MTV is now all set to provide us a live experience of the studio at its newly launched cafe, FlYP@MTV. Celebrity chef Ranveer Brar has curated the whole menu for the restaurant. He shares with Arjita Mishra the tips and tricks to make lakhnawi galauti kebabs
As we stepped in the restaurant, our eyes got struck to a food bus standing at one of the corner of restaurant where people had gathered to have some snacks. While we were entering inside, we found two separate stage with the set up of musical instrument and also a recording room. There was a Gali like space separated with the doors and windows where people can sit and work without any disturbance.
Here we are talking about MTV themed café, FlYP@MTV. It is the first café launched by MTV that focuses on the youth’s career opportunity. “This is a place where youngsters chill out by learning things or they can record their songs in our recording room. They can can keep it here with us and in this way, we can give them opportunity to engage them in some assignments of our channel,” said Saugato Bhowmik, senior vice-president, consumer product, Viacom 18 media Pvt ltd.
There is a garden bar in the restaurant which will host two concept bars - The herb bar which serves fresh herb drinks and juices and the second one is Tea and lemonade bar which will serve hot or iced tea and lemonades. The restaurant will organise workshops on bar tending, music, beverages, foods, fashion, tattoo, painting, et al. to educate and train the youngsters. “The workshops will be organise frequently because youth likes to learn new stuff or activities,” said Bhowmik.
“We have lockers and shower cubical in our café where people can change and attend the parties at night with the live music like Indian folk, Bollywood, unplugged and sufi music,” Bhowmik shared with us.
The culinary director for the café is celebrity chef, Ranveer Brar who created a unique offering for the café. Chef was present at the launch of the café and he also held a workshop where he made two dishes from his menu. Brar has created the whole menu by the fusion of different flavours. Chef accepted that he does not like the word fusion and said, “The word fusion is so over used and it has just lost the whole charm of what it used to do the food.” Rather than calling it a fusion, Brar preferred it to call an inspiration. “We have prepared the menu which is inspired by various people and my travels,” he said.
He told us that, somehow we all are inspired with the food that we eat and try to make a new dish out of it. In the menu, there was a dish called chicken tikka miso which is inspired from the Japanese teriyaki. Brar shared the process of making the dish and said, “We have taken black miso and used a similar flavour profile of yakitori and then we have cooked inside the tandoor in a Punjabi style.”
Rajme ki galauti, a famous cuisine from lucknow is also added by chef in the menu. He shared a story behind the origin of the cuisine and said, “There was a Nawab in lucknow who lost all his teeth in his old age and therefore he asked his cook to make a dish which he can eat easily. So, then galauti kebab was made. It got its name because it melts in your mouth and also because it was made from the galawat.”
For rajme ki galauti, we need to boil rajma and then make a paste of it. Afterwards, paste of brown onion and cashew nuts are added to it. “If someone says to you that a lucknawi dish can be made without kaju and ghee, than he is not trained under a lucknawi chef,” Brar said with a smile on his face. Ginger- garlic paste along with red chilly powder and salt is added in the rajma paste. “To give it a flavour, a most common spice or we can say traditional lucknawi masala called lazzet-e-taam is added,” he said.
All these paste are mixed well in a bowl and a chapatti is kept over it to give smoke to the paste. “The most important thing while you make galawat is the aroma, wet smoke is given to it,” the chef pointed out. One piece of charcoal is placed on the chapatti and few drops of ghee is added to it before covering it with a plate. “It gives a smoky flavour to the dish and it is the oldest method of giving smoke,” Brar shared with us. After giving smoke for few minutes, the paste is spread over the chapatti and is baked for few minutes on 240 degree centigrade. The other dishes that were in the menu include — mini nukti kebab spring rolls, teen mirch malai tikka, thai spiced tulsi fish tikka, tofu shammi slider, tarbooz sashimi with kokam amla drizzle.
photos Sanjeev Kumar