A Yen for SUSHI!!!
Oh, I love sushi – For a true-blue 100%Saraswat what’s not to love – fish - good, rice - good, hot as hell dip- action – super-duper good!!!
After figuring out that sushi is really like carpaccio which is also raw but very well marinated and super with nice garlic bread and Tabasco and I love (but that story is for another day), I tried it a couple of years ago and was hooked, booked and well, you know not cooked…
So, it was a happy-day in Nish-land when sushi made its little sesame-coated way to our city. There are 6 restaurants in the city that serve sushi – and one which only does Japanese. How great is that.
The sushi trail started at Joss, in Kala Ghoda waaaay back in June last year, before the great Japanese invasion – so, given that it was so long ago, I cannot really remember how good it was but could not have been that good since I don’t remember it, right???
But, now there’s Wasabi – and I’m happy, happy, joy, joy. OF course it’s super expensive and of course its totally a happy birthday or happy recovery from jaundice occasion place. It’s very nice and green (lots of green – walls, plates) and yes, there is a proper sushi bar that we can sit at and watch the three sushi chefs work…. Its quite beautiful and almost performance art – watching them roll the sticky rice around the seaweed and fish! And I got loads of wasabi to have really tiny bits of just like that between plates, freshly grated for me at the table by cute oriental looking chef…screw gari – I’m refreshing my palate with wasabi!! So, what did we have??? Here is where I got a chance to show off my partial knowledge – we tried chutoro (tuna belly), yellow-tail, shrimp, unagi (eel), fish-roe, salmon, nigiri, o-toro(some other tuna body part) – as is noticeable, I’m a sushi gourmand, not gourmet. I did not really waste stomach space on the veggie maki-rolls though I’m sure they are all perfectly nice rolls too.
Oh Oh, and they do an extremely interesting dessert – wasabi sorbet!!! Can one overload on wasabi??? I’ve always been a sucker for the side-chutneys and pickles and wasabi is jap pickle isn’t it???
Other places – I have been to India Jones, which does a very very good salmon maki roll and Seijo which does a very indifferent one (but the wasabi rocks!!) over the weekend.
So, there is still Spices at the Marriot and Tiffin, the Hilton towers to check out but we can safely say that I never need to worry again since my sushi security blanket is here!!! No more going insane at Yo Sushi again!! Yip Yip
(well maybe just a little bit)
Pasta nite
Well, I’m saving up for my next dive holiday – which means I’ve retrieved my Pasta cook-book from Dinu and attempting to make fabulous restaurant style pastas at home.
Here’s a great recipe GJ and I tried out tuesday night – of course, since we ate our own cooking, we are not entirely unbiased judges. This is if you like chicken liver – which I do.
Spaghetti with Chicken Liver & Tomatoes
(Serves 3 small appetites)
4 tbsp olive oil
2 onions chopped – approx ½ cup
6 chicken livers chopped – (I used 200gms ready-packed liver from Godrej – its pre-cleaned)
3 tomatoes chopped
1 tsp basil powder (Use more if fresh, I don’t get fresh basil easily in Bombay)
Spaghetti - boiled al-dente (roughly 10-12 mins, depending on the brand)
Grated parmesan
1. Heat olive oil in saucepan
2. Add the onions and suate till they are golden (I crisp mine up for that crunch)
3. Add the chiken livers and sauté till they turn light brown
4. Add the tomatoes and basil and reduce the flame – this lets the liver and tomatoe juice ooze, for about 7 minutes
5. Add the sauce to al-dente pasta, sprinkle pepper and cheese and enjoy.
I didn’t add any stock or wine to this, but I did bung in some chilli-garlic sauce for a little spice.
Diving in Lakshwadeep
Gorgeous!! Awesome!!! Blue!!!Oh help, I'm running out of superlatives for our diving holiday... after almost being a non-starter what with the tsumani & government cancellation of ship to Cochin. (Apparently, tourists are not a priority for the ship to Lakshwadeep -err, then why is it run by SPORT - some silly acronym for the Tourism in Lakshwadeep)
Reaching Kadmat was quite testing, since we had a charter flight in a itsy bitsy propeller plane by Taneja Aerospace& Aviation Company (I still have the boarding pass, I couldn’t get over the ambitious name) to Agatti and a 7-hour boat-ride from there to Kadmat.
So, anyway the first day of Diving 101 was snorkeling about in the lagoon. But we did not have the time to look at the fishies because we had to do all this tough stuff like take our masks off and flood our snorkels with water and then spit it out.
After testing our snorkelling skills, we started with lagoon sessions. The basic skills for diving – are mask clearing and regulator recovery, so we were supposed to spend like 2 days in the lagoon, with sissy 3feet water doing that.
Ok, not so sissy since I totally freaked out about having to take my mask off underwater. I sorely tested Seemant (the dive-master) patience - actually I forgot about the air-tank on my back which gave me nice, clean air through the mouth-piece. There’s a lot of conscious effort in this sport, since one has to really focus on breathing through the mouth and buoyanacy control and moving slow. It's not quite a natural sport - us, not having the gills and all. Anyway, after being reminded of mouthpiece in mouth and yogic breathing in 3meter deep water, I got super confident and did a lovely cruise around the lagoon – saw a very cool mud-coloured sting-ray just mucking around in the sand.
The open-water sessions went much better - I was calm, composed and oh, the other people sucked!!! Thank you thank you guys for making me look good.
The resort is not the greatest, since it’s the only one there and we really did not have achoice for board & lodging. Lunch & dinner were crazy coconut delights – the f&b was lucky we got so starving after the dives - I’m trying to override the coconut taste with lots of fried papad. Had complete mad-cap regress to family teenagedom with Arzan, a crazy adorable 19yr old parsee – we are walking around doing bad arnold impersonations.
For the 1star certification, we need six open water dives which were wonderful – so much more fun that the training lagoon sessions. By the end of the week we had done six dives around Kadmat at intriguiningly named dive-sites and cool fishies and underwater critters:
Kadmat East-Lagoon - Potato Patch 1 & 2 - coral, parrotfish, squirrelfish, triggerfish...
Kadmat West Lagoon - The Wall - A green turtle, a white-tip reef shark, leopard moral eels and a lobster who did not appreciate us looking into his under the sea apartment.
Kadmat South-side - Jack Point - A juvenile reef shark totally checked us out - not quite the friendly ‘oh hello, oh hello’ that the sweet-lips was doing but more like a beady-eyed ‘You’
re lucky you are not my natural prey’
After very many threats by Sumer, our dive-instructor, everyone finally finally swam in correct positions, maintaining correct buoyancy, etc etc on the very last dive. Husband dearest and I are now 1-star divers, and already planning the next holiday. If I give up partying for six-months, I'll save up for 20 dives - I'm going to try (not very hard though)
Oh, and I have to thank husband dearest for extremely good behavior and no deep, meandering insights during the whole trip.
To dive in Lashwadeep contact Lacadives -
www.lacadives.com
