the afternoon and the little girl chatted nineteen to the dozen...new friends, new books, new class, new teachers...

She stopped talking only when her dry throat got the better of her which is when I asked her to go and get some cold Roohafza from the refrigerator.

"Its seems to be stuck in my straw" was her first reaction. All this while I was trying REALLY hard to maintain a serious face. And then her little eyes grew really wide..."you tricked me", she shrieked. 

Her reaction was priceless!

Now she is waiting for her dad to get back home so that she can play the same trick on him. Go make your little one all giggly and super happy today.

April Fool's Day Strawberry "Drink"

Serves 4 little people and makes them think that their mum is supercool.

Ingredients

One packet of strawberry jelly ( Or any other that you have at hand)

Two cups of water

Four straws

Instructions:

1. Boil one cup of water and dissolve the jelly mix completely.

2. Add another cup of cold water.

3. Pour into glasses and add straws.

4. Leave them to chill till set.

5. Wait for your little one to turn it upside down and go ooohhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Happy April Fool's Day. Did you get naughty with your little ones today?

Images : Personal Album
While you enjoy reading this post with visuals.Please do not use them without asking. They belong to Orange Kitchens unless otherwise stated.

My first taste of Dubai.

A lot of you who follow my other blog, purplehomes are aware of our impending move to Dubai. And about two weeks back finally the big move happened.

And the city welcomed me with the “Taste of Dubai” festival. My heart did a happy dance when I came across it while sitting at home at New Delhi. And exactly a week later there I was enjoying the warm sun, the mad-mad crowd and my first culinary experience in my new home, Dubai.

So the Taste of Dubai is a three day long food festival that over the last five years has become a must attend on every food lover’s calendar. And I have to say I was all curious and excited considering it was a first time for me.

And it didn't disappoint me. Sponsored by Philips the festival was held at the Dubai Media City. With 30 restaurants offering more than 150 dishes the festival was my introduction to the world of food here.

People lazing on the grass with a mug of beer or glass of wine and listening to the wonderful music being played live on their entertainment stage, the atmosphere was sizzling.

We did the usual bit of roaming around and exploring the many many food stalls under those beautiful white canopies. 

The gorgeous Crate and Barrel booth had me salivating and Lakeland had lil Sara drooling but what really caught my attention were the Local Harvest and the Crescendo World booths.

Local Harvest is an initiative by the Abu Dhabi Farmer’sService Center (ADFSC) to showcase the diversity of fresh and safe local vegetables.  The vegetables and fruits are delivered the day after harvest as compared to imported products which usually take five days or more to reach the UAE. They partner with big retailers and large corporate customers to provide them with quality local products. A lovely initiative to open up marketing and selling channels for the local farmers. Bring it on I say.

                                 

Crescendo World. They produce spices, oils and vinegars. And they had tons of beautiful, thick, fruity ,syrupy, fragnant vinegars on display. I ofcourse wanted to come back home with their entire range of aceto balsamico, balsamic and crème vinegars. Read more about how they produce and where they retail here.

The big things that I was looking forward to were the Philips Chefs Theatre and the Kenwood Cookery School.

The Philips Chef theatre boasted of culinary greats like Gary Rhodes, Vineet Bhatia, Reza Mohammad, Gizzi Erskine and many other big names demonstrating and sharing their cooking secrets, answering innumerable questions and interacting with the audience.

One session that I really enjoyed was of Chef Atul Kochhar’s. The Indian born, British based chef, restaurateur and television personality is one of the most critically acclaimed chefs in Britain for his take on modern Indian cuisine. Atul was the first Indian chef to receive a Michelin star, which he maintained with the opening of his first solo venture- Benares restaurant in London in 2007. He put together seared scallops with cauliflower (where he played on the different textures of cauliflower).  It was a sheer pleasure to watch him cook and engage the audience with his awesome sense of humour.

Unfortunately I couldn’t be a part of the Kenwood Cookery School where one could cook along with some hugely talented chefs. They were all sold out by the time I reached the venue. I am sure the lucky guys who got a chance to be a part picked up some great professional tips to hone their cooking skills.

There were a lot of other things too. Dine in the dark with Chef Andy Campbell. A test of your palate where one had to taste three canapés in the dark and guess the 20 ingredients that went in the canapés ( out of a list of 100). The prize was to die for. A 5000 AED dining experience by Chef Andy at your own home! DH had participated in something similar years back at London I think but this time he focus was the beverage theatre where Jack Daniels, Fuller Ale’s and Sake were calling out his name:)

A lot of other booths were holding fun contests as well. And we had fun winning some too!

Hmm..there were a couple of things that didn’t go down that well with me. The ground was bursting with people and there wasn’t even space to stand. To make one’s way to a specific booth required some serious muscle power :) Now for me this was the first time there so I am not sure if the festival is always this crowded or over the years it has just become too big for the ground. Anyone listening? Why have an insurance company, dentist, people selling clothes and jewellery in a food festival! And hello! Portion sizes anyone! I am sorry but I want more food for my buck. Fine dining or not. We are at a fair people! And we are hungry after all the sessions, shoving and pushing and ofcourse meeting a lot of lovely people.

A beautiful experience over all. And this time since I had just moved to Dubai I am looking forward to being a part of it next year with some more planning and with more time on hand to experience all that I missed.

And before I end this post I must thank Sarita of Turret Media and Katie and Lindsay of Total Communications for giving me a Media pass that provided me with access to Taste of Dubai for the full weekend and for being so very kind. Thanks ladies.

And here are some interesting facts that were put together by the team of Taste of Dubai:

A Taste Tally:

• ·         More than 150 dishes
• ·         30 restaurants – 12 new to the festival
• ·         International celebrity chefs: 10
• ·         6,790 potatoes used to produce the famous Rivington Grill chips
• ·         33 Philips Chefs’ Theatre Displays
• ·         15 – 30: The cost in AED of all dishes
• ·         Number of kilograms of black cod ordered for the famous Nobu dish: 70
• ·         26 Kenwood Cookery School interactive sessions
• ·         2,700 pieces of handmade Ravioli for Ronda Locatelli
• ·         Satisfying gastronomy spread across 31 hours (3 days)
• ·         5 international and regional bands performing

Eat well. Stay Fit.

Images : Personal Album
While you enjoy reading this post with visuals.Please do not use them without asking. 
They belong to Orange Kitchens unless otherwise stated.