Birthday at Pepper Cafe

This post is more than a month overdue. It was the day I updated the description of the blog from "A 27 year old Bangalorean's ..." to "A 28 year old Bangalorean's ...". It was my birthday dinner at Pepper Cafe with a few of my closest friends. Special day, special people, special moment. Nothing much to write, most of the dishes were the same as what we had when I'd gone to review the place.

One fact worth mentioning is that Ms Quiche and Ms BakeAnything came with a gift - Ms BakeAnything had baked me a wonderful chocolate cake. I usually don't choke, but I did while writing this post :) Many thanks also to Rohan D'Souza (partner & chef at Pepper Cafe) for ensuring the food was top notch.

Chef's summer salad

Italian chicken bites with garlic scallion mayo

Fish rissoles

Crab, chilli and corn soup

Fried calamari with cocktail dip

Beetroot hummus

Grilled basa topped with Cajun spiced crab

Asparagus and artichoke fusili pasta

Chicken something with a pepper sauce

Lebanese lamb chops with tabouleh

Grilled tenderloin strips with vinegar salad and horseradish cream

5 spice marinated chicken breast with spicy Asian sauce

My budday cake

Barbeque @ VP's house

Saturday night fever! That's what it was all about. VP celebrated his 25th birthday (yeah, although he's my batchmate, he's a year younger than I am...one of those 84 kids and not an 83 adult) on the 25th (coincidence!) of Feb and decided to have a barbeque party for the Army School gang on the weekend. As usual, I was supposed to do the cooking, and with VP's skills in the kitchen (he didn't even know where the salt is kept), I knew it was going to be an interesting evening to say the least.

So Saturday afternoon I go to his house (he's already purchased most of the stuff we need) and we start - I with the marinade, and he handing over the ingredients I ask for (as and when he finds them). So we decide to make two kinds of marinades for the chicken - a coriander-mint-green chilly-curd marinade for one, and a soya sauce-sugar-white-wine vinegar-spring onioin-chilly powder marinade for the steaks. This second one was a typical Korean way of marinating and barbecuing/grilling chicken in the open.

For Mr P, the vegetarian, there was the ever faithful paneer, and Mr VP had bought 1 kg of paneer, and so we knew there was going to be enough. Although we had some mushrooms, we weren't able to do anything with them coz of the lack of time, in spite of starting at 3 in afternoon. So for the paneer, one marinade was the same coriander-mint-curd, while for the second one I kept wondering what a good friend of mine, with whom I had an unfortunate fallout a couple of days prior to this party, would have liked being a paneer lover. Peeved at myself for the fallout, I tried to think what could be done to make a paneer lover enjoy the dish. A moment of inspiration from VP's mom and we had it - lemon juice, with curd, a little chilly powder, turmeric, a little garam masala and chat masala, and some salt.

After leaving the food to marinate in the refridgerator for a few hours, we killed time by shopping for some charcoal! Boy, it's tough to find what you want when you want it. We, however, got lucky as we found a place. However, finding charcoal is one thing, getting it to burn is quite another, as we soon found out! Luckily, VP's dad was an old hand at this - I guess his days in the air force had made him a pro at such things.

VP and his dad starting the barbeque

Pretty soon, that darn black thing was all ablaze and we were all set for the grilling - or actually, the food of all set for the grilling, we were just plain hungry!

And then there was fire!

Food, glor-e-ous food :)

Paneer with the coriander-mint-curd marinade (L) and chicken with the same marinade (R)

A different view

Miss BakeACake also joined us, and although I had initially started the blog with no pictures of people, to heck with it! That's Ms BakeACake, who left her husband (no, no, I mean left him at home) and came skewered a quite a few (I tried to make it sound like as if this was a hunting expedition and she came and shot a few, but I know I'm falling woefully short of the mark).

And that's yours truly on the left, and Mr P on the right - excuse the glitter on my face, but the place was HOT and the only benefit of standing in front of a hot barbeque grill is it will clear your nasal highways, that's all!

