Mad About Meat - Beef

Beef Momos

I’ve always wondered about foodies who love to eat but can’t cook. How much they must suffer. Especially when restaurants do not serve the kind of food that you crave. That dreadful allegory of Hell being a place where people cook delicious food using spoons with such long handles that they can’t bring the food to their lips comes to mind (Shudder!!!) Such was my predicament when I landed in Mumbai and discovered that there were no Momos to be found. The obvious solution was to simply learn to make them (Rushina suggested when she saw my suffering).
So imagine my delight when my sister-in-law Azung invited me and my sisters over to her place for a Momo-making party! Ani Azung had invited her Tibetan tenant to come teach us how to make momos. Here’s what I learnt.

Momo Dough
500 g of Maida flour
100 ml of Water
1 egg (Optional)

Mix ingredients, knead until dough is smooth and consistent. The egg apparently makes the dough less likely to tear when you’re wrapping the meat in it.



Stuffing
1kg of Beef, Choose a portion with meat and bones so that the bones can be boiled for the soup
4 large onions, finely chopped
6 large cloves of garlic, finely chopped
2 tbsp Salt

Mince the beef and mix with the other ingredients.



To make the Wrapper
Roll the dough into a sausage about 2 inches in diameter. Cut into cross sections about an inch wide. Use a rolling pin to flatten and roll the dough until it is about 4 inches in diameter.

Wrapping Momos
Place a tablespoon of the mince meat in the middle of the wrapper


Gently pinch together one edge of the wrapper and fold the edges of the wrapper toward you until the stuffing is completely enclosed.






Thanks to the expert guidance we had, we learnt some different wrapping styles.







Steaming
Place Momos in the steamer and cook for forty minutes.




Momo Soup
Take bones of the beef, add 3ltrs of water, place lid and cook for 30-40mins.


Add coriander, onion grass or spring onion leaves as garnish and serve hot with the Momos.

Momomania

Dear Rushina,

All in all, my trip to Delhi served its purpose. I returned to Mumbai with the most ghastly flu, but mentally and emotionally restored and ready to start over. During my two weeks there, I sought refuge and reassurance in friends and food, most often these two together. Minus my disastrous solo Momo binge in Karol Bagh which left me with a terrible stomach, the rest of my foodie forays were carried out with friends and family in tow.

And no respectable foodie foray in Delhi would be complete without Momos. Tibetan in origin, these steamed dumplings of thin flour sheets stuffed with meat and condiments are wrapped in different styles and serve with a water thin clear soup and spicy chutney. Momos are omnipresent in the Capital. As a group of voracious 18 year olds in Delhi, almost a decade ago, we would descend on the small street side stall of ‘Momo aunty’ at Lajpat Nagar Market and gorge on delicious mutton (and then chicken when those were exhausted) Momos. It wasn’t the prettiest sight unless you were part of the pack. It was a surreal time when my frighteningly fast metabolism allowed me to eat three plates of pork Momos at the Nagaland Stall in Dilli Haat, then move on to the Sikkim stall for another two plates of deep fried mutton Momos. The Momos at M Block market weren’t bad either, stuffed with chicken and served with a biting chili sauce. And nothing revived you from a marathon bargaining session at Janpath than the numerous Momo stalls in the market.

At 22, I was back in Delhi, this time in Delhi University’s North Campus. I discovered the revered Momo’s point in Kamla Nagar Market where I stuffed myself, albeit in more modest portions. But I will forever be indebted to my friend Nina who introduced me to Majnu Ka Tila and the most divine beef Momos at Tee Dee restaurant.

You can understand that it was not without a generous helping of sentimentality and nostalgia that I began to retrace my old Momo Haunts. I planned my pilgrimage so that it would culminate in Majnu Ka Tila, with Tee Dee’s beef Momos as my Holy Grail. I walked through the labyrinth that is Lajpat Nagar Central Market and returned broken hearted as ‘Momo Aunty’ was nowhere to be found. My cousin consoled me later. Apparently there’s a fabulous little place called Chingwa, run by a Tibetan that may satisfy my Momo cravings the next time I’m in Lajpat Nagar. The Momos at both the Nagaland and Sikkim stall were faithful like my favorite verses in the Bible.

