COLOURFUL SPREAD: The World of Curries at Aramede will focus on diverse culinary traditions of Asia.
By Anand Holla
If time or your plans don’t permit you to travel to Asia, you sure can enjoy its authentic and rich flavours right here in Doha. With Aramede Restaurant of Crowne Plaza Doha – The Business Park, kicking off their World of Curries feast, guests can treat themselves to the finest spread of salads, breads, dips, mains and desserts from South, Southeast and East Asia.
The spotlight is on the curries that are expertly prepared by the team of chefs hailing from these regions. The recipes are those of their grandmothers and mothers, the first dish they learned to cook while growing up. Others are inspired by their passion for creating something that tastes and looks delicious.
While the South Asian cuisine from the Indian subcontinent uses turmeric and cumin to infuse rich colours and aroma into their curries, South East Asian cuisine uses citrus, lemon grass, tamarind and fish sauce as the main ingredients to bring out its distinct flavours of sweet, spicy, salty and sour.
Most dishes are prepared stir-fried, boiled or steamed. East Asian cuisine, informed by a time-honoured culinary tradition, is known for the direct simplicity of its dishes, as well as for its cool presentation.
The buffet begins with an interesting choice of greens, including the spicy yet refreshing Indonesian chicken salad, gin thoke or Burmese ginger salad that can serve both as an appetiser and a palate cleanser, Thai mango salad with prawns, red chilli and mint that bursts with sweet and tangy flavours and chukka wakame or seaweed salad.
You can also pair your rotis, chapatis and parathas with a variety of Indian salads like aloo anardana, made of potatoes and pomegranate, and the creamy dahi wada. Curries include Thai duck red curry, Thai shrimps in green curry, Sri Lankan chilli pepper, Japanese beef kare, aubergine curry with lemongrass and coconut milk, the fish simmered in caramel sauce or Vietnamese ca kho to, and the Singaporean crab chilli.
The in-house desserts feature popular picks such as Thailand’s khao niew mamuang or sticky rice with mango doused with coconut milk, studded with ripe mango, and the Thai pancake, a popular sweetbread. For those who love Indian sweets, there’s gulab jamun and jalebi. We give you a quick look through of the chefs behind this Asian food fest.
Senior Chef de Partie Wethida Trancharoen from Bangkok says that Thai food is healthy as it uses only fresh ingredients and herbs, and its flavours come from lemongrass, caffirlime and chilli. “Vegetables and curry with a lot of spice and chillies are part of our daily meals. And it is such a wonderful feeling to be able to share this taste of home to the people halfway around the world from where I come from,” she says.
Banquet Chef Sanjay Singh from India, who always wanted to join the army but eventually discovered his passion for cooking, mentions about his speciality, the rogan josh – an aromatic lamb dish from the Kashmiri cuisine. “This is the first proper dish I learned from cooking school. I really enjoyed making it that’s why I developed it and made it my own,” he says.
While Pastry Chef Bandula Keerthirath from Sri Lanka has grown up helping his grandmother prepare sweets for the family, the speciality of Demi Chef de Partie Rajib Gomes from Bangladesh is the fish curry – the same dish that he learned to cook with his mother.
Senior Chef de Partie Subir Singh from India, who has prepared the Japanese beef kare and the Singaporean red snapper curry for the World of Curries, says, “Japanese cuisine is a showcase of the oldest fusion of food. The beef kare uses Indian spices but is prepared using Japanese techniques such as stewing,” he explains. The World of Curries at Aramede Restaurant is every Monday from 6pm to 11pm.
