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| Clockwise: Butter chicken, kali dal, chhole, sirke wale piyaz and green chutney, jeera rice, lachha paratha: Delhi BC |
I have been a bit circumspect about trying food from folks I do not know given the pandemic situation we are in. I have also tried the reduce the number of meals from outside that we have, as that had shot up recently. Such rich food is not good for my health in the long run. Which is why I have unfortunately had to decline some offers to sample food that were made to me. I would not want to waste food after all.
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| Butter chicken |
Today’s lunch was a great example of this. It was sent by someone named Gaurav who reached out to me on Instagram a few weeks back. He told me that he is a self taught cook and that he has been in the food business for 18 years. He wanted to send me some food from his enterprise that is called Delhi BC.
No, before you protest, BC means ‘Butterly Delicious’ according to their menu. Not what you are thinking!
A very apt pun/ double entendre given the context.
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| Dal Makhani lachha paratha |
Gaurav said that he operates out of his home kitchen and that he hopes to have a cloud kitchen someday. He said that he is currently the ‘chef, sous chef and cook’ rolled into one! That the recipes are from his home and promised that the food would remind me of the street food of Delhi.
Among the Delhi street/ dhaaba/ hole in the wall food that I have tried is the Punjabi food that you get at places such as Sadar Bazar, CP, Delhi 6 and Paharganj, the Muslim food that you get in Delhi 6, Nizamuddin and Jamia and some of the chaat which is sold at Punjabi Hindu run sweet shops. I have not had the Tibetan food that you get in some pockets of the city. I have had the Bengali food on offer at Chittaranjan park.
I guessed that the food would fall into one of the first two categories.
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| Chhole jeera rice |
I let Gaurav choose the menu and he sent butter chicken, kaali dal, Punjabi chhole, lachha paratha, jeera rice and sirke wale piyaz today.
Well, the food lived up to the its high billing. It was as Delhi Punjabi as the ‘BC’ in its name is! Very well flavoured and yet light and akin to home-cooked food. The way it was at the stall of Sardar Meat-wala at Sadar Bazar (in spirit, as the food there was mutton based) which I went to last year. The other memory that the food brought back was that of the fare that the field team would order when I would go to Delhi to conduct focus groups. This would come from neighbourhood caterers. Once from Chawla’s when we were conducting car clinics at Pragati Maidan. I remember loving that meal of roti, saag paneer and butter chicken a lot, while the two Korean ladies who had flown in for the project and were with us, kept saying, ‘not spicy enough, not spicy!’
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| Delhi BC at #TheFinelyChoppedTable |
Gaurav’s food brought back all those happy Delhi memories. My favourites from what he sent was the very soulful dal makhani, the butter chicken which was not excessively sweet or oily or heavy and where the chicken was juicy, the parathas which were made with wholewheat and stayed quite soft. The chhole was quite ‘Dally’ too. The rice was typical of what they serve at Punjabi rajma chawal stalls as well as ‘meat’ stalls in Delhi.
I thought that I will write about the food here and then post on Instagram, instead of doing it the other way round, for I felt that Gaurav was on to a good thing and I do hope that he can achieve his dreams of scaling up. BC!
Sorry, could not resist that.
I totally endorse you views. I tried it too. It was unlike resturants,it certainly had a homely touch. Good luck to Gaurav.
Mumbai cant get better Delhi food than this. As close as it gets. Tried so many times now that sunday is now Delhi BC Day. Thanks gaurav.