The paneer sitting in it's tangy, lemony marinade - oh I so wish that things get back to where they were before the fallout! Sniff, honk.

That's the Korean-styled soya sauce steak - juicy!

The end is nigh! The closing ceremony has the birthday boy putting off the barbeque in style.

So after eating, we drive Ms BakeACake to her house and reunite her with her hubby dear, spend some time there discussing iPhone apps that could be possible hits, and finally head back to VP's place at close to 2 AM. Long day, and for me, a long wait.

Millers 46 for a birthday

Mr P called us out for lunch on Monday for his birthday. He had taken the day off and called Mr VP, and also Ms BakeAcake. Luckily, I didn't have a lot of work to do at office, and so could slip out for almost, gulp, 4 hours for lunch! Millers 46 it was again, and so good food was guaranteed.

It's been a while since I'd met Ms BakeAcake, and it wasn't just me. None of us (P & VP included) had had a lot of meetings with BakeAcake since she got married. Yeah, we have a married girlie in our group, although I'm sure if Mr P or Mr VP read this, they'd protest saying she's not a 100% part of the group now that she's married (they're a little millitant that way). We started off with a round of lime sodas and soups, and we pretty much covered the soup menu of Millers. I had a combo stew, which had shrimps, mixed veggies and ladies fingers (okra) in it.
Ms BakeAcake had a chicken creme soup with mushrooms,
Mr VP ordered a chicken Minestrone soup,
and the birthday boy Mr P had a veg creme soup with mixed vegetables.

After the soups (actually while we were having the soups), BakeAcake told us she would need to hurry things up because of an irritating colleague of hers who usually tried to sabotage her work if she realises BakeAcake isn't at work. So we wuickly ordered a plate of chicken tenders for ourselves (the meat eaters)

and Mr P ordered a plate of cottage cheese fingers.
While tucking away at the food, we caught up on a lot of things we'd missed over the last several months (almost a year) with BakeAcake. And yeah, in the midst of all that, we also ordered our main course.

Mr P, being the veggie, went for a veg lasagna, and I have to say that every place I've been to that serves lasagna has a unique way of presenting it, and Millers was no different.
Mr VP stuck with chicken and ordered a chicken cheese grill with rice, and that thing looked mean and I was wondering how Mr VP was planning on finishing that alone.
Ms BakeAcake ordered a classic New York steak with cheese and bernaise sauce.

Before we go any further, I'll let you all know that she ate around 20% of the steak and said "I'm too full to continue" and tossed it over to me. All afternoon she kept saying that I've lost so much weight, now I know: she was readying me to eat what she couldn't! Women, you can never get anything straight out of them.

I was a lil busy clicking pictures of others food and engrossed in the taboo topics we were discussing that I forgot to click a picture of the bacon burger I ordered until I was almost half done. It was a classic BLT with some salad by the side for garnish, which I've always found a little funny, coz I've never seen anyone clean that up from their plate while eating.
I've been on this quest to find the perfect burger, and so I've been looking to eat burgers wherever I can. The steak sandwich I had the last time I came to Millers was very good, and although they called it a sandwich, if you're gonna put a steak in the middle of a piece of bread, sorry, it doesn't become a sandwich, it's a burger. I go by the stuffing, and not the outer bread/bun jacket to call it a sandwich or a burger.

I've had crisp bacon before at Fresco's, but this bacon was something totally different.. It was a little think, and had fat on it, and it wasn't chewy at all. Now I know why Americans and Europeans go gaga over bacon, especially when there's a little fat on it. This thing is delicious, truly delicious, and I'm glad I had the pleasure of wolfing it down.

We decided to have desserts outside at the Sweet Chariot on Cunningham Road, but while walking there, BakeAcake got a call from work that required here to go back at the earliest because, no surprises, the sabotage had begun. Mr VP took her, while birthday boy dropped me back to office and headed home. I wonder if BakeAcake owes us dessert now, since it was her work that got dessert taken away from under our noses. I guess we'll never know.