Indigo Go, Go, Go!

Busybee goes eating out to Indigo which celebrated its second anniversary with a brand new menu of summery fusion foods

SUMMER winds are blowing through Rahul Akerkar's landmark Indigo, off Colaba Causeway in Downtown Bombay. Cold tomato consomme with warm basil floating inside, green tea-scented cold duck breasts, with cranberry sorbet, a smoked Norwegian salmon and spinach souffle, and a half-dozen Kerala oysters, the morning's catch, served raw with red wine and oregano. The restaurant completed two years on April 1. And this is the new summer menu. Get yourself reintroduced to Indigo.

It is among my five favourite in-town restaurants... make that four. The food looks and eats handsome, the decor is uncluttered and masculine, the service is not obsequious, and as far as the bar goes � you have come to the right place. The food is, to say the least, interesting, but there is a subtle difference between the previous menus and the present one, this is more direct and to the point, more use is made of sweet red and yellow peppers and saffron. The kitchen, evidently, has grown in confidence.

I shall take you straight into the entrees. Ask for the grilled medallions of tuna, somewhat unusually rubbed with ajwain, instead of the normal coriander seeds. Ajwain, I understand, suits the strong flavoured meat better, and the tuna is a strong flavoured fish. The meat is done in shitake mushrooms and white beans ragout, with sesame sauteed long beans. What emerges is a very light creamy curry, but it is not a curry per se. You may also order a smoked Norwegian salmon, or fresh crabs and crisp prawns in a ravioli. All the fish is fresh, my guarantee, but that is the case with seafood in all Bombay restaurants. Once the novelty of freezing and ice storaging our sea food wore off, we stopped doing so. Restaurateurs, housewives, everybody.

There is also a rawas, one in a new avatar, on the menu. But let me tell you about pork first. A lot of people would eat pork, the softest of meat, the maximum of fat, the juiciest of joints, but the standard of pork is uniformly poor all through the country. A meat supplier of Indigo does search the markets every day, looking if he can lay his hands on a nice shoulder or loins, but most of the time he is disappointed. And the restaurant will not go in for touch-and-go meat. So Rahul has introduced the pan-seared rawas in its place. The recipe is interesting. The fish is rubbed with aniseed and pan-seared, and served with artichoke hearts and coconut-braised spinach. But first it is cooked in panchamrut, which Rahul discovered at his aunt's house. It is prepared with coconut, peanuts, caju, kismiss, etc. I don't know what the etceteras are.

In two years, the kitchen staff's skills have kept pace with the growth of the restaurant. And the rest of the staff has also helped. The room behind the bar, which was wasted as a lounge, has been turned into a dining area (the inside name is the yellow room), plus a room upstairs with another 30 covers. But I would advise the main dining area as the first choice. There you see the entrances and exits of not only your food but everybody else's also. It is advisable to book in advance. And your knowing the management may not help, after all the whole world knows Malini Akerkar.

The stress is on comparatively lighter fare, and a prime example is the farafelle and grilled prawns tossed together with �real� black beans, and done in a light sauce of white beans and the flavour of rosemary. The prawns are just grilled, nothing more is done to them. For the vegetarians, I recommend the ravioli of sweet potatoes (repeat, sweet) and caramelised onions, prepared with garlic breadcrumbs (repeat, garlic breadcrumbs), pinenuts and sage browned in butter. Also, a fresh green garlic fettucine with grilled fennel, asparagus and leeks. More and more cooks, I find, are preferring the use of leeks to onions. And, bitter lettuce to leeks. They are, no doubt, a gentler version, for those who have not seen those sweet Madras onions, size and shape of garlic. Another in season dish is the fusilli with zucchini, with summer squashes and walnuts, plus plum tomatoes and pesto.

I have earmarked three more dishes, the Genovese of lamb, the roast prime tenderloin with marrow, and the lemon and pepper duck. The lamb is sealed in olive oil on the fire, the onions are cooked down till they are completely caramelised, and the meat cooked with them. Genovese is a type of pasta, broad and flat, in width about four times the regular pasta. About the tenderloin, the pleasure is in the marrow, and here somebody has taken it out and piled it up for you. The bones are roasted in the kitchen and the marrow removed. The roasting contributes to the smoky flavour, as the the espresso coffee that is added to the sauce. It is a dark sauce, made up, besides the espresso coffee, of caramelised onions, mashed potatoes, mustard, balsamic glace. With the amount of cooking it goes through, the sauce comes out demi glazed. But the heart of the dish is the bone narrow.

About the duck. It is a pekin duck and it comes from Delhi. Why Delhi? Because that is where it is born and lives. And, why pekin? Because that is what the breed is known as, it has got nothing to do with Peking. They use the breasts, roast the bird, making the skin crisp, and stuff lemon and fresh black pepper under the skin. And they serve it with mashed sweet potatoes, braised sauerkraut, chestnuts, mustard. It is flavoured with rosemary and olive jus, and served in the thick duck stock.