Lamb, aussie style

Mulwarra lamb is making inroads into the Indian palate through a host of traditional and non-traditional dishes

The Mulwarra lamb is all-natural prime lamb sourced from the pristine lamb regions of Victoria, which has specialised growers and some of the finest lamb producing areas in the world

By MINNaL khoNa

There’s no doubt that most Australians love their Aussie lamb, but a taste of this viand cooked to suit the Indian palate in the Indian subcontinent is unusual. Recently, the Hyatt Group of Hotels in India has collaborated with Mulwarra Export, a Victorian company, to supply lamb to its properties at the Hyatt hotels in Chennai, Hyderabad, New Delhi and Mumbai.

From Australian wines to coffee, and now lamb, products from down under are gaining popularity and acceptance in India. To promote their product in partnership with Hyatt Hotels, Mulwarra Export Pty Ltd, Meat and Livestock Australia, and Treasury Wine Estates recently organised an ‘Australian lamb experience’ The participating Hyatt Hotels include the Hyatt Regency in Chennai and Delhi, the Park Hyatt Hyderabad and Grand Hyatt Mumbai.

I attended a media lunch at the Park Hyatt in Hyderabad for a taste of Aussie lamb, Indian- style. I was curious to see how Australian lamb would fit into Hyderabadi biryani and other meat dishes for which the city is renowned. The lunch was hosted by Mike Tafe, Corporate Chef, Mulwarra Export, at The Dining Room, Park Hyatt’s Indian fine dining restaurant. Accompanying the food was the Koonunga Hill Chardonnay and Koonunga Hill Shiraz from Penfolds.

Greg Darwell, Managing Director of Mulwarra Export, told me his company’s lamb is being exported to over 30 countries. Greg revealed, “Early this year, we decided to introduce our product in India. The Hyatt group is one of our largest end users. It has been very well received in other parts of the world, and we hope to repeat that success in India”.

Incidentally, the partnership means that any lamb dish served at any of the Hyatt properties mentioned will be the Mulwarra lamb, and not the local variety.

The Mulwarra lamb is all-natural prime lamb sourced from the pristine lamb regions of Victoria, which has specialised growers and some of the finest lamb producing areas in the world. The lamb is halal certified and USFDA approved.

Chef Tafe, who also has his own spice marketing company, has been using the Mulwarra lamb for over 12 years at all the hotels in which he has worked.

“I am not afraid to use spices to appeal to the Indian palate, but at the same time I don’t like to overshadow the lamb,” he said, commenting on the menu for the day. Minimal marinades, slowly braised cuts of shoulder or leg of lamb were served in different avatars.

We started with a lamb and lentil soup flavoured with cumin and lemon-scented yoghurt. The soup tasted a lot like our dal makhni, except for the bits of lamb added and the hint of lemon. It was delicately flavoured and the lamb and lentils were easily distinguishable, even though both had absorbed the flavours of the spices. This was followed by a Japanese salad, a tataki of lamb loin with ginger, sesame and soy.

Chef Tafe, it seems, really knows his lamb. The several options that were served in the main course, all lamb-based of course, were full of flavour and each one was different from the other.

“I have created different recipes,” Tafe said. “Some are traditional ones. Essentially, the dishes are appropriate for the international traveller who is exposed to global cuisine. I try and incorporate flavours from the Middle East, South East Asia and the Mediterranean as well as India,” he said, adding that the lamb lends itself very well to josh and Chettinad style curries. True to his word, each serving had a different flavour. The barbecue Mulwarra lamb, butterflied with Greek spices and served with a basil tzatziki was refreshing and very soft. The breaded lamb rack cutlets with Italian herbs eventually emerged as my favourite from all the dishes I tried, and was replete with the aroma and taste of Italian herbs. Mixed with the bread, it was really tasty. This was followed by the lightly smoked lamb cutlets with chipotle butter, also quite different. The roast lamb rump with ras-el-hanout had a distinctly Middle Eastern flavour.

