NORTH-WEST FRONTIER ZAIKA @ HOTEL MARINE PLAZA

NIHARI GOSHT

The gastronomy of North-west Frontier lands of the Indian subcontinent entails food from the regions in and around Lahore, Peshawar, Kabul and Kandahar. I am fascinated with the culinary style of these lands as contemporary creations of Mughlai food we experience in restaurants today have born out of recipes of kebabs, breads and pulaos originating from this North-west Frontier cuisine.
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Chef Mujeebur Rehman has curated a special spread inspired by flavors from culinary styles of the aforementioned places as part of dinner buffet until Sunday 5th Nov at Bayview. So, I immediately jumped at the opportunity to savour some rich and delectable preparations before the festival concludes.
Here is a look at my gluttony with some of the North-west Frontier cuisine speciality dishes as part of the dinner buffet at Bayview:

AATISHI KUMBH

APPETIZER COURSE:
NON-VEGETARIAN
BIHAR BOTI was a dish inspired by town of Bihar across the border and not our state of Bihar. Boneless pieces of mutton were marinated in yoghurt, a secret potli masala, sprinkled with kewda water and then cooked on a griddle to arrive at this luscious and fragrant meat starter.
LAHORI MURGH TIKKA was your quintessential, tandoor-grilled boneless chicken with strong flavours of black cardamom.
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VEGETARIAN
AATISHI KUMBH or delicately grilled, chilli & mustard-imbibed button mushrooms were my favourite vegetarian appetizer. Apart from that I also savoured PANEER PASANDA and ALOO MATAR KI TIKKI. The former was a griddled cottage cheese preparation made with hara masala comprising of fresh green coriander leaves, mint and green chillies. The latter, a shallow fried cutlet of mashed potatoes and green peas laden with garam masala.

VEGETARIAN MAIN COURSE

MAIN COURSE:
NON-VEGETARIAN
The spread of non-vegetarian dishes was limited and comprised of three preparations only. The
NIHARI GOSHT was one of the most flavourful and juiciest mutton dishes I have had in a long time. The meat was succulent and came off the bone with ease after all the slow cooking of hours together. Also the spices used in cooking the meat had lent the mutton with just the right amount of heat to appeal to my palate. The other gravy was TAMATARI MAHI, a tomato and red chilli powder based fish curry.
I concluded the non-vegetarian main course with MURGH PULAO, a long grain rice preparation laden with golden fried onions and whole spices - black & green cardamoms, cloves, cinnamon, bay leaves. The chicken was moist and the rice was aromatic having picked up the flavour notes of the spices.

VEGETARIAN
There were a lot of dishes in this course to cater to the palate of the patrons at the restaurant. Some of these were:

• LAHORI BAINGAN BHARTA was my favourite veegtarian dish from the spread. Brinjals were roasted and then fried in yellow chilli powder and yoghurt to arrive at a tangy and tart dish.
• DAAL MEHTAB was a sumptuous milk and urad dal blend that was tempered with ghee and cumin seeds.
• SUBZ BAGICHA was mixed vegetable, cashewnut paste based gravy flavoured with garam masala.
• ACHAARI PANEER was a creamy, tangy gravy comprising of turmeric and chef's secret dry pickle masala.

Apart from the above vegetarian dishes I also tasted PINDI KE ALOO, KATHAL BIRYANI and PARWAL KORMA in the vegetarian main course.

DESSERT COURSE:
The regular deseert arraay of the buffet showcased two specialty desserts as part of the Norther Zaika promotion. These were beetroot or CHUKANDER HALWA and ZAFFRANI KHEER. The former was a vibrant coloured owing to beetroot that had been slow cooked in milk. A generous addition of cashew nuts, almonds and khoya was added as final touches to this halwa. The kheer was a creamy, rice-based, mildly sweet dessert redolent of oodles of saffron.

The aforementioned special dishes will be part of dinner buffet at Bayview only until 5th November so hurry and make your way to this restaurant.

Till then, HAPPY EATING…