A Little Bit Of
Saffron In Everything You Eat!

At Bombay�s new JW Marriott Hotel, MARK MANUEL goes eating out at the Indian restaurant Saffron and discovers the spice in every dish.

NEW culinary flavours are sweeping Bombay and the flavour of this season is saffron. At the JW Marriott Hotel in Juhu, which is suburban Bombay's swanky new address, is a contemporary Indian restaurant. It offers classical Indian cuisine in an upbeat, interactive and casual dining ambience. The restaurant is called Saffron. And happily, there is a Sardarji chef in charge here by the name of Surjan Singh Jolly who will not let the sun set without experimenting and improvising on the different flavours and cooking styles he created the night before. This piece is on him and the wonderfully tasteful menu he has put together at Saffron.

But first, a pat on the back. The food and menu at Saffron is inspired by an article on Nawab Mehboob Alam Khan, Hyderabad's great culinary expert, which UpperCrust did in January 2000. Chef Jolly was at the Marriott in Goa and anxious to get into the realities of Mughlai food. His employers, the Salgaocars, had no real understanding of the cuisine, and thought that Mughlai food was all about hot spices. They did not know about its delicate flavours. Chef Jolly read the UpperCrust and was taken up by Nawab Mehboob Alam Khan. He made a call to Hyderabad and asked the Nawab if he could become his student. The Nawab, who is getting on in years, and who had just had a bypass, told him, �I don't know how long I'll live, but call one day before coming here.�

Chef Jolly caught a train and left for Hyderabad immediately. Nawab Mehboob Alam Khan was most gracious and full of old world courtesy. He treated the chef not as his apprentice, but as his guest. The Sardar tells the story: �First day, he gave me this amazing banquet of Hyderabadi food for dinner. Next day onwards, every evening was spent with him in the kitchen. Between 7 and 10.30 p.m., the Nawab would cook one of his signature Hyderabadi dishes and teach me how to do it. Mornings I spent working in a small restaurant called Bismillah near Charminar where I was stunned to see 400 plates of Nihari being sold for breakfast and a deg still simmering on a slow coal flame!� He went back to the Marriott with his new-found knowledge of Hyderabadi food and with half a trainload of traditional copper and brass utensils and equipment to cook this food.

�There was no talk of coming to Bombay and starting Saffron at that time,� Chef Jolly recalls. But when it was time to commission the JW Marriott in Bombay, I was asked to come here, and discussions were held on what kind of Indian restaurant should such a hotel have. The choices were between Punjabi, Gujarati and Marwari. I suggested we do the flavours of Awadh and Hyderabad and be a little more flexible to include Punjabi and whatever else the guest was looking for. Like Jain food. Fifty per cent of Bombay's gourmets are vegetarians and 80 per cent of these vegetarians, are Jains. I played around with recipes and produced food for them that is without onion and garlic. I now have a maharaj cooking exclusive Jain food in the banquet kitchen. Trust me. Anybody can walk in and see.�

I did. It is a happy little kitchen and from it, I must say, Chef Jolly is producing some terrific food. The menu at Saffron is entirely his creation. He held lots of tasting sessions and made several changes to his food to make sure the dishes suited everybody's tastebuds. He is a chef who has the courage of his convictions to say that he will reduce the tamarind in the Baghare Baingan if it will make his guests happy. �I am somewhere between authenticity and catering to people's tastebuds,� admits the daring Sardar. �I'm not working towards offering an authentic menu. It is better to understand what authenticity is about and then to play around it. And I educate my guests. Each dish I serve, I accompany the waiter to the table and talk about it. People love to listen.�

Saffron is a 74-seater restaurant and it has a private dining room that can accommodate 16. The interiors are Indian, but contemporary and eclectic, designed by a firm from San Francisco. I recall reading somewhere that the designer was inspired to come up with something striking and extraordinary after witnessing sarees drying in the wind. What he's given Saffron are wall surfaces that are curved and clad with a rich golden pear veneer. I struggled to see the comparison with sarees fluttering in the breeze, then gave up. The restaurant's floor is Indian slate, its upholstery is vibrant and reflects the colours and patterns of India, yet managing to provide a soothing ambience for your fine dining experience.

