'No extra frills'

FOODIE

Wedding planner Meher Sarid makes us a Parsi classic.

By the time I taste her dhansak — it’s a pity that our vegetarian photographer has to give it a miss — I declare myself Meher Sarid’s slave. Her dhansak preparation has a delightful taste, the flavours of thick, richly blended dals generously absorbed into the succulent mutton pieces. “My entire family loves it, and we make it every Sunday,” laughs Sarid, one of India’s well-known party and wedding planners, who is now involved with Oxigen, a mobile-integrated platform provider.

Why the shift? “I was getting a chance to do something different,” she says, decked out in a black top teamed with smart pants. From planning functions — clients booked her a year in advance till two years ago — Sarid now does very “select and exclusive” work for the festive season. Her company, Wedding Art, has offices in the UK and Vancouver too, thanks to her overriding popularity and demand in the West.

This year Sarid’s also doing very exclusive “taash” parties where she’s aghast at the way money is changing hands. She’s creating cubicles with sheer partitions and serving delectable Indian food, happy to note that the trend this year is minimalist and very Indian. “No extra frills,” she declares. Despite the global financial meltdown, Sarid says most of her clients are gambling away fat wads of cash, philosophising that the more they lose this year, the better-equipped they will be to tackle the markets!

By the time we’ve finished sampling her dhansak with brown rice, Sarid regales us with stories of her hotel management days, including one where, on the first day of her entering a hotel kitchen, she was asked to peel, cut and chop bagfuls of onions for five continuous days. “I looked like a frog by the end of that particular week,” she laughs.

Her trips to her own kitchen may have become less frequent in recent times, especially since her kids are away at boarding school, but Sarid’s meals, if cooking can be called that, continue to remain, as her family members declare, works of art.

FAVOURITE RECIPE

DHANSAK
½ kg mutton
1 cup arhar dal
½ cup moong dal
½ cup red masoor
1 brinjal, chopped
100 gm pumpkin
½ bundle methi leaves
2 sprigs of mint leaves
3 onions
3 tomatoes, chopped
A handful of coriander, finely chopped
2 tsp ginger-garlic paste
For the masala
2 tsp haldi
2 tsp chilli powder
2 tsp dhanna jeera powder
2 tsp khambatki sambhar masala
3 tsp dhansak masala
Salt to taste
For the tadka
2 green chillies
3 pods garlic, chopped
½ tsp sabut jeera

Boil mutton with ginger-garlic paste separately. Keep aside. Put all the other ingredients in a pressure cooker for 20 minutes. Blend dals and add mutton to this stock. Pour the tadka over the preparation and add chopped garlic and green chillies. Boil for five minutes. Serve hot with brown rice and mutton kebabs, and don’t forget to squeeze lime on top.