More than mezze

THE FOOD CLUB

Hyatt Regency Delhi has just had one of its best food festivals ever: that of Lebanon. Presided over by Chef Maroun Chedid, the festival won on every count.

First, the spread: cold and hot mezzes, live counters and a buffet spread of main courses. Then, there's the matter of Lebanese food itself: in India, it is known almost solely for the array of mezzes. That's hardly surprising: Italian food is known for its pastas and pizzas, just as Indian food must be known by its tandoori offerings elsewhere in the world. However, Lebanese main courses are a closely guarded secret in this country.

Chedid's festival changed all that. The main courses were definitely the focus of the festival. And what a spread it was. There were stews featuring chickpeas and moughrabiah "" tiny balls made of flour and water which, when cooked, swell up and take on the flavour of the gravy.

There was a pilaf with roasted green wheat, raisins and almonds, there was a rice and pine nut pilaf to be eaten with artichokes cooked in tomatoes, and numerous other delights.

What stood out "" besides the quality of cooking, which was superb "" was the parallels with Indian cuisine. Chickpeas are hardly an unknown quantity here, and moughrabiah serve roughly the same purpose as besan boondis.

The spices are, with the exception of sumac and zatar, the same ones that every Indian housewife uses "" cumin, coriander, cinnamon and cardamom. However, the way the spices were used made the difference: it was as if the two cuisines (Lebanese and Indian) were marching side by side, but never overlapping.

Take the tenderloin shawerma. It was marinated with sweet pepper powder, cinnamon, cardamom and coriander powder, but each was used judiciously, so that the effect was tantalizingly similar, yet completely different, and that, perhaps was the key to the success of the festival as a whole. Why didn't the shawerma taste like a kathi roll made with beef?

After all, there were onion juliennes sprinkled with coriander leaves, bits of tomato, tenderloin marinated with garam masalas and cooked on a grill, and tahina sauce in place of mint chutney.

The answer lies in the ingredients that Chedid and his assistant brought with them. There was wild thyme powdered, concentrated pomegranate juice with its trademark sweet-sour stickiness, vine leaves, syrup of orange flower, even sahlab, the powdered root of a plant that is used to give texture to desserts. They even carried olive oil and tahina with them, both from Lebanon.

In contrast, many restaurants in India with international menus use Syrian tahina and Italian olive oil in their hummus and mouttabal, which gives quite a different result.

Meghle, a rice pudding, summed up the exotic quotient of the festival. Made of rice power and sugar syrup, it was flavoured with cinnamon, caraway and aniseed. But did it taste like kheer or halwa? Avowedly not. My only grouse is: why isn't such food available at restaurants all over the country?