Chef Jolly had nothing to do with the interiors, but he ensured that Saffron got specially designed china from Nikko in Japan, glassware from Schott Zweisel in Germany, and silver-plated cutlery from Saint Andrea in Italy. And he made sure that all the food on the menu is presented with saffron in some form or the other. �This is quite a Hyderabadi tradition,� he explains, �the cuisine is influenced by the old spice trade with Persia, Afghanistan, Iran, it has the elegance of North Indian foods, plus the strong spices of the South. And something from the neighbouring states of Orissa and Maharashtra. Hyderabad has no cuisine of its own. It is blend of cultures and traditions. The saffron touch comes from Kashmir. It is very expensive, Rs. 80 for a gram, I buy the single stigmas from Kashmir.�

The menu is more meat than chicken, and the meat is lamb, kid goat, weighing between seven and eight kilograms. The leg that Chef Jolly uses in his signature dish, the Salim Raan that is sparingly spiced and slowly cooked to perfection, is about 800, 900 grams, but never 950. Let me start the menu by telling you about it. Chef Jolly loves this dish because it is Nawab Mehboob Alam Khan's personal recipe, though the raan is too subtly spiced for Bombay's palate, it is difficult for everybody to enjoy. Chef Jolly is aware of this. For the corrupted Bombay palate, he suggests the Nalli Ka Khaasa Saalan and the Dum Ke Chaamp, both of which are cooked like the Dum Ka Murgh with robust masalas and Hyderabadi spices. �They should go well with Bombay's tastes,� he says with satisfaction. I second that. The Nalli Ka Saalan is shanks of the baby goat marinated in dahi, the dhania, kothmir and green chilli of hara masala, red chilli paste made of the fiery Begdi chillies of Mangalore, some brown birasta, ginger and garlic.

The marination is over two hours. The shanks are then cooked in a lagan, which is a flat, roundish Hyderabadi cooking vessel, in a little ghee. A baghar of elaichi, dalchini, lavang and kabachini is given, and the lagan is sealed for three minutes. The meat gets brown and sears. To this Chef Jolly adds some lamb stock and lets it brew slowly for an hour. When the shanks are tender, he removes them from the masala and bathes them in saffron cream. The hot shanks catch the saffron flavour. He then takes the masala, the saalan, and strains it to get a clear extract of meat juices and masala flavours. After straining, he introduces the Hyderabadi potli masala into the salaan for 20 minutes, remarries it with the shanks, and puts the dish onto dum for 25 minutes. The slow cooking makes the meat soft, glutinous and succulent.

The saalan in this dish is the nihari, a thin stew, into which you can dunk all kinds of breads. Chef Jolly has gone a texture above the nihari by adding the potli masala to his salaan. I ask him about the potli masala. It is a collection of 36 spices tied together in a muslin cloth and dipped into the brewing lamb dish. He looks at me narrowly, �The spices include khas ki kadi, kapoor kachari, munsari ka phool, paan ki jadi, gehu dana, gulab pankhudi, which are all Ayurvedic ingredients collected from the jungle. I get them from a hakim's shop in the Charminar area of Hyderabad.� What the potli masala does is it lends a beautiful fragrance to Chef Jolly's cooking. �It is subtle, but sharp and also pleasant, better than most aromas of the world,� he says.

And his menu has a variety of succulent kebabs from royal homes of Hyderabad. They are served directly from the skewers onto the plate. The kebabs are grilled or fried, the Shikanje Ka Paneer, toasted pinenuts, sesame and figs packed in cottage cheese, are roasted on an iron griller on charcoal. Chef Jolly is talking about getting the pathar from Hyderabad, soon, Saffron will have Pathar Gosht on its menu. But for now, there is a lot that has to be sampled and which defy description. Like his Lagan Ka Murgh, which is like the Awadhi Dum Ka Murgh, but with gravy, and meant to be eaten with parathas. There are biryanis with saffron, a Murgh Pulao, not a biryani, because Hyderabadis don't use chicken, they use gosht in their biryanis. �It is cooked like a biryani, but called pulao,� Chef Jolly says. �People think that pulaos are rice stir-fried on a saucepan! I encourage them to taste the Murgh Pulao, if they don't like it, the dish is on me. But if they do, then they must order it again the next time.�

I ask him who the regulars are at his new restaurant, and Chef Jolly replies: �Amitabh calls and Anil Ambani comes here to have the Mirch Ka Salaan with Tina and friends. Amitabh and Jaya like a corner table. They and the Ambanis are regular here. It's strange, the men are vegetarians, the women are hardcore non-vegetarians. Rishi Kapoor, Mahesh Bhatt, most of the film industry, several industrialists, come. I take them into the kitchen, show them around.� And finally, the desserts at Saffron. There are only four, all of them have some saffron in them, but I will recommend the ice-cream. It is a natural ice-cream that is blended with saffron cream, reset again, and served with a pineapple coulis. The flavour of the saffron is so subtle, you will miss it if you do not look out for it.

Saffron
JW Marriott Hotel, Mumbai
Juhu Tara Road, Bombay 400 049.
Tel: 693 3113.