The year the anniversary staycation came home.

The food mentioned in this post was courtesy our neighbours, Gia & Erika, my brother, Siddhartha, the ITC Maratha Hotel, home chefs Farida of Karrylicious Kitchen & Ananya Banerjee of ‘the saree chef.’ I attribute my being able to load all this food on the table to the practise I got 20 years back while loading salads plate at JATC, Bandra, when K & I were seeing each other.

‘Decided to go retro and ditch the selfie today and used the timer mode instead, just as we did on our initial wedding anniversaries.  

Today is the 19th one. Spent safe and snug at home. With a table bursting at the seams with food. Counting our blessings, not calories! ‘

From my Instagram post on our wedding anniversary last week.

#Le19Anniv

K’s birthday was in August and we ditched the idea of going out for a luxury hotel staycation then, unlike what we usually do on the occasion. We did not feel confident to go out of home given the situation we were in, though hotels had just opened for stay in Mumbai. 

We will go for one in October, we told ourselves. On our anniversary. 

So we stayed home and I cooked up a seafood storm for K and we did not miss our staycation at all. Or so we told ourselves.

Well, our 19th wedding anniversary happened exactly a week back (this was written on the 29th). Nothing had really changed as far as the pandemic was concerned, though more things had opened up in Mumbai, including restaurants. We decided to stay home once again, rather than go on a staycation. 

While one does not doubt that those running hotels and restaurants would take all precautions, the truth is that we would not really be at peace if we went out and in which case it did not make sense to go on a staycation. At a subliminal level I guess I was not ready to leave the boys (our kittens) home alone yet. They have got so used to us. Or me to them, as K would tell you.

Richa Sharma of the ITC Hotels group and Priyanka Jacob of the ITC Maratha Hotel (where we did a staycation on our last anniversary) were most kindly in touch with me about our anniversary plans duing the run up to the day. “Come and dine with us,” said Priyanka. “If you are not comfortable, let us send you some food to celebrate the day with at least,” she offered.

I took her up on her offer and we spent the day feasting on the lovely food that executive chef Mayank Kulshreshtha and his team had sent over with a personal note from their GM, Mr Atul Bhalla, whom we know from his earlier stint at ITC Sonar and Royal Bengal. Feeling very grateful about life.

At the stroke of midnight

Le 15 chocolate macaron box

Let me share some Instagram posts from the day while I create a diary of food memories for us here. 

Breakfast:

Sali margi by Farida @karrylicouskitchen

I used them all to make what turned out to be delicious #loveyourleftovers sali chicken open sandwiches for us and that’s how we ended up having a Parsi Lagan nu Bhonu (wedding feast) touch to our breakfast on our 19th wedding anniversary.

Sali chicken sandwich

Lunch:

The #GourmetCouch spread from ITC Maratha

We were missing our anniversary hotel staycation as we decided to stay home given the current situation, and I didn’t want to leave the cats alone to be honest as I mentioned earlier, so the folks at @itcmaratha most kindly brought a staycation home to us, figuratively speaking, with our favourites from #dumpukht #peshawari – Awadhi biryani (my favourite biryani in town), dal bukhara (the first bite of it made us smile as I remembered my getting K to Peshawari to have the dal on her birthday when we were a lot younger and new to the coveted world of five stars), shikhampuri kebab (as juicy and tender as a Sufi poem), mutton nihari (a most intense gravy with very tender meat, the magic of slow cooking), shirmal, warqi paratha (both stayed very well overnight) – and a lovely chocolate cake from Nutmeg (we were most tickled to have got a complimentary chocolate cake on the first ‘dal Peshawari visit’ years back, as I had specified the occasion while booking).

This was three room service meals worth of food, if not more!!!!

Dum Pukht mutton Awadhi biryani with salan

ITC Gourmet couch mutton nihari

Dal Bukhara and Warqi paratha

ITC Gourmet Couch Shikhampuri kebabs and shirmal

Tea

With Gia and the boys

The Kitty Karmakars

You could call the pictures above as ‘from the ‘kids love to get clicked with their parents. Not!’ Series.

We took the opportunity of the visit by our friends Erika & Gia, who came bearing muffins and flowers to wish us, to get ourselves clicked with the boys.

The cupcakes were accompanied by ice creams

Dinner

Mutton shingara, chingri cutlet and fish roll by Ananya Banerjee @thesareechef

If there was a Parsi lagan nu bhonu touch to our breakfast thanks to Farida’s jardalu sali margi, Ananya Banerjee @thesareechef stepped in as the borjatri pokkho (groom’s side), by sending Bangali biye barir bhoj style mangsho shingara, fish roll and chingri cutlet on the #le19anniv

I was rather stuffed after lunch and thought that I would skip dinner and then better sense prevailed and forced myself to have dinner after a chamomile tea. K followed suit.

I am so glad we did so! Ananya’s food was fabulous as always. The mutton shingara won our heart with the crisp maida casing, the quality of the prawn in the chingri cutlet was fabulous (from Poonam as I Iater learnt and I had just introduced Ananya to her) and the fish roll was stuffed with prawns too and very indulgent. Her grandmother’s recipe it seems.

We popped everything in the air fryer to heat and the food came out as fresh as newly-weds and that is the story of our #Le19Anniv.

The pictures taken by Gia did make the house look rather Staycationish

My brother had organised the  first family hangout that night

The morning after

Jamuna rolls on Saptami

Saptami, which was the day after the anniversary and the second day of the Durga Puja, started with a #loveyourleftovers bang.

I used the shikhampuri kebabs, the warqi parathas and the sliced onions & finely chopped chillies that came with the @itcmaratha #gourmetcouch feast on our anniversary, to make power packed rolls that took me straight to the roll shops outside what was once Jamuna cinema in Kolkata that morning. In a more ‘sophi’ avatar, as we would say back in the day.

It allowed me to show off the really elegant chopping board from Jaypore that the missus gave me on our anniversary. The perfect gift from the one who named my blog Finely Chopped.

Jamuna gulley gets posh

Also read:

Last year’s anniversary staycation

Our Dal Bukhara story

K’s Lockdown birthday