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Apsara Restaurant - Port of Spain

Cré Olé asked chef Tapas Bose & Ramsingh Gurung of Apsara restaurant, Level 1, 13 Queen’s Park East, Port of Spain, to choose the dish of the week.

Tapas Bose & Ramsingh Gurung chose a typically North Indian menu, beginning with a balti paneer appetizer, moving on to an entrée comprising both murgh tandoori and burra kebab and ending the meal with kisar pista kulfi.

The round pieces of cottage cheese in the balti paneer were made by curdling fresh milk in vinegar, straining it through cheesecloth and then compressing it for half a day before quick-frying in seasonings, cashew nuts and paste and finally slow-cooking in a rich, tomato-based cream sauce.

The murgh tandoori element of the main course consisted of chicken marinated in tandoori masala, imported North Indian spices & yogurt, and then slowly roasted in the clay tandoor oven. The burra kebab was made up of lamb chops marinated in a blend of pawpaw paste and Indian spices and roasted for 25 minutes in the tandoor. Plain and garlic naan breads as well as the lamb-stuffed keema naan, all cooked on the walls of the tandoor, were served as side dishes.

Dessert was the traditional Indian dessert of kesar pista kulfi, commonly called, “Indian ice cream”, which is made from frozen milk flavoured with almonds or pistachios, cardamom and saffron.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 






In the Chef’s Own Words…

Tapas Bose & Ramsingh Gurung say…
“The reason we chose the tandoori items on the menu is because of the extraordinary blend of seasonings combined in the tandoor oven to add that rich, authentic flavouring to every tandoori dish. It makes for an out of this world, heavenly taste in the dining room. To understand our choice, we need to explain to you the process it takes to create this unique taste. The walls of the tandoor are first lined with clay. Then a mixture of turmeric, salt, sugar, spinach, yogurt etc is cooked into a paste and left to cool, then rubbed onto the walls of the tandoor and left to dry. Special coals are imported from Guyana to fire up the tandoor as the final process to create these mouth-watering tandoori dishes. To us, this is the best of North India.”



7th Monday September 2009
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Sponsored Information:

Wyndham Estate Bin 333 Pinot Noir

Distributed by Pernod Ricard 640-8884.

Cré Olé asked Junior Serrette of Pernod Ricard to select what he thought might be the perfect wine to complement Ramsingh & Tapas’s Plat de la Semaine. Junior chose a bottle of Wyndham Estate Bin 333 Pinot Noir, an elegant medium-bodied Australian red capable of complementing both the chicken & lamb main courses wonderfully. It also pairs extremely well with some of the spices used in seasoning the whole meal. To the nose, this wine presents a rich bouquet of strawberries, cherries and spices with subtle hints of oak. Its moderately intense crimson red with purple tints is particularly pleasing to the eye and, in the mouth, its spicy, fruity taste and soft tannins offer a long, polished finish. The grapes were harvested from February to April 2004 and allowed a six-month maturation after fermenting and blending before bottling.