Chef Veena Arora has selected rice and vermicelli noodles to come up with Thai delicacies that are also a part of her childhood memories. She chatted with Divya Kaushik on her soupy, slurpy days
What we ate as a child remains as close to our hearts as are the people and memories associated with that food. No wonder Chef Veena Arora is always delighted to serve a portion of her memories and talk about the food that she had while growing up in Thailand. The latest from her kitchen is the Noodle Symphony at The Spice Route, the South East Asian restaurant at The Imperial. She came up with a special, precise and prim menu to serve different varieties of noodles to her guests. The list includes delicacies like kieow tieow naam, Thai rice noodle soup with pok choy, beansprouts, flavoured with peanut and sautéed garlic. Yum shiang hai, spicy and tangy square cellophane noodle salad. Mee goreng, Malaysian style spicy yellow noodles with squid rings and prawns. Mee see ieow, wok fried rice vermicelli noodle with exotic vegetables, flavoured with mushroom sauce and the chef’s special, stir-fried broad rice noodles with Keraliite style mutton, garnished with curry leaves.
Chef De Cuisine of The Spice Route says, “Noodles or I should term them vermicelli rice noodles, are extremely light and can be prepared in multitude of ways. In Thailand, these ultra thin noodles are eaten for breakfast and are deliciously consumed with soups or eaten as a complete meal in the form of soups. So one of the aims of this festival was introducing noodles as a wholesome meal and not just as a side dish. I have prepared a soup, salad and a main course dish to give examples of how people in Thailand come up with interesting ways to consume noodles.” Different kinds of noodles have been used for the dishes. For example, there are extremely thin ones that resemble the vermicelli noodles that we are used to having in our homes. There’s a flat, thick noodles cooked with mutton. “It is kept in mind that mutton is little chewy so we need the kind of noodles that do not melt in mouth immediately but are as chewy as the mutton in the dish is,” says chef Veena.
Chef Veena was born and brought up in Thailand in a small town named Phathalung situated in the south of Thailand and close to the sea and the Malaysian border. Her father was in the Indian national army and posted at Burma (now Myanmar) during the second World War from where he travelled to South of Thailand and settled in Phathalung. Therefore, though an Indian by origin, she grew up amongst Thais as they were the only Indian family in that town. Following her marriage to an Indian, she settled in India in the year 1980 and ever since then she has been living in India. She had a small restaurant in Thailand and the family was virtually living on Thai food. It was, therefore, easy for her to learn about commercial Thai cuisine. Her husband and her two children also developed a palate for Thai cuisine and thus cooking Thai food at home has become a pleasure for her. “I love my noodles to be little soupy and most of the noodles that I have created for the festival are my favourite. I love the fact they are light and can be easily cooked without too much of tampering,” says chef Veena.