Chef Ashish Bhasin
Chef Ashish Bhasin
Director – F&B Service and Culinary
The Leela Ambience Gurugram Hotel & Residences
Monsoon is fun! Monsoon is a relief from the scorching summer. Monsoon is an adventure. Monsoon is an emotion. Nature all dressed in green is a pretty sight. The extra special fragrance that the earth emits is maddening. When animals celebrate and peacocks dance and the farmers are really relieved. It's pure nostalgia, too. Memories of playing in the rain, making paper boats and floating them in a rain stream. Of jumping in puddles and best of all, the taste memory of those chai-pakoras.
Fried items, chaat and rain are a match made in heaven. I am sure we all have memories of the same. Spicy and tangy food whets our appetite in the wet weather.
That’s what I worked around for the recipes for UpperCrust. So karkade/ hibiscus tea fits well into the tea bucket. Tempura and tamiya into the fried bucket. Hot aloo tikki and Thai salad tickmarks the spicy and tangy bucket.
Warm crispy Peanut Butter Sourdough with Caramelised Banana is a quick-fix dish to satisfy the kid in all of us and to make the monsoon more enjoyable. But why fateer? Well, once when I was in Egypt where the rains are negligible, the heavens opened up! I was eating fateer and from that day on, this dish has created in me a permanent association with rain!
I enjoy the rain best when I am in company; family or friends. As all chefs do, I also continue to work come rain or shine, but I do like it when I can sit in my balcony watching the rain, with some soft music playing and I have a hot chai in my hand and a plate of something just fried next to me!
