Saund & Snyder
Location: Washington, DC
Visit Date: September 11, 2021
Moorni
(August 2021)
“A note from our Chef-Sommelier Kiran Kaur Saund: Growing up as a first generation Punjabi-American, it was easy to remove myself from my ancestral origins. When I was 11, I knew I wanted to be a Chef. When I was 13, I began watching my Bibi and Papa cook our Punjabi staples at home. I wasn’t fluent in my mother tongue, but food was the medium I used to invite myself back into a culture I fought to leave. The menu you are enjoying today is my love letter to my family, my culture and my community.”
Compartments
Sugar Cane Tandoori Prawns
Every summer, the community hosts festivals, called melas, where there is live music and performances, pop up shops and amazing food all throughout an open field. Attending these melas is a yearly family tradition in the Saund home, we all get dressed up for a day in the August sun to celebrate life in the community. I mention the melas because every year, my mom will walk along all the food vendors searching for her love, fresh sugar cane juice. We’d wait in the long line, watching the sugar cane press smash up each stalk one at a time, our mouths salivating more and more with each passing stalk.
Another mela staple is the tandoor with bright red roasted chicken on long skewers coming out of a flaming hot clay cylinder. You already know that’s what Dad ordered while we were running around shopping and haggling for cheaper prices.
When it was time to make this menu, I wanted to combine my parent’s favorite mela classics. As you enjoy the skewers, the pockets of crunchy juice within the sugar cane will complement the natural sweetness of the spot prawns topped with dahi, bee pollen and marigolds. This course is summer on a stick and pays homage to the melas I attend every year with my family.
Pickup the sugarcane and take a bite of the prawns off of the stick. As sweet as the sugarcane is, please do not eat the stick itself. We recommend crunching on it lightly, to release the juices within.
Lamb Tenderloin and Saag Paneer
Whenever there is a celebration in the Saund home, you can expect Papa to give us a call asking “Should I make my bakhra?”. If I had to associate my Papa with one dish, it would be his bakhra, it is absolutely iconic and I’ve sat with him over the years, watching him make it time and time again spending hours upon hours over the range outside waiting for the spices to stew together to become one. After his hard work, he celebrates with a bowl of rice and his goat with his ideal pairing, a double shot of Black Label whiskey.
Now on the other end, Saag is stewed, pureed leafy greens often served with cubes of paneer and is one of the delicacies of Punjab. This dish takes hours to make, and the visual of the folding bright greenery with the smell of the spicy aromatics is overwhelming with nostalgia. Bibi is vegetarian and this dish holds a special place in her heart, and often I find myself feeling the same way.
I’ve watched my grandparents proudly tend to their dishes for hours, and their efforts have not gone unnoticed. I chose to combine the two dishes because I feel it best represents my grandparents' relationship. The eagerness to party and celebrate like Papa with his goat paired with the calm responsibility of Bibi and her saag paneer.
We chose to work with Lamb Tenderloin to create a more composed version of my grandfather's dish. While the saag paneer has remained unchanged from its origin.
Use your knife and fork to cut through the lamb, enjoying a bit of saag paneer in every bite.
Bataun Sabji with Kaluga Caviar & Roti Biscuits
When I would be away for college preparing to come home for break, this would be the dish I would call my Bibi and Papa to make for me on my first night back. At home this dish often consists of quartered baby eggplant and potato braised and cooked until dry, full of abundant warm spices and tharka. Served with a roti, fresh off the tava, made by my mother’s hands. This dish changed the way I looked at eggplant.
Here we’ve transformed this Saund home favorite into a dip with the jar full of bataun sabji, dahi and topped with Kaluga caviar. Traditionally, caviar accompaniments have always left me a little bored and wanting more. Of course I understand that the simplicity of these accompaniments exists to admire the caviar. Regardless, caviar does play well with others. The roasted eggplant blurs the lines of savory and spicy, while the dahi cools your palate as the Kaluga pearls begin to pop in your mouth. We’ve taken the same ingredients used to make roti and turned them into a miniature biscuit.
We recommend using your smallest spoon to scoop through the layers of bataun, dahi and caviar enjoying them atop the roti biscuits.