The one aspect that repeatedly stood out in all the lamb dishes served was that there was no prominent odour that lamb can sometimes have. In fact, even though all the dishes were delicately flavoured with a minimum of spices used, none of the dishes had any odour. Chef Tafe definitely accomplished his goal of not overshadowing the lamb.

We ended with a mango pavlova and though none of the dishes were traditional to the Indian palate, I could see satisfied faces all around me.

The breaded lamb rack cutlets with Italian herbs eventually emerged as my favourite from all the dishes I tried, and was replete with the aroma and taste of Italian herbs

Uttarakhand rescue mission hit by rain, IAF chopper crash kills 20

At the time of going to press, heavy rains had hit operations to evacuate thousands of people still stranded in the hills of Uttarakhand, as most helicopters could not operate, while 20 people were killed as an IAF Mi-17 crashed while returning from a rescue mission, officials said, speaking from Dehradun.

The state government has put the death toll in the flood disaster at 845 and said it could climb further. With more rain and rising fog across the valley and the hills, operations slowed down, leaving more than 7,500 people still stranded on the Badrinath route.

Returning from a rescue mission from Guptkashi and Kedarnath, a newly-acquired IAF Mi-17 V5 helicopter crashed north of Gaurikund.

While National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) vice chief M. Shashidhar Reddy put the toll at 20, the IAF said that eight people, including five crew members, were killed.

Eleven bodies have been recovered, an IAF source said. The search for survivors had to be called off after it grew dark.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressed shock over the accident while commending the armed forces for their “selfless work” in saving lives.

While Indian Air Force (IAF) and army officials maintained that the rescue operations would continue, they admitted that the operations “had taken a brief hit” and added that they were now being “extra cautious and not over zealous”.

“All efforts are being done to pull out the trapped people but we will now take weather conditions and warnings more seriously,” an army officer said.

The NDMA declared Uttarakhand devastation a “severe natural disaster” and requested leaders not to politicise the issue. It also said it would send a team to locate bodies under the debris.

Due to severe rains in Dehradun, many helicopters like the Mi-17 with higher passenger capacity were mostly grounded at the Jolly Grant airport while smaller choppers which tried to fly had to return to their bases at Joshimath and Harshil.

Fog prevented rescue sorties around Devprayag, where a cloudburst in Dubh Mamora village left two people dead and three missing, and washed away several houses, while bad weather hit chopper missions at Jangalchatti, Guptkashi and Gauchar.

Uttarakhand Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna said that while weather had hit the rescue operations, he requested people not to lose hope.

“We will reach every person who is stranded, it is just that weather is hampering the rescue efforts,” he added, contending that the number of people to be rescued was well under 5,000.

Officials also added that the mass funeral proposed for the people who died in Kedarnath premises and whose bodies are decomposing there was also aborted due to the rains.

The NDMA also said that around 125 bodies were recovered from the flooddevastated Kedarnath area, while many more could be buried under the debris.

Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) personnel, undertaking rescue operations there, said the decomposing human and animal corpses are posing a health hazard.

Personnel of the Armed Forces Medical Services are working in the state with 29 teams deployed around Kedarnath while an emergency centre has been set up at Joshimath, an official release said.

In New Delhi, the NDMA vice chairman said MPs from all states could each contribute Rs.50 lakh from their funds for the relief work.

“Despite doing politics over the calamity, all the leaders and MPs should contribute as they can donate Rs.50 lakh from their funds in a national level disaster,” Shashidhar Reddy said.

He said the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) would send a team to the state for locating bodies under the debris.

The ITBP raised concerns about decaying corpses. “The corpses are eight to nine days old. They are rotting. It is difficult to operate in that area due to the strong stench,” said an ITBP spokesman.

An aid worker meanwhile called the situation in Uttarakhand “a mess” as vast stretches of roads have disappeared and transporting relief to some of the worst-hit areas was near impossible.

