Salad & White Wine April 2010

After a 2 month hiatus, the PGC met again on a warm April evening (17th) to enjoy refreshing salads and chilled white wines.

The growth of the club’s membership poses a new challenge – of finding a large enough space to host the meets. This time our newest members Nanzeen and Umeed Kothavala came to the rescue by offering their lovely terrace complete with a small lawn, chairs, tables, counters, a wash up area and a humungous chilller in tony Koregaon Park.

The salutatory effect of the security deposit was evident as we had only 3 dropouts. Total turnout was 41 adults.

Green Tokri, Pune’s unique supplier of salad leaves, hosted the salads part at no cost to the club. Benedikte and Marc, along with their assistants, laid out a superb spread of

1. Rucola with mushrooms

2. Salade Nicoise

3. Korean bites

with lots of spare leaves and Green Garlic & Oriental dressings. Toppings included Tuna, roasted and salted almond slivers, olives etc.

From PGC, Vikas and Pooja Kumar were allotted the task of creating not just a Greek Salad complete with Feta Cheese and preparing two butters - garlic and dill but also had to shop for two types of breads – the traditional Brun and whole wheat Poi both from Persian Bakery. Cyrus Vaghaiwalla brought over a fresh orange and Cognac dressing. Sheel Rege brought Red Snapper cooked in a stock containing fresh parsely, onions etc. Olives brought by Rohan Mankani were put to good use. Harshal Dofe, attending his first meet ever with wife Jaya was given the least enviable task of collecting Rs. 400 from each attendee. Once is enough he said and agreed to be more regular and take cooking rather than accounting tasks!

Benedikte and her friends tossed the salads fresh as per guest request and served all as per their choice. A salad buffet if you please.

The wines for the evening were 3 Viogniers from Four Seasons, Sula and Grover and 1 Riesling from Sula. All were chilled to 10 Deg C and kept in an icebox for everyone to pour their own.

The salad with the Red Snapper went particularly well with the Riesling. Marc of Green Tokri favoured the Four Seasons Viognier.

For the first time we used a unique clip which allows a diner to attach a wine glass to the plate leaving a hand free to wield a fork or spoon! Ideal for buffets –no wonder it’s called a Buffet Maid.

The VIP guest of the evening was Mr. Rajeev Parikh who owns Grape to Glass; Mumbai based distributors of Riedel in India. Do visit www.grapetoglass.com Rajeev, based in US, is a chef, gourmet and wine collector. Rajeev was happy to answer questions on Riedel stemware and demonstrated its quality by offering tastings so everyone could check them out. Without exception, all were amazed at the noticeable difference in the aroma, flavour and color of the wines. Rajeev explained how important a role the glass plays in the enjoyment of wine and how Riedel is the stemware of choice in the top wine tasting competitions. At the end of the evening, before taking his leave, he graciously presented me with the set of 12 Riesling glasses so that I might put them to good use at club meetings.

Dessert was home made watermelon ice cream served in the scooped out shell.

A big THANK YOU to Marc, Beneditke of Green Tokri for sponsoring the salads, to Nazneen and Umeed for hosting the evening and Rajeev for the Riedel Glasses.