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Appetizer of the Week: Tanzore's Tuna

Seared tuna is all over the place, but if you want to taste it Indian style, go to Tanzore on La Cienega Boulevard.

Executive chef Jayanta Paul coats ahi tuna steak with Indian spices such as coriander, cumin and red chiles, then sears it in extra virgin olive oil.

He serves the tuna on a bed of raita, not the usual cucumber, cumin and yogurt mixture, but raita that combines yogurt with cubed avocado, bell peppers, chives and a dash of ginger, green chiles and cumin powder. 

To provide some crunch, he adds another fusion touch--tortilla chips. These are made in-house from tortillas cut fine and deep-fried.

And there's more--a pile of tuna tartare on top.

Eating this, it's hard to imagine you're on Restaurant Row in Beverly Hills and not in some chic place in Mumbai, Kolkata or Delhi.

Tanzore, 50 N La Cienega Blvd, Beverly Hills, CA 90211. Tel: (310) 652-3838.

Back to Little India for Lunch

Lunch at Surati Farsan Mart in Little India was so good (see last post) that I simply had to do it again.

The previous post theorized that the popular Gujarati vegetarian eatery might expand into the space vacated by a book and gift shop next door.

That didn't happen. Karma Fashion Studio took over the empty space instead, but Surati expanded anyway--outside, onto the sidewalk.  At the top, you can see the row of tables waiting for customers when the restaurant gets crowded.

The latest lunch included one repeat from before, the silky bright yellow rolls of gram flour dough called khandvi (above). They're sprinkled with mustard seeds, cilantro and coconut strands and accompanied by a super spicy green sauce.

The friend who went with me swears that Surati's bhel puri (above) is better than any she tasted during months in India. As yellow as khandvi, it's a sweet and spicy, salad-like mix that includes crunchy rice puffs along with potatoes, beans, onions and cilantro.

You have to be careful with pani puri (above), or you'll splash tasty liquid over your face and hands. These miniature pastry puffs are filled with potatoes and green and black beans seasoned with sweet and spicy sauces. To finish them off, you spoon in mint-flavored water. This is what you'll be wiping off if you don't eat each one in a single bite.

Chick peas, channa, garbanzo beans, chole. They're all the same, and at Surati they come with a vegetable-filled samosa (above) that gets soft and gushy if you don't extract it from the sauce right away. But maybe that's how it's supposed to be. 

There's something else new at Surati in addition to sidewalk seating. It's a line of Indian-flavored ice creams from Saffron Spot down the street. You take your pick from a photo menu near the cash register. After eating, walk down to Saffron Spot, and you'll find even more flavors there. 

Surati Farsan Mart, 11814 E. 186 Street, Artesia, CA 90701. Tel: (562) 860-2310.

Saffron Spot, 18744 Pioneer Blvd., Artesia, CA 90701. Tel: (562) 809-4554.  

A Great Spot to Snack in Little India

Surati Farsan Mart in Artesia's Little India has expanded once to accommodate the crowds that come to eat and buy Indian snacks.

And we hear it's going to expand again, into space left vacant by a book and gift shop that closed recently.

Eating there is pleasant now, not the crowded hassle it once was--especially if you go during the week, when there aren't so many shoppers stopping in for a bite.  

The food is Gujarati, and all of it is vegetarian, ranging from snacks such as samosas to full meals served on a thali.

A friend and I started with khandvi, bright yellow, silky rolls made of steamed chick pea flour (above). On top are mustard and sesame seeds, strands of fresh coconut and cilantro.

My friend, who is Indian, raves about Surati's sambhar, a spicy lentil and vegetable soup. There it is, on the edge of a plate of idlis (above). You dip the soft white rice cakes into the sambhar and then take a spoonful of the fresh coconut chutney in the foreground. 

Sweet and spicy sauces, yogurt and the crunchy, fine noodles called sev add layers of flavor and texture to khasta kachori (above). Underneath all this are crisp shells stuffed with black and green channa dal.

