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Mint
27-06-2025
- Mint
From trotters to tripe, offal gets an upscale makeover
Rituparna Roy Borne out of necessity, nose-to-tail eating as a culinary practice traces its roots to ancient civilisations. The dishes and their fascinating stories are inspiring chefs to reinterpret them for the modern diner, be it from personal memories or research trips across the country 'Dohjem' liver pâté by Tanisha Phanbuh; (right) 'Golda chingri ghilu' hollandaise at Sienna. Gift this article Bengali mothers are adept at coaxing their children into eating every part of the fish. 'Chew the heads, they're good for you", 'eat the tel (innards), they are delicious", 'don't discard the skins, they have good fats", and so on. 'My mother cooks macher tel like a mishmash with vegetables, and it's something I cannot have enough of even today," says head chef Avinandan Kundu, who reimagines his mother's recipe in the form of dolma, the stuffed leaf parcels believed to have originated during the Ottoman times, at Sienna in Kolkata. The restaurant, known for its playful approach to Bengal's diverse food culture, offers small plates and bar bites featuring fish and meat offal. Bengali mothers are adept at coaxing their children into eating every part of the fish. 'Chew the heads, they're good for you", 'eat the tel (innards), they are delicious", 'don't discard the skins, they have good fats", and so on. 'My mother cooks macher tel like a mishmash with vegetables, and it's something I cannot have enough of even today," says head chef Avinandan Kundu, who reimagines his mother's recipe in the form of dolma, the stuffed leaf parcels believed to have originated during the Ottoman times, at Sienna in Kolkata. The restaurant, known for its playful approach to Bengal's diverse food culture, offers small plates and bar bites featuring fish and meat offal. Borne out of necessity, nose-to-tail eating as a culinary practice traces its roots to ancient civilisations. In India, it is prevalent across various communities with home cooks displaying their ingenuity via recipes passed down through generations. While offal is treated as a delicacy among many cultures, it often gets a bad rap here, primarily because of taste, texture and cultural stigma. The dishes and their fascinating stories are now inspiring chefs to reinterpret them for the modern diner, be it from memory or research trips across the country. Also Read | Hearts and guts In Mumbai, chef Varun Totlani makes a bone marrow dish spiced with fiery thecha at the cocktail bar Paradox. The theatrics involve guests scooping the marrow out of a buff shank bone that has been cut length-wise. 'While bheja is more acceptable because of its creamy texture, offal or organ meats as a category require a fair amount of work in fine dining," he says. 'Thecha' spiced bone marrow at Paradox, Kundu believes in making his food accessible, but not appropriating it. 'The idea is to showcase the nose-to-tail eating culture in Bengal, but also respect the base ingredient. Although Bengalis in Kolkata are not that experimental, the perception is slowly changing," he says. The team also brings in personal stories of eating offal. 'We all have that one memory of standing with our plates at weddings, contemplating whether to suck out the ghilu (brain matter) from the golda chingri (large freshwater prawns)," he says. At the restaurant, they turn it into a hollandaise, put it back into the prawn heads, grill and serve it with chimichurri. It's a favourite, so are the charred chicken gizzards, and chilli garlic bheja. At Naar, chef Prateek Sadhu's 16-seater restaurant near Kasauli, the menu is built on four pillars that define Himalayan cuisine, and nose-to-tail eating is one of them (apart from foraging, migration and preservation). He serves a dish featuring Ladakhi gyurma or blood sausages in a silken broth along with sunderkala, a type of hand-rolled millet noodles from Uttarakhand. While in the National Capital Region, Khasi pop-up chef Tanisha Phanbuh reimagines Meghalaya's classic pork brain salad doh khlieh in the form of crostinis and dohjem, traditionally made of pork intestines and belly, as pâté. 'Working with offal can be a task in Delhi given sourcing off-cuts can be a challenge," says Phanbuh, who has hosted pop-ups at Fig & Maple restaurant and Pullman Hotel in the past under her brand 'Tribal Gourmet'. Liver from the tapas menu at Ekaa. What excites chefs about offal is the ability to work with various forms and textures. 'Every offal behaves differently at a given temperature. Some can be paste-y, or crunchy like pork ears, and then there is brain, which are like these orbs of buttery ooziness," says chef-partner Niyati Rao of Ekaa in Mumbai. The restaurant has a dish of pork mince using the heart and liver to go with the Sikkimese tingmo bread. 'We take a lot of care to process the offal, with the right kind of spices and techniques, which people finally end up enjoying," she says. At Bombay Daak, her team does a version of Hyderabadi chakna, which is locally prepared with goat tripe, and a bheja dish cooked with anishi, the prized fermented taro leaf cakes from Nagaland. Inspiration also comes from the comfort and familiarity associated with the ingredient. 'If you have grown up eating offal, you instinctively understand the appeal. For me, it was never considered unusual or exotic," says chef Hussain Shahzad, who believes in highlighting its potential with thoughtful technique. On the Papa's Mumbai menu, he combines lamb tongue, brain, as well as shoulder, neck, and belly to make a French-style terrine, and plates it up with nihari sauce made from lamb trotters and neck bones. 'Some come seeking these dishes, others need a little nudge." Lamb terrine with 'nihari' sauce at Papa's. In Himalayan households, harvesting an animal means letting go of a valuable farm asset. 'This nose-to-tail approach is deeply rooted in both necessity and respect," says chef Prakriti Lama, who runs the Himalayan-inspired restaurant Across with her husband chef Viraf Patel in Mumbai. The menu has tripe, slow braised with mountain spices such as timur or Himalayan peppercorns, chillies, and foraged herbs like jimbu, but plated with finesse, and pork trotters, 'which have unexpectedly become a guest favourite for their gelatinous texture and deep flavour." The couple consults with restaurants and hosts pop-ups across India, and are proud to have introduced offal into menus, be it as bar snacks or elaborate mains. While chefs believe technique and storytelling can shift diners' reactions, it is exciting to find offal being appreciated for its place in India's food heritage, and that it is no longer disguised but celebrated for its complexity. Also Read | Guts, hearts and lungs in Sicily Topics You May Be Interested In
