Celebrate Diwali at Rasika West End

Oh my gosh, Mika, I'm so excited about this. Diwali celebrations are ramping up this weekend. It is the Festival of Lights, but it is a festival of food as flavor as well. We got some recipes you can make at home if you want, or the best thing to do, go to Rasika West End. That's where Rakesh is the executive chef there to show us how to make a lasagna in a minute. But first, I want to talk about Diwali. We hear Festival of Lights, but it's really, it's lights, it's colors, it's aromas, it's a little bit of everything, isn't it? Love this. Diwali is a celebration, a celebration of lights. It's traditionally we celebrate victory of light over darkness and good over evil. When I talk about Diwali, food is such an integral part of that. You start with sweets, you end with sweets, and it's a celebration on plate, right? And the best part, when you talk about Diwali, it's like a family, it's warm, it's very indulgent. It's so much, so much about Diwali and so, so nostalgic, you know. Yeah, listen, first of all, you had me at you start with sweets and you end with sweets. Of course. Who doesn't love that? We're going to get to some of the desserts that you have here in just a minute. But let's start with some of the items that you are serving at Rasika, but also would be available or maybe traditional during a Diwali celebration. Before we make this, what else did you bring today? So basically for Diwali at Rasika West End, starting from today until. Sunday, that's the 8th, we're having a special Diwali menu. And I also take this opportunity that not only at Rasika West End, now all other Indian sister restaurants like Bombay Club, Rasika Pen Quarter, Malabar, for these three days, we're having a feast. We have special menus and all the menus are unique. For here at Rasika West End, when you come over here, you will see me. And for our special menu at Rasika, we have a shrimp sunari. It's basically a sunari means gold. So it's a shrimp which is marinated with cashew to get that golden color and garnished with edible gold leaf. I was gonna say, you said it means gold and you're literally putting gold leaf on the shrimp. That's awesome. And then we have pistachio chicken tikka. Diwali means richness. You use lots of dry fruits, saffron, green cardamom. So here the chicken is marinated with the pistachio paste, yogurt, and the finish with the green cardamom, served with saffron yogurt chutney. Wow. So those are the flavors that come together. This looks familiar. What's inside? Well, that's the bene dosa. It's not like a normal dosa. Bene means butter. This dosa is cooked with butter, has a stuffing of potatoes cooked with cashew nut. It's served along with coconut chutney, flavored with green cardamom and cloves. The cashew plays such a big role in Indian cuisine. Chicken, what do we do with the chicken here? No, that's one of the traditional chicken dishes from the old part of Delhi. It's called chicken chankesi. Now, this is served with a sauce made with onions, cashews, tomatoes, bit of almonds, flavored with the green cardamom, cloves, cinnamon. Saffron, so that's one of the chicken parts what you're serving as one of the main course. You go with that saffron, you know you're making an investment there. You're talking about the Diwali saffron. It has to be there, you know, it's all richness. Saffron, one of the most expensive spices you'll find. You got to throw it in there. Okay, so let's put something together here. What are we going to make today? Okay, so we are making a palak paneer lasagna that's inspired by a classical dish called palak paneer. Palak is spinach. So here we have taken thin layers of cottage cheese. That's what this is, a kind of cheese? Yes, which is made with yogurt, cinnamon, and then we'll top a layer with seasoned spinach that goes over here. And we'll also do a little bit of cheddar cheese. For this, we have made a sauce, which is made with tomatoes, has got nice flavor of the leaves. A bit of butter for creamy texture. We talk about Diwali, we talk about celebration, and it will look like celebration on plate. And it sounds like, based on the ingredients, no guilt is involved here with the celebration, right? You can't afford to have that. Okay, so you got cheese out here, spinach, and then what we do, we just lined up like a lasagna. One top of other, so this goes over here, one. And we just stack it on top of each other. Yes, yes, exactly. So that's another one. It's our own way to make a palak paneer lasagna. And this goes on the top. All right, Chef, here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna do the magic of TV because this is the before and I wanna pull out the after and then I'm gonna let you finish it off. So this one just came out of the oven long enough ago that I'm not burning my fingers, but it looks absolutely gorgeous. Yes. So you can see the cheese kind of came together on here. Beautiful presentation, but we're not done with it yet. So this is the sauce, what I was talking about. Tomato sauce with the dill leaves, cashews is right over here. And on the base of sauce, we'll have a lasagna. Palak, paneer, lasagna, and since we struggle with palak and spinach, so it's lined with spinach, topped up with fried spinach. So we're spinach on spinach. We're not done yet with spinach. Now we've got spinach and ginger and green chili oil. So, Chef, it's an absolutely gorgeous presentation. I'm going to be completely honest with you. I told you I was late in the game to Indian food, and I'm so mad at myself for not discovering it or embracing it sooner. But I will say this as well. Well, I eat more vegetables when I come to to eat Indian food than I have ever eaten before because it's just, not only is it just integral in the cuisine, but you do it so well. we have so much to offer for our vegetarian guests. I mean, if you come over there, I'm not saying I'm biased towards vegetarians, but we've got equal offer of varieties for vegetarians. And I'm glad you like vegetarians. That's really great. Absolutely love it. Love everything here. Here's the deal. We're going to take a short break. We still have dessert to talk about. We'll tackle that. And by tackle that, I mean I'm going to sample this coming up right after the break. We'll see you in just a couple of minutes.