Savory Gajar Canelés
Gajar sabji is a tried and true recipe in the Saund home. Carrots in India have a lovely rich, red color and it’s said that no amount of organic shopping or food coloring can compensate for what is grown by the farmers. The farmers in India are currently protesting 3 corrupt laws that loosen the rules around the sale, pricing and storage of farm produce. This peaceful protest began in November 2020, tens of thousands of farmers left their villages and families to rally in protest against this corrupt farm legislation. Right now, the Indian government is doing everything it can to silence this protest - arresting organizers, blockading food and supply routes, cutting off the internet for media coverage, and attacking innocent elderly farmers protesting for their future generations. There is no Saund family story here, the farmers deserve the right to set their price against corporations, they deserve the right to peacefully protest, and more importantly they deserve the right to survive and thrive for generations to come.
Canelés are small French pastries with a soft and tender custard center and a dark, thick caramelized crust. Which is precisely why we’ve chosen it to be the perfect vessel to encapsulate gajar sabji. Traditional caneles are made using flour, milk, eggs and sugar. Our rendition was created with a savory aspect in mind, made entirely out of carrots with the same spices found within this iconic sabji.
Air Aloo Gobi Paratha
The Aloo Paratha is a Sunday staple in the Saund house, this is Bibi’s shining star. Every Saturday, Bibi will ask her grandkids “should I make paratha tomorrow?”, to which I always reply “omg yes please”. She will wake up early in the morning, peel and cook the potatoes, prepare the flavorful raw tharka, and prepare her ata to make these delicious Sunday morning staples. By this point, it’ll be 11am, and slowly each grandchild will come down from their rooms to the smell of fresh, piping hot, crispy paratha. My mouth is salivating as I’m writing this for you. This fluffy, crispy gold is perfection - not to mention the ultimate hangover cure. Bibi understands mise en place and for that we are spoiled with her delicacies.
Paratha fillings can vary but with the most common fillings being gobi (cauliflower) or aloo (potato). Both are fantastic. Additionally, there is a popular sabji called Aloo Gobi and I’ve seen it prepared in many different ways on the internet, in my home we stew and cook the cauliflower and potatoes with tharka and tomatoes and allow the water to evaporate until the dish is dry with the warm spices becoming one with the semi-fried potatoes and cauliflower.
When selecting the filling for this paratha I chose to combine the two dishes together to create a deeper education on both Punjabi home staples. You will find these dishes in any Punjabi home you visit, cooked for hours upon hours, only made with love. The air paratha is very similar to the traditional namesake, with the primary difference being that we’ve added a leavening agent to the dough. The best part of any paratha is the filling, within this progressive take we have added three times more than what you would find at home. There are no rules on how to enjoy this, simply pick it up and take a bite.
Ras Malai Cheesecake
Ras Malai is an Indian wedding dessert staple! You can rely on an Indian wedding to have a large serving dish of these sweet paneer patties floating in a warm cardamom milk bath. The main components of Ras Malai are paneer, milk, cardamom and saffron. Paneer is a fresh acid-set cheese made with cow or buffalo milk, originally derived from the Indian subcontinent. When thinking of the dessert for the Moorni menu, I wanted to combine my love for the New York Cheesecake with this traditional classic. Both dense and creamy yet both melt in your mouth. These little pillows of joy are incredibly easy to make and I absolutely encourage you to embark on this journey as a fun family or date night.
Our take on Ras Malai is a saffron and cardamom infused paneer cheesecake, with a Parle G - Sablé Breton cookie crust, pistachio praline, and topped with a pistachio mirror glaze.
Use the smallest, golden-handled spoon to enjoy this cheesecake bite by bite.
Gulab Jamun Macarons
Gulab Jamun is my favorite dessert. Spongy donut holes fried and then dunked in a fragrant floral syrup. It’s delicious when served at room temperature but the best way to enjoy it is piping hot off the pan. This crowd favorite is popular all throughout the Indian subcontinent, as well as within its neighboring countries. Gul (or gol) translates to flower or rose, ab translates to water which refers to the rose-water scented syrup this dessert is soaked in. Jamun translates to a small fruit, commonly titled black plum, this refers to the general shape and size the dough is rolled into before frying. Gulab Jamun was one of the initial ways I was introduced to saffron as a child. The florality and color of saffron, with the warm familiar spice of green cardamom, boiled together with sugar to make the aromatic finish of this Indian dessert would send me to another world. This recipe took a while for me to get right, but when it was time to choose the Saund & Snyder Macaron I knew this explosion of flavor had to be represented.
Page Last Updated: July 15, 2021
