Despite eating Indian food non-stop for two weeks while on holiday there, I am still no closer to really knowing how it is made. I think the basics are easy: most dishes start with fat (usually ghee), onions and spices, and proteins are marinated in an astringent such as tamarind water, yoghurt or lime. What confuses me is the typically very long cooking time and finishing with another spice mix or tempering. It seems that most dishes are cooked either in a Tandoor, a round ceramic oven fueled with charcoal where food is cooked on javelin-sized skewers, in a flattish wok, in clay pots or on the grill. I confess I don’t think I’d know where to begin in the Indian kitchen.
I’m sharing this culinary ineptitude with you (although after my last gaffe, where I said that Cape Salmon was Kabeljou instead of Geelbek, you’re probably expecting to me to put my foot in it again) because I can’t determine if Indian cooking is high or low in fat and where it stands on the healthy eating scale. Most of the Indians I saw had deliciously flat tummies but I assumed that had more to do with food shortages than healthy eating.

Less than 12 hours back on Cape Town soil I headed off to Sea Point’s newest Indian buffet – Kabab Mahal at 315 Main Road, Sea Point (opposite Adult World). Tel: 021-434-0008.

What I especially liked about this buffet is that it is served to the table. Bib-sized napkins are ceremoniously tied around the neck, so even if my diet didn’t remain intact at least my shirt did! This also means that greedy-guts like me can eat as much as we like without fellow diners noting the frequent trips to the buffet.
At R99 for the four-course and R139 for the five-course, I think it is on the pricey side, but happily the food was delicious.

Choose Tamater Dhaniya ka Shorba (hot and spicy tomato soup)  or Chicken Yakhani Shorba (unexciting chicken broth) to start if you are having the four-course. For five-courses, a platter of kebabs is served first. This was very delicious and frankly a meal in itself. Potato and pea samosas, lamb and lentil pattie, paneer (firm cottage cheese) with peppers, deep-fried fish, chicken in yoghurt cooked with egg and fenugreek and Tandoori Chicken were some of the morsels.

A selection of dishes are served together with a basket of Indian breads. First, the vegetable biryani followed by butter chicken (oven roasted with tomato and butter, methi chicken (cooked in fresh fenugreek leaves), Kashmiri Rogan Josh (lamb chunks marinated in red chilies), Paneer Methi Malai(with fenugreek), Paneer Wajid Ali ki Pasand (my favourite stuffed with nuts, raisins and cooked in tomato almond paste.) Lamb Yakhini Biryani (I had three helpings of that, too), Subz Meloni (assorted veg cooked in a rich tomato and butter gravy and Dal Kabab Mahal – the ubiquitous whole black lentils cooked overnight with ginger, garlic, tomatoes and seasoned with butter and cream (I could eat that with bread as a meal on its own.)

For dessert, choose between grated sweet carrots served hot or rice cooked in milk with cardamom, although I can’t recommend either. Even in India I couldn’t be tempted with their dessert offering, altogether too sweet and sticky for my taste.

Chai or massala tea is included in the price.

As cuisines go, Japanese food seems to be much healthier than other cuisines although I believe that if Indian food is eaten in line with Ayurvedic principles, it promises a long and healthy life. In my usual excessive way I have been back to Kabab Mahal three times in the last week – I guess I’m not yet ready to hang up my traveling shoes.