Momo’s Point at Kamla Nagar was, if it’s possible, shadier and shabbier than before. The Momos not up to par, I stepped out and walked over to Noodles, the slightly fancier and better lit restaurant next door and cleansed my palate with an understated thukpa, noodles served in a clear soup of vegetables and meat.

I scheduled an entire day to visit Majnu Ka Tila. If you get time to visit on your trip to Delhi, you’ll understand why. Nothing on the vast arid highway prepares you for the time warp that is the Tibetan settlement next to Majnu Ka Tila gurudwara.



You step in to find signs in Tibetan script, maroon(ed) robed Tibetan monks and Tibetan men of all ages sunbathing, playing carom or cards or just loitering on narrow streets. Those parts of the streets not occupied by them have stalls which sell everything from precious stones, silver, Tibetan literature, to goods from China.
To get to Tee Dee, one has to walk to the courtyard outside the Tibetan school and climb the stairs to the restaurant. The interiors were just like how I left it in my memories. Always crowded, guests are given a blank notepad to write down their orders (very dangerous, when you see the things the offer on the menu, from innocuous thukpa to tongue chilly fry).
Orders all written, we waited with bottles of fruit beer to keep us company. The food arrived and we dug in.



It wasn’t the same at all. Even the beef Momos tasted more like their sanitized Mall food court cousins. Nirvana was nowhere to be found that Saturday afternoon. But as I write this, the Pavlovian foodie in me still salivates in honour of the Momos in my memory. Taste buds, like elephants never forget.

Awesome Hors D'Oeuvres

Dear Rushina,

So K’s birthday party on Saturday was an absolute success! My plan to do sushi rolls didn’t materialize as I couldn’t find nori sheets anywhere in Mumbai (and believe me, I looked EVERYWHERE). And just when I was beginning to panic, I went food shopping with you and loved your suggestion that I use rice paper sheets. With happy memories of how much I enjoyed your shitake mushroom mini spring rolls – the perfect one bite portion, I decided I’d try something similar with…shitake mushrooms. So I set off to your house on Saturday morning to raid your kitchen, picking up rice paper sheets, shitake mushrooms and your pickled green peppercorns which I had been eyeing for quite sometime now. Having stocked up on meat during a brief stop at Nature’s Basket at Warden Road the previous evening, here’s what I (and K) made for the party.
First I sliced the Shitake mushrooms and fried them in roast sesame oil.
K cut the red and yellow bell peppers into thin slices. I cut the rice sheets into four quarters, soaked each in water until they were little soft and placed two pieces of shitake, some red and yellow bell peppers and three or four peppercorns and wrapped them. Done! K was hovering so I figured I’d teach him how to roll. He learned fast and was so much better than me…now I can look forward to great rolls.
And I know what you’re going to say Rushina, me and VEG???? Don’t worry everything else had a little meat in it. We made another set of rolls but this time, we stuffed it with that lovely chicken Provencal salami you made me taste at Nature's Basket, shredded spring onions and a tiny drop of Discovery’s Tequila and Lemon sauce. I also braised spicy chicken kebabs added in honey and garnished them with Almond shavings.
I made mini toothpick skewers of fried bacon, papaya and this very hot red chilli I picked up at Ratna’s, a general store in Chembur. The evening’s final offering was the delicious pork momos K’s friends made for him (70 and all gone by 1am).
I made rice and pork curry too, but that’ll have to be another story because the food described above along with the shameless amount of alcohol that was consumed till 3 am the next morning meant that most people didn’t have any space left for dinner…or should I say breakfast.

With much affection,

Theyie