You can order desserts such as kulfi and vanilla ice cream, but first take a look at the counter of sweets. Made from thickened milk, cashews, almonds, pistachios, dates, coconut and other goodies, they're so tempting you won't be able to resist taking some home. 

Surati Farsan Mart, 11814 E. 186th St., Artesia, CA 90701. Tel: (562) 860-2310.

Appams--Lacy Pancakes from India

Pancakes for breakfast--that's terrific. I'm not talking about the usual golden pancakes with maple syrup, but about South Indian appams.

These lacy cakes are browned and crisp at the edges, a little thicker at the center. At New Bhimas in Artesia, they come with either vegetable kurmah, which is a mellow vegetarian sauce, or sweetened coconut milk (at top).

Ever since I met up with appams in India, I've eaten them only with the sweet sauce, because they're so delicious that way, like a morning dessert. 

You don't throw them together with a mix. In one Indian hotel, I had to place an order the night before so the batter would have time to ferment. 

In the book "Flavours of Kerala," author Hena Jacob allots 7 to 8 hours for preparation, with the cooking time additional.

Her recipe includes two types of rice flour, yeast to start the fermentation, coconut milk and sugar. The distinctive shape results from cooking the batter in a shallow iron wok called an appam-chatti.

Jacob calls this type of appam pal-appam as opposed to idiyappam, or string hoppers. "Usually served as a starter dish for formal get-togethers, it is also a popular breakfast dish and is served with vegetable/meat stew," she writes. "It also tastes wonderful with thick coconut milk with a dash of sugar."

New Bhimas puts cardamom in its sweet coconut milk sauce, which makes it doubly delicious. The one flaw was that the restaurant served the sauce cold. When they heated it, it was wonderful. I could have eaten it without the appams, like a dessert soup. 

New Bhimas restaurant, 18752 Pioneer Blvd., Artesia, CA 90701. Tel: (562) 880-5678.

Madras Coffee--It's the Best

Coffee has had a bad rap, but now they say it's good for you.

This gives you a reason to head for Artesia's Little India, where you can taste some of the best coffee being brewed today. You won't find anything like it at the trendy coffee outlets in town.

It's Madras style filter coffee, creamy, rich and beyond delicious. New Bhimas, a South Indian vegetarian restaurant in the Little India Village Food Court, has it.

Foamy and milky, the coffee comes in a steel tumbler set inside a steel bowl. Indians pour the coffee back and forth to dissolve the sugar they've added and to aerate and cool it, making even more bubbles.

The coffee is brewed in a South Indian filter pot, which is composed of a top vessel with holes where you place the coffee and a plunger disc to spread it evenly. Hot water poured into the top goes through to the bottom container, forming a strong extract.

At New Bhimas, the coffee comes to the table already mixed with milk, which is the way it is served in India. You then add sugar to taste.

In the past, restaurants tried to duplicate South Indian coffee with American brands, producing a weak imitation. The coffee used in India contains a small amount of chicory. 

Now genuine South Indian coffee powder is available here, and that is what New Bhimas uses. The brand is Cothas Coffee, which is manufactured and packed by Cothas Coffee Company in Bangalore (Bengaluru), India.

You can get it at Farm Fresh, which has two markets on Pioneer Boulevard a short walk from New Bhimas.

New Bhimas restaurant, Litle India Village Food Court, 18746-18752 Pioneer Blvd., Artesia, CA 90701. Tel: (562) 860-5678.

Farm Fresh market, 18612 Pioneer Blvd., Artesia, CA 90701. Tel: (562) 865-8171. Also at 18551 Pioneer Blvd. Tel: (562) 865-3191.

Origin India--a Las Vegas Find

I hadn't expected to find Indian food in Las Vegas, and certainly not a restaurant as good as Origin India.

The only flaw I could find is that it is not in Los Angeles, closer to my home.

Executive chef Kuldeep Singh is updating Indian cuisine in a way that preserves its identity--no awkward fusion concepts. The dishes simply become more refined, more appealing, more interesting.

He might stuff a roast chicken with wild mushrooms and black prunes and serve it with a cashew mint korma sauce touched with truffle oil. Or he'll roast wild Atlantic black salmon that he has marinated in pickling spices and present it with apple fennel salad and roasted beets.

