Warming up to cold food

This summer, put aside the ice creams, salads, cold drinks and desserts. It’s time to try other kinds of cold foods which are as healthy as they are refreshing and wholesome.

A new item on the menus across city eateries is the refreshing cold soup. “We want to provide customers with wholesome, quick meals ,and cold soups fit the bill,” says Milind Dhonsekar, chef, Atrium Lounge, Taj Lands End.

Dhonsekar’s soups have a tomato and cucumber base, with avocados, parsley, watermelon, grapes, meat stock and seafood added to it. “These are better had as appetisers that complement the main course rather than as meals,” says Dhonsekar, adding that if the soups have flat bread on the side, then that could work as substitute for a meal.

And any talk of cold soups begins with the ubiquitous gazpacho, the Spanish cucumber and tomato soup. Atrium does a melon gazpacho, besides the yoghurt and cucumber soup, melon gazpacho, vichyssoise, and the water chestnut and celery soup.

The Intercontinental, Marine Drive, serves some chilled fruit-based soups that provide instant cooling. “Our watermelon and mint, and muskmelon and mint soups are very popular,” says Paul Kinny, executive chef, the Intercontinental.

Certain foods like salmon, oyster and caviar are best when eaten chilled, and lose their flavour when cooked or brought to room temperature. Kinny also whips up smoked salmon with sweet potatoes.

Starters like sushi and carpaccio (raw meat or fish sliced thin), which are best eaten raw and chilled, are popular appetisers. Vicky Ratnani, executive chef, Aurus, has two new starters on his summer menu: kokum and coconut toffee — a jelly made of kokum and coconut juice, set in toffee moulds and served with fish — and chilled avocado rice wrap made with Vietnamese rice paper, avocado, shredded vegetables and tofu.

Rajesh Ratna, sous chef at Escobar, has a selection of cold tapas to start a meal. One is tomato stuffed with kiwi marmalade, cottage cheese and herb prepared a day in advance and then chilled. “These days people prefer to eat sushi as it’s cold and filling,” says Ratna, whose sushi offering includes an avocado roll and a smoked salmon roll.

“Eating something cold tends to build your appetite,” says Gresham Fernandes, group executive chef for Salt Water Cafe, Il Terrazzo and Del Italia.

Most of the cold dishes Fernandes creates have some savoury or hot element to them, like sour cream in the vichyssoise (a leek and potato soup), tamarind jelly with the liver pate and the orange sorbet with duck. “This food can be healthy, depending on how it is prepared, but people tend to think it’s light just because it is cold,” he says.

Fernandes has zucchini soup, smoked eggplant with yoghurt, smoked salmon with cheese and a melon and beef carpaccio on his list of appetisers.

Soups and salads apart, the concept of cold food has not yet caught on in India, despite the climate being perfectly suited for such food.

Cold food is usually associated with dessert, a mindset that prevents people from wanting to try other things. But, beginning with the humble soup, this mindset seems to be slowly changing.