BENGALURU:Only few vegetables or plants can match the versatility of Colocasia or Arbi leaf or root. It is used in cooking across India and also in many global cuisines, especially in Thailand and Greece.
During the early years of my cooking career, I was strictly following classical French cooking, arbi never featured in the menu. I used to love it whenever it was cooked at home.
When I was travelling and working across continents and as the cuisines started overlapping in terms of ingredients and spices, that’s when I broke free and started working with arbi across cuisines such as Thai, Lebanese and French food. The response was very encouraging.
The beauty of Arbi, is the flexibility it gives you to combine with any flavours, spices and changes the dynamics very easily. Steaming it, mashing it or smoking it gives us wonderful options of doing delicate kabab like a galouti vegetarian version. This wonderful vegetable blends beautifully with any spice when steamed, sliced and fried crisp.
Perfect as a starter, or a main dish or as a side accompaniment, arbi in my book is right up there. Presenting a small recipe of my own, wherein I combine the east meets west story.