“It is a mess right now. It is a complete mess,” despaired a spokesperson for ActionAid, which has relief workers in Chamoli, Rudraprayag and Pithoragarh districts.

She said that renewed rains and landslides have made it difficult to reach the areas cut off since the cloudburst and terrible flooding of over 10 days ago.

The spokesperson reiterated that the overall death toll would “definitely be more than 1,000, may be in thousands”.

Help is pouring into Uttarakhand from all over the country.

Adopt zoning bill to minimise flood-linked disasters: Water secretary

States should adopt and implement a model Flood Plain Zoning Bill that was first circulated to them 38 years ago as this will minimise losses like those caused in Uttarakhand, a senior official has said in New Delhi. Ironically, Uttarakhand is one of only three states to have acceded to the measure, having done so only last December.

“Mitigation of devastation caused by floods, as we have seen in Uttarakhand, is possible if the bill is adopted and implemented by the states,” Secretary (Water Resources) S.K. Sarkar said recently in an interview, adding that the bill will regulate land use in flood plains and contain flood damage.

The bill provides for flood-plain zoning authorities, delineation of flood-plain areas, prohibiting the use of the flood plains and removing obstructions to ensure the free flow of water.

Sarkar said the states have reservations on the bill because of population density pressure and difficulties in relocating people living in flood plain areas.

“There are problems with states also. It (the bill) requires consensus building,” he added.

Water Resources Minister Harish Rawat had told a meeting of the Ganga Flood Control Board in January that the ministry was considering a review of the bill and re-circulating it among the states in view of their objections.

Ministry officials said the bill calls for zoning rivers in a way that loss of life and destruction to buildings are prevented or minimised in case of floods.

They said that the bill was aimed at preventing construction of residential areas in vulnerable zones and allowing parks, playgrounds or fields to come up in the low lying areas.

The bill has been drafted by the Central Water Commission (CWC).

Ministry officials said that the bill prioritises different types of buildings and utility services in view of the likely damage they may suffer in case of floods.

They said that defence installations, industries and public utilities, including airports and railway stations, should be located in areas that were above the highest flood level in the past several decades.

The officials said that they have been pursuing the model bill with the states and there was a need to not only adopt the bill but implement it, as there were increasing intrusions into the flood plains.

They also said any buildings constructed in low lying areas needed “special type of construction.”

For me, winning the game is very important: Dhoni

India skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni preferred to remain grounded on June 23, despite being the only captain to have lifted three ICC titles -- 2007 World Twenty20, 2011 World Cup, and the 2013 Champions Trophy.

“I never turn up on the field to achieve something as a captain. For me, winning the game is very important, and that is of utmost importance for us as a team,” said Dhoni in Birmingham, after a nerve-wracking win over England in a rain-marred final that was reduced to a 20-over match.

Dhoni was disappointed that a Champions Trophy final was decided in a 20-over match.

“I think it’s a bit unfair that in the ICC Champions Trophy 50-over format we had to play a 20-over game to find a winner. But still, I think they needed the result,” he said.

Asked how he motivated his boys, Dhoni said: “Before going in, I said let’s first of all get rid of the feeling that it’s a 50-over game. It’s a 20-over game, and we have seen in IPL and in T20 formats, 130 runs can be a difficult target to achieve. Secondly, nobody looks to the left of the pavilion. That’s the side that the rain was coming from. So, I said God is not coming to save us. If you want to win this trophy, we’ll have to fight it out.”

Dhoni said that beating England while defending a modest total of 129 was a special feeling.

“It means a lot because you’re playing against some of the best sides, and also the kind of match that we had won. To beat England in a 130-odd runs game is something that’s very difficult,” he said.

Dhoni was all praise for Shikhar Dhawan, Rohit Sharma and Ravindra Jadeja, saying that they accepted the responsibility that was given to them and took it as a challenge. IaNS