Gastronomic tours with Swiss Cheese

Yesterday we went for dinner to a restaurant in the Hyundai dept store building. It was on the 9th floor. Had the same veg dish that we'd had on Wednesday, but this time with a fried egg on the top. The others had a kind of meat-noodle soup.

They bring this large steel bowl with a plain soup - looks like clear brown water. This is placed on a flame in the centre of the table. They then add vegetables and spices (the standard ginger-garlic paste). Then the meat is added, and finally the noodles. I guess each is added based on how much time it takes to cook. The meat is really thin slices and red when they put it in, but brown when it comes out.

It is then served into bowls.

Once done, they add a bowl of rice into whatever soup remains in the steel bowl. That's mixed around, and then they add what looked like seaweed. Finally, an egg is broken into the mixture and mixed up with it. The egg had an orange shell, and I was told that it was a chicken's egg.

It's all mixed up and served into smaller bowls. The flame is still on throughout. It tastes good, although I think the seaweed has a funny taste - I can only describe the taste as "purple" - go figure (well, if you were to take LSD, then that taste would have caused you to see the colour purple all over (and I'm in no way telling people to go take LSD)).

It was quite an interesting dinner. On the side I've been amusing various koreans with my "hangul reading ability".

Lunch was at TGIF's. The standard TGIF fare.

Is there any place in bangalore where I can get good non-veg food? Kheema Paav and stuf like that.

Went to Pizza Fort the other day, and ordered a fried chicken meal. Tip - don't have the chicken there. If it had any taste it would have been overpriced, but it didn't, so let's not even talk about the price.

Saturday's lunch was at this place at Brigade road called Kohinoor. I had veg kofta and Kerala paratha. Couldn't see the difference between that and other parathas. The Koftas were filling, but that's about it. Price wise, you get what you pay for. Recommendation - unless you're starving, walk on by (and if you're not on foot, well why the heck are you looking that way?)

Sunday dinner was at Hyderabadi Biryani on Richmond Road. Had Egg biryani there. Would have preferred trying Chicken or Mutton, but since I was the only person eating, I thought it would be too much. I think I should go there and try it out again. This place isn't for you if you're vegetarian, or if you're easily turned off by unhygienic looking places. I would also not recommend the water there, but YMMV.

Sometime last week, we visited a place called Santrupti or something like that. It's just off MG Road, take a left from Trinity Circle. Food was pretty good. A couple of the guys had thalis, I had a kind of Pulao, don't remember what I ordered for, but I think I got a Kashmiri pulao. Yathin had a chole batura... and the batura was huuuuge. Food was good IMO. The pulao would have fed two persons, and it was cheap. Recommended.

Swadistha is an Andhra place at Mittal Tower. Relatively cheap Andhra thali, reasonably spicy, so keep the curd rice for the end. Um, eat there, don't eat there. No loss.

Ullas - first floor, utility building, MG Road. Good south indian food, and only good food is south indian. Don't order anything north indian there. Masala dosa was good, but they're inconsistent with where they put the butter. Wada sambar was good too. Worth a try. Go there. Not too expensive. View from the window's not that great though.

The only other time I ate out was Thursday night at the office. We ordered parathas. I had two gobi (since I'd already had methi, and aloo on the two days before, and was going to have daal on the following sunday).

Umm, well, if anyone knows where I can get kheema paav, let me know.

It was a rare day at the Tellis household today. Philip made something edible in the kitchen. Dad was making steaks and ham with mushrooms and cabbage. I decided to make Golfer's Egg. I've seen it once before in a newspaper a long time ago, and figured, hey what the heck, if I know what it looks like, maybe I can make it. I mean... it works with software right?

The Golfer's egg is basically two slices of sliced bread, with a hole cut out of one of them, and the yolk of a fried egg looking out through it.

1. Take two slices of sliced bread (don't take a pav and slice it, trust me).
2. Cut out a yolk sized hole in the centre of one of them
   (a yolk sized hole is approx. 1" in diameter)
3. Butter the insides
4. Add Jeera (Cumin seeds) and other herbs (I used a bottle of mixed herbs) (but see note below) to the buttered sides.
5. Fry both sides of both slices - use a non stick pan, and do not add any butter or oil in the pan, just let them fry in their own butter. Use a low flame - but you'll really have to figure out the frying time and flame size yourself.
   Once the bread is crisp - and you really want to figure out some way to keep it crisp, take it off, and keep it aside.
6. Now, fry the egg - try and get the yolk in the centre of the pan - it kept sliding to one edge for me. You may need to cool off the pan first to prevent the egg from sticking. Also, make sure the albumen doesn't spread out too far - you want it to fit in the bread, but if it does, don't worry, there's a trick you can use.
7. Once the egg is semi fried, ie, the bottom is firm, but the top is still wettish, place the holed out slice over the egg such that the yolk sticks through the the hole. You'll have to be careful that you don't break the yolk in this process, so try and do it as early as possible into the frying.
8. Let the egg fry as you normally would (if you don't normally fry eggs, then you probably shouldn't be starting with a golfer's
9. If you've let some of the albumen slip out from under the bread, trim it out neatly. You could use a pair of scissors, or just the spatula that you use to lift the egg off the pan with. Do this while still frying. (I've never used a pair of scissors for this). Once the trimmings of the albumen are fried, place them on the full slice of bread - you want it to be as flat as possible.
10. Give the yolk portion a little longer to fry - remember, part of it is in the bread, so it will require a while... you'll have to figure this out yourself.
11. Lift the egg with the bread off the pan and place atop the other slice.
12. And there you have it, golfer's egg

You could of course try your own variations on the herbs and spices used. I think you're supposed to put in Ginger and Garlic paste too, but not being a big fan of either, I left that out.

NOTE: You probably want to add the herbs after you're done frying, or they'll get burnt. Jeera though, is great when fried.

So, after having done all that, I served out three plates with golfer's eggs, a thick slice of ham with melted cheese, some cabbage and mushrooms.

Well, it wasn't all pretty. I started my golfer's egg with three loaves of bread because I couldn't find any sliced bread. That plan went awry without any eggs being used, but I still had a plate full of three loaves worth of sliced up bread.

No problem. Sis turned the bread into a chocolate bread pudding with almonds and raisins. Nice.

So, we had a great dinner, and I feel sleepy now.