I didn't taste those dishes, but I did try rogan josh in which Singh replaced the usual cubed meat with lamb shank, cooked until seductively tender (at left in the photo).

The other dishes in the photo are chicken tikka makhani, or tandoori-grilled chicken chunks in a tomato sauce with cream; garlic shrimp, yellow rice and kadhi pakora, or gram flour and vegetable dumplings in a yogurt-based sauce. 

Sometimes presentation makes the difference. The street snack pani puri appeared as a sort of shooter. Usually, it's a plate of small fried puffs (puri) that are stuffed with chick peas and potatoes and splashed with spicy sauce flavored with tamarind. Singh put the spicy mixture into a shot glass and set the puri on top.

Origin India's menu is primarily north Indian (Singh is from Meerut in that region), but he cooks southern dishes too, such as South Indian lemon rice with curry leaves and black mustard seeds, a lamb curry from Tamil Nadu, and baked eggplant in a Hyderabadi sesame peanut sauce tempered with fried curry leaves, mustard seeds and red chiles.

Naans include  one with wild mushrooms and truffle oil and a sweet naan with apricots and raisins.

Singh will compose a five course tasting menu ($45) with optional wine pairings. My lunch included the appetizer plate at right, composed of  a single seekh kebab, tandoori chicken decorated with edible  silver leaf and a tiger prawn seasoned with kaffir lime leaves. The shrimp sound Thai, but kaffir limes grow in India too, Singh said.

The bar offers signature cocktails and a long list of beers. But the best beverage may be Singh's own sparkly, spicy homemade ginger ale.

No surprise that his cooking has captured national attention. In February, Singh was guest chef at the Beard House in New York City.

The only dishes on that menu that I tasted at Origin India were crispy dumplings with masala water (pani puri) and the dessert, vermicelli panna cotta with Alphonso mango jelly.

It was another dessert, though, that really intrigued me--a dark red, sweet beet dumpling coated with coconut. Singh put it on a plate with the panna cotta, and it very nearly stole the show. 

Origin India Restaurant and Bar, 4480 Paradise Road, No. 1200, across from the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, Las Vegas, NV 89169. Tel: (702) 734-6342.

 

Saying Goodbye to Surya

My favorite Indian restaurant, Surya, will close by the end of this week after 10 years of producing marvelous food.

It was unthinkable not to have one last meal there. And that last meal was as good as any I have had in the past. This makes the closing all the more painful.

Because I couldn't choose among so many favorite dishes, owner Sheel Joshi decided what I should eat.

The appetizer was ginger lamb--lamb tikka masala cut into strips rather than chunks and fiery red with its juices. The meat had been marinated with orange juice and chiles, including a touch of habanero, and seasoned with rosemary and strips of gingerroot.

It's an art to cook fish in the tandoor so that it doesn't dry out, but tandoori seabass has always been one of Surya's best dishes, moist and tender throughout, yet with a wisp of crust at the edges.

Joshi had found fresh methi (fenugreek leaves) in an Indian shop, and those gave a delicate herbal flavor to chicken in a spicy, rich, slightly tart sauce. This was a new dish to me, as I always order Surya's signature chicken Mangalorean.

The accompaniments were saffron rice with peas and lots of naan.

Surya is upscale Indian, white tablecloths and all that, and has a good wine list. The wine for this last dinner was Pellegrini Milestone 2006, a blend of Merlot with Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Malbec. It was full-flavored and fruity, very good with this food.

After so much rich Indian food, the only dessert advisable was mango sorbet frozen in a mango shell.

Although Surya will close, much of the menu will continue to be available at Joshi's smaller, more spartan place, Holy Cow, which is located a few blocks west on the same street. This was some consolation as I walked away with a sack of leftovers to continue my last meal for another day or two. 

Surya Indian restaurant, 8048 W. 3rd St., Los Angeles, Ca 90048. Tel: (323) 653-5151.. 

Holy Cow, 8474 W. 3rd St., Los Angeles, CA 90048. Tel: (323) 852-8900.