It was my mom’s birthday a few days ago and as I have mentioned before, since she loved North Indian food, we decided to order again from Leela’s Kitchen for the occasion… It was pretty much a last minute decision and so was not sure if we could order for lunch… Then I contacted the owner and she graciously said its fine and I placed the order thru PinStove… The owner, Deepika N K even posted a screenshot of my order in Facebook saying its from her favourite customer 😀 🙂
This is the second time we ordered from Leela’s Kitchen and this time, remembering how good it was last time, we just had to get the Paneer Biriyani again 🙂 So, this time I chose the Paneer Dum Biriyani, Jeera Rice, Garlic Paratha, Boondhi Raita, Malai Koftha, Capsicum Fry Dry Masala and Kashmiri Dum Aaloo…
Last time, I had two problems with the dishes – too spicy and too oily… This time while ordering, I reminded the owner of the same and so, I am happy to report that this time, both spice and oil levels were perfect…
The Paneer Biriyani tasted authentic with a mix of punjabi and Awadhi flavours with a very generous paneer to rice ratio, served with some masala (cumin powder, if I am not mistaken) curd, pickle and some sliced carrots… It worked incredibly well with the Boondhi Raitha as well… The Jeera Rice was packed with the flavour of cumin as clearly, as you can see from the pic, there is quite a lot of them in it…
Last time we tried the Soft Ghee Rotis… So, this time we thought of trying one of the parathas and as per my mom’s suggestion chose the Garlic Parathas… The portion came with 2 parathas and they were quite soft was a good scent of garlic in it… In the pic, if you zoom in, you can see the garlic pieces on it…
Now coming to the curries we got, the Malai Kofta turned out to be the favourite among them… It came with two quite sizeable pieces of the Kofta with a gravy thats so packed with flavours that both me and my mom agrees that this is currently the best vegetarian Kofta curry in Trivandrum right now… It is a thick and creamy onion based gravy if I am not mistaken having a slightly sweet and spicy taste with, if I am not mistaken a cinnamon, nutmeg and garlic overtone and it works great with the paratha, even the biriyani and the Jeera Rice that we got…
The next one is the Capsicum Fry Masala which is a dry dish having a lot of capsicum cooked with onions, ginger and garlic with spices and then appears to have been finished off with some coriander leaves… The spice mixture seemed similar to the one used in the Kofta but with a slightly more intensity as one can expect from a dry dish, but without overpowering the Capsicum, leaving it to dominate the taste… One difference I felt about this dish compared to the dishes made out of Capsicum from other places is that unlike the other places, the Capsicum pieces have remained crispy… Usually what I see is that capsicum pieces have been overcooked to the point of it being practically disintegrated becoming quite slimy in texture… Kudos to the chef for that 🙂
Then finally, we also got the Kashmiri Dum Aloo.. The Kashmiri cuisine just like Lucknavi is quite famous for subtle flavours especially in their use of the Saffron… So, this Kashmiri Dum Aloo was exactly like that… Very subtle flavours in a curd based base with a hint of Saffron… Only problem I had was that the potatoes didn’t quite absorb the flavours in this one as their insides felt quite bland… I guess being the last minute order the chef may have been a bit pressed for time… Anyways, on the over all, a great meal once again from Leela’s Kitchen on the occasion of my mom’s birthday…
