Growing up I was not fond of Biryani, chicken or vegetarian. I don’t know why but the only rice based dish I liked was rajma chawal. Nothing else. So I avoided biryani and the likes. Of course later things changed but my true love for biryani started on one of my trips to Goa. My brother was posted there. He still is. I know, its awesome! Everyone should have a family member in Goa. It should be the norm.
About 6 years back, my parents and I went to visit my brother and his wife and they kept talking about the Biryani from a place called Anantashram.
They make handi biryani and the biryani is served in the clay pot/ handi that they make it in. One bite and I was in love. I don’t remember how many times I ate the biryani on that trip but I had countless dreams of it when I was back, and every biryani I ate was compared to the biryani from Anantashram. Sadly, over the years their quality has gone down. On a recent trip I tried it and it was a let down. My brother and sister in law resonated my feelings, and had also told us beforehand that it might not be the same as the first time we had it.
Besides the biryani disappointment our Goa trip was a huge gastronomical success. As you can see in this post. We all came back with our clothes a little tighter. And I came back in search of a new Biryani as my yardstick.
This 100% whole wheat bread recipe adapted from BBC Good Food magazine is packed with pumpkin and flax seeds.
Recently a one star review on my business page on zomato (an indian website on the same lines as yelp) just reconfirmed my belief that most people these days are reviewing for the sake of appearing cool and just do not have the patience to understand somebody else’s situation.
So the whole thing started on the Monday that went by. I had an order that I was busy working with. My phone was in the other room on charge. Generally if I am working on an order I do not keep my phone with me, because while baking I know I can not take a call lest I forget all about my cake in the oven. And sometimes while rushing through orders it becomes really difficult to attend phone calls. The moment I get free I call the people whose calls I have missed. If my phone is with me I message in between saying I am tied up and will call soon. That day though my phone wasn’t on me so I only saw the calls an hour or so later. On calling the first number I had missed two calls from, the person on the other line informed me that she had already placed an order with someone else for a cake. I said no problem, hopefully next time. I called the other number and it turned out to be the same person. This time I apologized and explained that I was busy with an order and again mentioned that hopefully next time I can bake for her. All this happened in a span of one and half hour of her initially trying to get in touch with me.
The next thing I know the said caller had left a one star review on Zomato saying that I had shitty customer service and that I was misguiding people with a phony address. I have no idea what she meant about a phony address, because no where I have mentioned my address just my locality. I do not want to put my home address on a public forum for obvious reasons. And just because I did not take her call she goes around slandering my business and my customer service. I get it. It can be frustrating trying an establishment number and have no one pick up. But I am not an establishment with a customer service team. I manage everything from baking, decorating, accounts, handling clients on my own. Besides trying to have a personal life as well. Even after explaining this to her that I was a home baker and I do not have people to attend my calls as a reply to her review, she replied that I never apologized to her for missing her calls (which was not true and even if it was, did that give her reason enough to slander my business with shitty customer service?). After that I saw no point in paying any more heed to what she had to say.
On a recent trip to Delhi, I was served these really delish Dahi ke kebabs (kebabs made from hung curd) and a reminder photograph on one of the food related facebook groups I am a part of gave me the nudge to try making these kebabs at home.
These kebabs are vegetarian kebabs and are made from mixing hung curd with onions, garlic, ginger and green chillies. Bread crumbs and roasted gram flour are used to bind the dough together. You could deep or shallow fry them and once eaten they melt in your mouth. It makes a great appetizer to serve at your dinner party.