Mint
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Mint
Saturday Feeling: Gen Z's superfast fashion, ‘Stolen' review and other stories
It was at an airport a year ago, while chatting with a young UI/UX engineer who was on the same delayed flight, that I learnt about fashion cycles shrinking to two weeks. She worked for a fashion brand that changed its collection every two weeks since Gen Z followed social media trends and switched out their wardrobes about once a month. I was surprised because this is a generation that has brought 'eco-anxiety' and 'climate grief' into everyday vocabulary. A few weeks later, Myntra launched its M-Now 30-minute clothing delivery service targeted largely at Gen-Z and since then a host of other companies have been talking about their 60-90-minute deliveries for clothing. Who needs a new outfit in 30 minutes? That's the question we set out to answer this week, and found out what's driving the buying patterns of Gen Z, born between 1997 and 2012 and the generation influencing most buying decisions in a family. Their personal style is driven by trends, the internet, and never being caught in the same outfit twice. Which means they often shop for a new outfit every day of the week, giving Monday-Sunday dressing a whole new meaning. Pooja Singh spoke to 40 people outside colleges, via social media DMs, in the Metro, while browsing at shopping malls, and at local markets. She found that Gen Z is playing an endless game of catch-up and it is a story about excess, but it's also an indicator of the industry's own complicity in this superfast cycle. The cover of Mint Lounge dated 7 June 2025, which has stories on Gen Z's shopping habits, new galleries transforming the art world, and more. At a time when fine-dining menus evolve with fresh takes on hyperlocal cuisines, the culinary culture of Maharashtra remains confined to a few select dishes. But there's more to Marathi food than vada pav and misal. A new era of chefs is changing the narrative by showcasing the diverse food heritage of the state with bold, progressive formats. Think puran poli baklava, karvanda Cosmopolitan, and goda masala pizza, that too served in an omakase in Japan, writes Rituparna Roy. Read more. There's a quiet shift in the Indian art market landscape. Newer art galleries are whetting the appetite of collectors, both seasoned and novice, as interest continues to evolve. Many of these galleries showcase the personal collections of longtime art collectors. For some, the galleries represent a chance to give their artworks a home. For others, it's a way to tap into a growing fraternity that's interested in acquiring art, reports Abhilasha Ojha. Read more. Poets have often called love an insanity, a disease that destroys the one who experiences it, steals their tranquility and sleep; its only reward being the sights, sounds and smell of the beloved. Mehak Jamal's book, Loal Kashmir, takes you into this world of love and insanity told through 16 non-fiction stories, exploring the human cost of conflict and the resilience of lovers in Kashmir. These stories, told to Jamal by people who have faced the twin demons of militancy and army atrocities for decades, are full of beautiful nuances, without being preachy, Zeyad Masroor Khan writes in his review. It's an insider's view of the cost of loving and caring while living in a conflict zone. Read more. Only a handful of Hindi films, including Mukkabaaz (2018) and Afwaah (2023), have addressed the modern face of lynching in India. Karan Tejpal's Stolen doesn't imitate, but it comes close to capturing the dread of WhatsApp videos of lynch mobs. It's a searing, scary film about two brothers and a desperate mother—Gautam (Abhishek Banerjee) has come to pick up his brother, Raman (Shubham Vardan), from the railway station. Jhumpa (Mia Maelzer) is accusing Raman of stealing her baby. The misunderstanding turns into a nightmare and unfolds as the kind of film that makes you feel some hope for Hindi cinema and none for the country, writes Uday Bhatia. Stolen is now streaming on Amazon Prime. Read more. Cold showers are touted for sharper focus, reduced inflammation, and mood boosts. Silicon Valley CEOs swear by them. Fitness influencers frame them as proof of grit. But beyond the invigorating jolt, what does science really say? Tanisha Saxena speaks to experts and finds that pairing short cold showers with breathwork aids post-exercise recovery, mental clarity and metabolic resilience. It taps into the body's natural stress adaptation systems that not only boost circulation and metabolism, but also train the nervous system to better handle real-life stress. The key, though, is to do it small doses. Exposing yourself to cold water for 11 minutes per week is said to boost the production of beneficial neurochemicals in the body. Read more. The new Redmi Watch Move ( ₹ 1,999) by Xiaomi is a budget-friendly smartwatch that aims to deliver a compelling set of features without breaking the bank. It's an important intervention, since most affordable smartwatches in India often come with heavy compromises and significant inaccuracies in fitness tracking. The 1.85-inch AMOLED display is one of the biggest and brightest displays in the segment—there's vibrant colours, deep blacks, and pretty good contrast. You can customize the interface via the Mi Fitness app (available for both Android and iOS). The watch also supports Hindi to widen its cache of users. Xiaomi punches above its weight with this device, delivering features that fly in the face of its price, concludes Abhishek Baxi. Read more. Amazon's business model may be riddled with ethical problems, but there's no doubt the Kindle is a popular device among avid readers. A newish, less-visible feature in Kindle devices allows users to share their library with others. Given Amazon's tendency to bury such options deep inside its ecosystem, it is likely that this hack may be news to many readers. If you want to legally share your library with another user, you can use the Amazon Household platform, and it works pretty much like Amazon Prime's family plan, writes Somak Ghoshal. Read more.
