If you are a meat lover, the ongoing Mongolian food festival at city-based Confucius restaurant in Swoti Premium hotel will give you the ‘foodgasm’. However, the house chef, Biswanath Dey, has opted for mix and match of the ingredients to bring out the Chinese influence on Mongolian cuisine for the visitors.
Food in Mongolia is greatly influenced by the nomadic way of life. The food from the land of Genghis Khan has a close resemblance with the Chinese and Russian cuisine. However, what makes it different is the style of cooking. The cuisine is heavily dependent on meat and dairy products. And, it’s not just chicken. Mongolian roasts can never be anything but a whole heap of aged mutton or lamb cooked with the fleshy flavour being intact. The Mangolian barbeque or ‘Khorkhog’ is a bit different. Slow-cooking is the key to serving an impeccably cooked Mongolian dish. And, for ‘Khorkhog’ the same is followed. Mutton or lamb meat is thrown into a big metal pot along with other ingredients and heated rocks. The rocks and the steam impart a distinct flavour to ‘Khorkhog’.
However, the chef at Confucius has customised ‘Khorkhog’ or Mongolian barbeque to please the taste buds of Bhubaneswarites. The lamb or mutton has been replaced by chicken and cottage cheese. And, the chicken is dressed in chef’s special Mongolian sauce made out of ginger, garlic, bell pepper, vegetables and wine.
The restaurant offers a variety of dimsums to the guests. Infact, dumplings or dimsums are found on dinner tables throughout Mongolia. The Chinese influence on Mongolia’s cuisine is indicated by these small doughy packages of mutton or lamb. The dumplings in this part of the world are a little different. They are made from a harder dough unlike momos and the stuffing is more rich and spicy. They are known as ‘buuz’ in Mongolia. ‘Khuushuur’ is the name for fried dimsums. The restaurant offers limited varieties of dimsums. Exotic vegetable jade dimsum, American corn spring dimsum, chicken and basil dimsum and chicken and mushroom dimsum are on the menu list. “We have not followed the Mongolian style of cooking or choice of ingredients strictly. We have altered some of the recipes so that guests don’t have difficulty in having Mongolian dishes,” said chef Biswanath Dey.
Chef Biswanath’s steamed fish wrapped in banana leaf is a classic example of fusion cooking. Taking inspiration from Odisha’s ‘patra poda machha’, the chef has experimented the same with fish and mangolian sauce enveloped by a banana leaf. For a host of dishes, the chef relies on basil and lemon grass to enhance the natural flavour of the meat without overpowering it. The dishes have been priced reasonably, ranging from Rs 200 to Rs 1,300. The festival will continue till May 20.
Gobble up
Lemon basil lamb
Smoked prawns
Asian Sriracha chicken (Sriracha sauce is a red pepper sauce that tastes like Indonesian piri piri sauce)
Lamb/chicken/cottage cheese in black bean sauce
Steam prawn dimsum with orange sauce