A few days ago, I got the chance to visit the restaurant at Hotel Ginger near the Technopark campus near Kazhakuttom, Trivandrum… This was after more than a month since my last visit and unfortunately I have a bad news… They stopped doing their lunch and dinner buffets (which I wrote about in my last post on the place), but are open to doing the same to order… Hence, went for the ala carte menu and went for the classic Soup-Rice-Curry-Dessert combo by picking their Chicken Cream Soup, Chicken Fried Rice, Butter Chicken Masala and a portion of Kulfi for dessert…
So, the first to arrive was the Chicken Cream Soup… The soup consisted of some shredded chicken in a chicken broth made with cream, seasoned perfectly with salt and pepper… Usually how the soup is made is that the chicken is cooked first either separately and then added to the broth when making the soup or they chicken can be cooked in the broth itself while cream gets added at the end along with the seasonings…
First of all, you won’t find this or any other soup mentioned in the menu as they just say “Soup of the Day” in the menu… So, one must ask for this to get this… Also, most places end up making this soup as thick and creamy like a chowder that it feels heavy to have as a starter… However, the version here is made to be very light as in not thick at all and not too much cream as well that I think this might be the least in the calories version of this soup… The chicken pieces were found to be cooked perfectly that it melted in my mouth and the broth was packed with flavours of what I could detect to be chicken, ginger, garlic, green onions, celery stalks (I guess from the chicken stock) and then of-course the black pepper… Altogether an excellent soup that I will be getting again…
Once I was done with the soup, I got served the Chicken Fried Rice and the Butter Chicken Masala… This is a combination that I find to be a personal favourite of mine because of the mildly spiced nature of both… The Chicken Fried Rice consisted of long grain rice with shredded chicken breast, egg and an assortment of vegetables including carrots, green beans, celery stalks, onions and spring onions stir fried together and seasoned with salt and black pepper… The Butter Chicken Masala is a mildly spiced curry that had pieces of chicken marinated in spices and yogurt, cooked in a rich butter, tomato, onions and cashew-nut (optional) based sauce cooked with a version of the garam masala…
Regarding the fried rice, it felt so incredibly clean, cooked in a hakka style where one can taste each and every ingredient in the same… Even the egg scrambled into it was in perfectly cooked condition (In many places, I have found it to be dry) and the vegetables was cooked but still crispy on the outside, which worked marvellously with the perfectly cooked rice… The flavours are so good that this is currently my favourite version of the Chicken Fried Rice… Another important thing to note is that unlike most places, this fried rice is not oily at all… Hence, I believe this would be the healthiest Chicken Fried Rice as well…
Regarding the Butter Chicken Masala, once again, I believe is the healthiest version of the same when compared to other places from where I have had the same… Why I say this is because compared to the other versions, I felt this one to be much less creamy and had much lesser amount of grease in it… There is the taste of butter in it but you don’t find it dripping as you take a spoon-full every time… I could taste the spices used in the masala in each bite which based of how I could detect consisted of cinnamon, cloves, mace-spice, black pepper and cardamom to be dominating the sauce…
The combination of this particular version of the fried rice and the curry turned out to be so great that this particular version of it has definitely made its way into the list of my all time personal favourites … It felt so great that I can’t wait to have them again… The only complaint that I have is that unlike before, they seem to have increased the portion sizes because of which I ended up not being able to finish the whole thing…
Finally after I was done with the mains, I got served the Kulfi as the dessert… Kulfi is as you may already know, is an ice cream that dates back to hundreds of years in India and is considered as one of the traditional desserts of India… Unlike modern ice creams made with custard and cream base, The Kulfi is made by reducing full fat sweetened milk giving it a caramelised flavour and creamy consistency and then freezing it over ice after adding nuts like pista, badam, etc… [ A short cut to save hours of reducing is to start use condensed milk ]
The Kulfi that I got was incredibly creamy and packed with cashew-nuts… It felt incredibly rich and creamy and the level of sweetness was just right for me rather than being on the verge of sending me to a sugar-induced coma like most places… The portion consists of two small scoops as shown in the pic…
So, altogether a great meal and to be frank, I may have gone a bit overboard by ordering the dessert this time… But then again, its only once a while indulgence and not a daily affair… 🙂
Nice review
Thanks 🙂